The most talented team loses to the team that plays for each other. The shortstop with a cannon can't turn the double play because she doesn't trust her second baseman. That's not talent — that's teammates.

In Episode 4 of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe breaks down the inch that multiplies every other inch. The three circles every athlete has (squad, leadership team, support team), the "Now what?" lens that turns ideas into action, and the climb from Survive to Thrive to Win — told through softball. Plus how coaches engineer chemistry instead of hoping for it, why allies beat friends, and how to work backwards from elite culture to daily behavior.

In this episode:

• The three circles: squad, leadership team, support team (and the one everybody neglects)
• "Now what?" — the lens that turns every idea into an action item
• Survive → Thrive → Win, in softball: do your job → turn the double play → carry the culture
• Why you label the play before it happens — trust is built out loud
• Tom Ryan: the size of your fight is proportionate to the depth of your love
• Chemistry isn't luck — how coaches engineer connection reps
• Scott Bird: give respect to get respect; be authentic and consistent
• Allies vs. friends — every player needs a mirror
• Be worth following: your standard on your worst day sets the team's floor
• The Teammate SWOT — and the real threat isn't the loss, it's losing a kid for 12 months
• Work backwards: HS gets one connection habit; college defines elite culture first

▶️ SCORE YOUR TEAM — FREE ASSESSMENT (about 10 minutes)
👉 https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

📬 The Two Minute Drill (weekly newsletter): https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter

📘 The book — Athlete Builder: The Blueprint to Build Champion Athletes: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

🔔 Subscribe for the rest of the series.
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Keep stacking wins. Win the day. Stay relentless.

Description:
Tom Ryan has coached Olympic gold medalist Kyle Snyder, 80 All-Americans, and a national championship team at Ohio State. None of that is what shaped him. In this conversation, the two-time NCAA Coach of the Year and author of Chosen Suffering goes to the places most coaches won't: the day he walked into Dan Gable's wrestling room and got beaten unmercifully, the loss of his five-year-old son Teague and the question it forced him to answer, and why there's no such thing as a quantum leap — only dogged persistence that ends up looking like one.

Jim and Tom get into the non-negotiable standards behind every elite athlete Tom has coached, how to actually know your athletes before the world labels them, why ultra-competitors don't break when fatigue and pressure hit, and what it means to be the landlord of your own mind.

Timestamps:
02:30 — Walking on at Iowa: the "Are you warm?" moment
07:30 — Getting cut from basketball and finding wrestling
15:30 — Losing Teague, and the question Tom couldn't answer
21:00 — "Gratitude crushes suffering"
25:45 — No quantum leaps: the unseen work
29:15 — Choosing the hard thing and living in reality
31:30 — The non-negotiable standard (Snyder's 5:28 mile)
37:15 — Landlord of your mind: I love tos, I believes, I ams
46:00 — Why ultra-competitors don't break under pressure
57:00 — What Tom wants his athletes to carry with them
57:50 — Rapid fire

Find your athlete's weak link — take The Athlete Builder Scorecard, our free assessment that scores all six blocks (knowledge counts double): link https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

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Tom Ryan: @buckeye158 on Instagram and X · Chosen Suffering wherever books are sold.

He sprints every play. Never dogs a rep. And never gets the ball. Why? He doesn't know the routes...or he does, BUT doens't know something else.

In Part 3 of the Build Champion Athletes series, Jim Beebe breaks down Knowledge — the second inch in the head, and the quiet limiting factor nobody talks about. Effort without mastery is just fast confusion. Using a wide receiver's route tree, Jim shows the three levels every athlete climbs, and how to move up them. He then applies it to other sports.

In this episode:
• Why the hardest worker on the team can still be invisible
• The playbook — and why knowledge "counts double"
• The route tree: Survive → Thrive → Win
• Survive: know the routes. Thrive: master the craft. Win: read the game.
• Why every sport has a route tree — baseball, basketball, wrestling
• Learn faster than anyone: ask questions, film, mentors
• Life knowledge — school, sleep, time, money
• Diagnosing it with the Knowledge SWOT and one habit

▶️ SCORE YOUR TEAM — FREE ASSESSMENT (about 10 minutes)
👉 https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

📬 The Two Minute Drill (weekly newsletter): https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter
📘 The book — Athlete Builder: The Blueprint to Build Champion Athletes: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

🔔 Subscribe for the rest of the series.
Follow: IG @athlete_builder | TikTok @athlete.builder

Keep stacking wins. Win the day. Stay relentless.

