Sports Science Creator and 6-Time Emmy-Award Winner John Brenkus Breaks Down the Mindset of Top Performing Athletes and People

Audio Transcription

On today’s show, we interviewed the six time Emmy Award winner and the creator of Espns sports science, Mr John Brenkus, and on today’s show, he breaks down why you must have a vision and be able to execute on that vision, the difference in the mindset of truly great athletes and very good athletes. Why nearly all top performers are the most coachable white character sets the ceiling and talent sets the floor. And on today’s show, John Brenkus breaks down all of this and much, much more.

How are you sir?

I am outstanding. Absolutely outstanding. Thank you guys so much for having me.

Now, can you measure the amount of outstanding you are with all of your equipment? Is it scientific?

I’ll, I’ve got an outstanding sensor on right now.

I love that. This guy is my guy. He’s my guy. Would those sensors, you don’t want to ask you this? Uh, you have spent such a massive amount of time breaking down sports greatness. Has this impacted your appreciation for athletes or how’s it impacted? But when you break down, you realize that Lebron James can cross the entire span of a court nine strike verses 12, 13. That impacted you. How has it impacted your appreciation for athletes?

What’s interesting is that I got involved with sports science because I am a sports fan and a science fan and I always marveled that the athletes who peaked in sixth grade,

me too, man. Me Too. I joined, at least you picked seven of us. Never peaked. I do want to do,

I need to throw out a broad. I don’t know if this record still stands, but I know it’s for a very long time. I did have the record for the 600 yard dash at Vienna elementary.

Yeah, the fighting, fighting beaver. That’s scary. That’s a scary thought.

Look that I was really fast and I was a kid and as I grew up, I’m a small guy. My speed, you know, essentially kept dwindling as everyone got faster and I became really fascinated with why are some people better than others that are very young age. No, I grew up in the DC area, so I had three super bowls with the redskins. I had a world series with cal ripkin and the orioles, you know, we had a basketball NBA championship at the board I had. I had a very solid sports foundation as a kid. Not only as a player but as a fan now being a science geek like I am. When you asked the question, what’s the difference between good and great? That’s what I’m really trying to unpack is trying to explain. You know what? There are certain people when in, in sort of thing that that annoys me the most is when people say that person, like even using Lebron James, he’s just a genetic freak.

He wakes up, rolls out of bed is better than everybody else. That is not true at the professional level. That was true in high school would have been true if he had. He got into college, but at the elite level, all all of the men and women at the elite level are they are the person who could wake up, roll out of bed and be better than everybody. In sixth grade, they were all that, that person, but at the elite level, nobody can do that. So what are the things and aspects of the game that an athlete can do to separate themselves? Obviously size. You can’t teach sucks, but also size can be a disadvantage. People say you can’t teach speed. You actually can, but if you. If you say speed is everything, it’s not how big you are. It’s the way, depending on what your position needs, and I’ll give you a good stat about understanding the appreciation of elite athletes.

I love to use the staff. People say run. You can’t teach speed and size and you want the biggest, strongest, fastest guide running the ball. Like you really don’t. You don’t want the fastest guy and you don’t want a big guy. You want someone who, if you look at top five running backs of all time in the NFL by yards gained five running backs, none of them are over six feet tall. They’re six feet and under the average weight is about 2:15, so you’re not talking about a giant human being and they’re 40 times when go ahead and look them up at the top five. Nobody was the fastest in their class or the fastest on their team and not even necessarily the fastest at their own position. He had Emmitt Smith as the number one running back in NFL history. He had Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, Curtis Martin Lt. none of these guys ran a 40 time.

That is John Ross’s, you know, force you three, wherever he ran it. It is possible to be too big and too fast because of f equals m. A force is mass times acceleration. The bigger you are, the more you experience, the faster you are, the more force you experience. So I like to refer to great athletes as being in that goldilocks zone. They’re not too big or too fast, they’re just right. And that’s because there’s another newtonian principal, um, were two objects that each experienced the same amount of force, so you can’t as a, as a human being experienced, too much force, so you don’t want to be small and really fast or big and really slow or even big and super fast. You want to make sure that you’re, you’re the right size or whatever position you’re playing.

