It has been a long time coming for this pod!!! I have wanted to sit down with Austin for a long time, because I really admire his grind and he is also a deep thinker, and I like deep thinkers. Austin has really busted through to a new level these last two years and we got to discuss what he has been doing different along with the consistent threads from the beginning that have held his vaulting together. This podcast was a great blend of technical talk and relaxed conversation about what the life of an elite pole vaulter entails. Thanks for a great chat Austin!
Thank you so much to our sponsors!!!
PVR App - The future of pole rentals: If you are in the business of renting pole vaulting poles, you need to see what PVR can do for you! Check out the links below for more info and to see PVR in action.
PVR Website
PVR Instagram
PVR Youtube
Want to help support the One More Jump Podcast? Click the link below to become an episode sponsor!
https://www.risepolevault.com/omj-episode-sponsorship/
Visit RISEPolevault.com for all things pole vault!!! Whether you are looking to take a vaulting class or compete in a competition at our the state of the art RISE Pole Vault Training Center located in Joliet, IL, or wanting to use one of our many services ranging from pole vault business consulting to virtual coaching in the vault, risepolevault.com has got your covered!
RISE Pole Vault is now selling all three major pole brands including UCS Spirit, Essx, and Pacer. Email in to support@risepolevault.com and let us get you set up with some new poles!
It has been a long time coming for this pod!!! I have wanted to sit down with Austin for a long time, because I really admire his grind and he is also a deep thinker, and I like deep thinkers. Austin has really busted through to a new level these last two years and we got to discuss what he has been doing different along with the consistent threads from the beginning that have held his vaulting together. This podcast was a great blend of technical talk and relaxed conversation about what the life of an elite pole vaulter entails. Thanks for a great chat Austin!
Thank you so much to our sponsors!!!
PVR App - The future of pole rentals: If you are in the business of renting pole vaulting poles, you need to see what PVR can do for you! Check out the links below for more info and to see PVR in action.
PVR Website
PVR Instagram
PVR Youtube
Want to help support the One More Jump Podcast? Click the link below to become an episode sponsor!
https://www.risepolevault.com/omj-episode-sponsorship/
Visit RISEPolevault.com for all things pole vault!!! Whether you are looking to take a vaulting class or compete in a competition at our the state of the art RISE Pole Vault Training Center located in Joliet, IL, or wanting to use one of our many services ranging from pole vault business consulting to virtual coaching in the vault, risepolevault.com has got your covered!
RISE Pole Vault is now selling all three major pole brands including UCS Spirit, Essx, and Pacer. Email in to support@risepolevault.com and let us get you set up with some new poles!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the one more jump podcast by Rise Poval. Today we have Austin Miller on the podcast. I've gotten to know Austin over the last few years just traveling around to these different elite meets, and I've gotten to talk to him a lot and we've been wanting to do this podcast for a really long time. Austin has had a really crazy come up the last two years, but this podcast does a great job explaining that it wasn't just out of nowhere. It's been a long, slow grind for Austin and he's being rewarded for all of his efforts and it's really really good to see. So I hope you guys enjoy this podcast with Austin.
Austin Miller:Miller. What's up, man Brother? How are you? I'm doing all right, man.
Jake Winder:How's your morning starting off, Dude? It's been really hectic to be honest with you? Yeah, it's. Yeah, sorry, we were like running a couple of actually, no, we're on time, yeah, we're good. No, I was doing some work this morning early and then I got a text from Luke's wife and she was like hey, luke's been in the ER for like three hours, he's got appendicitis, and so yeah, no dude. I know man.
Jake Winder:And he's like you know. I don't know If you're familiar with like you probably not, but like he, he like jumped really well at Reno. Everything was looking good and then it, uh, then he got really sick like immediately after Reno.
Austin Miller:And yeah, he was right about that.
Jake Winder:Yeah, fried for like two weeks and then like was okay for a week of training, then got super sick again and came back and tried to put something together at USA's and then uh, and then now he's got fricking appendicitis two weeks into the training block for outdoors.
Austin Miller:Damn dude. I mean at least it's not two weeks out from the trials. No, 100% yeah.
Jake Winder:So we're trying to be positive and and all of that. So yeah, this is about you. Dude, how are you doing?
Austin Miller:Man, I'm doing all right, you know, getting just a slow roll in the morning, a little bit um on a rest day today, which is cool. You know, we're in the second week of a of an eccentric cycle. I kind of just did a little micro cycle, so the second week is the last week of this anyway. Um and so, uh, but yeah, things are feeling good. Man, I um can't complain, I'm busy, but busy is good, you know I'm. I'm busy with things that that fill me up and things that that fit, that make me feel fulfilled. Um and so, you know, I get to the end of my days and I'm just like man, I didn't do anything today, but I actually did all of the things.
Jake Winder:Um, and so you don't notice it as work. It's just like things that you enjoy, yeah.
Austin Miller:Exactly, I was just talking to a friend last night about this. Actually, uh, how you know, you have the little checklist things in your head of like, okay, I had to send these emails, I got to do this, I got to do that, got to get in touch with this person and that person, and then you get to the end of your day and you didn't do those things and you're just like I didn't do anything with my day and it's like, well, no, actually I had two multi hour workouts and then I had to coach and then I had to coach again. So I actually did a lot of things.
Jake Winder:Dude, it's crazy. It's crazy how the day fills up. So, like Trevor and Luke both are are elites that train here at Rise and it's, I mean it's a lot. When you throw that workout in the middle of all of it, it's it really kind of throws, throws a big chunk of the day off because, like you still have to eat. Um, you know you're not going to get to the workout and just like immediately start working out. You know you're going to kind of slow, roll a warm up and things like that, and and then your workout ends up lasting. You know you're not like working out hard for two hours, but you're there, you know, engaged, for like two hours, yeah, or however long, and then all of a sudden it's like all right, yeah, we got like an hour and a half and then classes start for coaching.
Jake Winder:And then it's like yeah, that's a wrap.
Austin Miller:Yeah, especially if you have to do, like some, some maintenance work beforehand. Like you know, you got to get your floss bands out. You got to make sure the joints are mowed. You got to do this. You got to pay a little extra attention to this thing. That is just starting to like. You're just starting to notice it. It doesn't hurt, it's not keeping you from doing a workout. You can still push like a hundred percent, but you're starting to feel it and I wasn't feeling it before, and so you know you have to be cut. You really have to be a bit of a hypochondriac on those things, um, and if, yeah, that that's staying healthy is so part, is such a huge part of it. You know, as you get older too.
Jake Winder:it's just like. You know, things just take long, like longer to warm up and and you acquire over your career, you acquire these little knickknack injuries that are just like, oh, I got to take a couple minutes to make sure that's okay, and then now I'm making sure this is okay and, yeah, just acquire like a whole bag full of little tiny injuries that you got to take care of. But yeah, I actually oh, go ahead.
Austin Miller:No, you're all good. I was just going to say like I've actually. So when I first started training, like when I was first in college and after college, it would actually take me significantly longer to warm up than it does now, like I would have to be. I would have to like get it to practice like 20 to 30 minutes before everybody else. So it's like start moving around to get my body up to the point where it's like, okay, now we're explosive.
Austin Miller:And before it was just like everything would be flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat. And then, after all of that warming up and then, like you know, 10 jumps into the session, it's like, oh, here we are, now we're. Now we're actually clipping. But now, as I've really worked on getting myself to be more springy and explosive because I'm not a naturally springy and explosive person, that's something I've really had to really work hard to fine tune Now it's like, okay, I can do a few strides. And oh, okay, yeah, we're covering ground, we're good. Like I'm obviously still going to go through my sprint drills and get my shoulders warmed up and do all these things, but I can get on the runway in much less time now than it used to take me like six years ago.
Jake Winder:That's yeah, that's awesome. And you also, like, with all that stuff I said, you acquire these little things that knick, knack, injuries and stuff like that that you got to take care of, but also with that you become more efficient. You know with, like, how you do things. And one thing that I've really thought about for a while is like that whole idea that, like, cheetahs don't warm up, like yeah, they just see an opportunity.
Jake Winder:They see that opportunity and they don't have to warm up and they're like not blowing out their Achilles and you know stuff like that. It's just like they are able to go to that. And I've thought too that if you train your body to need a long, long, long warm up, it's like you're sending the signal like that that's what you want your body to do. It's like, okay, if I want my body to move fast, then I have to go through this long warm up. But if you start to slowly like whittle that warm up down and train your body to be like no, like you got to be ready to go sooner, like we don't, we can't go through this whole process every time you want to move fast. And if you train your body to do that, it actually responds pretty well, in my opinion.
Austin Miller:Yeah, no, I, yeah.
Austin Miller:That whole idea of like the cheetah or like, as as Kelly Storet puts it, the supple leopard you know, I literally have that book sitting on my coffee table right now is just like a coffee table book.
Austin Miller:Yeah, and yeah, that like that idea was something that, you know, kind of really shifted my focus into just more like. Just more like, just paying attention in the day to day to what the body is feeling in the state that it's in, just because of that idea of like, if it like, if you know you get the call or something like, hey, there's a meat you know down on the other side of the world, or something like that, and the spot opened up and you got to go, but you know I'm in the middle of an eccentric block or something like that. Well, okay, yes, I might not be my, I might not be working out my like quick to which explosiveness, but the body still has to be able to go and do those things Right, and not only just from a mobility and maintenance perspective, but from a training perspective, making sure that there's always a little bit of that sprinkled in like at all times of the year.
Jake Winder:All times of the year? Yeah for sure. So I knew this was going to happen, that we were just going to get on for like 30 seconds and then just jump into like some crazy stuff. I want to ask you one thing, and then I want to go back and kind of have like a little bit of an introduction to like people who maybe they're not familiar with you and your background. So when you say eccentric block, what do you mean by that? Like I would love to learn about that.
Austin Miller:Yeah, so in I'll call it like it's not necessarily the force equation, because force equation is mass times, acceleration or something like that. Maybe I don't know, I didn't study physics. But so in, like the idea of like setting up a jump, will say, just because we all know what it's like to drop down and jump up as high as we can, the that dropping down and the absorbing that force on the way down, that's eccentric loading. So when you're going to jump into a pole vault, take off that absorption of the last step through the ground to redistribute that force, that absorption, that's eccentric Right. And then you get to the next part of the equation, which is isometric, which is the redistribution of that force. And then concentric is the speed at which you can, the force at which you can move the weight or move like up.
Jake Winder:Right, right, so yeah, so I'm familiar with the terms I'm curious about like the training blocks. So do you like structure your training like OK, this is where we're just working on that ability to rebound that that.
Austin Miller:Yeah.
Jake Winder:And then you go into isometric or and then concentric or work yeah.
Austin Miller:Yeah, yeah. So so I really like to like target. Well, I say I, but like we in our training group, like with Scott and KB and Robin and Megan, like to target like the specific parts of like that force equation. I guess I'll call it, even though it's not the right term, for it Sounds cool. Yeah Right, it makes it sound legit. Makes it sound like I know, like I know what I'm talking about, right.
