Coach Tony Holler

Doing a deep dive into Hans Selye (1907-1982). ⤵️

Too much stress without adequate recovery eventually produces exhaustion.

The traditional coaching mistake is assuming:

MORE STRESS = MORE ADAPTATION

Selye’s work says that’s not how biology works.

A better equation would be:

STRESS + RECOVERY = ADAPTATION

And when stress continually exceeds the ability to recover:

STRESS − RECOVERY = BREAKDOWN

(Injuries are almost always a load-management problem.)

Selye eventually differentiated between:

EUSTRESS — beneficial stress that stimulates positive adaptation.

DISTRESS — excessive or poorly managed stress that becomes harmful.

Training is a stressor. The goal is adaptation, not exhaustion.

Feed the Cats lives in the adaptation zone

A high-quality sprint is an enormous stimulus. Sprinting at 95–100% exposes the nervous system, muscles, tendons, fascia, and coordination system to demands that slower running simply cannot reproduce.

When you train the EXTREME, you train the RANGE.

🚫 “How much work can we get athletes to tolerate?”

🎯 “What’s the smallest dose that produces the adaptation we want?”

And…

🚫 stress → adaptation

🎯 appropriate stress + recovery → adaptation

More stress doesn’t automatically produce more adaptation. Eventually, additional work produces diminishing returns and can become counterproductive.

“For every substance, small doses stimulate, moderate doses inhibit, and large doses kill.” ~Hugo Schulz

🚫 “You’re tired. You need to learn to push through it.”

🎯 “Why are we training speed when the athlete can’t access speed?”

Tired is the enemy, not the goal.

Feed the Cats prioritizes speed and eliminates mindless conditioning designed to create fatigue rather than improve performance.

Kids gain athletic fitness by stacking performance-level work, creating the CAPACITY to repeat skills at a competitive level.

Important: If you go beyond five or six seconds your average outputs will drop REGARDLESS OF EFFORT.

💥 Keep outputs high. Tired is the enemy.

Another ingredient is to patiently let the sport train the sport. The goal is to be 80% in shape and 100% healthy.

Sprint fast, lift heavy, jump high & far, bounce, and throw.

Supplement speed with X-Factor work—weights, plyos, isometrics, mini-hurdles, med balls, eccentrics, COD, and other creative exercises that deliver a positive stimulus without stealing from speed.

Do all of this in a gamified way (record, rank, publish)… on a foundation of rest, recovery, sleep, and nutrition.

Never let today ruin tomorrow.

Let the competitions be the hardest thing you do.

Make training the best part of a kid’s day because kids are good at what they LIKE and obsessed with what they LOVE.

When kids perform, effort is never an issue.

Joyful athletes create joyful coaches, and joyful coaches create joyful athletes. It becomes an endless feedback loop.

Schmidtbleicher Principle: the final repetition of an exercise has the most profound and long-lasting impact on motor learning and central nervous system (CNS) adaptation.

The brain deeply encodes and "remembers" the ex*****on quality of the final rep of a training set or session.

💥 Tired is the enemy… train in a state of energy, excitement, and enthusiasm

💥 When you train the EXTREME, you train the RANGE

💥 When an athlete PRs in a workout, send them home ⚡️⚡️⚡️

💥 Don’t burn the steak

💥 Send athletes home with gas left in the tank

New Feed the Cats podcast episode posted! 90 minutes of coach-talk with Brian Kula!

https://youtu.be/jVhC_Ty0Utk?is=rVkN1XQzaxsF-mdh

What if we threw away the dozens of over-engineered objectives in a K-12 PE program?

What if we rejected the gobbledygook and replaced it with a single mission?

*SPEED*

One mission.

One priority… the most extreme movement in the human experience!

Would PE programs ONLY SPRINT? Hell no.

They would sprint, lift, jump high, jump far, bounce, and throw.

Any exercise that might improve speed is fair game.

Everything is gamified… record, rank, publish.

💥 Competition is FUNDAMENTAL. Kids learn to win, lose, and celebrate improvement.

Kids are exposed to sports that are speed and power-based (not walking/standing/jogging sports).

⚡️ Wouldn’t the fastest schools be the most fit?

⚡️ Wouldn’t the fastest schools be the most athletic?

⚡️ Wouldn’t the fastest schools be the most HEALTHY?

Had another school inquire about Feed the Cats PE yesterday.

This is the curriculum developed by Alec & Tanya Holler at Lincoln Middle School in Edwardsville.

The FTC track is the ORANGE.

In the beginning, there was concern that most students would choose the BLUE.

Now most students choose the gamified athletic training of the ORANGE.

Check out the SPEED results from the past 2 school years (remember this is middle school, not a varsity 🏈 team):

2024-25 ➡️ 2025-26

Over 20 mph 4 ➡️ 9
Over 19 mph 8 ➡️ 20
Over 18 mph 21 ➡️ 44
Over 17 mph 49 ➡️ 89

Becoming a great 🏈 team:

💥 keeping your athletes mentally alert

💥 keeping their bodies charged up

💥 not losing speed ⚡️⚡️⚡️

💥 loving practice

💥 without losing strength

✅ If you don’t check these boxes, your kids will be detrained athletically and injury-prone.