John Brenkus, You have gained obviously massive attraction with your career. But the idea of merging science and sports I think is probably new or bizarre to Mo. Most people. It’s a new thing. Can I ask you what, what, what were your biggest challenges as you were atteMpting to gain traction with your career? Emerging sports and science?

What’s interesting is we start the production company that I owned with my, with my brother in law and partner. We, we had two divisions of our company sport division in the science division to hit all of the live programming for the Washington capitals, Washington, the Washington bullets. I’m going to the Washington wizards. We have that contract for 17 years. Wow. You know, we, we had tons of sports program. We also did science programming where we did the young scientist challenge. We did the first live interactive show called science live, all on discovery science channel. So we had this great foundation of being known as a company for doing sports you type cd. We combined those things into a show called xma extreme martial arts. We had tom cruise during the wraps for it. He was tied up with the last samurai and it was really sort of the 10,000 foot view at the biomechanics of martial arts.

Um, and it did really well for us. National geographic came along and said, hey, we want that, the science it up. So we did a show called fight science where we brought in the world’s greatest martial artists to punch and kick the crap out of a crash test dummy to see which style generated the most amount of force this was to us. This was sort of the punch and the kick heard round the world because it was top 10 all time from national geographic. And fox owns national geographiC and fox sports. And they ran fIght signed on fox sports opposite the original eli manning versus payton manning, sunday night football game and on fox sports who was the third highest rated show of the year with no advertising. People are like, oh my god, people love decides things. What else do you have?

which which

yeah, I said, well we have a show called sports science and the premise is sports science to take that idea that we had from site site and use it in all sports. So you know, who hits harder a rugby player or football player, you know. And you know, we’ve done 1800 segments of a for science. We have like we had, we had this grand idea, but we had fights scientists, sort of the introduction now would what’s, what’s crazy is I told everybody, I said it went in. It’s the show in two very important things. I said, one, we’re not paying any player to come in no matter what. Because great. If you’re great at something, you’re going to want to show up at this one of a kind lab that we’re going to build and you’re going to want to not only demonstrate what you can do and show off to the world, but you want to learn something. That’s the exchange here. So I believe that the better you are at your craft, the more willing you are to do it for free because you’re going to learn something. And the second thing that happened was the general manager at the time said, well, you who’s going to get the hosting? And I said, listen, we were licensing the show to you. So whoever you want, he said, you know what, you are so average as an athlete. You’re a great counterpoint to this.

Backhanded compliment.

Felt like, wow, I’m going to take average as a, uh, as a couple, but there. So when we started, you know, we built this laptop was actually in the lab. Um, it’s done. It was done at hawthorne airport and we, you know, in seasons one and two out of the, out of the gate where nobody even knew that sports science existed. We had ray lewis, ben roethlisberger, drew brees, Larry Fitzgerald, Jerry Rice, on and on and on. Guys who are the best of the best of the best, all doing it for free. So now when you’re calling up it, it became a, well, who are you to saying no, these guys who are the greatest of all time, how are you? Why would you not want to do this? That’s whEn we were then on fox because we then went to espn between fox and espn, you know, we won six emmy’s, had did 1800 segments and now we’ve branched off and started a new one called soul and science.

I started up with trent dilfer. Um, but it’s been in terms of getting traction with what’S been. When you say like, how difficult was it? It was surprisingly easy because I believe human beings are interested in what human beings can do. Whether or not you’re a sports fan or now they’re just interested. If I said, can ray lewis, does ray lewis hit harder than a swat team? Battering ram or ray louis bull rush over a swat team, battering ram. You want to see what happens? You just like ray lewis knocked his door. I totally off the hinges generates way more force. Even if you’re not a football fan, you’re entertained by it and being educated at the same amount of time.