Jake Winder:But you do for everyone out there.
Austin Miller:Austin does know what he's talking about, Anyway it's all just, it's all been the knowledge acquisition over the years. But yeah, so we'll focus on on specific parts of the equation at specific times of the year, you know, at specific times of the preseason and leading up into the season. And so for myself, because everyone's a little bit different Um, I will. In this particular eccentric block I'm working on how well I can absorb force moving down in a quick manner. So we're really we're very familiar with tempo decentrics, right when we're going down one, two, three, four, five, six or however long you want to go, and then you gotta push it back up, right, and pushing it back up that's fricking hard man, that's really hard, oh yeah, and when, by the time you're going back up, it's not moving very fast going up.
Austin Miller:And so the strength coach that I work with at high point, will Sullivan he was actually at USD at South Dakota before he was at high point he has taken a real interest in the fine points of like of how simple can you make that force equation? How are we going to target only force absorption down? How are we going to target only maximum tempo up, like maximum explosiveness up? And so you're not ever taking away from the quick twitch that you're trying to build up because that's so important for us as athletes right, right, right. And so one thing that we started to do is we'll do that, we'll do like an overloaded, like 130 to 150% of the max back squat and just tempo it on the way down to like pins, to drop it on pins, and then you get out from under it and you go right into like explosive jumps.
Jake Winder:Oh, wow, yeah.
Austin Miller:So you're never doing anything, that is. That is contrary to explosive movement Right.
Austin Miller:Because you got to be really careful about that. Like I said, I like I've had to work really hard to get to an explosive point because I think in another life I was like an 800 runner or 400 runner and I love the 400. I used to run it in college and I did the eight in high school but I've never been like really springy, and so having to work on that, that explosiveness, has been something that's really important for me. But I also have found that or I've kind of come to this conclusion that that, that eccentric, that force absorption, is really important for longevity and that's something you know I'm coming up on 30 this year. That's something that I'm really trying to pay attention to.
Austin Miller:You know, scott likes Scott Houston, my my primary coach here in North Carolina.
Austin Miller:He likes to think of the eccentric cycle as like kind of the glue that holds everything together.
Austin Miller:Right, and he gets a lot out of eccentric like he like he does not respond particularly well to like plios and lots of explosive, dynamic things, but when he's just doing heavy con centrics and eccentric dude, he is like a different animal, which is so strange, because if I were to do those things I'd get really strong but I would lose all my pop, and so that's one thing I really enjoy just about track and field and programming for for pole vault in general is the fact that it's such an individual equation and it's you have to figure out what works best for you.
Austin Miller:And having to figure out and having the space to explore those things and to take note of those things, I think has been a huge, a huge benefit for myself as a as a athlete over the years and something I'm really grateful for for having, like Scott as as my main coach, he's given me the space to explore and to try out different things that I might find online. Or look at this crazy exercise I saw an Instagram and I want to try this. I want to do that. He's like given me the the leash to to go explore as long as I know why I'm doing it. That's his big thing is like as long as you know why you're doing something, we let's go with it. But right, don't just go into something with no reason as to why you're doing it.
Jake Winder:Has he ever called bullshit on you? Um, and just been like dude, you're not doing that.
Austin Miller:Yes, only when I like, because I have. I have a tendency you know athletes, you know this has a coach for sure. They're athletes that when they're like here and you need to make a correction, they're going to go there. You tell them, hey, you need to do this a little bit different, and they're like okay, boom, boom, complete opposite all the way.
Jake Winder:Yeah, exactly.
Austin Miller:And then there's some athletes that they're like, hey, you need to do this, and they tick up like that much and it's like, yeah, I think that was a step in the right direction. We need more of it. More of it, though, right. And so it's like you know, throughout the course of a practice, you'll either spend the whole time like finding your equilibrium by going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, or you'll find your equilibrium by like ticking up slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and I am very much the athlete that goes way to the other end of the spectrum.
Jake Winder:Okay, very much a golden Go ahead. Whenever you are told something, there's the risk from the coaching perspective of you taking it like too literally and just like too, like investing in it too much.
Austin Miller:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, for example, when we started doing French contrast training a couple of years ago, which is something that has been a huge game changer for myself One of the for those that don't know French contrast training is where you pair a loaded exercise with an unloaded exercise and then back to another loaded exercise, to another unloaded exercise, I think I said that right, loaded, unloaded, loaded, unloaded. And so one of the things we were doing would be like do like two, like 50% hang snatches and then go into a depth jump and then go into like three hex spar jumps and then into hurdle hops. And so a depth jump for those that don't know is like you're standing up on, you know, we'll say, like a 18 inch or two foot box, and then you just step down and like you drop and you just catch yourself, you just absorb that force. You don't need to pop it back up, you're literally just absorbing it.
Austin Miller:And so I was doing that. And then you know we're getting through the weeks of the cycles and I'm like, oh man, like I feel great. This is so easy. I bet I can get even more if I do, if I go from a greater height, and we have this like table? Have you guys ever done tabletop vaulting at at Rise?
Jake Winder:Where you like standing up on a platform. Yeah, you're on a platform.
Austin Miller:And so we had this platform that's, like you know, five feet tall or so, like almost six feet tall and I was just like I went up on top of it and I was just like doing depth jumps off of that and we just have a concrete floor like under that, under where that was. And I came to practice the next day and I told Scott yeah, man, I was trying out, like I was doing the French contrast, and I went up on, like I leveled it up, I went to the top of the table and I jumped down and he looked at me and he was like you did what?
Austin Miller:I was like yeah, I went, I was on the table and like I was good, Like I didn't do anything crazy with it, and he was like what do you mean? You didn't do anything crazy with it. That's, that is crazy.
Jake Winder:That's how you're going to blow in a killie, so it's just like oh, that's a lot. Yeah, you think so. Next thing you know, you'll be on your house, like it's just like. Okay, all, right now I'm trying it from the roof of the house now.
Austin Miller:It's like oh my gosh.
Jake Winder:Yeah, that's. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, with people like with that sort of personality, which is probably most elite. You know athletes. It's like you as the coach, you do have to be careful because it's like the lot of what the what an elite coach does is pull the reins on their athletes Like I was talking with Luke about this the other day is just like I'm just kind of just holding the reins and just kind of pulling back and kind of steering him where he needs to go, because I know that they're most elite athletes. Their tendency is going to be more. It's going to be like oh, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing enough. Very rarely do you have to encourage an athlete to do more. You know you always have to encourage the athlete to do less and so, like doing jump jumps off of like a six foot platform it's like Scott was probably like dude, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I meant when I said that. It's like chill out, man.
Austin Miller:Yeah, that's a yeah, and that's that's one of the reasons why Scott and I work so well together and why we've worked so well together over the years. You know, like Scott's level of operation is like it doesn't divulge very much past center, like he's very he's one of the most stoic human beings you're going to meet, whereas I'm like very golden retriever, ask, I guess, like it's going one thing to the next, to the next, like oh, I saw this cool thing, I want to try that, or I just read this, or I was talking to this person and they suggested that, and doing all these things, and like being together for as long as we have, because he became my coach my senior year, at high point in 2015. So, yeah, so fast forward. Now we're coming up on, we're coming up on year nine and we uh, yeah, this fall will be year nine that we've been together and we've learned, like each other's communication, we've learned each other's tendencies, and we've I well, I can't speak for him, um, I'd like to think I might have rubbed off on him a little bit, but he's, but he's definitely rubbed off on me, um, and and being able to you know, just know, know exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing, you know, and kind of going back to has he ever called bullshit on anything I've done? Um, not, like there haven't been too many times as, because, like I said, as long as I'm able to articulate why I think what I want to do is the right choice for me, then he's like, okay, like, go on, let's see. Like I like let's see if it, let's see if it is, it might be, it might not be, but we don't know if we don't try. Um, and which has been like you know, the more I think about it, um and I've thought about it a lot over the years is like that's just something that I think has been a huge piece of the.
Austin Miller:The person and the athlete and the Volter that I am today is being able to have that, that space for exploration, that space to explore my curiosities. Um, without um, you know someone being like like no, this is what we're doing, this is how we're doing it, it's my way, or the highway, and if you don't like it, then go find somewhere else to train, right and that. But that's come with time and you know, it's come with communication and we've had our spats and we've had our highs and we've had our lows and like, but now we're like our you know our relationships better than ever and it's it's comes from this mutual understanding of like that we're both trying to go to the same place, and what gets us to the same place is going to be slightly different for every person. And yeah, it's. It's been a really fun exploration to explore.
Jake Winder:Yeah, and not only that, but I was talking with Trevor about this the other day because Trevor, trevor has always had a coach, like at every meet, and you know, throughout high school I had a great coach, throughout college he had a great coach and, um, you know, once you get out of college, it's like, you know, I remember his eyes kind of just being wide open whenever it was like you know, hey, you're going to your meet. You know he's like, well, is anybody going to be there?
Austin Miller:And I'm like no, no, it's going to be you.
Jake Winder:This is post-collegiate pole vaulted in the United.
Jake Winder:States man Like it's it's going to be you, and you can kind of see that he had relied very heavily on you know other people, uh, for his corrections and for you know a lot of things and that's good and you should take advantage of that If you have, if you're lucky enough to have a good high school coach and you're lucky enough to have a good collegiate coach, like, definitely take advantage of that.
Jake Winder:But I think one of the cool things about vaulting after college is it makes it's both the hard thing about it and and one of the most rewarding parts about it is you. You come out on the other end of that with an incredible understanding of yourself as a person and as an athlete. You know, because you is for exactly like you were talking about, you're experimenting with all of these different things and you don't necessarily have that person there with you all the time. Like Scott's not traveling to very many meets with you. You know like and I'm not traveling to very many meets with Luke or Trevor, and it's it's you got to figure it out on your own and at the end of it it you come out with this giant body of knowledge of not only like yourself but of the sport and of how things work, where, if you kind of have your hand held the entire time. You might get to the end of your career and be like I just had a great successful career and I know nothing.
Jake Winder:you know, because I was just spoon fed my entire career and it's really cool. And then you can take that. You know, whatever it is that you want to do with the rest of your life, you'll you'll always have that skill set of of what you learned about yourself and how to train yourself and your ability to be self sufficient, and whether it's mental techniques or physical training techniques, you'll be able to apply that to other areas of your life after you're done. Pole vaulting too, which is fricking cool man.
Austin Miller:That's what happened with me, you know, yeah, yeah, dude, I've been. It was funny, I was a little bit younger back in in 2019. Or maybe it was no, it was 2020. Yeah, no, it was 2020. And I was. I was starting to be cognizant of exactly what you're saying, of these, these lessons and these, this growth that that was occurring within me as a person.
