Will Gilmore | Navigating New Frontiers in Action Sports

No two days are the same for Will Gilmore as part of a team that oversees over 800 athletes across 200 sports at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center. From surfers to skydivers, the facility provides an elite high-performance ecosystem for traditionally individual sport athletes. Gilmore highlights the need for remote programming and monitoring to support a constantly shifting roster. Together as a team, they navigate uncharted territory in action sports conditioning, guided by physiological demands and underlying energy systems. Gilmore and NSCA Coaching and Sport Science Program Manager Eric McMahon discuss the shift in sport science from ample to actionable data to find, change, and measure what matters most. Gilmore reflects on his “career periodization” and having free time for friends and family while working corporate hours — a stark contrast with his background in Major League Baseball (MLB). The pair also emphasize proactive networking and education for future career opportunities.

Connect with Will on Instagram: @will_gilmore_ or LinkedIn: @will-gilmore | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs  

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“What I've found is that relationships, again, are very important. You never know what's coming around the next corner. But being a good person, meeting people, forming genuine bonds over strength and conditioning or even things outside of work with people in your field are very important.” 16:05

“Whether the sport demands show that, hey, you need some high-level anaerobic conditioning for this, the mental state of the athlete demands it. So whether that's cliff diving or downhill mountain biking where there's zero pedaling or even pitching in baseball, they've shown that the heart rate gets to 90%, 95% max. Why? Because that guy is stressed out. That is a tough job out there. And so you better prepare him in the gym to handle those demands.” 23:20

“That's really what we're looking for if we're going to be hiring a strength and conditioning coach. Not necessarily, have you worked with any extreme sports, but what is your thought process in going about evaluating a sport?” 26:32

[00:00:00.00] [INTRO MUSIC]

[00:00:02.64] Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast, season 8, episode 12.

[00:00:08.61] And now whether the sport demands show that, hey, you need some high-level anaerobic conditioning for this, the mental state of the athlete demands it. And so whether that's cliff diving or downhill mountain biking where there's zero pedaling, or even pitching in baseball, they've shown that the heart rate gets to 90%, 95% max. Why? Because that guy is stressed out. That is a tough job out there. And so you better prepare him in the gym to handle those demands.

[00:00:44.73] This is the NSCA's Coaching Podcast, where we talk to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know, but probably didn't learn in school. There's strength and conditioning, and then there's everything else.

[00:00:55.23] This is the NSCA Coaching Podcast. I'm Eric McMahon. Have you ever met a coach who is in a unique position in the field and wondered how they got there? Today, that's our conversation. We're joined by Will Gilmore, a performance coach at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center in Los Angeles. Will, welcome.

[00:01:12.39] Hey, Eric. Thank you very much for having me.

[00:01:14.40] Yeah, as always, man. Great catching up. You're part of a team overseeing Red Bull's roster of over 800 athletes in nearly 200 different sporting disciplines. It sounds like a really cool job, definitely a unique opportunity. What's that been like for you?

[00:01:37.01] It is a very unique job, and I think that's the whole appeal of what brought me to it was the ability to work with different athletes, different sports on a daily basis, doing things that I had never tried before and sports that really don't have a training background or a training history, so it's pretty much a blank slate. And in terms of a strength and conditioning coach, it's pretty much a new frontier. So very exciting and something that has kept it very refreshing for me.

[00:02:14.06] There was a time, it was the X Games was all we really thought about in this, what we called extreme sports, then it became action sports. But I know Red Bull even gets into auto racing and a lot of different international sports as well. If you would, break down what sports are you're working with? What kind of athletes do you have the opportunity to work with? And just maybe break down that action sport arena for us.

[00:02:44.57] Yeah. So Red Bull, as you said, we have nearly 800 athletes in over 200 sports. So we also have another training facility in Austria, and so we are the North American version here in LA. And we see pretty much any sport you can think of. So anyone that is sponsored by Red Bull from your traditional tennis, soccer, basketball, all the way to any board sport-- surfing, skateboarding, skiing, and then you get video gamers, you get skydivers, you get any kind of cyclist. We obviously have the F1 team and a lot of the racing sports, so it's really the full gamut of anything that's competitive. There's likely a chance that we sponsor an athlete.

[00:03:36.67] Yeah. That's sounds so cool. And with athletes from all over the world, I mean, I'm even thinking like some of these big mountain skiers, they've got to be-- they're all over the world just to compete in their sport. How much access do you have to these athletes? What's the training cycle typically like?

