Bobby Stroupe shares the secrets of a Super Bowl-winning training program

Bobby Stroupe shares the secrets of a Super Bowl-winning training program

Bobby Stroupe has coached Kansas City Chiefs Patrick Mahomes since the quarterback was in elementary school. Stroupe is the founder and president of the Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC) and trains NFL and MLB players alongside youth athletes at its locations in Dallas-Fort Worth and Tyler, TX.

Mahomes just picked up his second Super Bowl victory and Super Bowl MVP, along with two regular season MVPs in his six-year career. Stroupe has been with his client every step of the way and is just as excited as he was when Mahomes first reached the big game.

“It's incredible as a coach to see someone reach a level that they aspire to,” Stroupe said. "We talk about dreams into plans all the time and that's been written on the wall of my company since 2005. For a coach to be able to be with someone, have a relationship and see that development and growth as a man or a woman - get to the Super Bowl - it's just great to be able to live that out."

As an underdog athlete, Stroupe was always looking for ways to gain an advantage. That's why he leaves no stone unturned to help his clients continue to excel in their field. The coach spoke to M&F about how he learned to channel his athlete ego to better help other athletes, why positivity goes a long way, and how Whoop data has been helpful in his training.

Turn fuel into focus

I really feel like my whole upbringing and sporting experience was a really good psychological preparation for me to at least know what it's like to be in those moments. I was a bit of an outsider, an undersized kid, so I always had to find additional ways to fill those gaps. Having to do my own personal research and extra work really prepared me for what I do now. As someone who focuses on health, performance and player development, I know what it's like to find ways to be better than the competition to the extent that I've had to be able to find those gaps in order to play.

Even though I made it to a professional level in football, I was just striving to get a resume strong enough to attract clients and get opportunities with people I wouldn't have otherwise. Additionally, understanding what it was like to be an athlete in these situations was paramount. I think in life, in business, in relationships and in the training industry, you still have that competitive nature and feeling.

You constantly have the opportunity to question yourself and go out and be competitive when it comes to finding things that will improve your training practices. It's really humbling when one of your athletes gets injured or fails because if you're really good at it, you should be the one doing it. You should find a way to create a better scenario for your people, and you should try to own every part of it you can to become better.

The power of positivity

I think there is a tremendous amount of evidence over the last 30 years about the power of positivity and the impact it has on linking neurological processes in the brain and body and manifesting the physiological benefits. Injuries are a part of sports and pain tolerance is a part of greatness.

I also think that when you encounter an injury, you have to have a cooperative group of people focused forward. It's like an F1 racing team. If you blow a tire in the middle of a race, no one should say, “Who bought those tires?” The questions should be what needs to happen now and how we win this. Luckily, Patrick has an incredible ecosystem of leadership, training and medical staff, and we work together like a pit crew.

The great thing about him is that he is an extremely positive person. I would challenge you to find any quote of his that is negative about a person or a situation. You'll have a hard time finding it, and that speaks to what kind of person he is. More importantly, it speaks to the type of relationship he has with himself.

The way I want my athletes to think about injuries is that every single injury is their fault. The reason lies in the culmination of all factors, how they grew up and treated their bodies, sleep and habits. It is a cumulative result of how they have lived for the last 10 to 21 days to six months, and it is the result of a decision or the solution they choose in a game. Whether it is a contact or non-contact injury.

I say this with a wink because if they do this, they will protect themselves. Injuries are far from their fault, but if they approach it from that perspective, and I also approach it from the perspective that I need to find a way to improve the resilience, mobility, stability and flexibility of my tissues during off-season work. Then you have the Chiefs medical staff proactively taking care of things that are suboptimal or things that happen in the game.

If everyone involved sees it as their responsibility, including the athlete, then we now have the opportunity to get that best-case performance when these things come up.

Stay true to your principles

I think for us it's about what are our core principles and things that we know we're going to use as part of our curriculum that promote our athletic attributes and what we do. You may change some of your strategies and concepts, but you do not change your principles of human performance. God isn't out there building bodies like the Terminator. They are still human bodies and there are things we need to do.

The Power of Whoop

When I finally got the chance to get Whoop, I ordered dozens of them for my training facility in 2016, and they cost $500 each. I bought one for every single baseball player we had this offseason. We had about 60 people at the time. We invested in the product not because it was a business relationship, but because I wanted to finally have some level of responsibility for whether my boys are living properly so that this training can make the adjustments I want. I had to find out how good our training is. How do I know how good it is if I don't know who is living correctly according to the metrics for these adjustments? I could see that this guy wasn't sleeping, so we're not going to look at his results and judge ourselves by that. The fact that he only improves two miles per hour on a left spinal rotation test is not as important as this kid getting an average of eight hours of sleep a night. It improves by an average of nine miles per hour and that's a better way for us to test whether our theories are true.

It started with a selfish approach to be able to test our theories and our training systems. What ultimately happened was that athletes began to invest more in the gamification of recovery and become more competitive in this space. Whoop has so many metrics you can look at, but it's all about the stress and recovery value. You simplify the complex when you communicate with the athletes and then have the opportunity for them to actually make a change. I have been quoted on this many times and I will say it again. I don't care if it's accurate, and here's why. All I need is for these athletes to want to be competitive in this regard. If they do that, I win, period. That's me, a little snarky. I want it to be accurate, and it's accurate enough that I can look at things in real time that may be important for me to change training, especially with someone who is a one-on-one client like Patrick.

What separates the great from the good?

I think it boils down to an absolute addiction to self-improvement. The greatest won't rest and enjoy accolades and championships because it just irritates them to death that they were inaccurate on short passes to the left within three yards, or that they had sloppy footwork and missed three post throws during the season, or they didn't have enough speed to get past a linebacker to make that one play. In the NBA, it's really easy to identify the guys who add something to their game each offseason. I think what you see at the quarterback position is guys do the same things. I think there's an old-school approach to quarterbacking where a lot of these guys are now announcers. This is how they shape the general public's knowledge of the quarterback position.

I feel like there's a strong belief out there that quarterbacks can't improve, and I think that's very strong in the announcer crowd. They believe this because they haven't improved, and they think because they haven't that no one can. I think what you're finding is a more malleable and variable athlete playing the quarterback position. Not everyone is 6'5" tall and has the same footwork and can drop their back foot to achieve a particular route. It's a different kind of approach and possibility. Yes, quarterbacks are still capable of doing those things, but they can also do so much more now. There has never been a time in the NFL when quarterbacks improve as quickly as they improve. I think that refers to advancements in coaching, strength and conditioning, performance, athletic training, sports medicine and head coaches making decisions to move the game forward, open this thing up and let people be themselves on the football field.