Show Notes

• What causes athletes – and others – to achieve greatness?
• The two options in life we can control
• How Barwis works with their clients
• Investing in people… through service
• Commonalities and differences among high performers
• What got you here won’t get you there
• The importance of linear focus
• Mike’s mission in life
• What makes our life journey special
• The responsibility we have to do something with the gifts we are given
• The Brock Mealer story

Connect With Mike Barwis

✩ Website: https://barwis.info/
✩ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barwismethods/
✩ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarwisMethods
✩ Twitter – https://twitter.com/barwismethods

Summary

Mike Barwis is the founder and CEO of the BARWIS Methods family of companies. He has trained over 500 Olympic and professional athletes in all sports leagues, and has extensive experience in strength and conditioning at both the pro and college levels. Mike discusses what it’s like working with elite athletes, and the bigger calling he has for his life.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. 

Mike Barwis is the founder and CEO of the BARWIS Methods family of companies, including the BARWIS Methods training centers. In addition to running BARWIS, Mike is also the Director of Sports Science for the Anaheim Ducks and the Director of Sports Science and Human Performance at the Detroit Red Wings, both in the National Hockey League. Mike also worked for ten years with the New York Mets baseball team and as a consultant for the Miami Dolphins in the National Football League. Additionally, Mike has extensive experience at the college level, having served as Director of Strength and Conditioning for the University of Michigan and prior to that, as Director of Strength and Conditioning at West Virginia University. Mike has trained over 500 Olympic and professional athletes in all sports leagues and from various countries around the world. Mike and BARWIS have been showcased in numerous journals, magazines and newspapers and Mike has also written several books and produced countless videos on the topic of strength and conditioning. As you will soon discover, Mike is the real deal; the bio I just read barely scratches the surface of everything Mike has accomplished. Olympic swimmer Peter VanderKaay, who we had on the LifeExcellence podcast way back in episode two, calls Mike a strength and conditioning genius who strives for perfection in all aspects of coaching and life. I’m humbled and honored to have him on the show. I can’t wait to jump into this episode. Welcome, Mike and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Mike  

Thanks for having me, Brian. I appreciate it. I’m looking forward to getting to spend some time together, it’s been something I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.

Brian  

Me too. Mike, BARWIS bills itself as the world’s leader in human performance optimization. You’ve helped, as I said in the bio, countless athletes reach the pinnacle of their profession in several different sports. What is it that separates athletes who achieve greatness from those who get close to the top but never reached the highest level of their sport?

Mike  

It’s a good question. I think there are a number of things that do but I’ve had a lot of different exposures, worked with over 5000 Olympic and professional athletes in 54 sporting events so I’ve seen just about everything you can imagine. There is a definitive characteristic that becomes common among them and really in high business performers that I work with who have achieved the level of excellence there. People who perform well in the medical field [too]. There is a strong commonality. One is a relentless nature that never allows them to surrender. It’s understanding that most people in life quit just before they get what they want. When you’re relentless and focused, you have a great opportunity to achieve. Adversity or adversaries in life are really looked at as growth opportunities instead of significant hurdles that provide impedance for your success. They get to a situation where – when I face adversity or I have an adversary – my willingness to continue to climb and grow and excel is what changes my mindset versus I feel that and I surrender and I fade away and the pressures of that adversary, I succumb to. Learning to say that adversity is a process that actually helps me grow and helps me metamorphose into a successful situation and is something I desire is a completely different mindset. That is typically not common, but you can’t do common things and expect uncommon results. If we expect to achieve the uncommon, we can’t do what everyone else does that haven’t. I think exposing ourselves to an environment where we get comfortable with uncomfortable situations, we get comfortable with struggles and adversaries, and we understand that those are opportunities for us to cultivate something inside us, that makes us better than we were the day before. That makes us stronger than we were than before we faced that that adversary. That allows us to change or adapt systems or structures that we have that allow us to be more effective at achieving our goals. Those bumps, ripples, times you get knocked down, times your feet get cut out from underneath you, are really what molds you into the champion. It’s not the successful days, the days that you have that are successful, you feel great, you go home, nothing really changes. The days that you have the struggle, you learn from, you cultivate, you learn how to push through, you learn how to devise a different system, you learn how to work differently, that’s what made you great. I tell my kids all the time – I’ve got four children – I tell them all the time, listen, you never have to lose in life, you choose to lose in life. The reality is, you’re going to get beat, you’re going to fail, you’re going to struggle, the only way you lose is if you do nothing when that happens, because that loss stays with you and you don’t grow from it. The reality is, every loss is a victory. If we understand what we did wrong, how we can be better at it, what systems we need to change to make ourselves more effective then we come back stronger than we were before. Now the loss was a cultivation of growth inside ourselves and it allows us to become something better today than we were yesterday. That becomes a victory. Standard victories, you learn very little from them, they’re great, they’re achievements, you’re excited about it, but it’s when we lose that we get better. I think that mindset of a true champion is understanding that I have to embrace my losses, I have to understand how to cultivate greatness within myself from the losses that I face and achieve a higher level of performance.

Brian  

It’s interesting to me that nothing you said has anything to do with talent. It’s all really about mindset and how you position yourself and how you react to situations; becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable, recognizing that you’re going to face adversity and maybe looking at that differently than most people look at adversity and not necessarily welcoming it but just recognizing that it’s going to happen and positioning yourself to overcome that, to navigate through that. But again, none of what you said has anything to do with with physical talent.

Mike:

No, I think there’s…obviously you have your God given gifts, you have your talents, you have your passion. I always always tell people, we’re given two options in life to control; we can control our attitude, we can control our effort. That’s it, right, that’s free will. We’ve got free will, we’ve got attitude control, we’ve got effort control. The reality is, you have God given gifts, you have God given attributes or talents, and you have a God given passion. An individual that loves football can’t make themselves love croquet. You’re going to have a passion, you’re going to be driven towards your passion. I always tell people, if you want to be successful, find your passion. Take your God given talents and attributes and fortify them with what you control; a positive attitude and a tremendous effort and never surrender when you struggle. If those things become normative for you, you’re going to be successful in anything you do.