Dr. Three, three, three part question for you, but the first is I’m really excited to hear that I don’t have the fastest 40 and I’m not the biggest guy, so I still have a shot. Have a shot at being a running back in the nfl at 54 years of age. That’s. I’m excited about that. Thank you for jacking me up. Fit the mold. I fit the both. Number one. I haven’t seen all of your shows, but the ones I have, I just. They’re awesome. I love him. I enjoy them. Have you ever done one on thoroughbred racehorse? That’s one of my passions. I breed and race thoroughbreds. If you ever done one on the athlete, that is a horse.

We’ve done both the horse and the jockey.

Oh wow. So I can a website, I can go what, what’s, what’s worth going to see that youtube or what’s the best place to go and see that

type in sports science and whatever topic you want. There’s still 100. There are probably four or 500 there is still up there. Um, because some of them had footage restrictions with the league you have. Yeah. You have tons of segments that you can still find. It’s, it’s interesting between the segments that are in line, there’s over a billion hits just for sport science. So yeah, we’d done, you know, with horse racing it’s interesting. People are always saying, you know, it was horse racing, sports. You can consider it a horse and athlete. What about the jockey? I’m like, there’s so much precision. There is so much. Um, there’s so much that lettuces and that is when people try to sell it short, it’s kind of like, you know, a race car driver. I’m like, do you understand the reactIon time you need when you’re going 200 miles an hour in traffic with other cars that are going 200 miles an hour?

yeah, exactly.

You can’t, you can’t possibly argue that the rates for drivers, not an athlete.

Absolutely.

So, you know, so yeah, it was. horse racing is really fascinating to study. Um, and there’s a lot of, there’s a really big element in terms of horse racing, of the intangibles of it all, right, because why, you know, why will one jockey wind over another why we’re one owner win over another. Um, there’s a lot of intangibles that go on that couldn’t be measured exactly down to a science. You could break down the science of blood flow within a horse and you know, breathing rate and stride length times stride frequency and all, all different of stuff. But there definitely is a component like any, like anything else, there’s a mental component to it. You know, a human beings sprinting 100 meters is going to behave very differently. Their income if they’re just not in the right state of mind. Same thing goes for animals, for sure. There’s a eight. There is an art and science to getting an animal prepared to run.

Absolutely. NoW, second part is if you’re the gm or owner of an nfl team, you’re the decision maker. Okay. That’s where you are and you’re the hundred 18 draft with a number one draft pick. Come on. I know you’ve evaluated all these quarterbacks. I know you’ve met with them. I know you know them. Which one would you have said is the number one draft pick?

Yes. Well, from this past year we broke down actually, so trent nih with soul and science on nfl network. We broke down all of the quarterback’s going into the draft.

Well, most of them in on your website. I’m looking at the breakdowns right now. I’m pretty pretty impressive.

[inaudible] dot com, and you can look at all the breakdown. The here’S what’s interesting is people need to understanD that the position of quarterback more than any other position in all of sport is really susceptible to the factors surrounding that person. So when I. When you say, well, who’s the best one? Single quarterback, it really depends on the system that they’re playing it. It really depends on what team they’re playing it. When you, when you saw, um, you know, donald come in and light it up and the first couple of weeks and weeks of the judge, then he added a couple of rough weeks. Now you’re like, where does he sit? How much is he responsible for that? How much does the coordinator responsible? There are so many factors that go into it. All you can say is here are guys that it put into the right situation, right place, right time, right team.

They could really thrive. You can’t just pull a name out of a hat. it’s got to be the right guy. I think josh allen has a really good chance. I think josh rosen as a really good chance. I think darla doeS as well. I think mayfield is shown. Flashes of, you know, have flashes of being that exciting quarterback. Um, I think those guys all have a chance. But you see like with baker mayfielD, I think we’re, I mean the head coach and the offensive coordinator just got fired and baker mayfield greatest lighting up the ratings with the brown, so people are watching the browns and he’s made them more relevant than ever. it’s really exciting to watch. Kind of reminds me of, you remember when uh, uh, Jason Williams and chris webber, we’re playing for the kings in sacramento. It like, like lit up. It just,

I know sacramento has a team, right?