Austin Miller:From the pole vault pursuit, from, like, understanding, you know how to work towards something without guarantee of results, how to really be process oriented and find joy in collecting the puzzle pieces and putting the puzzle pieces together in whatever thing you're trying to problem, solve or pursue. And it got me really excited for whenever my time pole vaulting was done and I was like, oh my gosh, like I can't wait to apply this to something else. And it almost scared me at first because I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, does does that mean that I I don't want to pull vault? And it was like this weird thing I had to wrestle with, which, like you think about, like I can think about that now and be like no, obviously that does not mean that I'm ready to be done pole vaulting Right, but I can, I can recognize and appreciate that those skills and that growth and just that toolkit and how directly applicable is going to be to so many things.
Austin Miller:After, after pole vault and it's really cool because I'm I, you know I'm I am hopelessly romantic in this, in the sense of like. I know that whatever I do after I'm done, pole vaulting, whether it's, you know, I'd like to do a little bit of coaching. I'd like to, you know, step more into like, like working in the music industry, because that's something else I'm really passionate about. I'd love to like do all these different things and I just know that, regardless of what I put my head to, that I'm going to find some relative amount of success. But, more importantly, I'm going to be really happy in doing what I'm doing, because I know one having done this is going to be so.
Austin Miller:It's going to be impossible to do something that I don't love doing. You know, once you get a taste of doing something that you really love doing and you're seeing return on it whether it's just return on time, return on finances, return on this or that it's I feel like it's next to impossible to go back to something that does not fill your cup. You know what I mean Right. And so I think that you know, whatever I do, I know I'm going to be happy, but I also know, like I'm I, for no reason am very confident that I'm going to be really successful in whatever I do after this. So, yeah, it's a really cool feeling.
Jake Winder:You're going through. One of the hardest things to do period is be a post collegiate poll, walter, after, like after college, trying to pursue what you're trying to pursue. When people ask me, like, what's the heart? The other day somebody asked me, what, what's the hardest thing you you've ever done? And I was like, uh, walter, after college, because I'm trying to. I'm trying to do something that not like everybody in my personal life doesn't understand, like it, like and, and they think that it's just like why, why is he still doing this? This is yeah.
Jake Winder:Why didn't he get a freaking job? Or like, why didn't you do this or do that? Nobody understands it. And then and you're, you're spending a lot of like lonely. I don't know about you, but like, for me it was just like lonely days in the weight room, just by myself. You know, go into the track by myself, vaulting a lot of times by myself, going to meet by myself, and it's like from one for one year, for two years, for three years, for four years and it's like and then, and then sometimes, and then for the first few years I didn't see any returns on it.
Jake Winder:I just had this dream and this hope that I was going to be able to be this elite poll Walter that I wanted to be. And that's exhausting, it's so exhausting. And then you get injuries and you have disappointments and letdowns. Dude, it is really, really hard to do what you're doing. And then when you get out on the other side of that, you're going to come up against some of these other things and you're going to be like it's not, it's not as hard as what I just did for the last 10 years.
Austin Miller:Yeah, yeah, a friend of mine, brandon Hudgens. He runs High Point Athletic Club here in in High Point and but he was I don't know if you saw or not, but I indoor USA. He was the big bearded guy or he was like the bearded guy with the hat who was like taking my videos and I was referring to.
Jake Winder:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Austin Miller:I did see him. Yeah, so he was. He was a distance runner, like made it to a couple of the trial, a couple of Olympic trials, and now is, you know, moved back to the area and has opened up this club. And you know we're just, he helped out at High Point for a little while and so we're just homies and you know he's he's just, like you know, one of our community members and I remember talking to him about that as after he had, like, officially retired and was starting to build up High Point Athletics or High Point Athletic Club, and that was something he said was like dude, all of the energy, like I didn't realize how much energy obviously was going into my training, but not even just my training, but into being purposeful about, okay, this is recovery time.
Austin Miller:I am doing here, I'm sitting here doing nothing because I am recovering right now, and you're thinking about your races, you're thinking about your workouts, you're thinking about your program. Okay, what do I have coming up tomorrow? Okay, so I maybe need to make sure I carve up a little bit more today. This out of the. It's just the gears are always, at least passively turning, and he was like I didn't realize how much energy was going into that until I wasn't doing it anymore. He's like you're building a business from the ground up. This is cake compared to that right, I did not realize it.
Jake Winder:Yeah, I mean every, every piece of food that goes in your mouth, every drink that you have with your friends, every, every time that your friends ask you to go do something like, or you know, vacation that you got to stay back from you, just like it's constant and it's relentless and it's never ending and it's like, well, don't you guys have an off season? No, not really. I mean, you're still you're. You might not be training, but in your head you can't get away from it. You wake up every morning and it's there and even when you're not training.
Jake Winder:Yeah, it's there because you have this goal and this pursuit and and man, it's, it's, it's tiring, but we're making this, painting this out to be really like a bad situation, but but it's extremely rewarding. Yeah, like, 90% of the time is really difficult, but that is it's worth it for that 10% that you really, you know, have have good days like your day over at indoor USA's. That was probably like. You know what this is. This has been worth it, you know oh, 100%.
Austin Miller:Well, and it was. You know I had that. It was worth it. Like man, like four years ago, like I've had I get those like little, like this is all worth it and I think it's because I'm very conscious about trying to make sure I'm aware of all of those. This is worth it.
Austin Miller:Moments like I mean shoot even leading up to leading up to the championship, and Albuquerque I. So I was there for like a week. I went straight from Milrose the week before and I just flew straight to Albuquerque and just had near BNB and was like I'm just going to get there, take out like one flight from the whole thing so I don't have to go from, like, north Carolina to New York, new York back to North Carolina, north Carolina to Albuquerque and do the whole back and forth and back and forth. Let me just take it out. So I just got a great Airbnb. It was sick. It was like this little studio above a wellness spa and center, which was really yeah. So I did like a sensory deprivation float before like a few days before the meet.
Austin Miller:It was awesome dude it's on is in there. They had PMF tables. It was sick and so and so. But one of the things I did was I went up to Sandia peak on like Wednesday night so we can be on Friday went up on Wednesday night and for those that don't know, Sandia peak is this mountain range just outside of Albuquerque and you can take a like a gondola up there or you can just drive up there. So I just took the rental car and drove up and caught the sunset and it is, you know that, a super snowy mountain. Like I'd be walking on the snow and then, like you fall through up to your hips and you're just like, oh crap, and you got to climb back out right get back on top of the snow.
Austin Miller:But you know, I kind of was just hiking around through the woods up there, up along the ridge line, and just found a spot where there was like no one around me for like like hundreds of meters and I was just there with me and the wind was freaking, howling and it was really cold, but the sunset was beautiful and man, I had this, this really like just profound moment of like this giddy gratitude where I was like literally laughing to myself and like talking to myself out loud about how, like, regardless of what happens at the championship, this whole adventure of like I'm having a just a little staycation in Albuquerque right now, meet and cool people at this wellness center and like getting to experience that coming up to Sandia peak and like catching a glorious sunset, and I'm like this, like this wouldn't happen if I wasn't pursuing pole vault as a whole, and I am so incredibly grateful to be living a life like that that I can just go and have those adventures. I can, and now, like I have to put myself into the position to go do that. You know I very easily could have stayed in the Airbnb the whole time, but you know, I'm I'm thrilled to to have the energy and the curiosity for life to to be able to go and do those things, because that's that really makes it all worth it. Those are stories that, like, I'm going to remember that sunset for sure, I'm going to remember the championship for sure, but that energy that, that like kind of, was cultivated within myself during, like during that time up on the mountain, like that, and that's something of substance that, like, I can recall for years down the line and I and I recalled it when I went to France the next weekend for for Rowan, I was like I did a little meditating, like right before the competition, and kind of just in this really loud arena where there's music and lights and all these things, and but just kind of sat there and just put myself back up on that mountain and just like cultivated that feeling.
Austin Miller:I was feeling just that like the giddiness of just like dude, what, what am I doing? Right, I'm just gallivanting around the world, in the country, just like you know, catch and sunsets, and then I'll like I'll go poll a little bit and, like you know, go, go get dinner with the homies or something like that, and then go back home for a little bit and go somewhere else and do it all over again. You know it's just all one giant adventure and I think that's something that that keeps my, keeps my relationship with Paul really fresh, is just like that, and so it was always like I, when I first got going, you know I had a lot of. I had a lot of ground to make up. You know I only jumped 17 to in college and so I had a lot of ground to make up and I had Scott four years ahead of me like in like career progression, which was again like, really helpful.
Austin Miller:I could talk for I could talk for hours about how helpful Scott has been as a, as a mentor and as a coach.
Austin Miller:But you know, he was going and traveling, like around Europe, getting into the Diamond Leagues after he won in 28 one, the National Championship in 2018 and made the world team and all that and you know he was getting to go to all these cool places and telling all these cool stories and at that time, while he was overseas in Europe, that's when I started going out to Bell Athletics as well, and so I started getting all these stories from like from Earl about when he was traveling and from Daniel Ryland about when he was traveling and just hearing all of these cool stories about, you know, people traveling all over the world and having these cool adventures, and I've always had a bit of a travel bug in me as well and I was like, man, that's cool.
Austin Miller:I want pole vault to be like a vehicle to see the world. It didn't start as like, oh, I want to be the, I want to break the world record or I want to do this, or I want to do that. It started as I want to, like. I wanted to take me cool places and and let it be the vehicle by which I can have adventures and it's cool and it's done a great job doing that.
Jake Winder:It's been a real yeah, you've been to some really cool places, man. Yeah, that that is. I mean, it's totally, you know, reasonable to think like that too, like I was talking with Trevor again about. About that is like there's everybody has different goals in this whole thing too. Like some, some people you know have have super like performance oriented, like this is the only thing I only want to, like, make this certain bar or win this certain championship or whatever. But then there's other people that not only do they want those things, but they have other goals inside of you know their career as well, and one of them is like I want to see, to see different things, and Trevor and I kind of went back and forth with if he should go to this meet over in Taiwan next week, and he brought it to me and I was like, no, not doing it, I felt bad, I anyway.
Jake Winder:But this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about how a coach you have to get involved with, a coach that is able to talk with, like you're able to talk with them and you're able to, as an athlete, go to them and say, hey, you know, this is, you know, maybe something that I want to do with my family, or this is a certain way that I've been thinking about training, or this is an experience that I want to have, and and so I went home and I just like kind of thought about it and, you know, went through everything and I was like you know what, I'm going to call him back and we're going to talk more about it.
Jake Winder:And eventually, once I really thought about it, I was like, okay, some of those things that I thought might be negatives, like disruption to training, you know, kind of pushing our next training block back a little bit, those sorts of things. I started to be like you know what, it's not that big of a deal and he's a young kid and this is a great opportunity and there could be a lot of positive that comes out of this. So then we eventually landed on he's going and, and it's it's you have to remember that you know that's that could be part of what that person's goals are to, you know, to be able to, like you said, go and see cool things and use it as a vehicle. So every, every athlete is different man and it's it's a cool it's a cool thing you guys get to do though.