Brian  

That’s great. The clients who come to you – and I’m referring specifically to the professional athletes, Olympic athletes, elite athletes – they’re already operating at a pretty high level, probably even with a lot of what we’ve been talking about, the mindset stuff, but certainly they have raw talent, why do they seek you out? And what does working with you look like for those athletes?

Mike  

In BARWIS we’re about 37 different companies. We are an international company, we train thousands of athletes. We’re the only private organization in the world that runs professional sports teams externally. I’m a sports scientist, my background is in physiology, specialization in phys. When we do what we do, there are a lot of components to it. We’re the most cutting edge in the world when it comes to tracking data and understanding and utilizing technology for force assessments on joints. I wrote the ARS Neural Screen which is the most progressive screen for evaluating athletes imbalances and corrective needs. So an athlete comes in here and we’ll identify what do you need to do nutritional, we’re going to assess, maybe running blood work, testing deficiencies, and seeing areas of needs, understanding genetics, and how their body has to be treated differently than someone else’s, via nutritional aspects. Looking at, understanding in a full one to two hour screen on the human anatomy of every motion of every pattern, and understand the forces and the relationships of every joint and the magnitudes of how each of those pieces integrate and what needs to be balanced and what corrective exercises are specific for that individual to make sure that mechanically they’re optimized. But also we’re going to reduce the risk of injury or imbalances or future problems by looking at what are the mechanisms for bio-mechanics and how are they functioning with force plate assessments and [inaudible] board assessments in dynamic nature. Do we decelerate appropriately for the explosive nature we have on the propulsive side? What way should we be training this individual based on the deficiencies or efficiencies they have, genetically and in their history of training and sport, understanding how have the actual attributes they have that the game has presented caused an adaptation in the person? Because there’s a law of medicine – Wolf’s Law – the body conforms and adapts to the intensities and individual directions the individual is subjected to. So what we do is what we become, just like anything else in life, and specific motions in sport create specific adaptations. How are we counteracting them to maintain a normative function of the joint so that the joint doesn’t have a degenerative nature or create imbalances? Then identifying from a standpoint of what are the biometrics of that individual. How are they sleeping? What are their hydration levels? What are we looking at for their sympathetic and parasympathetic responses? What is their heart rate variability? How are they recovering? What recovery dynamics are we applying to this individual? So looking at all of those different facets before we even start training. We need to know what we’re dealing with, how you operate from a physiological standpoint, how you operate from a bio-mechanical standpoint, how your biochemistry is effectively optimized; all of the different aspects of you – genetically, physiologically – need to be identified before we start training so we know exactly what we’re working with. I don’t want to get in a car and put on a blindfold and try to drive home and park in my driveway. I want to take the blindfold off so I can see every turn, every road, every red light, every stop sign and pull in my driveway effectively and safely. And that’s what I have to understand about the human anatomy and physiology before I start working with an athlete. Once we have that athlete, and we understand exactly what we have to provide them to allow them to gain and function and optimize and recover appropriately, then we’ve got to put them in a different situation. Then we have to place them under a specific duress or a given stimulus that elicits the desired result we want from that person at that time. People say you train sports specific; you don’t really train sport specific, you train cellularly specific; you provide a given stimulus for a cell to adapt to specifically in the way you desire. And there’s different phases of that. Maybe the person has the increased cross sectional area and a muscle to allow for more actin and myosin to be laid down in parallel so I can generate more force in the next phase. And then maybe I have to initiate the neural patterns to fire at a more rapid rate. Whatever it is I desire based on the testing and attributes of that athlete, I have to provide that specific stimulus. Then it comes down to the most important part. I’ve got to motivate that individual and help them understand what they’re capable of. Because the truth is, we can do all this science, we can have everything we need perfectly positioned but we still have to work with the human being. We still have to motivate a human being, we still have to educated a human being, we still have to help them understand that the greatness isn’t in the building, it’s not the air, it’s not in the floor, you’re not going to find it in the fancy turf, you’re not going to see it in all the other things that we use. The greatness is inside you and our job is to get it out. Greatness doesn’t exist in inanimate objects. Those objects are used to find the tools to provide the resources and the stimulus to get greatness out of a human being. That greatness resides in you. It’s no different in business, in life, in humanity in general. Greatness is in people. It’s not here. It’s not in the place. It’s not in the facility. You’ve got to get it out of people and that requires an environment which cultivates greatness in human beings.

Brian  

Do you find, Mike, that what your clients are getting ends up being different than what they’re coming to you for? (Mike:  That’s a great question.) I can see where…I don’t know what example…a running back in the NFL wants to be faster or wants to be more agile and learns about you and comes to you. You have a very high reputation but the things that you’re talking about are probably different than, I’m assuming, what that athlete is thinking about when he comes to you. Is that the case or do they have some understanding of all the other stuff; becoming great and everything that goes into that, that isn’t about speed necessarily, or agility in the case of a running back?