Food of the browns are actually big data. They’re competitive in dc.

Okay. Johnson, you can, you could sit up whatever system you want. Come on. You gotta give me a name. You’ve got to. Come on, come on bro. Give it to me. Come on.

I’m going to take donald number one.

Oh my goodness. Okay. They’re going to dig in. Garland number one,

the reason being is having seen everybody in person, he’s the safest bet for overall. You know, there’s not going to be a locker room problem. You knoW, there’s not going to be an attitude problem. You know, he’s got the physical skill. So there’s not a lot of mystery in terms of his feeling like his arm isn’t the strongest arm. Josh allen clearly has the strongest arm, you know, rose got a chip on his shoulder in a good way of wanting to prove himself. But I think donald was the safest bet to go. Number one,

I Want to get into soul and science and I also want to get into you as a person, as I’ve deep dive to probably, uh, we, we had to reel them back, was like a really high character guy. You’re a guy who, um, I feel like you really do care about your career and you care about each and every person you interview and you really have a positive message that’s deeper than we probably have time to get into today. But of all the athletes that you’ve interviewed, roberT griffin, the third ray, leWis, marshawn lynch, martin, martin, marshawn lynch, Larry Fitzgerald, Jerry Rice, michael vick, I mean huge, huge people. Is there a certain athlete in your mind that exhibits the character traits that you admire the most? Not that athleticism where you go, that person has unbelievable character.

What’s interesting is a lot of people think that elite athletes or celebrities have huge egos and attitudes. That’s just what you sayIng. There are just people who come along where like ray lewis, one of my best friends, Larry Fitzgerald, very, very good friend. When you just like hook up with people who are the best at what they do and they have no like the ego is checked. They are here. They know that they’re here to spread positive energy in the universe. When you really get to know larry or really get to know ray trent dilfer, I mean trent dilfer is being partnered up with them. When you, when you meet people who know, success is measured by the amount of love and happiness you’re spreading in the universe. one way to do that is to entertain people by doing your best. That’s one Way of doing it.

Another way is by leading by example, and living a great life. You know, and and when really dive down. I love marshawn, marshawn lynch. To me, it’s such an amazing human being because you will find no one who’s more authentic. You will find no one Who doesn’t have an agenda other than just to be himself. He and I get along so well and during his, you know, media blackout time where he didn’t talk to anybody who was on our show three times. He like, he just, he and I just get along so well because we both are bringing to the table the sense of authenticity and positive energy and you look at marshawn, he’s still living in the neighborhood where he grew up. He could live anywhere in the world, but he still lives in the same neighborhood because that’s who he believes he can, if he can influence the most, are those around him who we love.

We interviewed justin for set on the thrive time show and he and marshawn lynch are very good friends and he would also agree with you that did marshawn lynch is a super high character individual who a lot of people don’t understand and I think a lot of people want to understand though here, john, your new show, so on science. Tell us about and science. Everybody out there. We have a lot of action orientated entrepreneurs out there. Tell us about solon science, your new program, and why every single listener listening today needs to check it out at least once.

Yep. I’m joined forces and we are creating segments that are not only looking at the science of sport, but it’s also looking at the soul, the intangibles, leadership, grit, desire, things that are very hard to measure because you really need to take a look. This is a more holistic approach where we’re doing segments for thursday night football for the nfl. We have a deal with intel produce original content. We have many more deals that are rolling out from underneath the banner. You can go to soul and science.com to check it out. But really when you, when you. The thing that I learned about, I’m from solon psa from sports science is that character really matters and character is this incredible, um, incredible ingredient to creating an amazing athlete like you mentioned, like who are the ones that you get along with the most? What’s amazing is the number of, of, of athletes that we’ve had in. I can honestly tell you there has not been a single athlete where they weren’t special in their own way. They Weren’t kind, they weren’t generous. They remember they’re there for free and even always saw on site. These guys are there for free. It takes a special, someone who’s really great to do something for free and to want to continue to spread positive energy and that really is what it’s all about

for the entrepreneurs out there that look up to you, that to, um, are a big fan of what you’ve done throughout your career. Do you have one piece of advice for anybody out there? Because we used to, when you decided to merge sports and science, it had to seem like a crazy idea, but you’ve gained traction and now massive success. You’ve Won six emmy’s. You’re having massive success. Your news, your new show and science is going to be a huge success. It’s alreadY gaining traction, massive traction. What encouragement or advice would you have? His parting words for the entrepreneurs out there listening to today’s show?