Austin Miller:Yeah, well, and also one thing I think that you know this is something that you know both Scott and Sam Bell and Earl Bell of all put into me is, like you know, that being able to, to jump in, like, whatever conditions are provided to you, but, and being able to build that adaptability and and and add a add a new, add a new narrative to that, to that problem solving puzzle, can be really, really helpful and like, so, like for that Taiwan meet it's, it's one that so that so many different people have gone to and been a part of, and, if it, if it's still in the same place. You know it's like in this school gymnasium that you know you can't, depending on how, like, how long your stride length is, you can't really fit in much more than 16 or 14 steps because there's like a garage door that you know.
Jake Winder:You kind of he's got to get. He'll be able to get seven left, so 14. Yeah, yeah.
Austin Miller:And so, but, yeah, so, being able to go and perform, and you know, maybe, you know, maybe the flight doesn't. When I went, my my flight came, my flight got delayed a whole day, and so I like had that much less time to kind of like get acclimated and the food is different, and so you got to like make sure, ok, well, how do I handle myself in these situations? And that little bit of exposure, like that's a great first one to do, because there's like there's not a huge expectation there and they love pole vault, they love the competition, the energy is immaculate and we don't get anything like that here in the States except for Reno, and that also in when I went, like Brian Yokeyama went I don't know if he's going again this year, I know he helps to coordinate that, but I think last year Dave Butler went, and so there's always people involved in it that are, you know, more or less like really ingrained in the pole vault community. They may or may not have like more or less impact, depending on who they are, but it's also a great opportunity to build relationships, you know, and I think that relationship building from the career side of pole vault has been something that I've also really taken a lot of time and attention towards is making sure that, you know, there's this cultivation of relationships, because it's not just enough for at least anymore, because people are jumping so darn good and there's just so many people trying to make the teams and get those few spots that are open overseas for these competitions, it's not just enough for people to not have a reason to not bring you somewhere or to not invite you somewhere. They have to have a reason to want to bring you there.
Austin Miller:And so it's like that neutral ground isn't really enough anymore, just because of the density of high vaulters these days. It's like how are you going to stand out? What is the thing that they're going to be like Like okay, well, we have two, three, four people that are like really kind of like the same caliber of jumper. What's going to be your thing that sets you apart? You know, and I think those, those kinds of opportunities can really provide that for you and like for me, when I went, that was like Scott told me. He was like hey, like make sure when the crowd, win the crowd, and so it was a really big. Like you know, I did the the hooping in the holler and in the flips and like the playing with the crowd and all that.
Austin Miller:And I ended up getting tying for a third or second and with with EJ OB Enna before he was a big six meter boy, but that you know, that kind of cultivation of that energy when, like with Brian Yocchia, I'm there, who's the pole development chair, and just spending a little bit more time with him and just you know, just getting his recommendations on things, having him coach me up, and that's just all kind of building the relationship and the repertoire and for lack of a better word kind of the persona you know like, what is what, like how do people know you like from afar and I think that's something that's becoming more and more important to to kind of pay attention to for better or for worse you know like you'd obviously like just the merits of your jumping to be the thing that's like setting you apart, and you know if you're going to, if you're jumping on like undeniably high, like if you're going to jump a six meter bar, then yeah, you're going to like the doors are going to open for sure, but you know when you're in that middle ground to really try to claw for your spots.
Austin Miller:You know what? What is the, the differentiating part of your, of your external persona that people know you for, even if you haven't been necessarily purposely tried to cultivate?
Jake Winder:that Right? Yeah, so you definitely have that for sure. The external persona For sure, I mean. So for people who have never seen Austin jump in person, I mean it's like like he is like having his own party, like the entire, the entire time. It's, it's really, it really is fun to watch and you do engage the crowd a lot and it looks like.
Jake Winder:I texted you the other day and I was just like you know, you know I just want to talk to you. You know you seem like you just marched to the beat of your own drum and you're just kind of like you know what this is what I do and this is how I have fun doing it, and you know that's what it is. So, whether that I, so I actually that is one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about. So there's a ton of like if you go and you watch you at Reno, like I mean the crowd goes nuts and you're doing flips and doing cellies and all all these different things, which in great engages the crowd a lot and they enjoy it a lot. Do you ever, do you ever come against haters who hate on that At all?
Austin Miller:I don't. I have I've never come across anyone or that has like, like, at least said to me anything like against it. There's like occasionally like someone on like social media or something that'll say, like you know, they're just, you know, trying to be a contrarian and so, and they'll be like, oh dude, thanks, he's the, you know, it's whatever. But and I think part of why I haven't gotten pushed back on it is because it really is like that really is authentic. That's not me like, like that's not me doing something or like letting this energy out that doesn't exist otherwise, like that energy is always there. And now I'm not like through every jump session here in North Carolina or in Arkansas. I'm not doing cellies after every jump or every bar clear there, Right, but it's. I find that that crowd interaction keeps me for and like that fun really keeps my equilibrium. You know, like I've I've tried doing it last year I kind of took, I took the the really serious like, like that mean mug, like I'm here to ruin someone's day energy to a few competitions and it worked once or twice. It worked a couple of times and I won some good meets and I and I like jumped really high doing it. But then when I took it to a championship, it was like I was just so locked in that I was too locked in for my own good. It was like I was so focused on trying to do what I was trying to do. And you know, like kind of going back to what I was saying about you know, I kind of go from one side of the spectrum to the other. I was, I went way too far to the other side of the spectrum where I was so locked in, ok, I need to execute this and I would just overboard that. You know I would, I would go way too hard with that correction and it worked against me and it kind of like it kept me from. You know, it wasn't as fun to do it like that and I had kind of noticed, you know, looking at past USA performances and at other meets where I've I've just jumped, that the meets where I was like filled with them, where I was competing with the most gratitude and having the most fun and just being thrilled to be there, were the ones where I consistently had performed the best, and so it's not like I couldn't care less what happens, or it's not.
Austin Miller:I am like I'm out to like like kick ass and take names, like I'm just I'm there having my own time and just having a great time while doing it, and that's especially for a championship performance. That's what I found. It has been a big difference maker for me now, historically speaking. The ones that I've really gone in and really tried to like, oh, I'm ready and I'm going to make it happen, like well, it didn't really make it happen. And the ones where I came in and I was just like man, like oh, dude, I'm just so excited to be here, this is a great time, like excited to be here with the boys and just have another day to jump and really get after it, were the days where I was just like, oh, dude, like that was a great day, I jumped pretty darn well.
Jake Winder:And so it was yeah.
Austin Miller:And so that's just like that's the equilibrium for me, especially in the championship time. It's different kind of come street vault time. It's much more like intentional then. But in a championship time that's kind of like where it like keeps my equilibrium.
Jake Winder:Right, right, yeah, and I mean, and then at this point it's like it would be weird if you didn't. You know what I'm saying. Like it's just kind of like that's just you've. You've kind of just put your you know kind of true self out there and it's almost like if you see you too serious, it'd be like, oh, something's, something's going to probably be off here or whatever yeah.
Jake Winder:So what goes into the development of these celebrations, because these are some of them are, you know, really good ones that I've seen before, like that maybe football players do, or whatever. So, like, so how does it work? So you're, do you go in with a bag of like three? Or four, and then like what constitutes which celebration.
Austin Miller:So that's a great question. So I kind of I definitely have like like three or four that stay on rotation that have kind of like become their own, like signature, almost like the flexing and stuff like that, right, which is like, but it's also strange because it's it's it's things that I don't see, other people do you know. It's just like. But I also, I guess you know if I'm thinking about it, there's just not really many people that celebrate in general.
Jake Winder:In a pole ball.
Austin Miller:you're saying yeah In the pole ball.
Austin Miller:There's not too many people that really get after it with the cellies. But there are, like I'll occasionally get to a point where I'm like, okay, I've like really used this one a lot. I need to like think of another one. Or where this and this is a great problem to have, where it's like okay, well, I'm clearing more bars, now I need to have more celebrations, right, and so, yeah, and so it's, and like like the, you know I get ideas from like I watch a lot of NBA and so you know some of those celebrations, but also like some of them just, or one that I started to use this year, was actually inspired by Usain Bolt.
Austin Miller:There was one where, like I think it was before 200 meter, maybe it was in an Olympics, and you know they go and they like put the camera on one person, they put the camera on the other, they put the camera on the other as they're introducing them. And they got to him and he had like just shaved his head and he was like oiling it up and like getting all ready to go.
Austin Miller:I was like oh dude, like I'm like the bald guy in pole vaults, so like I need to play into that. And it really has. The baldness has become its own homing beacon. It's wild, it is great, like I didn't. I mean, I guess I understand why, because there's not a lot of just like bald people. Well, there's nobody else who's bald in pole vault right now.
Austin Miller:I get like Justin Norberg was back in the day, but yeah, and so it's like I kind of like play into it and I was actually dude. I was joking with oh shoot, I think who was it? I know Brian. Brian was there at Reno. Well, I was talking about this but someone came up to me as Brian and I were kind of walking through the lobby and passed a few people on there, you know, hey, like you did a great job, it was really fun. Yada, yada, yada. And one guy was like dude, you're like, you're like the next, you're like the modern day Toby Stevenson.
Austin Miller:And I was just like, oh, wow, like with the cellies and all that, because he used to like air guitar and shit like that as well, right, and I was like, oh, wow, damn day, like dude, I'm really honored to hear that. You know, thank you so much. That's like that, you know it's, it's just, it makes it fun for me. And someone was like, yeah, we need to do like a passing of the torch ceremony. And then for some reason, this like light bulb moment came into my head where I was like no dude, here's what we need to do. It needs to be like a skit. And you know, toby is like he has his like helmet on and stuff like that, and we do like a passing of the helmet. Then when he takes off the helmet, like the flow coming out from the back comes with it and he's bald underneath it. And then he gives it to me and like I have the helmet and the hair now.
Jake Winder:That's hilarious, dude. So you just lean into the bald you, I mean you, you just have to right, I mean that's that's. That's that's what it is.
Austin Miller:If I'm going to be completely honest. It's just because I have I have a God awful hairline, I really do. I started losing my hair when I was like a sophomore junior in college and it just like it just kept going and kept going and kept going and I tried for the first couple of years. You know, you do the thing where you cut, like cutting it progressively shorter and shorter and shorter. And then I started recognizing, you know, like like Tyson Fury, who's like heavyweight champ and the rock, and Jason Statham and Bruce Willis and all these guys are like good looking bald dudes. I was like you know, I think I just got to own it and at that point I was cutting my hair short enough that I could still cut. I could see the kind of the shape of my head and so I knew that I didn't have like a wrinkly scalp or anything like that.