Mike  

Yeah, I think there are attributes to that. I mean, nobody cares what you know, till they know you care. I think investing in human beings and caring about people is what allows us to be successful in anything we do. The goal should be…in every every gym or facility or sports science lab or anything…we have on the wall, I always put up the same quote that I wrote years ago, it says that “if the people we work with today mean more to us than we do to ourselves, we’ll be good at our jobs.” It’s about investing in other people. To be a great leader, you have to serve. There are a lot of leaders who lead by fear; they’re not great leaders, you’re in the position because people are afraid. The reality is, if you’re not willing to take the knee and serve the individuals who work for you and with you, then you’re really not leading them anywhere, you’re leading them where you want them to go, not where they need to go. I think the reality is, when people come to me, yes, they’ve heard the reputation and they see the success, or they’ve seen the different pro teams around the world that we operate and run and they see the success of different organizations, and maybe athletes that we’ve trained over the years – thousands of them – and they see, okay, these guys have achieved this; maybe they come for that performance. I think when they get here, that changes completely. They get here and they realize that it’s not just about performance, it’s about understanding who I am and being the best version of me, while being optimized physiologically for performance. I want to be completely optimized with all the attributes I have, I want my biochemistry to be awesome, optimized, I want to bio-mechanically be as efficient as I can, in all my movements – speed, agility – I want to have the optimal power and explosiveness that I need to create those movements, I want to have the mobility and stability to create those movements effectively without the risk of injury. I want to have all of these attributes and conditioning and the bio-energetic so that I’m efficient and I can last a longer period of time. All of these attributes make me great in sport, but they only make me great in sport if I have the cognitive understanding of who I am, how to use them, and the capability of having the mental strength and fortitude to drive through the situations when I face adversity. Knowing that everything that I am and I was designed to be only comes to fruition if I’m in a place that allows me to believe I can accomplish it and in a place that allows me to be strong and effective and comfortable in my mind at being the best version of me. I think a lot of times I see…and even in business – I run a lot of companies, I do a lot of speeches for different corporations around the world, motivational pieces and/or business development – I see in business as well it’s the same thing. We hire people and we try to force them into holes that don’t work for them. A lot of times we’re better off bringing people into a position and finding out that they’re more resourceful in maybe a deviation of that position, then cultivating and growing them in the area that they’re more resourceful because it’s going to be more beneficial for them in their development and more beneficial for you and your company. So being rigid and stringent in the developmental process although sometimes it’s necessary to create the structure behind what we’re trying to produce. Sometimes it’s better to deviate from that process and create a little different avenue because the attributes you have are more suited for the developmental process that you’re cultivating into. It’s no different in athletics. That’s why we really want to know what are we dealing with. What is this person? What makes this person unique? What makes him tick physiologically, physically, but also what makes him tick, cognitively and mentally. I mean, I have athletes around the world that call me at night when they’re having a struggle with their wife, or they’ll call me at night when they’re having hard times in the game and they’re just trying to get through the process. Letting them find the best version of themselves and the fortitude to continue to climb in hard circumstances is a big key component to success.

Brian  

One of the things that I was going to ask you about, and it’s really impressive as I look at BARWIS, is the breadth of training, the different sports that you work in, but as we talk, it seems like there’s more commonality than there are differences. Obviously, you’re working very heavily in the NFL and the NHL and MLB, I know you work with tennis players. A running back is different than an offensive lineman and both of them are certainly different than a pitcher in MLB or a tennis player. But is there more commonality in your approach in the work that you do with your clients than there are differences?

Mike  

I would say that when we’re evaluating athletes, I mean, these are the world’s top performers and we work with extremes. I mean, we’re also the top neuro clinic in the world for people with disabilities. So you’re going to see people who are trying to learn to walk and take their first step right next to the top athletes in the world. You’re going to see [someone] like Donovan Peoples-Jones training right next to a little boy trying to take his first step. They all have initiatives, they all have goals, they all have battles, they all have adversity they face, they just face it in different situations and they face it with different stressors, they face it with different abilities. So I think there is a commonality in anyone who wants to achieve in anything. Mindset, approach to difficulties, getting comfortable with uncomfortable situations, being willing to do the uncommon if you want to achieve uncommon results; all of those things are commonalities for high performers in anything in life. If you don’t have those, you won’t achieve. However, if you take the differences in sport…if I take Coco Gauff, who we work with, and I take Donovan Peoples-Jones, they’re very different. Coco Gauff is a premier tennis player who is tremendously athletic and has some of the best athleticism I’ve ever seen and, in my opinion, some of the best cognitive strengths and kindness and generosity and just a wonderful person. Donovan is the same type of person with a similar mindset, with a similar structure; they do totally different things so they have to be trained and developed physiologically very differently. But cognitively, they’re very similar people. They’re both world class achievers, they’re both at the highest level in their game, they’re both tremendously athletically gifted, received a tremendous gift from God with their talents. And they both have been willing to do the uncommon and work harder than somebody else to achieve what they want to achieve in life. I think there are a lot of commonalities, although there are a lot of developmental differences in the process necessary to get them physiologically ready for their sport and their recovery plans are very different. That’s based on the biometrics that individually they have genetically and the physical loads that they face, the acute on chronic workloads they face on an individual basis. But from a cognitive perspective you’re going to see a lot of overlap in high achievers, they’re going to have very similar dispositions, they’re going to have very similar mindsets when it comes to struggles and overcoming adversity, they’re going to have very similar approaches to achievement and focus. I always tell people, like, if I have 27 Plan Bs that I’m working on, I’m probably not going to achieve my Plan A; it’s pretty simple. If I want to be good at something, I have to be hyper-focused on doing what I do and getting it done. That mindset is something that is the same in high performance, in business, it’s no different. Learning to understand that a linear focus allows us to achieve. I use this example; I have people close their eyes – before I have them look around the room, they gaze around the room – okay, now close your eyes. They close their eyes, and I say, when you open your eyes, I want you to find everything in the room that’s green. So I tell them to open their eyes in about three seconds I say, okay, close your eyes. When their eyes are closed again, I say tell me everything in the room with red. They’re like, I mean, I think I saw one thing that was red. Okay, tell me everything green. They start listing the green. Why can’t you tell me everything that is red? Their eyes are still closed. Well, I wasn’t looking for it. So you’re telling me what you’re focused on is what you see…what you’re focused on, you’re comfortable at achieving goals and excelling at high levels. Why do you think life’s any different? It’s the same thing if I can get a linear focus on the tasks I need to achieve. First I need to understand what those tasks are. Second, I need to understand my attributes, and how I can cultivate those attributes to be as functionally successful as possible at the tasks that are in front of me. Then I need to say, I’ve got to take everything else and get rid of the distractions and focus literally on achieving this task with my attributes and with the abilities and capabilities that I have, specifically on the necessities of this task to accomplish my goal. When I deviate from that the distractions create imbalances and don’t allow me to succeed. So throwing out those other secondary aspects and saying, I’ve got a primary goal, and I’m going at it, all in. I’m going to achieve it knowing that I have the attributes and I have the plan and the steps necessary to make it happen. Now, I’ve got to say, I’m not looking for a safeguard behind me. You’ve got to take a look behind you and say, okay, I’m burning the bridges behind me so there’s no place for retreat. It’s simple. When there’s no place for retreat, I’ve got to move forward and I’ve got to move forward with the task that’s placed in front of me, because that’s the task I’m going to achieve.

