Our guest today is Patrick Coyne, coach and owner of Black Sheep Performance in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pat started helping clients of all levels reach their fullest potential after his career as a 4-star high school football recruit ended in college due to injury. Pat started Black Sheep Performance in 2018 on the side of a house in Cincinnati, OH. Within 3 years BSP organically outgrew itself, working from renting gym space, to a barn, to a state of the art 11,000 sq. foot training facility.
Pat has mentored under some of the top coaches in the nation, is a progressive thinker, and gets great results with his clients in his fast-growing business. When I moved back to Ohio in July, I connected with Pat shortly thereafter and have gotten several training sessions and conversations in with him since then. Pat has a training style that fuses many of the elements I consider essential: A great environment, room for exploration/creativity, competition and reaction, as well as an integration of modern speed training methods, such as those taught by multi-time podcast guest, Adarian Barr.
As such, it was only a matter of time until Pat and I sat down together and recorded a podcast. Two of the big things that Pat and I are both passionate about are being life-long learners and then looking at (and experiencing) the holistic effects of things like the training environment, athlete autonomy/creativity, and the effects of music, rhythm and reactions on performance. On this podcast, Pat and I go into his background as an athlete and coach, his thoughts on structured vs. unstructured/open training, his progressions on speed training, rhythm, timing, how he challenges athletes on a holistic level, and some deeper discussion on the evolution of the human/sports performance industry.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:30 Pat’s medieval gear in his gym, as well as his background as a top-ranked high school quarterback, and his transition into strength and conditioning
11:15 What Pat believes held him back from being successful on the college level after being very successful (and physically fit and gifted) in high school, and what he would tell his younger self from his place now as a coach
16:00 How Pat uses games and a holistic approach to connect dots in his training programs/process
27:40 Ideas on how structured versus unstructured training, as well as the importance of being in the moment without expectations, in the training setting
46:50 How Pat’s speed training process has changed over his years as a coach
54:15 A chat on rhythm and timing in coaching speed and athletic movement, as well as using musical beats to time up various training movements
What Pat sees as the evolving purpose of the profession of a strength coach and the deeper purposes of training and coaching in the physical realm
Three things that go into Pat’s mind before each training session that tell him “this is what will make a great session”
“(To my younger self) I would go and spend time doing everything that I didn’t want to do”
“You have these training sessions which are comfortable and build people up, and it’s very ego driven to where you have your athletes feeling to where they crushed the day, and there is truth in that. But.. how uncomfortable did you make your athletes in a healthy way, in a safe environment, to where they could fail, to where you could see how resilient that athlete is becoming”
“I want to see the full human being first, then we can smack the weights”
“I feel like you make the most progress when you are having fun… why does a kid make progress so fast. Why do we throw that out when we are working with a pro athlete?”
“They may have got their asses kicked, but what they are going to remember at the end of the practice is that the coach might have let them have some fun”
“It’s your job (as a coach) to be a facilitator, you’re literally a catalyst, it’s your job to pull out from the athlete what they need, not to force (your markers) on them, because you are ego-driven”
“The gym is the perfect place to be more resilient as a human, and a lot of that is games and not structuring everything in your workout”
“What I do a lot of times, is I’ll sneak videos when they are playing a game, and I’ll show the positions they are hitting, and I’ll show the kids and ask them “why are you not hitting that in training?”
“I’ve seen the point where fun and open chain (more games) does more damage; people who might need the structure to feel good about the session”
“Seeing an athlete run completely wrong, and smoke everyone in my facility…. well, there goes everything I know”
“Let’s work on falling first, and then all of a sudden you see athletes start to feel and they find their own way of running…. they are figuring it out, I am not over-coaching those positions”
“I teach rhythm before force”
“I use (training movements) to music beats, with my youth, every other day”
“Our job is to optimize the human on the raw, foundational level, I think it’s all together, it’s spiritual, it’s physical, it’s emotional”
“After a training session I feel like I can do everything in the world because I did everything I could in that moment to make myself a more resilient human being”
“Feeling an intense, rich, fiery energy when you walk into a room, it’s kinetic. Environment, a lot of times is more important than programming”
About Pat Coyne
Patrick Coyne is a Cincinnati native who has a deep passion for athletic training rooted in delivering results.
Pat started helping clients of all levels reach their fullest potential after his career as a 4-star high school football recruit ended in college due to injury. Coyne had the opportunity to learn from trainers & gym owners across the United States such as Loren Landow, Marc Megna, Mike Barwis and others. Pat soon discovered that his calling in life is to create value for Cincinnati’s fitness and sports industry, in his own way through his gym, Black Sheep Performance.
Black Sheep Performance was started in 2018 on the side of a house in Cincinnati OH. Within 3 years BSP organically outgrew itself, working from renting gym space, to a barn, to a state of the art 11,000 sq. foot training facility. Pat started Black Sheep Performance in order to help as many people as possible and fulfill his mission, and BSP clients range from youth, to professional athletes, to seniors post-operation.
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