So what would I advise everyone to be able to have a vision and be able to execute on that vision? And I’ll explain what I mean by that. Steven soderbergh, when I was young in college, I did an independent study with him. He had, he had not won an oscar yet. He just done sex, lies and videotape, and he said, if you want to be in film and television, learn, did you everything yourself, that way you’ll know what you are individually good at. And if you hire somebody, you’ll know whether or not they’re better than you because you want to make sure you’re hiring people who are better than you and every position. So if you learn whatever craft you’re in, if you learn how to do it, soup to nuts and you understand it inside and out, you then can identify people who are better than you, who can then then help the venture.

When you have that vision of, I want to, you know, I want to create a product line for a lacrosse stick or whatever it is. You need to understand the manufacturing aspect of marketing aspect. Um, you know, uh, every possible aspect I’m involved in whatever product it is that you’re doing and if you understand it, then you can actually wrap your head around it and succeed and don’t use money as sort of your measuring stick because money is a, is very subjective, depending on the field you’re in, you want to measure it by happiness. HoW much joy are you? are you getting out of this and how much joy are you returning to the world? That money will come if you become great at something, it’s this, that’s just the way that, that finances work. If you hate what you’re doing and if you’re spreading negative energy, it’s not worth doing. If you are positive and you are doing something positive and emanating positive energy and really love what you’re doing, you’re going to stumble upon that, the, you know, the sport and science and putting, putting it all together and creating something that had never existed before.

John Brenkus, I appreciate you for being on today’s show. I know dr z and I are just, we’re honored to have you on here and if you’re out there listening today, I encourage you to check out the new show, soul and science. Check it out. We’ll put a link to it on the show notes. John, I appreciate you taking the time. Have an awesome day, my friend

and John Brenkus, if you need, if you want to do sports and science with honor a radio host, a play and I would be be more than happy to show up and get it hooked up to any. Any probes are. Could talk the fastest, the quickest. Yeah, I mean the option for. I don’t know what science you could do, could do, but I think here’s one thing I would put clay up against anybody. I’ll tell you what. This guy is a beast when it comes behind the mic, so they’re there. We have that.

I would say be careful what you wish.

You’re so right. Are you outside right now? John, do you have a great day, my friend?

Alright, appreciate it.

Take care. Chuck. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but coming up very, very soon. We have our, our December 7th and eighth thrive time show workshop. I am aware actually it’s going to be exciting, my friend. I’m excited. hundreds of people, 100. We have a lot of people from Florida who will be attending flow and we have ken schmidt, the four e’s. The guy behind the harley famous turnaround. Harley davidson Was not doing well, and kenny schmidt joined the team in 1985 where he led the company until 1999. Helping to transform their image and to turnaround this iconic american brand into the brand that we all know and love today. Can schmidt from harley davidson fame will be there. And Michael Levine bed. Former pr consultant of choice for nike for prints for Michael Jackson for a pizza hut for cameron diaz for george. Mike, come on for George Bush.