Brian  

It totally makes sense. What’s the biggest challenge that you have working with high achievers, whether we’re talking about elite athletes, or you mentioned you’re working in business and in the marketplace?

Mike  

I would say that there are a lot of different challenges. When high achievers first come in, how you got to where you are, can be a blessing or a detriment. So sometimes there is the super gifted athlete who just had crazy talents, and worked hard at a sport and achieved the level of greatness because of those gifts. They worked hard but they really never had to work hard at anything else. They didn’t have to work hard at the developmental process, they didn’t have to work hard training, they didn’t have to pay attention to their biometrics and thereby energetic systems, they didn’t have to focus on all those things and they got to a place of achievement without it so they almost don’t think they need it because they are already there. But there comes a point when that athlete starts to equivocate. Other people around them are younger, they play with a higher level of of achievement because that person is slowly going this way, and the other person is slowly going this way. That competitive nature in him makes him say, okay, now I’m looking for a resource, I’m looking for a way to keep me at that level that I performed at to outperform these individuals. So now they have to start reaching for something they didn’t do, or weren’t invested in their entire life and change the thought process of now I’ve got to become someone that I’ve never been. I’ve got to learn to be driven to train harder, I’ve got to learn that I can’t stay healthy anymore because my muscles aren’t strong enough, I don’t have great enough stability, I don’t have the right balance and mobility so now I’ve got to learn to be something different. That’s a precipice somebody faces in any other part of life as well. When you hit a point of achievement and you’ve been winning, well, everybody catches up so how do you continue to climb? You can quit, camp or climb, I would say. You can you can either say at this point, I’m quitting, I’m turning it in, I’m done. I could camp here, but everybody keeps going past me, or I’ve got to climb. I’ve got to decide to take the next step and say, what do I need to achieve and continue to climb. That means coming up with a new process that may be uncomfortable, again, it should be uncomfortable. That will be uncomfortable because now I’m going to face something that I’ve never done before and I need to adapt to that. I need to cultivate a new plan and a new philosophy and I’ve got to drive through new adversaries and elicit different results within myself to make me able to achieve with people who have reached my precipice and I’m going to set a new precipice for me to climb.

Brian  

I would think some athletes do that very effectively and that’s what causes some athletes to just plateau. I mean, I think about in football, everybody who goes to a D-1 football program, like University of Michigan, for example, was a star in high school. They were the superstar on their team, and they’re one of many in division one football. When you get to the pros, it’s the same thing. Everybody was the best player on their college football team. Now they’re not only with other rookies coming in who were also the best on their team, but they’re with seasoned veterans who have dealt with people like them year after year after year and if they don’t adapt to that, if they don’t recognize that they need to do something different…Marshall Goldsmith wrote a book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” If they don’t recognize that, then they’re going to plateau. We see that with players and on the other hand, the ones that are teachable and recognize that…and by the way, that’s probably a really rude awakening for somebody who’s been used to being the superstar their whole life as a peewee and then in high school and in college, and they get to the pros, which was their goal, and they realize that they’re not really a big deal anymore. They’re just one of many. If they don’t do that, if they don’t adapt, if they don’t do the things necessary to take their life and their game to the next level, then they’re going to be selling insurance or doing something else next year, because you’re not going to be playing pro football.