[00:03:54.83] Yeah, so that's where this job gets somewhat difficult. In terms of being in LA, it's great because it's a huge hub for travel. Now at the same time, that's why it's bad. So you'll have athletes flying through. Hey, I'm coming in town for a couple of days. Can I stop in, check in with you guys, get a workout? But I'm gone in three days.

[00:04:19.78] We'll also have athletes like, hey, I got hurt down in New Zealand snowboarding last week. Can you come check out my knee? I'm only going to be there for a day and a half. It's like, yeah, we could check it out, but can't really give you a lot of detail in a day and a half. And so dealing with athletes that are always rotating through keeps it fresh, but it's also really hard to gain traction.

[00:04:45.16] And so the way that we've really tried to get that going is through our remote monitoring and remote programming, and--

[00:04:54.49] Nice.

[00:04:55.49] We do have athletes who come in for weeks at a time, and then if they go home and we assess that their buy-in is there, we'll follow up with remote programs, and then we just ask that they come back once every six weeks or so, reassess where they are so that we can get the next program going. But if that athlete really isn't going to commit to us in terms of checking in and coming back every so often, then it's really hard to give them a program that's worthwhile.

[00:05:28.96] Yeah. I mean, it's totally against the grain in our field to think of strength and conditioning in small doses and how to actually make that an effective strategy for training athletes. I know you have a baseball background, Will, and dealing with professional-level athletes versus, maybe on the amateur side, where you have that athlete all during the school year. It's a little different when you're dealing with adults or dealing with sponsored athletes or athletes that are competing all over the world. So it's important for us to understand as a field that we work with a wide range of people and a wide range of contexts and areas that make us become dynamic as practitioners. I think that's really interesting that the remote training and remote programming is now a new skill that maybe coaches need to be effective at.

[00:06:26.35] Yeah. And I think COVID actually was a really good kicking off point for coaches and remote programming, and being in baseball at that time with our 180 minor league players, it was, how do you keep them going through the next six, seven, eight, nine, 10 months, whatever it ended up being, that they were gone? We've got to keep them productive. And so that was a really good way of trying different techniques and figuring out how to keep athletes engaged and actually how to monitor any kind of progress remotely.

[00:07:01.63] How do you build it into the program? How do you assess without technology and being hands-on? And so a lot of that now goes into how we deal with our athletes. And what we're finding, too, is that when these athletes are training, I mean, their sport training at such a high volume, even just little doses of strength and conditioning work can make a big difference. So if we can get an athlete in the gym three times a week for 20 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes, we can make some progress, I would say. I don't necessarily want to say gains, but we can make some progress in terms of building robustness and staying healthy and helping them do things that they want to do in their sport without increased risk of injury.

[00:07:53.47] Would you say because of the access you have with athletes that training is on the relatively-- well, say simple side of things, or are there times where you go all in and can really build a robust or complex program?

[00:08:10.16] Yeah. I'd say it's both. Predominantly, I would say it's very simple and straightforward. These athletes are so heavy on their sports side that they also don't really have much of a training history in the gym. And so the fundamentals go a long way. But then at the same time, you have athletes who are maybe a little bit later in their age, a little more mature, have gone through some injuries, and they're really finding what it takes to stay at the top of their game for another four or five years. And they're doing everything it takes from nutrition to mental skills to strength and conditioning, and those are the ones that are fun to work with because you can really dial into the nitty gritty and trying to squeeze out an extra 1% here and there with whatever they're doing at home.

[00:09:05.23] Lots of coaches may not realize that Red Bull had a Performance Center out in Santa Monica, and it is such a cool place to go check out and just see that we have coaches working there and managing strength and conditioning programs-- strength and conditioning, sports nutrition, sports medicine-- tons of resources that you have available. Obviously, you're working with a unique athlete population. What are some of the unique elements that your facility brings to their program?

[00:09:36.19] Yeah. So the really cool thing that Red Bull has done in putting together the APC is we have a high-performance team around these traditionally individual athletes. Put them in a team setting. Normally, it would just be a skateboarder out there on his own. He's got a sponsorship deal. He gets a call to go to X Games and shows up. He gets hurt, then he goes out and finds his own PT.

[00:10:00.67] Well, what Red Bull has done is put a traditional team around them. So we've got four S & C coaches. We have mental performance, nutrition, sports science, biomechanics-- pretty much everything that they can need as well as three physios. So you come in, and it's not too much different than walking into a baseball facility in spring training. You've got people on the table getting treatment for an injury. You got some people doing a mental performance assessment, and then you've got people in the gym training. So it's really just building out that ecosystem around these usual individual athletes.

[00:10:42.12] You mentioned baseball. You worked in Major League Baseball for a number of years. Was that your main goal, getting into the profession?