Austin Miller:So I could just like shave it, and it was going to be pretty good yeah.
Jake Winder:And yeah, it's solid. I mean you're lucky though that you got like the head. That looks good bald, right? Because? Imagine if you're going bald and like you have, you don't have a like a good bald head. That would be rough man.
Austin Miller:If I had like a square head or something like that, yeah, then you've got to get the way People have different head shapes, and that's something to consider.
Austin Miller:It really is. It's funny when I again at Reno, I was walking through the lobby and I had a beanie on because I was getting ready to go outside and I actually got snowed in for a couple extra days in Reno so I didn't leave until like Tuesday. That's terrible, yeah, and a couple other people did as well. But I was just walking through the lobby and this, you know, his family was walking by and they were like, um, they kind of walked by and they turned around. They're like excuse me, are you a pole valter? And I was just like I was walking with Sam Bell at the time and I was just like hold on a second. I literally just like took off my beanie and they were like you're the guy.
Austin Miller:You're the guy. That's hilarious it really is its own homing beacon dude.
Jake Winder:That's awesome man. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the like. Probably the funnest thing about you is just like you just be like. You're just unique. You know you're a unique dude and you know the way that you go about your competitions and everything is just a unique way of doing it. And that was why I was so excited to see I love to see like the person who, like, got out of college and had to really grind to get to where they're at. You know it's really cool, like if somebody jumps super high in college and gets out and, you know, gets contracts and all that, that's really really impressive and cool too. But there's something about that person you know, like, like, like you and Luke and Trey and like like all these people that have been like grinding really hard there's way more than that Carson and Nate, like.
Jake Winder:I mean, I'm not going to try to name all of them, sorry about that I'm going to send people out and then all the girls too, and it's just like something about like these people have put in a lot of time with not a ton of support and now they're doing it like they're doing it like the underdog story you know, I love that, I freaking love it. So I was so pumped to see you do so well at at USA's and I mean dude, that six meter bar is right there, yeah it's.
Austin Miller:That's one of the really interesting things. That is, like you know, both times I jumped 90 this indoor season. My jump before it, like the bar before it, was my best jump of the day by fall. It was just like real clean, really connected the entire time. And then the next jump, that 90, was like like not quite connected but it was just on a pole big enough to like get up and over it and get some solid bar love on it too. And so it's cool because I know that if I just do those same jumps, like do those same really connected jumps, you know, maybe get up a pole, maybe do this, maybe do that just or just line up the same jump, but better that that six meter bar is going to be there, which is really interesting because it's like, it's really like I can say and feel to my core with full confidence, like I know that I'm going to jump six meters.
Austin Miller:It's not like it's not a matter of if, but when I jump six meters, which is like, which is cool to say and feel so confidently and I actually had, I actually had someone another poll Walter asked me the other, like after USA is like you know, where did this like brazen confidence of yours come from? And I was just like and I think it was in response to like saying like oh, I know I'm going to jump six meters and it has come from, like you said, like having to grind, you know it's, but it hasn't been, you know, it hasn't been necessarily just like win after win after win after win after win after win after win after win. For the past six years you know it's been like hit some great improvement and then kind of get that ego, check, you know, maybe get a little bit of an injury. Then have to like build it back up. Go into some meets there you're feeling great, Hit an ego, check. Go into some meets, really succeed, maybe overperform. Go into some championships and underperform. It's like you learn, you just you cultivate this huge basket of experience to pull from and to make it. You know, to just keep making it and keep progressing you have to accumulate the right puzzle pieces Right, and over the past six years, the puzzle pieces that I've accumulated are just make me so, so confident in everything that I do, like every step that I can take, Every step that I take, every like, every tweak that I make.
Austin Miller:There's thought behind it, and it's not just my own thought, like because I am not shy about the fact that I don't know anything, Like I left my ego at the door as far as programming wise, like long ago, and but because I know that there's people out there who know that stuff and they know it backwards and forwards and have incredible insights, and so I'll like outsource that, like that response to well, yeah, that responsibility to people that really know what they're talking about, and I'll approach them with hey, I have this idea. This is kind of the end goal I want to get to. Do you have any tips or tricks or programming ideas that might help me get there? You know, I work, I work with or I get ideas from for my like sprint, for my sprint things from the sprint coach James Daniels here in North Carolina. I also work a little bit with the sprint coach Shemoya Pruitt at HPU. I, you know, get I do a lot of my strength.
Austin Miller:Programming through will sell a little bit at high point and then I put it all like after that.
Austin Miller:I like put it all through the filter of Scott, I'm like all right, this is what we put together and like what do you think of it?
Austin Miller:He's like my final like safety, like my final like safety net on things, because before I started kind of outsourcing those things, he like, he was like he was like my one resource and he was going and you know ask it like, you know taking classes and you know getting ideas from other people and this and that, and so he's really kind of put out that blueprint of being collaborative in your, in your effort to accumulate the knowledge, which has been again like it all kind of goes back to that first.
Austin Miller:That first thing I said where having the space to explore, having the space to explore curiosity, because you know, when Scott, four years down the line for me was, you know he was going out to California to do some, to do some jump sessions with Brian or he would go up to Virginia Tech to hit some jump sessions with Bob Phillips. You know he would accumulate this knowledge and I was watching him from North Carolina like go and get this knowledge, and so it kind of laid the groundwork for me to feel comfortable going and getting knowledge. You know, going and spending like going going out to the bell athletics a few times a year to get the bell families opinion on things, because they're great, they're an incredible resource of public knowledge. You know, being able to reach out to other sprint, like to sprint coaches into strength coaches and you know, and I'll, you know, give props to Scott too, because it takes, like it takes a lot of trust as a coach to let your athlete go do those things as well.
Jake Winder:Yeah, they can't have an ego. They can't have an ego. They have to have their pride. You know they have to not have a ton of pride like, like too prideful of a coach would never allow that. They would be like oh no, no, no, you don't need to talk to that person. Yeah, that's really cool.
Austin Miller:Yeah, and he, and it's because and it's because, like you know, like I said, our communication has been has really come to a great head, like we communicate really well now, and like he knows that I'll, like I'll go and explore and and talk to people and all that, but it doesn't mean I'm going anywhere. You know it's like I'm still like I am, I'm here, I'm, I'm like still on the path and still on the mission, and like you're going to hear about the things that I'm doing. It's not like I'm going to go get this and then like from this coach and then start doing like secret workouts that you don't know about. You know it's like like that's not going to be conducive to the goals you know. Right, and so it's. Yeah, so it's. It's been a really cool, it's been a really cool path and it's been really cool to to explore and to get all that information.
Austin Miller:And you know, I've, I've always liked to say that everyone has something they can teach you. You know, whether it's in a professional setting and a track setting and a familial setting, and then you know a familial setting and this or that, even if that thing is well, I don't want to be like that. You know it's, it's, it's up to you to kind of like step into the role of the student and always be looking for, like learning opportunities and growth opportunities. And, like you know, I've definitely done jump sessions at places and someone told me like oh yeah, like hey, you should really try and do this. And I'm just like okay, and like I'll, I'll, I'll humor them and I'll try it, and it's like okay, like I mean, it didn't make a difference really one way or the other, and so it's like, but you know, you're not just going to be like no, that's stupid. Shut up, right right, Okay, like.
Austin Miller:I'll give it a go. You know everything has, everything has like, has a little bit of merit one way or the other, and everyone pole vaults so differently, everyone's mechanics are so differently, and what everyone's feeling in the jump is very different as well. You know, it's like what the same. We're all trying to execute the same jump, the same fluid, the same like fluid transition of energy in and out of the jump, but the things that people think about to get there are going to be very different, and so you know what might be working one way for one person might have to be rephrased differently to for the other, and so you don't know if you don't go and find those things you know and you can decipher later on, like did that help or did that not help Exactly?
Jake Winder:Exactly. Hey, let's take a bathroom break real quick and then I want to talk to you about a couple other things. You cool with that? Yeah, I can talk all day and we're back.
Austin Miller:Feel much better now, sorry, yeah, I had to refill my my salt water.
Jake Winder:Oh, what you got in there? Just salt, just salt and water. There you go. I gotta get those these days.
Austin Miller:It's just a pain. It's like, you know, the paint came away and salt. I got like a big thing of like sea salt back at bought house as well and it's just like, yeah, it's um electrolytes. You know that's um, I'll get those electrolytes. In fun fact, do you actually know that when, like, if you're just like kind of crushing just water, water, water, water, water, water, you can actually get to a point where you're like dehydrating yourself by drinking too much water? Yep, because you need those electrolytic minerals to make sure your body retains that water, yep.
Jake Winder:Yeah, that's exactly it, because it will start to. You'll start to notice that you're like peeing a lot, and then you're just really thirsty and it's like what the heck like? I'm peeing a lot, like my pee's clear, but I'm still really thirsty. Yeah, it's very strange. Yeah, people don't think about that. Very often I use a Celtic Sea salt like it's so okay, really. Yeah, you should check it out. It's it's like a gray salt and it's like got the highest mineral content of any of the salts.
Jake Winder:Oh yeah it's in a blue like a blue Like container. They'll have it at any of your like kind of health food stores. Yeah, it's just really really good, but it's got a lot, a lot higher mineral content than the other ones and it's like super salty, so like if I'm making like a ribeye or something like that, so like throw that on there and it like makes a really good crust and everything, and nice yeah, yeah, nice, yeah I.
Jake Winder:So there's like two other things that I want. There's a lot of things that I want to talk to you about, but I Feel like we should go Back to like, kind of like how you began your, your pole vaulting and stuff like that yeah, just because usually, like the first time somebody comes on, it's like we like we've never heard your story.
Austin Miller:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so let's hear it so where my pole vault journey begin?
Jake Winder:a yeah, so your sports, athletics, like where'd you grow up, and yeah, all that.
Austin Miller:Yeah, so I grew up, born and raised in northern Virginia, just outside of like 30 minutes outside of DC or so. I went to Herndon high school and Herndon, virginia, and Play I was. I was an only child growing up with not a lot of kids in my, with no kids in my neighborhood actually, and I went to like a private school for like first through eighth grade and so Was like very active in like sports and such for the like to, you know, be around people and be around kids. But so I ended up playing a lot of, did all the things you know, did the, did the soccer, did the you know, did the t-ball.
Austin Miller:But the big thing that really stuck with me was lacrosse.
Austin Miller:Like I was a big lacrosse kid going up through grade school and and like going in and first dip my toes into track and field when I was in middle school but really kind of kept the focus on lacrosse.
Austin Miller:And Then, when high school rolled around, you know they have indoor track right, and so I was like, oh well, what better way to get in shape for lacrosse season than for in with indoor track? And they did the interest meeting and you know this is the indoor track team, yeah, and we're gonna have pole vault this year and we haven't had pole vault in a long time, but we have a pole vault coach and this is the pole vault coach. And there's this dude coach daily, the real old school guy, and I was kind of just like, yeah, this is what you're gonna need to do, like no, no, no, no, and gave the whole load down. It's like, oh, that's the thing with the stick and it bends, and that sounds kind of cool. I kind of want to try that. Yeah, and I was like so bad at it that I quit after like two weeks.