Mike  

I think it’s why you see a lot of…people always say, well, he must be really bad, at the draft. You see a lot of six, seventh round draft pick guys that are ten or eleven year players and have had amazing success. You see guys like Tom Brady, who lost his starting job in college and was more or less downgraded as a football player, you see the Michael Jordan’s who gets cut from his high school team, you see the Kobe Bryant’s who was the kid that when he was overseas was a nobody player; you see those guys that have faced struggles early and have learned how to cope, deal with and overcome those struggles achieve greater levels than those who are just gifted and were already there. Because by the time they get to that point where that gift has carried them, they don’t know how to get to there. They’re already here, because of their achievements and their accomplishments but they’ve never really faced heavy struggles and adversity and learned to overcome those struggles and adversity to achieve the next level. So when they’re faced with it later in life, oftentimes it overtakes him, because they can’t deal with that pressure. They don’t know what it is, what it’s like to not be the best player, they don’t understand how, when they’re in that position, to fight through it. Instead, they melt away, they’re almost semi-ashamed of not being the best player, it’s embarrassing. I’s embarrassing for me to have to go back and do these things because I was always the greatest player, where the individual who struggled and then was cut from their team already learned how to battle back. It’s just another battle. For me, this is how I grow. This is how I move forward. That mindset is really what we started the conversation talking about. It’s that mindset of saying, I’m uncomfortable here, you can keep bringing as much of this adversity as you want into my life, you can drop adversaries in front of me, but I’m going to keep climbing, I’m not going to camp, I’m not going to quit, I’m going to move forward and make the best version of me, something that the world has to deal with. It’s understanding and there’s a physiological part to that, too. It’s the same piece of saying that we were talking about earlier where the linear focus allows me to have greater results. If I take you on a rowing machine and I load the rowing machine as heavy as I can – each arm is independent – I load the rowing machine as heavy as I can and you pull it for one rep, both arms are loaded, maybe it’s 500 pounds, and you’re straining as hard as you can, you can only pull it one time. If I tell you to let go with your left hand and grip it with your right hand only, now the 500 pounds that was on both arms – still 250 pounds in each arm – and I tell you to pull with your right arm, you’re going to pull that thing probably three to four times and it’s the exact same weight that was weighting your right arm that you could only pull one time when both arms were loaded. The reason is cognitively, neurologically, we send electricity to our fibers. When we divide the source to multiple locations, it’s like hooking up light bulbs to one battery, I keep hooking up 30 of them, the lights get dimmer, or they’ll go up one, it’s bright, it’s focused. It’s the same thing in human anatomy, the more I divide that focus from a linear component to a bilateral component, the less I recruit those fibers to that area. Okay, now take a baseball player who walks to the plate and he’s thinking about…an individual years ago, we’re talking…it was Lucas Duda who actually played for the Mets and he was in the minor leagues and was doing well in the minor leagues, but hadn’t really made it to majors, 14 home run guy, and we trained, got in great physical condition, and we were talking about mindset, he’s like, I want to understand mindset. I actually used that example of the rowing machine. When we we’re done, I said, Lucas, let me ask you this. What do you think about when you walk to the plate? He stopped and I said, let’s think. We understand that physiologically, there is a performance result in my ability to generate force and power and have control by splitting my thoughts in multiple directions. Tell me what you think when you’re at the plate, because you’re going to perform at your highest level, with the most rapid nature, and the least time for decisions. What’s going through your head? He said, well, you know, the game situation and where the players are in the field and what we have to do and maybe the manager talked to me and gave some advice, and also understand the pitcher, what type of pitches he likes to throw. I said, let me ask you a question; what’s your job? He said, hit the ball. I said, okay, you’ve got a piece of wood and a little white ball coming at you. He nodded his head. Your job is to put the wood on the ball. But when the pitcher lets go of the ball can you control it? No. He has no more control once he lets go. What’s happening on the field doesn’t matter because if you don’t hit the ball, it’s irrelevant. The crowd, you want to block them out because they can’t help you hit the ball, and the manager surely can’t tell you anything that’s going to help you. The reality is you’re in sole control of a piece of wood so all you’re doing is tracking a little white ball, in sole control of placing a piece of wood on it; everything else is a distraction. He stopped and I’m like, you’re just adding different components, you’re making your legs push, your arms push, your neck’s working, everything’s working at the same time, when you just need to let go of everything, grab with one hand and focus. And if you can get to that one place where you’re focused on one thing, when you walk to the plate say to yourself, I don’t care who’s throwing the ball, I don’t care what the situation is, tonight, you pitch to Lucas Duda and I’m hitting this ball out of here. You’re changing the mindset of, I’m here, I will accomplish my task, I will be strong in my focus and I will understand that this piece of wood is going to be on that ball, I’m going to focus on the one tangible thing I control and I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. But I’m going to do it with a confidence that I’m putting this thing out of here. That changes the perspective of achievement and focus for an individual and it allows us to guide ourselves in one direction to achieve.

Brian  

Well, that changes it dramatically. That’s also something that anybody can apply in their lives. You talked about life today with the distractions of media and social media and what’s going on with our family and our friends and all these things that we’re thinking about. We go to work and rather than focus on that one thing – I call that our highest value activity – rather than focusing on our highest value activity, we’re thinking about and being distracted by all kinds of other things. The same thing applies to everyone. If we think about what is our highest value activity; is it hitting the white ball with a piece of wood or is it selling something? Or is it helping somebody or what is it? If we can narrow our focus to just that highest value activity, or to the extent that we can do that, we’re going to achieve far greater results than than we would being distracted by the the crowd or what the manager told us a couple innings ago or whatever the example is. Mike, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you and one thing I noticed immediately about you when we first met is the standard you have for your own performance. We’re seeing it even in this discussion today. That standard obviously carries over to the level of service that you provide your clients, and also what you model for others. Again, you’ve done that on the show today already. Where does the desire come from to help people be the best we can be? Because that’s what I hear. It’s an overarching theme in everything that we’ve talked about and in what I’ve learned in my research of BARWIS is that you really…I don’t know if it’s your mission or if you have have it on a wall somewhere, but clearly, you have a strong desire to help people be the best they can be.

Mike  

It’s a great question, I think. It definitely is my mission and life. I understand what I was given – and I’m a person that believes I don’t deserve any of it – that the gifts that were given to me, and the grace that has been handed to me, is not an opportunity, it’s an obligation. I tell kids all the time, listen, if mom, dad and God gave you genetics that made you fast, explosive and made you capable of achieving greatness, and you don’t, then you’re stealing; they should have given it to somebody else. The reality is that gift was given to you so that you would cultivate and bring something to fruition that shows the greatness that was laid inside you. And if you refuse to use it, you refuse the obligation you were given they should have just given it to somebody else, because they might have done it. But if you embrace what you were given, and you’re thankful for what you’re given, and you’re humble with what you received, and you say, I’m going to go as hard as I can today, with everything I’ve got, I ran as fast as my legs can run, I pushed myself as hard as I could push, I fought every battle you asked me to fight so that on the last day, when I look my Maker in the eye, I can say I’m okay with that because today, I’ll die your champion. That, to me is a life well lived. And it might not be winning. Now I’ve got 27 championship rings for sports and they’re all in a box. They don’t mean a darn thing. They’re all inanimate objects. They’re nice to have. My kids picked some and they all have them, I’ve never had them on my hands. But I can tell you this, every one of the people I worked with mattered:  their families mattered, their lives mattered, the individuals that they came alongside of matter, the struggles and the stripes and the difficulties they face. That’s what made the journey special. This life journey is only special because of the people who work next to you, your family, your friends, the sacrifices you make, the difficulties you face, the growths and the setbacks. That’s what makes it special. It’s not the inanimate objects of achievement. It’s the journey that made it special in life. When we don’t use what we’re given, we deny the world a piece of that journey. These journeys, of every individual in the world, are what makes the world special. It’s what makes it unique. It’s what makes us accomplish things that seem unaccomplishable. You see someone run a five minute mile and it’s a big deal and the next thing you know, 25 people do it in a year. You know why? Because they think it’s possible. Then you see a four minute mile and the next thing you know, 25 do in a year. Why? Because they think it’s possible. If we continue to break down barriers of what is possible, we continue to move forward in humanity, we continue to convert our bodies and our minds into a situation that embraces greatness, and we cultivate greatness inside of us and others. As we establish greatness, we stimulate that greatness in somebody else. What we were put here for, a lot of people say what is our purpose in life; find the tangible gifts you are given, find the things you’re passionate about, and cultivate what’s inside you that makes you great at it every day. Because if you find those things and you cultivate them to the end of what they are, you’re going to find out what your purpose is. Along the way, your journey is going to stimulate that purpose and that growth in somebody else’s life. That’s why I like seeing a little boy next to Donovan Peoples-Jones, or whoever it might be, like we talked about earlier, that little boy taking that step, he looks to him and goes, wow, I wish I could be him on the football field. But you know what? Donovan looks to his right, and says, look at the fight in that kid and the fire and the struggle and the adversity he’s facing; mine just became easy. What am I willing to do to be great? Humanity has a way of motivating and growing and cultivating success in humanity. Humanity feeds humanity. The reality is our souls are in a place where if we allow them to flourish, they stimulate that in other people. I think we have the choice to listen to two people; you’ve got the bad guy talking and you got the good guy talking – which one do you choose to listen to? I just choose to get up and listen to the good guy every day.