[00:10:49.44] Yeah, I'd say it was. I grew up playing baseball myself-- played in college and played a little bit in Europe after, and didn't really know what to do after that. So I was coaching my high school baseball team, and the head coach was an older guy. And so I said, hey, let me take the reins in the gym. I've done a little bit of training myself, and I have an interest in it.

[00:11:11.64] And started really diving into the S & C. That's when I got my CSCS and kept going from there. And within a couple of years of coaching high school and college, realized you know what? I think this could be pretty fun to do at the professional level. And that's where I really started dedicating my time to S & C and finding ways to get into a major league team.

[00:11:38.27] So coming in through the minor leagues, major leagues and getting that experience working with a very traditional American sport, baseball, a lot of history, a lot of tradition, now, you're working with a really unique athlete population. What was that like personally, going from one area of the profession to a completely different area, really, that professional transition for you?

[00:12:11.34] Yeah. So I'd say there's two things that come to mind. First is just dealing with the personalities. And I think baseball really prepared me well for that. You have so many international players, even including Australia, Japan, Korea. And so as a coach, you really learn how to deal with those unique personalities and how to get buy-in from different players from all over.

[00:12:35.22] And that's no different here at Red Bull. Snowboarders, surfers, guys from Europe, Australia-- it's all over, again. And all it comes down to is relationships and really earning their trust and showing them that you can provide their career benefit. That's going to go a long way. But then professionally, for me, the biggest thing going from baseball to Red Bull is the time and the level of commitment that baseball takes from you, where it's pretty much a 24/7 job.

[00:13:12.92] You're at the field every day. You're there 10 to 12 hours a day, and you're not getting time off. At Red Bull, what's super unique is that we do have time off. We're part of a corporation, and so we have PTO. We have holidays. We get weekends. And so, we're pretty much doing the same work of a elite-level sporting facility but on corporate hours.

[00:13:39.04] And so that, for me, has been interesting of like, OK. What do I do with weekends? I'm used to just going to the facility at 8:00 AM Saturday morning and being there for six hours. Now what?

[00:13:53.08] Yeah. I mean, a lot of us, we turned our hobby-- maybe that was in the gym-- into our job. And so dedicating extra time at the clubhouse or coming up through the baseball side of things, it didn't bother us. But do you find that now that you have more time to explore different areas, that's helped you grow in some different ways?

[00:14:18.92] Oh yeah. I think everything has a time and a place, and being younger in baseball was great for me. I was single at the time. I could dedicate as much time as I wanted to reading and studying up on whatever was new in the field of strength and conditioning or sport science, and it helped me really get to where I was. But now, I'm a little bit older. I was getting married. I wanted to start a family. I wanted to settle down and get back to seeing friends and family that I hadn't seen for the last eight or nine years.

[00:14:53.94] And so it's kind of like a career periodization, a little bit. You put in the work up front, and then you figure out where you want to go, and you settle down a little bit.

[00:15:05.36] Yeah. No, I like that term, career periodization. Thinking about we know there's going to be a time we're all in. We've all been in school where we had to cram for a project or whatever it may be, and that level of commitment, we probably know, at the time, that we can't sustain that level of effort or intensity in our career for forever. But yeah, I mean, we do age into a different stage in this profession. I know that's tough for some coaches to hear.

[00:15:40.29] I guess what I'll ask you, Will, is what advice do you have for coaches early in their career to maybe prepare for what's next, maybe not knowing-- we don't always know where we're going to end up. What advice do you have for coaches maybe before they get to some of these lifestyle milestones?

[00:16:03.32] Yeah, Eric, what I've found is that relationships, again, are very important. You never know what's coming around the next corner. But being a good person, meeting people, forming genuine bonds over strength and conditioning or even things outside of work with people in your field are very important because, like this job, came out of nowhere. It came from a guy that I met like four or five years previously when I was in baseball. I had no idea Red Bull had a training facility and was going to be hiring.

[00:16:42.71] But at that time, I was doing my job as best I could, putting myself in a position to continue moving up. I think it was four years into being in baseball, I got recommended from someone at Kansas City to go and get my master's. I was like, OK, well, I'm going to double A. If I want to make it to the big leagues, it'd be good to have a master's of sports science and really get that formal education.

[00:17:12.61] And so that was a tough year, but a couple years down the line, having that under my belt opens this door to Red Bull for me because had I not had that formal education, I'm probably not getting looked at for a job like this.

[00:17:27.66] Yeah.

[00:17:28.14] So it's putting together the formal and the informal and just continuing to put your head down and grind and do good work. It'll put you in a good position.

