Check Out Coach Potts’ Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Coach Potts.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
The path that got me to where I am today began partway thru college, as a collegiate athlete I always had friends and families asking me to write them out exercise plans, which along with the lack of success utilizing the team strength coach’s approach led me to my do own personal experimenting with different methods of performance training. When other players on the team saw my improved athletic ability and began to seek me out for advice I realized I could make a career out of performance training. After college and a short foray into professional indoor football, I was working towards a master’s degree and part of that program led to me working as a strength coach for Lawrence Free State where Coach Lisher gave me the autonomy to use my own approach with his players – it’d be an understatement to say the results were fantastic, multiple athletes ran 4.4 or faster 40 yard dash times, the school bench press record was broken, one recruit was named a Top 100 prospect. Every senior on the squad who wanted to play college football received an offer to do so and a good amount signed to play at the D1 level.

That was around the time that recruiting websites were gaining popularity and the accompanying media attention led to the KC Royals reaching out and asking if I’d be interested in a position they have open. After an arduous interview process, I was offered and accepted the position and one year later was named the Director of Speed Development in addition to my normal duties. With the chaos that ensues during a professional baseball season those years really improved my ability to think, adapt, and plan on the fly.

I had been offered various college coaching positions during that time and after a few years, I verbally accepted one with the staff at the University of Delaware football team. As fate would have it the athletic director there was fired a few weeks before I was slated to move there and the new AD fired the staff that had hired me. At that point I began working in the private sector while consulting for college staff and that ultimately led to the opening of the first TopSpeed Strength & Conditioning facility and the success that has followed along.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
The most obvious downside to operating a facility, or really any small business, is the time commitment. For the first few years, I was on site every day of the week. It was a few years before I took the time off to travel or see family. In the industry, there’s also a lot of competition, since we first opened our doors there have been nearly a dozen competing companies come and go.

That leads to some negative rumor-mongering, over the years I’ve had coaches lie to parents about working or interning for us and we’ve had athletes lie to college coaches about training with us. Probably the most extreme thing that happened early was an athlete who told me his parents were approached during a baseball practice by a coach from a competing company who told them that I must be giving their child steroids. In recent years that same coach, now with a different entity, has also verbally harassed and tried to physically intimidate high school students who switched from his company over to ours. You see and hear a lot of petty and immature stuff that it’s best to turn a blind eye to.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Our approach is primarily oriented towards improving athletes’ speed and power output versus the traditional strength-based approach most places use. The results have been multiple athletes to have achieved 40+ inch vertical jumps, sub-4.4 forty-yard dash times, sub-6.6 sixty yards dash times, and what has reportedly been the hardest pitch ever by a high school baseball player at 102 MPH. The tertiary effect of our approach is more resilient and less injury-prone athletes who are better prepared for the kinetic forces they encounter during games.

One interesting factoid is that every single skill position player from the KC Chiefs who spent an off-season training with us had a career year the following season, leading to significant salary increases for each respective player.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
The ability to adapt is easily the most highlightable characteristic of any success we’ve had.

That may mean changing our approach with an athlete at multiple levels; be it in terms of the method being used, the accessory work being prescribed, or simply how we package information and present it to that athlete. It’s also a big part of why my staff is good about entertaining multiple training ideologies versus a traditional block-style approach many western coaches traditionally prefer.

Pricing:

• Single session – $50
• 10 appointment pack – $450
• 20-appointment package – $840
• 30-appointment package – $1200
• 12-month unlimited contract – $300/month

Contact Info:

• Website: www.TopSpeedTraining.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/topspeedllc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TopSpeedSportsPerformance
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/topspeedllc
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@JosephPotts

Image Credits
Jan Salmon and Linda Olson