#AthleteBuilder #BuildChampionAthletes #SportsIQ #Coaching #AthleticDevelopment #SportsPerformance #YouthSports

Two athletes do the same workout — one gets 10x better. In this episode of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe talks with Matt Wietlispach, strength coach for Syracuse women's basketball and a former pro baseball player who was told he wasn't good enough and outworked everyone anyway. They get into committed vs. compliant, what actually makes a great coach, how to hunt an athlete's limiting factor, and why telling athletes the truth is the fastest way to make them better.

▶️ Score your team with the free assessment (about 10 minutes): https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest
📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter
📘 The book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

Keep stacking wins. WIN THE DAY. Stay relentless.

You know this athlete: talented and hard-working, but a bad play sets them off and lingers for days. That's not talent — it's the inch above the neck.

In Episode 2 of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe breaks down the mindset block — the first of the six inches and the one that drives the rest. The four levels of athlete, anchoring the decision to a Why, the lie every athlete tells themselves, and how to rewire the self-talk. Then he runs the whole system on himself: at 50, a non-swimmer training to cross the Hudson with Navy SEALs, and the "10 and one" mantra that got him across.

▶️ Score your team with the free assessment (about 10 minutes):
https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter
📘 The book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

Keep stacking wins. Win the day. Stay relentless.

Every coach has that athlete — talented, works hard, and suddenly stuck.

The plateau isn't a talent problem or an effort problem. It's a diagnosis problem.

In Part 1 of the Build Champion Athletes series, Jim Beebe breaks down the exact framework he uses to figure out why any athlete plateaus — and how to find the ONE inch to work on next instead of chasing "the one thing" or grinding harder at what they're already good at.

In this episode:

• The athlete who stalled

• Jim's background: finance meets 14 years with athletes

• Mistake #1: "What's the one thing?"

• Mistake #2: more-is-better grind culture

• Why a plateau is a diagnosis problem

• The big idea: a game of inches

• The 6 Inch Blocks — 3 in the head, 3 in the body

• The Head: Mindset, Knowledge, Teammates

• The Body: Training, Nutrition, Recovery

• The SWOT: find the weak link • Whittling 6 priorities down to the 1 that breaks the plateau

• Score your team ▶️ SCORE YOUR TEAM — FREE ASSESSMENT (about 8 minutes) 👉 https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

📬 Get the Two Minute Drill (weekly newsletter): https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter

📘 The book — Athlete Builder: The Blueprint to Build Champion Athletes: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

🔔 Subscribe for the rest of the series.

Follow: IG @athlete_builder | TikTok @athlete.builder

Two athletes take the exact same supplement. One gets stronger. The other feels off for days — and nobody knows why. The difference is in their DNA.

In this episode of Athlete Builder Jim Beebe sits down with Garrett Hill — Officer with Gene Companion, former University of Missouri tight end, and one-time West Point appointee — to open a brand-new lens on building the athlete's body: genetics. Garrett's company, Gene Companion, runs a simple saliva test that shows how your body actually metabolizes every FDA-approved medication and the top 300 over-the-counter drugs — so you stop guessing whether what you (or your athletes) take is helping, doing nothing, or quietly causing harm. Adverse drug reactions are a leading cause of death, and most of it comes down to genetics nobody checked. For coaches, that's training, supplements, and recovery — getting athletes back on the field faster, without the trial and error. We also get into Garrett's story: a torn retina that cost him a West Point football scholarship, the 5-minute rule he used to bounce back and commit to Missouri, training under Pat Ivey, and the faith that still drives him — "prepare your field."

In this episode:

• If you could change one gene (the X-Men question)

• Tight end at Missouri, training under Pat Ivey

• Losing West Point to a torn retina — and bouncing back fast

• Why modern medicine is reactive, not proactive

• How your DNA changes what you should and shouldn't take

• The saliva test, the app, and avoiding adverse drug reactions

• Real saves: a fungal-med interaction during COVID, a team's inflammation mystery, Garrett's own migraine injection

• Supplements, NSAIDs, and faster recovery for athletes

• "Prepare your field" — resilience, faith, and legacy

▶️ SCORE YOUR TEAM — FREE ASSESSMENT (about 10 minutes)

👉 https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

📬 The Two Minute Drill (weekly newsletter): https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter

📘 The book — Athlete Builder: The Blueprint to Build Champion Athletes: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

🧬 Connect with Garrett & Gene Companion: genecompanion.com | Ghill@genecompanion.com | LinkedIn: /in/garrett-hill-3aa354b4

🔔 Subscribe for new episodes every week.

Follow: IG @athlete_builder | TikTok @athlete.builder #AthleteBuilder #BuildChampionAthletes #Genetics #GeneCompanion #Recovery #Supplements #AthleticDevelopment #SportsPerformance