[00:17:38.45] On the sports science topic, what are the big trends or shifts that you're seeing in the field that maybe weren't the way things were 10, 15 years ago?

[00:17:50.48] Yeah. So my time in baseball started in 2015, and I think four years, three, four years in, we started getting into the force plates. And then by the time I left in 2022, nearly every team was doing supplemental force plates. Every player got drafted, had seen them before, maybe at college, maybe at a showcase.

[00:18:14.64] Tech was everywhere. Tech in the gym, tech on the mound, tech in the cages, and so it's all about data. But the biggest thing now that we're seeing is almost the pendulum swinging back to what's usable? Let's not just collect as much data as possible and say we're doing it because coaches are swimming in data, and it's doing more harm than good.

[00:18:39.69] So when I was with the Reds, the biggest thing we did was, OK, what are the two or three things that we're going to test that are actionable? We could test five, six, seven, but we don't know how to program off of that many variables. So let's pick maybe two, and let's be really direct about how we're going to change those two variables.

[00:19:02.76] Yeah. I like that. Can you monitor with it? Can you program with it? What makes the data useful? And that requires some deep conversation and thought with your performance staff to be able to not just get the force play, plug it in, and start getting numbers, actually, OK, maybe run some sessions with just your staff and determine, OK, what metrics are we going to use based on the literature or based on what we have in front of us, what device we went with to actually make actionable decisions in programming, and then overlay that to level of access you have to players, athletes, their sport, all the different things that we think about?

[00:19:49.48] I do think it's-- force plate, I would say, is a necessary skill for strength coaches today. Probably wasn't when you first got into the field. Do you think there are any other technology areas that you'd recommend young coaches pursue earlier in their career?

[00:20:08.46] I would actually say that heart rate data is super important. And that's come and gone with my time in baseball, but when I was leaving, it was getting more important again and even right now, I think with our athletes, heart rate data is something-- there's something to it that you can't get from other variables. And being able to train energy systems and understand the unique demands of the sport and what energy systems are demanded from that, you can really start to pinpoint your programming for athletes and help them.

[00:20:46.49] So right now, for example, we're less than 100 days away from the Olympics, and skateboarding is now an Olympic sport. Well, and training skateboarders over the last couple of years, we've had to understand, OK. It's a 45-second run with four to five, six minutes rest between runs. So what kind of conditioning are these skaters doing?

[00:21:12.14] Well, traditionally, none. But their heart rate is going to be up for that entire 45 seconds, and if we want to complete our biggest trick at the end of that 45 seconds, that's going to be much more difficult if we're fatigued. So if you understand the energy systems underlying that and you can go ahead and train that, you're going to put your athletes in a much better position to succeed.

[00:21:35.34] I mean, I think a lot of the sports that you have access to now, man, on ESPN, maybe ESPN2, I always see the Red Bull cliff diving, and I mean, talk about something that would get my heart rate up. It probably does just watching it on television. But they're standing there. You know their heart rate's doing something. You know their heart rate's elevated.

[00:22:00.54] But we don't typically think of that as a heart rate sport, as a aerobic sport. Race car driver sitting in the chair. It gets hot in there. There was a really good session on NASCAR at Coach's Conference with Caitlin Quinn a couple of years ago that touched on this but really, heart rate does give us a look into the athlete that other performance metrics don't.

[00:22:30.84] And it's funny, we say this is something we coaches should pay attention to because we go back on early exercise physiology that really is the foundation of our strength and conditioning field. And we were all getting this, but maybe we have gone more a shift towards biomechanics or sport-specific modalities or training in recent years that we're having to double back on some of these more physiological topics.

[00:22:58.00] Yeah. The crazy thing too, is I think cliff diving is a perfect example-- there's no physical reason why their heart rate should be that high. It's purely psychological. And if you look at a lot of sports, that is a main driver in heart rate, that stress, fight-or-flight response. And now, whether the sport demands show that, hey, you need some high-level anaerobic conditioning for this, the mental state of the athlete demands it.

[00:23:32.78] And so whether that's cliff diving or downhill mountain biking where there's zero pedaling or even pitching in baseball, they've shown that the heart rate gets to 90%, 95% max. Why? Because that guy is stressed out. That is a tough job out there. And so you better prepare him in the gym to handle those demands.

[00:23:54.53] Well, and we know it's a conditioning topic in baseball, but how do you condition that physiological response when it's not in alignment with how we would align the sports-specific aspects of that sport, if it's a purely short-burst, anaerobic sport, but heart rates are elevated to a point that we'd more think of it along the lines of an aerobic sport? When those things don't connect for us, I think that creates a really tough conditioning conversation.