Austin Miller:I was just like I was just like, because, I mean, you know, you also only have like Like two or three poles in the shed and one of them is like, one of them is, like you know, like a 12 foot 60 and the other, the other one is like a 12, 140 and the other one is like a 15, 675 and so like, and having the right pole is so important and can really make or break a first-timer. You know, it's like that's, that's something that I think is so important. You got to have the right, the right tools necessary. And so I was just like, okay, this is like I'm not getting a lot out of this, like I'm like I'm here to get in shape for the cross, so like I'm just gonna stick with the, with the running.
Austin Miller:And I also wasn't very developed, like as like physically going into high school I was like five, six, 100 pounds. Going into high school, like I was, I was kind of a small kid, right. And then and sophomore year rolls around and I had like grown six inches and then came back out for it and did like at some point in the season had cleared one bar and like the opening it was the opening bar at some competition was like eight feet or something like that, and Because I cleared one bar that qualified me for the district championship. And if you go.
Austin Miller:Yeah, and if you got to the district championship then you were technically a varsity athlete and I was just like and but like, leading up to that district championship, so I'd gotten. You know I'd gotten a little taller. You know I'd not filled out. I still did not. I was like now, I was just six foot 140 pounds.
Austin Miller:You know, bean and but I Started to figure out like, oh wait, like if I hold higher on the pole, I go higher in the air. Whoa, oh my, now for those listening. If you don't like, if you're not really, if you're just getting into pole vault, don't do that.
Austin Miller:That's right, that's not, that's not how that really works. But it was so serendipitous that this 12, 160 orange catapult that we had in the shed Was just perfect for my height and weight that I could do that, that I could just keep bumping my grip up, up, up up and it would keep rolling and like load a little bit more. You know, a six foot kid on a 12 foot pole like you, that's not typically something you'd really see, but I could get away with like all these bad habits and just like get up over the bar and that sophomore year I'd also. We lost the, the freshman year coach, and we had a distance coach who had, you know, taking the, the first aid course to be allowed to coach pole vault. So he and I were learning the event together and neither of us knew of anything. So like I went from jumping eight feet like a couple weeks before to then like all of a sudden I jumped 10, six and regional championship and I was like, oh my god, this is sick.
Austin Miller:And did, you know, went to regionals and did all that and but it was still like lacrosse was still a thing and but at that point it was like, oh well, this is just the best polevolta that we have at the school. Like, can you come back and do that during outdoor season? And I was like, well, only if I can just pole vault, like I lacrosse is my thing, and so kind of just kept doing that. Junior year came around, same thing. I jumped like Like 11 in the indoor season and 12 in the outdoor season doing that. And that was just for me getting a little bit, a little bit taller, filling out a little bit more, hitting a little bit bigger of a pole.
Austin Miller:Yeah, did you get where'd you get the other poles? We like bought one more pole For the school and it was like, okay, cool, yeah, we got another pole and it was like much stiffer than the catapult. Now we have four poles. No, oh, my gosh. And I remember in between what was it?
Austin Miller:Yeah, it was in between my sophomore junior, I went to a pole vault camp. I went to the pole vault camp at William and Mary and, like, they had us doing the drills and I learned some stuff and it was really cool, or no, I'm sorry this between junior and senior year. Junior and senior year, I went to William and Mary camp and I like learned some stuff and learned like, and I learned how to like hit a big takeoff. You know, that's that was the main thing I learned there and I made some friends. It was cool. But I came back my senior year and like, and we, we were out at practice and I learned how to like hit these big takeoffs, right, and we were like out of poles. We didn't have enough poles at the time and so I was like, oh man, well, if I like I'm hitting these big takeoffs and it's like you know, your classic high school, just like.
Jake Winder:All right, just straight out, yeah.
Austin Miller:Yeah and like okay, well, like, let me just like hit the next pole. And the next pole was like a 15, 7, 170 sky pole and I went, like I literally went to the back of the runway, like didn't go from like a run, I literally just went to the back of the runway and like the long jump was going on next to it and like we're just at practice and our coach wasn't there at the time and I just like kind of ran and stutter, stepped and ran and stutter, stepped and ran, ran, ran, ran and just and just hit it and it like Ben, and just like put me up Like I didn't turn on it because I didn't know how to do any of that.
Jake Winder:Right, right right.
Austin Miller:Ben and just like bailed out of it, like like right back onto the runway but like really high in the air back on the runway. Right, I was like oh my god, are you okay? And I was like did you just see how high I went? That was so cool.
Austin Miller:That was sick and I went back to the runway and did it like two more times. I literally did that exact same thing, just went down, hit like this big blocked out takeoff, bent the crap out of this pole and went straight up and came back on the runway on my feet and I was like you were excited about it.
Jake Winder:I was like this is so sick.
Austin Miller:I'm going so high in the air. Now I need to go that way with it and we'll be cooking.
Jake Winder:Oh my gosh right, am I so?
Austin Miller:we ended up getting a new, a new coach who kind of like who knew what he was talking about and like, knew some stuff about pole vault and, you know, had connections with other schools. You know he went to George Mason, was a debt to Catholic there and George Mason is a college in in Northern Virginia and so a lot of his old teammates were coaches in the area as well. And so he was like hey, you know, I have a valter, I need some polls. And so we started to acquire the right polls and he started, and, like you know, having someone who knew a little bit of something about something and could teach me, like, just the like the basics, and it was still like there was not really much form to speak of. I was just a really tall, lanky kid who could cap like a 15185 and and like, get stuck in the bucket and pop out over 146, you know like.
Austin Miller:That was it, um and so yeah, but like the cross was still always the thing and it like got to this point where I was like you know, come colleges were coming around and I wanted to play the college across and I had offers from places, but I wanted to, I really wanted to. The I took a tour at high point and I wanted to go to high point and there was their first year as a d1 program and so they like weren't really taken too many people, but the sprint coach at my high school that year had recently graduated from high point a couple years earlier, and the district championship that, or the indoor district championship, my senior year I like polluted 14 feet and long, jumped like 99 and ran 50 point in the 400 and ran like like 110 in the 500, just did all these things and like triple jumped pretty well as well. And so he gave a call. The high point was like yo, you should check this kid out as a deck. And then you know got in touch or they got in touch with me and they're okay, I heard you're looking at high point. You know you should like we'd love to talk to you about being a decathlete.
Austin Miller:And I was like yo, that's kind of sick. Okay, um and the. Yeah, I ended up taking them up on the offer and Like that was my way of going to the school, that I really wanted to go to Um, and that first year they were going to have me do decathlon and then pull vault individually. But I just started doing really well and pull vault right off the bat. They, it was like just Didn't have any of that like freshman year dip, it was just like Started and it was probably because I didn't know how to pull vault at all.
Jake Winder:It can only go up from there, you know.
Austin Miller:So, yeah, just took a little bit. You know, got better and better and better and they just kept me in the pole vault and Even out the all the way to the end of my freshman year I was like you know, maybe there's a chance I'll like I'm a much better athlete now I actually know what a weight room looks like. I gained 35 pounds in my first semester of college and, yeah, from just like being in a weight room for days a week.
Jake Winder:Yeah, oh, big swallowing. That's what's up.
Austin Miller:Yeah, I brought me up to a whopping 185 pounds. And Then, but yeah, I was like you know, maybe I'll walk on to lacrosse team next year. And then I got a letter over the summer and because I I ended up jumping Uh 15, nine my my freshman year and like getting the school record at high point At the time, and they were like hey, you know, we want to double your scholarship. And I was like Whoa, well, I guess I'm going to keep doing track then.
Jake Winder:Yeah right.
Austin Miller:Which you know, and it's very serendipitous in how it worked out, because you know, I still coach lacrosse to this day, right, I coach, I coach the club lacrosse team at High Point now, and even when I was playing lacrosse, even when, you know, and I coach it to this day, like I always, I always identified more with the track kids, like I was always more of a track kid because it's track, it's an, it's an individual sport at its core, you know, and so there's much more room for individual expression and you know there's not this like this like team mob mentality that you're like you have to be a part of the collective. You know, like you can be different and that's, I think that's something so beautiful about track. And so that's like kind of how I kept. You know, I stayed in, stayed in track and stayed in pole vault and, you know, got a little bit better each year, just a little bit better, jumped 490 my sophomore year, 507 my, my junior year, 525 my senior year.
Austin Miller:And just the longer I was in it, the more I just like started to realize like man, like track people are my people, man, that's like it's, and so it's like it's. That's kind of how it all kind of turned out and you know, here we are now. It's. It's been a cool ride and one filled with you know one. I've gotten a lot of a lot, an incredible amount of like acts of support over the years, and I've been the recipient of a lot of belief over the years as well, like that's awesome.
Jake Winder:Yeah, that's you got to have. You know everyone. You know no one ever gets to you know where they're in a successful position by themselves, like they're climbing on the shoulders of you know the people before them and the people around them, and things like that. It's really that's really cool that you got that opportunity, because I'm sure that people listening to this are like you know, like how did you go from like high school, not jumping, you know super high, and then you got to go to a division, one school and this, then the other, like all of these things are possible, you know. You just you just have to continue to keep going and, you know, meet the right people and create those relationships like we were talking about, you know that's super, super important.
Jake Winder:And it's just funny because, like, I'm thinking about how, like the you know the athletes that we coach here at Rise. You know you'll have a boy come in and you know belly aching about how they I can't, I didn't jump 15 this weekend. It's like gosh dang man, like there's a lot. There's people who have done a lot, lot, lot worse than that and have become really, really, really, really good pole vaulters. It's so, it's so crazy.
Jake Winder:They think they need to jump like well, I mean, these days, though, it is pretty, it is pretty nutty. You know, being a high school pole vaulter, these days you got to jump pretty freaking high to be like one of the best. It's really really wild, but I mean it's a long. I always say to the athletes like you know how long it takes for you to be like really proficient in the pole vault, and they're like how long I'm like eight to 10 years. You know, to be like really proficient, dialed in, consistent, like getting to where you're reaching your potential, it's like an eight to 10 year process. You know, like not to say that you can't become very successful in three years or two years, or you know, I'm sure you know you train out of? Do you train out of High Point and Vault House?
Austin Miller:Yeah, so, yeah, so I still still train at HPU and Vault House as well. So Vault House is right in High Point and they and you know, they have a very, a very like good working relationship with one another as well. So that's where. That's where Scott takes all the HPU kids during the indoor season. Gotcha, gotcha, okay.