Brian  

I love that. Obviously, you’re a man of faith, you and I share that. You’ve talked about gifts and you get to work with a lot of very gifted people and people who have tremendous potential to not only make their own lives better with those gifts, but to make a positive impact on the world. What I also hear, though, is this idea of responsibility around those gifts. Say more about that. I think you would agree, I certainly believe that God blesses us all with certain gifts and gives us the potential to do great things with those gifts. Again, for ourselves and I think, more importantly, for others and I think you share that. But I also believe very strongly that we not only have the potential to do great things with those gifts, that we actually have the responsibility to do something with those gifts. Say more about that and how does that play into your training?

Mike  

I would firmly agree with that. The journey I’m on now is because of my desire to do the right thing with the gifts I was given; I don’t deserve any of them. My talents and abilities are blessings from God and I’m thankful for them. I’m grateful that He allows me to do what I get to do with them while I’m here. Understanding that allows me to understand that because it was something that was given to me for a purpose, because it was something that was given to me with a direction, I don’t really have the right to choose not to do what I need to do with it. I’m obligated to do what I need to do with it. I had an individual as a high level football player. He played a long time in the NFL and had tremendous success, multiple time pro bowler, and I had him when he was young. We had we had a discussion one time when he was in college and he’s now in his 15th, 16th year in the NFL, which is pretty good. He’s played a long time. We had a discussion when he was in college. He had some struggles and he had some things happen to his family that were really difficult. He was at a precipice of a difficult situation. We had a conversation where I talked to him and I said, look, you’ve got to make a choice, you’re in a place where you could go down the wrong road here, and in defense of your family, I wouldn’t tell you that it’s not your right to defend them and be a person who feels attacked and has to defend their family. I can’t tell you that’s not your right. But I can tell you this, that if you look at your family and generations and generations of your family, how many people were given the gift you were given? He nodded his head and he said, nobody. I said, okay, so you’ve come from an impoverished neighborhood, and you’re the first one with this gift so understand that when God gives you that gift, he expects you achieve something with it. I promise you, anything that you have that is talented, the devil wants it just as badly as God does, I promise you. So he’s going to give you your one last trial, right before you achieve what you need to achieve to change your family’s life. You can choose to listen and falter and sway and fade away from opportunity or you can choose to rise above it and do what you’re supposed to do with the gifts you are given. It’s not an opportunity, son, it’s an obligation and I’m telling you, if you choose to let it go, every child, every person that comes after you – your wife, your children, your children’s children – will never experience the grace of the gift you are given. So if you feel it’s just about you, you’re wrong. It’s about them. You’re obligated to do what’s right, to help them have a different life. He gave it to you because he thought you would do something with it to make their lives different; to get them out of self perpetuating poverty and get them out of the struggles you face and avoid the hardships that just happened with your family. Will you make the right decision? At this point, it will determine where you end up in life and where they end up in life, so don’t shirk your responsibility. He nodded his head, went back to work, ignored the situation. His mom, his grandma live in nice homes in nice neighborhoods. His wife’s a wonderful human being, his children are going into good schools and every single person that comes after him from now on will never experience the things he experienced before because of his decision. We’re obligated to be the best version of ourselves because we’re given the opportunity to be the best version of ourselves. If we shirk that responsibility then we under achieve in what God expected of us.

Brian  

Wow, that’s a powerful story and I appreciate you sharing it. You talked earlier about the work that you do in injury recovery and that was maybe the most surprising part in my research. I didn’t realize what you were doing in that area with working with folks with neurological disorders, spinal cord injuries and the like. How did that start? Talk a little bit more about the work that you’re doing in that area and the results that has for your clients. It’s not unconnected to the other work that you’re doing but it is very different. I loved hearing you talk about two people working alongside each other, two clients working alongside each other and they’re fighting very different battles. Maybe one of them – the pro football player, you could say by comparison isn’t fighting a battle at all, I mean, they’re trying to get better, they’re trying to be the best in their field – but the little boy is really fighting for quality of life that most of us take for granted. Share with us how you help him and how you help others achieve that.