[00:24:26.90] Yeah. I've had a number of conversations or debates about this with coaches. They're like, no, no, we don't need to train it. Yeah, I get it. It's psychological. But if he just calms down, then he'll be good. OK. And if he doesn't calm down, then he's up there with his heart rate at 165 not knowing what to do because he's never felt this before.

[00:24:51.10] So you've got to expose athletes to the demands of what they're going to get in competition. That way they know how to deal with it.

[00:24:59.73] Yeah. I think it's really interesting. And then if you look at the roster of Red Bull sports and just the number of different, I mean, just extreme or action sport activities that we don't typically think of, I mean, it really broadens the scope of this conversation quite a bit. And wow. I didn't think we'd get into conditioning today, but I'm glad we did. I think it's really cool what you're doing out there, Will.

[00:25:29.25] I actually had a student ask me recently, and I didn't have the answer, but their goal was to, one day, work at the Red Bull Performance Center. So maybe unlike us saying, hey, we want to go work for Red Bull one day, there's actually students that know you have a facility and think this is a pretty cool job to pursue. What advice do you have for students maybe pursuing this path?

[00:25:55.61] I'd say, in terms of trying to get into Red Bull, the biggest thing is doing an exceptional job where you are. So being really good at the fundamentals of your craft, but then also expanding a little bit into all other modalities that might surround strength and conditioning. So if you're an S & C coach, have a really good understanding of how sports science can inform your S & C programming and testing. How does the testing apply to certain sports, or what's your process in applying testing?

[00:26:31.68] So that's really what we're looking for if we're going to be hiring a strength and conditioning coach. Not necessarily, have you worked with any extreme sports, but what is your thought process in going about evaluating a sport? Because on a daily basis, the staff that I work with right now, we have athletes come in that we've never worked with before in sports we've never even looked at. And so our whole process or what we've done is have to develop a process of OK, determine what the needs are. How are we going to change those? And then let's measure that. So it's, find what matters, measure what matters, change what matters.

[00:27:14.30] And the whole thing of finding what matters can be as wide as talking to people who have coached that sport or done that sport themselves, diving into the literature, what does it say? What are the demands of the sport? How should I train them? And then ultimately, speaking to that athlete to figure out, from their insights, what's important and what's not. Then you go ahead and you apply your sport science background to the testing, and then we try and measure and change that output at the end.

[00:27:47.00] There's a coach out there listening who is probably working with a team they never thought they'd work with. Maybe they were a football player, and they're working with a women's field hockey team or something outside of their athletic arsenal that they've had to go learn a sport that wasn't what they played. What I'm hearing is that there's value to that. There's value to coaches diversifying their skill set and trying their craft with different sports, different groups, maybe different age levels and different experience levels with training. You mentioned that a lot of the athletes you work with don't really have a strength and conditioning foundation, and these are professional athletes.

[00:28:33.21] So a lot of times we think, well, you want to work with inexperienced athletes, you work with youth. That's not always the case, and your example really highlights that. I think it's cool what you're doing, Will. I appreciate about you taking the time to share with us today, and for anyone listening in who wants to reach out to Will, learn about Red Bull and all the cool things they're over there, what's the best way to do that?

[00:29:01.68] I'd say you can either find me on LinkedIn or on Instagram, just under my name, Will Gilmore. Those would be the easiest ways, and feel free to reach out. That's how I got my start, looking to get in Major League Baseball, and I searched LinkedIn for any major league strength coach I could find. And luckily enough, the guy reached out, said he wanted to pay it forward, and the rest is history. So don't be afraid of reaching out and asking for help, but do it in a way that's respectful and have something to contribute to the conversation as well.

[00:29:34.71] Yeah. I like that. Coaches, be proactive. Find ways to make contact with people who can influence your career, and do it in a professional and respectful way. This is a fun episode to look at some different sports than we typically do on the NSCA Coaching Podcast, so we appreciate that opportunity. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in, and thank you to Sorinex Exercise Equipment. We appreciate their support.

[00:29:58.71] Hey, this is Justin Levitt from the Los Angeles Rams. Honored to be the 2024 Professional Coach of the Year for the National Strength Conditioning Association. The NSCA is a foundational part of our continuing education initiatives here in Los Angeles and across the NFL.

[00:30:16.54] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:30:19.13] This was the NSCA's Coaching Podcast. The National Strength and Conditioning Association was founded in 1978 by strength and conditioning coaches to share information, resources, and help advance the profession. Serving coaches for over 40 years, the NSCA is the trusted source for strength and conditioning professionals. Be sure to join us next time.

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