President, uh, president clinton. He’s going to be speaking at our workshop as well as kin schmidt. Dr zellner will be speaking. It’s going to be awesome. It’s day 15 hour workshop. It is. It has the power to change your life, but we cannot help you if we do not get a chance to know you, so get your tickets today by going to thrive time show.com. Once again, that’s thrive time show.com. But if I were thinking about tickets and traveling from Florida or New York or anywhere, I would want to at least have listened to either know or have seen five or 10 video reviews or 100. The answer is I want to have at least seen some video review. Absolutely and right now we have a. According to the last time I looked at, we had 891 video reviews of real people out there just like you on video talking about their experience as well as we have 512 objective google reviews from real conference attendees and over a thousand I tune reviews, but I want to kind of make it easy for you out there. So if you google search, thrive time show conference reviews, you can find it. If you go onto youtube and you type in thrive time, show conference reviews, you could find it or if you listen for the next five minutes, I’m going to tell to you with a barrage, a cornucopia, a plethora of real reviews from real people out there just like you who have attended our real in person, thrive time, show workshops,

carlos cloud and I am from anaheim, California. I originally heard about it through robert redmond, which is my business coach, and he offered it to me for free and one of our sessions, tcp commercial contractors, was just looking to learn better systems and better ways to structure. My company was very exciting, very energetic, motivating and inspiring. A lot of good people, a lot of place, good place to network. Clay’s very funny. A lot of jokes constantly laughing and making good points and an examples. One of the most valuable things is just not beating around the bush about getting rid of people that needed to get out of the company. People that’s costing you money. A lot of people are out for their selfish ambitions and you don’t want to. Those types of people ruin your dreams. My favorite aSpect of the workshop is that the notes in the book and everything set up to where if you do miss something and there’s always a backup way to get to, well, they are missing out on all of the stuff that they think they know, but they don’t know and just having the atmosphere in the circle of people around you that’s gonna influence you will help you and teach you the systems that you’re going to need you to know to get yourself to the next level.

So my name is John Kelly from baton rouge, Louisiana. Also heard about the thrive time workshop through a clay stairs at leadership initiative. So I’m a general contractor. We do commercial residential work and I’m just looking to refine my business and uh, learn some of the staff to do that. Took place. All of office in the team is awesome. They really know their stuff. They have great culture. Also plays, plays, presentation style is super cool. It makes it a lot of fun, but at the same time you can tell he really knows his stuff. He really does his homework. I think the biggest takeaway that I have from the conferences, just it’s really important to be disciplined and disciplined in a lot of areas. you got to be disciplined with your time. You got to be disciplined in the way you manage and that’s super important for people not attending the conference. They’re really missing a great opportunity to learn a whole lot about business and they’re missing it. They’re missing the experience of learning in a fun way. Everyone is attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. You talked to the coaches and you talked to the leadership, you know, from week to week what you aCtually get to see companies that have been through it anD just, it makes the whole experience.

I’m kelly and I’m from tulsa, Oklahoma. HoW we heard about it. Um, one of my husband’s students isn’t it? And he was telling me about a, just in small talk about what he does, how do you help small businesses grow? And that’s exactly where we’re at needing to grow. And so we jumped on the opportunity to become like a barber. My husband and I own curtis music academy is a private institution or anybody from the ages of six to 66 and we were just wanting to learn how to hire new instructors because we have maxed out our availability and we want to continue. I’m blown away, didn’t know what to expect. This was my first time in and it exceeded my expectations. High energy, which is a great, great music playing, excellent atmosphere, very welcoming and inviting for newbies. Okay. Trading style. Um, I see that he has a lot of comedic influences.

My husband and I were joking like what comedians who might be listening to you because we definitely picked up on a lot of the responses, but just again, high energy, making it fun while giving a lot of content valuable. Probably the most practical for myself is I am the wife of an entrepreneur. He’s working 80 plus hours a week. I’m taking care of two kids and so what I’m learning is how I can help them continue to grow and just practical things that I can do on the side when he is tied up. How can I best support my husband? You don’t know what you don’t know until you found out that you don’t know it. So we just are like, oh my goodness, we’re avoiding a many common mistakes that small businesses might make because we’re getting the information now and we’re seeing because you need motivation and you need to hear the testimonies of people who have done the hard work and seeing the payoffs and it’s gonna take us a long time to get to where a lot of these people are, but it’s going to be worth in the end,

chuck, we’d like to end each and every show with a boom. And so now, without any further ado, to what.