Jake Winder:Yeah, yeah. But I mean I'm sure you guys have had you know kids do where it's just like, hey, I want to learn how to pole vault, and then a year later they're, you know, going on scholarship to some big school and it like we've had that two times in the last two years, where athlete comes to us like senior year and they're like hey, I want to learn how to pole vault, and then, not even a year later, really it's like their their whole life's changed, you know.
Austin Miller:Yeah, so yeah.
Jake Winder:Everyone's everyone's got a whole, completely different ride through this whole thing. I was talking with Bridget Williams on the podcast. She was talking about that, about that idea of the slow burn.
Jake Winder:So like your career has just kind of been that slow burn, that's just been like all right we're just putting in the work over time and we're thinking about improvement over years, not over days, you know and that that that's exactly what happened is you know, like it's such a crazy story that you went from jumping, like you know, 10, 6 is a sophomore or something you said, and then you just like, just a little bit at a time, little bit at a time, and then we're 30 years old talking about jumping six meters. It's so wild.
Austin Miller:Yeah, dude, it's the, it's the, it's the. You know Jeff Hart, hartwig, tim Max story, you know, yeah, and that's and it's really cool to be like because that's been like, that's been the. You know it's the Scott Houston story too. Honestly, it's like that's and that's been something that has been like having those people to see and say like, look, they did it, like they, they did it. That's, it's possible, it's something that can be done was really important for me. You know it's and it still is really important for me to to look at those things and to, you know, competing in Europe the past couple years, you know, seeing it like getting to jump with guys like you know, claudio Stetschi and like Peter Lisic, who are like they're in their thirties now and still like jumping really well. Like Claudia just PR'd last year after like two years off from injury and it's like there's there's examples of it all around.
Austin Miller:I think we just kind of forget about it because, like, we obviously have like huge stars that are like, that are so young, in Mondo and like, and Chris, you know Chris had a lot of success really really early as well. Same with KC, you know, those guys are like in, still in, like the front half of their twenties, but like, but you know, you got Sam too. You know Sam's like 31, now 32, and he's like, and he's, you know, looking better than ever. And yeah, it's been, it's been. It's cool to have those examples out there.
Austin Miller:So to know it's like, you know it's, it's very possible, for sure, you know, it always like kind of grinds my gears a little bit when people are like oh, you know, like you're older, you can't do it like you used to and it's like. That's the thing I call BS on, because, yes, I think you're. It's not that your body can't recover like it used to. It's that it takes more steps to recover. To make it recover like it used to, it just takes extra maintenance. It takes extra steps here and there. But just because you know, oh, like you know I'm coming up on 30 or I'm like 31 or I'm 32, it's just like my body, just my body's just like old and broken, it's like dude, get away from me with that kind of verbiage right now.
Jake Winder:Right, right.
Austin Miller:I don't want to hear that at all, like it really is such a mindset thing, it really is such a you know, it's like that, that growth mentality, it's that idea of you know, do you still have some place to go, you know? Or like, how are you framing it in your mind? And that's one thing I think is is really important. You know, it's still. There's always this uphill climb that you can, that you can frame in your head, or it's very easy for yourself to kind of turn it around and be like, oh well, like I was on my peak and now I'm on my decline down. I think it's. I think that mental game is is really really important, especially after college, you know, especially the longer you get into it, you know.
Jake Winder:Absolutely yeah. And the other thing, too is, as you get older, I just don't think you need as much training as you used to. Like, if you think about it, as if you can, like take. The problem is, is our, our mind? They're so locked into this concept of time and the, and it's like we measure everything in days and weeks and months and years. But, like, if you think about your training as like all of that volume that you've done prior, like it doesn't go away. So when you start a new season, all that is still there. So, as you get older, like the amount of work that you've accumulated over a long, long period of time, it's an enormous amount of work and volume that you've done and training that you've done. And as you get older, you just don't need to put in as much as you probably used to to get a very similar result or even better result, and that's something that you and I talked about on the phone last year, I think After after the 2022 outdoor championships, when Luke made the team.
Jake Winder:Yeah, when Luke yeah, when Luke made the team, it was, we were talking about that, that concept of, like minimum effective dose and just having a purpose for every single thing that you're doing and just trying to get rid of what I would call fluffy workouts. You know like where, like 90% of it is just fluff and it's just like just get rid of the fluff. Like why are we doing the fluff? Like what? What the hell? Like this is, this is dumb. It's a waste of energy. Like if you have so much energy in a day or for a workout, like why? Why? Why use that energy on stuff that is not moving the needle?
Jake Winder:Like if it's not moving the needle it goes. You know, that's like, that's one thing.
Jake Winder:I read Elon Musk's biography Very interesting, human being Very interesting. But he, that's kind of like how he was maybe a bad, bad example because Tesla's stocks not doing so well right now, but but when he was building Tesla, it was just like he would go through this process of all right, they would like basically audit the process and they would be like, okay, why are we doing this? I don't know, it's gone, all right. Why are we doing this? Well, we kind of use it up gone.
Jake Winder:And they would just be like get out, get it out, get it out, get it out. And then you end up with you whittle your training down to only things that are moving the needle and there are necessities, and as you get older it I think you can just become better at that and just being like, yeah, this is this over here, this is bogus. Like why am I doing this? This is stupid, this isn't doing anything for me. And then you end up with this kind of these core exercises that are like I know that this works, because I've seen it work in my career so many times that one stays.
Austin Miller:You know what I'm saying?
Jake Winder:Okay, what about this new thing that I saw on YouTube. Maybe, maybe it's something good, but what's its track record? What's this thing that I'm doing in my training? What's the track record? Okay, I'm going to look back. It has no track record, okay, well, you know like, I've never used it.
Austin Miller:Yeah, yeah.
Jake Winder:Or I've used it from time to time and have seen no results. It's gone. See ya, see ya later. And then you end up with this ultra efficient workout of only things that move the needle. And then you just and that's that concept of minimum effective dose. Why are we doing anything over the top of what is required to be effective? Like?
Austin Miller:why aren't we doing?
Jake Winder:anything over the top of that?
Austin Miller:Yeah, dude, that I remember that that that conversation was like really important for me that we had, and it was like also, you know, and it paired with you know something that EB had been telling me for years, and it's just like, dude, like you love to work which is awesome, you know but like you got to learn how to rest, like you do so much work, like you're just doing a lot of fluff, you know, you're just doing all these little things that like aren't actively moving you forward. It's just like it's just adding volume to your work overall workload. And that's been, you know, kind of tying it back to our talk about the, you know, the force equation, like that same idea that minimum effective dose is what is part of the reason why, or like that moving the needle is like why I've taken so much attention into, okay, what exercises do I have to do that I know are going to work my ability to absorb force better? What exercises am I going to do that I know are going to make my explosive output better, without doing something that's like going to work against me in the process of doing those things. And it's been a really cool.
Austin Miller:Yeah, it's, it's, it makes it very interesting, almost provides like this, a little bit of like a sense of clarity, a little bit, you know, because it's like there are so many options of things to do. You know there are. There are a million different exercises you can do, that you could make an argument for oh well, this is why those things work, or this is what those things work, and you can really boil it down, like you said, into like what is moving the needle and how do I know that it's moving the needle? And thank that that, how you do you know that it's moving the needle. I think that's a, I think that's something that can trip a lot of people up, because it's hard to track those things.
Austin Miller:It's hard like, yes, you can look at. Okay, well, I did this and it looks like I jumped good at this meat that week later or two weeks later, and that's a great way to. That's a great place to start and that's actually what I do now, like what I've done with my programming the past two years now. Like when I started jumping 19 feet last year, I just like when I would program the rest of the year out I was like, okay, what was I doing? And like, the two or three weeks leading up to that meat, okay, that's what I was doing. Okay, well, what about the next time I jump 580? Oh well, wow, that's strikingly similar. Okay, well, I, I guess. And what about the? The third time I did it? Oh, my God, I was doing damn near the same thing. Wow, okay. And so it's like you can go back, and that's why it's so important to log your workouts, you know. But if you want to get even more like, I've become such a nerd for the data lately like or not just lately in the past couple of years, whether it's in programming, whether it's in poll engineering or poll design like having tangible numbers to look at and see. All right, this is where we were starting at. We did x, y, z and here's where we're at now, and having measurable data points has been so, so helpful, beneficial, helpful and beneficial in me not just trusting that the work that I'm doing is working, but seeing for myself it is working. We have force plates at high point and we'll do, like before and after each cycle we'll be like okay, we're going to do some force plate jumps, measure out and you can see, like you know, it tracks force from where you go to load the jump and then like the amount of force that you put out when you jump, how quick you put it out and the amount of force that occurs and the forces absorption occurs when you land, and measures all these different data points and you can track each thing. And so in the eccentric cycle, right, we're going to track the loading and then the catch on the way back down. Okay, here's where it started. After the eccentric cycle, we do it again. All right, sick, the things went up. Amazing, we did what we needed to do. All right, concentric cycle All right, I'm doing my heavy hex bar and I'm doing, you know, working up into heavy cleans and doing this is that or the other. Okay, did my like power, did my overall power output increase? Yes, amazing, sweet. We can keep doing those things. All right. Now we're in the contrast cycle, all right, did my like time off the ground? Did my, did my rate of force development go up? Yes, amazing, cool.
Austin Miller:All of the things that we're doing are working and if something we try something new, we're like, hey, this might keep, this might help us move the needle even more, and we try it. And it's like, eh, diminishing returns there, we didn't. It wasn't much different than what we were doing before. It's like, okay, well, cool, we tried it, scratch it, we don't need it.
Austin Miller:Going forward, and so, having those points for me, at least, as someone who you know, like I said, I'm not shy about like calling myself an idiot, like I don't, I didn't go to school for these things All I have is very circumstantial and like very circumstantial evidence of like my, of like what I've experimented with and what I found. So me being able to see the data points and to see, okay, I did this here and this there and I got this, like this answer to the equation Amazing, sweet. Now I can like go forward and be more confident in what I'm doing and it all ties back into that confidence conversation we're having. You know, why are you so brazenly confident? Because I have these data points. You know I've I've accumulated these, I have these puzzle pieces that I've put into place and I've I've been able to acquire over the years. You know, when I first started training, I didn't have force plate data.
Austin Miller:It was like by being around Highpoint, as it's grown, its health sciences department and now having these tools available, it's, you know, someone coming in who takes value in. You know, they're just as much of a nerd as I am and they want to collect these data points so they can use these ideas that I'm guinea pigging on, like the basketball team that they're programming for. You know it's it's finding those pieces. It's finding a, you know, a poll company that that's gonna like, that's gonna try and make what I want out of a poll and say like, okay, yeah, maybe what we're building right now isn't the best for this person, so like, let's try something else. And yeah, and try to, you know, work with you and work hand in hand and have that space for curiosity and exploration that I was, that I keep referring back to you and once you find those, those pieces and those facilitators of the curiosity like freaking. Hang on tight because they're gonna like.
Austin Miller:Those are the people that are in your corner and want to see you succeed, you know.