Mike  

My big specialization in physiology is neuro, I’ve always enjoyed it, everything I design. When I run sports science divisions I’m actually not just a strength conditioning coach, I run the medical spot that the medical oversee, the medical divisions as well as the performance division, so I run athletic trainers, physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, soft tissue experts, nutrition and dietetics, oversee the data analytics for performance, data tracking, recovery technicians, performance coaches, strength conditioning coaches, all of those areas. I do that for professional teams, our company does all of those things and then we do neuro and looking at what we do in these areas, you may come in here and see someone in physical therapy, from the general population, getting treated, you may additionally see…you sprained your ankle maybe, you may additionally see someone in there with spine issues seeing a chiropractor, or person there for soft tissue management or professional athlete getting soft tissue management. At the same time, you may see a neuro client from all over the world, we have people that come from 50 different countries around the world fly in for us to treat neuro disabilities and neural disorders. I don’t know how long you want to go, but I’m happy to tell the story. I was at West Virginia University, I ran the sports science division there and…we were doing well, we had taken kids that people didn’t think were capable of achieving, one and two star recruits, and turned unsuccessful programs that were being cut into nationally ranked programs competing for national championships. Through developmental process, through great kids, hard workers willing to grind, went from the bottom of the barrel to a top athletic institution in the country, finished fourth in the series cup with half the sports, the other players, the other organizations getting twice the points and still defeating them, football being 33 and 3 in three years, competed for national titles three years in a row, basketball in the Sweet 16, the Elite Eight final four, winning national championships in rifle, soccer, women’s soccer gone from a team that was getting beat 8-0 to dominate, making national qualifiers; all of these things cultivated. Went from an institution that was cutting sports and failing to their golden era where they had the greatest achievement they’ve had in school history and to this date still continues to be that greatest time because of a group of people who are willing to work together, sacrifice, fight, battle, struggle, and do the uncommon with gifts and talents that were deemed lower than others. Next thing we know everybody was saying, what are they doing? Why are they winning with one or two star recruits? Well, it’s what we talked about. It’s exactly an entire institution was cultivated on we learn how to work and grind and fight, and next thing you know the gymnastics team was going to nationals for the first time ever, had the same pride in doing what the football team is doing and the basketball team, everybody got pride in being different and working harder and excelling at a higher level. They had tremendous success because of it. For me, it was great to watch human beings flourish but I didn’t feel like I was doing all I could do. So we were recognized as the top program in the country and around the world. People were saying, for ten years in a row they have been dominant and these guys are just doing things that people can’t do. People and teams were coming in to learn and study what we were doing. I felt like I wasn’t doing everything I needed to do. I talked to my wife who has a strong faith, her father was a preacher. I was a wild man when I was young, thank God for her. She brought me to my Savior and directed my life. If it wasn’t for her…she’s the greatest gift I ever got and I’m thankful for that because she allowed me to find my salvation. But at that point, I looked at her and I said, Babe, I feel like I’m not fulfilling everything I was put here to fulfill. And she looked at me, she said, Mike, you work 17 hour days, seven days a week. You don’t mind grinding and you’re at the top of your game, everybody is looking at you as a platform for achievement. You’re using science people haven’t used, you’re pushing yourself, you’re always trying to grow, what do you think you need to do? And I said, oh, no, I just don’t feel like I’m doing everything I should do. She said, then you need to pray on it and decide what it is He’s asking you to do. So I did, I sat down and I thought about it and I prayed. That year we were ranked number one in the country in football, we had crushed everybody and we were about to play Oklahoma for the national championship. We had a Pitt game, which is semi legendary. On ESPN, they love to play it back, gives me nightmares, but we had a Pitt game coming and they had three wins. They were terrible and we should have just absolutely demolished them in the game. But you could feel the pressure of the kids going into that game. All they had to do was win then they win a national title. You could feel the pressure, you could feel the anxiety and it was continuing to grow. You try to talk it out of the kids and get them to calm down. Pat McAfee – who’s a legend on TV right now, obviously I love him to death, I had him since high school, Pennsylvania soccer player – he’d never missed a field goal inside 30 yards that I could possibly remember and he struggled that night, he missed several. Pat White and Steve Slate were both Heisman candidates, one sprained his ankle, the other one dislocated his thumb and had a problem in that game. We had 200 yards offense, we did everything we could do to achieve and sometimes things just go wrong and you don’t achieve, you’re not successful. We lost the game. We lost the game to a team that if we played them three thousand times couldn’t beat us more than once. And the reality is, it knocked us out of the national championship. That was supposed to happen. We were supposed to face adversity. We were supposed to face difficulty. Oklahoma was number one. The other pole was struggling back and forth:  we were one and one, they were number one – the other was struggling back and forth. They lost their game. So one played two anyway and we beat those guys horribly in the Fiesta Bowl, 47-14. It was a blowout. We could have easily won the national title if everything stayed the same. But you can look at that and say the world’s falling down, it is collapsing. You can look at that and say we just faced some adversity and what are we going to do to overcome it? How are we going to bounce back? Who are we going to be? So we played that game and I ended up accepting the job at the University of Michigan. When I accepted the job at the University of Michigan, the same day, there was a family from Washington, Ohio, named the Mealer family. Mealer and his family were coming home from church on Christmas Eve, they were Ohio State fans, despised Michigan, had a big “O” on their wall. And Elliott, who had previously decided he was going to go to Ohio State, told his father he thought he was supposed to visit Michigan. His reply was, God hates Michigan. [Laughter.] If God’s leading you it’s the wrong guy, God hates Michigan. They were Ohio State fans. But Elliott decides to change his mind, to take a visit to the University of Michigan. Been an Ohio State fan his entire life and accepts a scholarship to the University of Michigan because he felt like he was supposed to. At the same time I accepted the job that I felt like I was supposed to. I had turned down 27 jobs in 12 months and I felt like I was supposed to. So I took the job. The first person I walked on campus to see was Brandy Graham and Elliott Mealer. When I walked into gym, Elliott Mealer was in a sling and had talked to me for a couple minutes and asked me if I would go visit his brother in the hospital. To see a 320 pound man with tears in his eyes, in a sling, and asked me to go visit his brother in the hospital, I had just got back from winning the Fiesta Bowl and I thought to myself, who, what just happened? He told me the story. He said, we were coming home from church on Christmas Eve, we stopped at a stop sign, we proceeded through the stop sign, a 90 year old man ran the stop sign going 80 miles an hour, he killed my father, my girlfriend died in my arms and my brother, Brock was paralyzed from the waist down and I tore my shoulder up ripping the window and the door out so I could get him out of the car. Mom’s the only one that got out unscathed. Hearing that story, I thought to myself, these rings, these rings don’t matter. These championships don’t matter, this person’s life matters. So he asked me to go to the hospital with him and I did. Visited his brother and his brother was struggling, paralyzed from the waist down. But he was positive; they had already told him he would never walk again, but he was optimistic. I talked to him and I said, look, no one knows. It’s up to God’s will and your work. Whatever you want to achieve, I tell you this, if you do nothing, nothing will happen. But if you do something and give opportunity to God to make something happen, and show that you’re willing to fight for what you want, there’s always a chance. So I left and I’m sure the physical therapist said that guy’s crazy, he needs to get out of here. Brock went to rehab at the University of Michigan for several years. After two years, he was unable to walk and they had to cut his insurance off, as insurance works. I spoke to his mother and I ended up talking to Brock. She said, do you mind talking to him? So I did. I said what do you want to do? We used to bring him to into the gym and bring him to practice in his wheelchair and Carter Brown would throw him the ball. He became like a family member to all of us. I said, what do you want to do? And he said, well, I want to walk. I said, what are you going to do about it? He looked at me and he said, Coach, I’ve been trying for two years, it’s not like I’m not trying. I said, no, I understand that, but what are you willing to do? Because again, if you do nothing now, nothing happens. Then he said, well, I don’t have anybody to help me. And I said, well, we will. You show up, we’ll help you. So our staff embraced Brock and brought him in. Myself and Parker Whiteman and other members of staff all started working with him. He came every morning, we would train him every morning, and wrote the ARS neural system and evaluation systems that I use for neural clients. We took an approach of what has been done in the past doesn’t work so how do I individualize this? How do I take science and develop a program and an evaluation process and then provide the given stimulus to help this person recover from the situation he’s in. We did that while we were training the Michigan teams. We trained him in the weight room; in six weeks he had a twitch, in six months he led us out of the tunnel in front of 110,000 people on his own two feet. He touched the banner to the loudest volume decimal reading in the history of University of Michigan. I stood in the middle of the field. He asked me to walk with him. I told him no chance. This is your moment, God’s moment and everybody who’s ever faced adversity. I’m just the dummy that got to help. You know, I stood at the 50 yard line and watched him walk across the 50 yard line and touch the banner and I made a decision that day that I was done being tied completely into institutional sports solely. I wanted to do something different with my life and when we got to the sideline, there wasn’t a dry eye on the field. Those guys had watched him fight and struggle and go through hardship and sacrifice to achieve his goals and knew what he’d been through. The entire football team was crying. They looked at me and I had tears in my eyes and the guys were like you’re crying, they couldn’t believe it. I’m the tough guy, I guess. So I smiled and said, well, if Brock walked right he wouldn’t be kicking dirt in my eye, it wouldn’t be a problem. He started laughing, he smacked me. We all kind of chuckled, everybody laughed, but I knew that day that I had a bigger calling, and that He wanted me to do more. So I left that year and opened our corporations and now we train the Draymond Greens next to a little girl trying to recover from from paralysis. You name it, we train the best athletes in the world from the Coco Gauffs to the Draymond Greens today, you name it and you see them right next to the people suffering the most. It’s amazing how they feed and fuel each other and we’ve devised evaluative techniques and protocols and systems for treating neuropathy called neurological re-engineering. We have people come from 50 different countries; from Japan, Israel, Taiwan, England, Africa, China, who come for us to treat them with all types of neurological disabilities, all ethnicities, all religions, all races. It’s a blessing to have people from all over the world you’re trying to heal and watching them get better. It’s also a blessing to have the top athletes in the world here healing with them and getting better. I watched Draymond Green one day; we were training for about an hour, a girl had been paralyzed in Miami in a car accident, and he stopped the training session and got down on his hands and knees and crawled with her for an hour, watched her cry on his chest and him wrap his arms around her. And to me, there is no greater light than that. I know the first time she stood and took steps how proud he was; that was bigger to him than the NBA championship game. To me, watching humanity and good people thrive with each other, there’s no greater reward than what I have there.

