Today’s episode features Tony Holler. Tony is the track coach at Plainfield North High School with 39 years of coaching experience in football, basketball, and track. He is the originator of the “Feed the Cats” training system that has not only found immense popularity in the track and field world, but the team sport coaching world as well. Tony is the co-director of the Track Football Consortium along with Chris Korfist, and has been a two-time prior guest on the podcast. Tony’s ideas of a speed-based culture, and rank-record-publish are making large waves in the coaching world.
It’s been said that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In the coaching world, the desire to be “well-prepared” for one’s sport can easily lead to an excessive amount of conditioning and overall training volume done too early in the season, creating ground for injuries to happen. It’s extremely easy to just “do more”. It takes wisdom and management of one’s coaching validation to start the journey of doing less.
On today’s show, Tony goes in detail on his evolution in his “Feed the Cats” coaching system, from the pre-2008 period where he had no electronic timing, to some of the worst workouts he had his athletes do before that critical year-2000 split where he removed things like tempo sprinting (the t-word) from his programming, and centered his program around being the best part of an athlete’s day. We’ll get into how Feed the Cats is working into team sport training and “conditioning”, and then go in detail on Tony’s speed-training culture built on love, joy, and recognition. Tony will speak on the “art of surrender” in goal setting, his X-factor workouts, and much more in this conversation of almost 2 hours. When you are speaking to someone like Tony, the two hours flies by, and you have a spring in your coaching step afterwards.
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Timestamps and Main Points:
3:49 – The “worst” workout that Tony administered to his sprinters before the year 2000 when “Feed the Cats” started, and Tony’s thoughts on those kids who “survived” that type of training
11:38 – Thoughts on the “Feed the Cats” system as a “base” system for a college sprint program that will likely have more volume and intensive training means
18:49 – Psychological elements of Tony’s program, and the counter-intuitive elements of “not training” for things like back-to-back races at the state championship meet
24:49 – What Tony did for “feed the cats” iterations before his first timing system in 2008, and what the original “feed the cats” workouts were from 2000-2007
31:41 – The idea of being more “sensitized for speed endurance” through an off-season based on feed the cats
35:50 – Joy and love as a foundational force of speed training in the “feed the cats” system
39:36 – Some other elements of Tony’s early “feed the cats” days compared to now, and what he has cut out of the program
48:27 – How to use wrist bands with 20-24mph engravings to reinforce team culture and motivation
57:00 – Tony’s experience of moving FTC into a team sport space, and stories from team sport coaches
1:06:50 – Thoughts on using sport itself as conditioning and essentialism in sport training and conditioning
1:23:05 – Transcending older programs, thought processes in programming, and surrendering to the results
1:31:36 – The present-mindedness of training, and what it means to train like a child
1:36:11 – If Tony’s arm was twisted, would he put in one of the following: A 20’ meeting prior to practice, 6-8x200m tempo, or weightlifting, in his FTC practice
1:40:15 – Some nuts and bolts to Tony’s X-factor workout for the day
“(The worst workout I ever administered before FTC) We ran 48×100 on 20-minute rest, the next week we did 24x200s, and the fifth week we ran 12×400’s”… how did we not get people hurt?
“I say that the most elite athletes are “coach-proof”… us high school coaches are forced to look at coaching the group”
“Paul Souza said “don’t do everything, leave some stuff for us (college coaches) to do (on the level of speed training)”
“Speed grows like a tree, and you have to play the long game. And the only way you play the long game successfully is if kids love what they do”
“As I get older, I realize that sometimes the obvious is the wrong answer”
“If you see a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by accident”
“If my sprint coach became “40-based” I would get every single wide receiver, defensive back, running back, maybe even linemen, come out for my team because of the connection with football. I was willing to under-train my guys in order to “out-athlete” the other team… what I thought was an under-training situation was actually a fantastic way to train”
“If you think about it, the 40 is the perfect metric, it’s half acceleration, half top speed”
“If I work with coaches who are really doing things poorly, and I say “it depends”, that’s not moving the needle”
“Measure what matters, and record what matter… people die for symbols”
“We let the games be the hardest thing we do. We let the 400m be the hardest thing we do”
“I say let the sport train the sport… and we have to be patient with the season training the season…I’d rather be 80% in shape and 100% healthy than the other way around; we don’t want to be 100% in shape because what we have to trade off is way too large”
“Football coaches that get outscore in the 4th quarter, they always say we gotta get tougher, “were soft” and “more conditioning”, but they forget about the two fumbles and 4 missed tackles”
“Jay Schroeder was my number-one influence in my X-factor exercises”
“Every coach should be uncomfortable with how little they do in the first week… I think you should be uncomfortable with how little you do the entire season”
“Track is the ultimate goal-sport because it’s measured”
“When you surrender to the results, the results improve”
“Success will drive you crazy just like failure”
“Did you ever know the guy who tried too hard to get a girlfriend…? He never got a girlfriend”
“The weightroom is so over-hyped, that I have to talk moderation towards the weight-room, which comes off as being anti-strength, and I’m not… I could fit in a 25’ lift after practice, especially if I was only dealing with 15 guys instead of 40. What I would look for is a stimulus effect, not a no-pain-no-gain”
About Tony Holler
Tony Holler is the track coach at Plainfield North High School. Tony retired from teaching chemistry after 38 years in the classroom and has 39 years of coaching experience (football, basketball, and track). Tony Holler is a member of Illinois Track & Field Hall of Fame and Co-director of Track Football Consortium along with Chris Korfist.
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