Brian  

Boy, what incredible stories. Mike, I have a tremendous respect, tremendous admiration for what you do with professional and Olympic and elite athletes but hearing you talk about your injury recovery program, to me, it just makes all that other stuff pale in comparison. I appreciate you for the work you do with all your clients but boy, my heart just goes out. Helping somebody to walk just seems like a much bigger deal than helping a tennis player to win the US Open, not that that’s insignificant. Mike, as you know, our show is called LifeExcellence and you obviously epitomize excellence both personally and in the work that you’re doing with others. I’m curious, what does excellence mean to you?

Mike  

That’s a good question. I think, to me, excellence is based on the situation that you’re placed in. Excellence is always striving to achieve greatness with the tools you were given. It doesn’t mean that you have to win a World Series or a Super Bowl or start a Fortune 500 company. It means that you’ve got to show up with the gifts and attributes you are given and make sure that what was intended for those gifts and attributes comes to fruition, that you’re willing – every day – to make the sacrifice necessary to achieve the desires that God has for you. That you’re willing every day to embrace those talents and those struggles to make the world a better place than it was before you arrived. That’s excellent to me.

Brian  

That’s awesome. Mike, thank you so much for being on the show today. I’m grateful for you. I’m grateful for all the great information that you shared, for the stories that you shared. I really appreciate you taking time to be on the show today.

Mike  

It’s truly my honor and it’s a blessing to be able to spend time with a wonderful person and have the opportunity to maybe, hopefully, one day motivate somebody else to be the best version of themselves.

Brian  

I have no doubt that you’ve done that. Thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Mike Barwis on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.