Jake Winder:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And there's the it's keeping data and tracking data is very, very important. I I remember going into the world championships into 2020 and 2022 with Luke. I I mean I didn't tell him this, but I just in my head I was just like, well, you know, we should be good. Like I'd look at his numbers and I was just like, yeah, we're there, we're good, you know. And then, right before he jumped 580, for the first time I went and I told him, like the week before I was like you should, you should jump somewhere in the ballpark of 70 to 90, somewhere in there.
Austin Miller:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jake Winder:I was like I know, I know this because I just saw you, you know power, clean this much and I just saw you sprint this fast. I just saw all those things and it's all written down and you can just see all of it and it's really it is very important to track that and sometimes you can get a little you know too involved in it and overthink it. But having having that is really, really important. Then the other thing, the last thing I'll say about that minimum effective dose thing is just like applying common sense to your training, like and and applying. I always say that a lot of issues, 90% of the issues that we have like with athletes that we work with at RISE, is not, is not really like whole vault related. It's just basic training principles, like not not doing extreme workouts you know prior to, you know whole vaulting and like just like random stuff like that.
Austin Miller:But if you're not doing six foot depth jumps yeah, there you go yeah.
Jake Winder:But like, if you, if you think about like, let's say that it takes, let's say it takes six, like we used, we do 10 meter flies. So like six, 10 meter flies to hit the effective dose, so we do six. But the problem is is that a lot of Americans have this what I call the MIB mind virus, which is the more is better virus like that's. That's just in them and it's in you from a, from when you're a kid in America, because we're Americans, dude, like consumers.
Austin Miller:dude, we go hard Like it's more is way better.
Jake Winder:If I'm doing this mini sprints, then this mini sprints is going to be way better and I'm going to get. We grew up watching Rocky, you know like it's. It's that's just kind of in our DNA and in our blood which both makes us an incredible country, I think, but then also, so you know, makes sometimes some pretty, you know, overworked people. But if you apply just some common sense to this, if it takes six Sprints to hit the effective dose, most people most like high school coaches and even college coaches at times will think six is not enough, there's no way it could be enough. Like, how would it be enough? Like it's gotta be at least 10.
Jake Winder:Okay, so then you do 10, okay, and so that's one week and you do that for the next week. Okay, so now you did four over what the effective dose was, and then next week you did four more over what the effective dose was. That's the equivalent of training for over an extra week because you done eight more reps than you had to do. So now you've done three weeks of training inside of two weeks of training, like, and then, if you stack that up over a whole season, all of a sudden, you've done weeks of training that you didn't need to do to be effective.
Jake Winder:And that's how you become over trained, you know, and you get injured. And people are like why do I got shin splints? And it's like, well, you know, you're just like there's no way around it. If you get shin splints, you are over training. You're over training plios, or you're over training sprints, you're over training pole vaulting, like that it's there's no way around it. Like, oh, there's gotta be something wrong with me. It's like no, like anybody that gets shin splints it's because they're tibias too hard, man, like it's just, that's just what it is.
Jake Winder:It's really really crazy. But anyway, I could go on for hours about that and really that that sort of stuff really fires me up.
Austin Miller:I mean that's the because I mean it makes sense, cause at the end of the day, like you know, it's you and your body versus everybody else in their body, and so it's like that's like track and feel that it's like. That's why we get so wrapped up in the day and so wrapped up in like training modalities and training volumes and such like that. Because it is there's no like. Yeah, there's some like, there's some like race planning or there's like okay, well, I need to maybe pass this height or I need to strategically go up a pole earlier, something like that. Yada, yada, yada.
Austin Miller:But there's, in the grand scheme of like playmaking and this, that or the other, there's no like, there's. You're not gonna sit down and, and you know, sketch out like these plays and stuff like that. It's like, at the end of the day, who's gonna show up and their body is gonna be in the best shape and ready to deliver the most amount of force and velocity down the straightaway or around the track, down the runway, through the throw, and whoever is gonna be the most capable of doing those things well, you're gonna have the best potential of performing, of putting the best performance out there. The technical aspect is still a thing, but like you're gonna have the best potential to do those things.
Jake Winder:Right and, unfortunately, like you don't get an extra reward for, like, having put in the most volume, like you don't get an extra reward. It's not a hard work competition. And if it was a hard work competition, you know that would. I would have been pretty good at it because I used to beat the crap out of myself like really well, but it's not. It's who can train the smartest and the most effectively.
Jake Winder:And that is where some people just kind of get lost in this idea that, like well, we're building character, it's not a character building competition either it's a mobile thing competition man.
Austin Miller:It's not a hard work.
Jake Winder:Competition. It's not a character building competition. It's who can show up, like you said, and have been trained the most effectively and is ready to perform on that day, and that those are the goals that you have to have. Performance is should you build your character through hard work? When you're a young person, probably I would agree that that is good, but after you do it a couple of times like it's just like, why are we doing this again? Like I already showed you that I got good character, you know, so let's get past to the performance you know the performance side.
Jake Winder:So, before we get off here, I am interested in this whole poll situation and your switch and kind of all of that. So how did that all come about and what's going on, Because I mean from an outsider's perspective, it looks like you're lining up these Essex pretty well.
Austin Miller:Yeah.
Austin Miller:So for those that don't know, I was jumping on pacer poles for a long time and I first jumped on spirits when I was in college and then we pretty quickly figured out like that, when I graduated college I could cap a five meter pole. I could cap like a five meter or 14.0 and like use it to get over five, 20. You know again same thing in high school where I was capping up 15 foot pole to sit over 14.6. It was the same concept. I've always been able to grip high and like and just then rip it, you know. But we pretty quickly figured out like, okay, what's the quickest way that we can get me to a competitive level from a, from a, like making you a state's perspective. And it's like, okay, well, if I can cap a five meter pole like and it's still running away from me, let's see how high I can push my grip up. And ended up just acquiring some like OG white label pacer carbons that were my high school coaches and like they're five twenties and it just like they just lined up with what I needed at the time and so I could like max out my grip on them and I just kept acquiring pacer poles like just from from people you know, I got Daniel Rylans old pacer's, I got some of Marcolis's old pacer poles and just kept acquiring these pacer's. And so when I started, when I jumped like first, jumped like five, 65 in 2018, they approached me and were like, hey, you know, notice that you're jumping on pacer poles and you know, would love to like maybe try out our new poles. And so I tried them out and I was looking for like one of Marcolis's old poles was like it was.
Austin Miller:You know, every pole Walter at some point in their career has a point where they're like dang, this pole is. I love this pole so much. Oh my gosh, this is my stick. And yeah, and like, I was jumping out at Bell Athletics one time and you know, and EB and Sam and just the whole Bell Athletics, like family out there, like that's like they know pole science, you know, and they know like pole shapes and pole direct and pole reactions and stuff. And this is when I first started going out there and he was like, whatever poles you can get made like that one, tell them you want that pole. And so I, you know, said, hey, here's the serial number. And they're like, oh my gosh, wait, this is like built like our new, like our new pole that's coming out. And I was like sick, let's go.
Austin Miller:And I don't know if it was just like a mislabel or something like that, but the reaction just wasn't the same, just wasn't what I was like really looking for. But I was, you know, fresh out of college and a company's given me free sticks and I was like, yeah, dude, sign me up, I'll take them all. And so got sticks and, you know, made them work and kind of jumped a little bit higher. And jumped a little bit higher and kept like was able to jump well on them but kept finding myself, like, like really having to work hard to jump high on them, like I had to be so lined up in my body, I had to be so good on them. And it was one of those things where, you know, every polevolter is kind of like well, like we were just talking about, like, well, what am I doing wrong? Like what? Like, what do I need? Like, why am I not getting the return for my effort? Like when, like, my speed is good, my strength is good, like I think I'm hitting good positions, like what's happening here, and you know, and Sam Bell and Earl were like dude, like I just don't think those are the poles for you, and I was like okay, but like you know, it was me being like well, but I think they can be Like like why can't I can make them the poles for me? And so I would, like you know, cut.
Austin Miller:I was like a lot of polevolters, do you know? You cut a little bit off the bottom right To try and change the bend shape, which, for those that don't know that, lowers the thick part of the pole. That, yeah, lowers it closer to the bottom, which makes the pole bend a little higher up. So you're getting more leverage over that thick part and hopefully, rolling it in more. And so I was doing that and it was working better. And it was working better.
Austin Miller:But I was kind of running out of grip because I would take my five twenties and I would end up cutting like four inches off the bottom of them. And yeah, just to like kind of make them take the shape. That like was oh wait, that's lining up really well, you know, and I wasn't quite able to piece together like okay, well, I just know that cutting them is making it work better. I wasn't quite sure like why exactly? Yet I hadn't really come to like the full understanding of like pole engineering that I have now and I was like, hey, you know, can we maybe like change something? And they were like, well, you know, cutting four inches off the pole is working for you, then just keep doing that. And I was like, but I don't want to do that.
Austin Miller:I don't want to have to cut four inches off the pole because that's like it's just it's. You know there's just a lot of it's just more variables being introduced. You know there's already so many variables in pole vault. I don't want my poles to be a variable.
Austin Miller:And after the twenty twenty one trials I was out at Bell Athletics and came across these like the set of Essex poles, these like naked Essex poles, and I was trying out Carson's Essex poles because you know, I didn't have any meets or anything lined up, and so I was like why not? Like what's the harm? And so I tried them and I was just like yo like okay, this is kind of gnarly, this is like I'm PRing from every run on these poles and it's like I don't know what's in them or what's working, but something's really working in them. And come to twenty twenty two, and I didn't have enough poles from, and those old Essex poles were Jeremy Scott's old poles and yeah, they're Grandes El Grande's old poles, and I didn't have enough poles to fill out a whole series. And so I was like, you know, the season kind of came, came around and I was like, well, I have a whole pacer series and so like I'm just going to keep jumping on my pacer for poles and I had a pretty good season. You know I did pretty well in Europe but and I jumped, you know, jumped to PR that year, jumped five, seventy six, but like again it was I had to be so on to make these poles work like my meets in Europe went five, sixty five, twenty five, seventy five, thirty If my body was like take off on you or what yeah yeah, yeah, they just go so fast, you know it's just
Austin Miller:like, and it was there, it was just like, not really it wasn't particularly forgiving. And the way that they were built or the way that they're kind of built out, you see, a greater proportion of the pole recoil at one time. So you see, like the like you know we'll say like the top three feet of the pole all start to uncoil together like this, and when that's happening it makes it really hard for me, at least in the way that I pull vault. It makes it really hard for me to keep getting my hips up on top of that and so I get kind of like dumped out a lot of the time.
Jake Winder:Yeah, and you have such a long body to start with too, which is really hard to swing.
Austin Miller:Exactly. And now I could mitigate it by, you know, gripping sixteen eleven. But that was like you know, because then it would like, ok, it forced the top to stay bent for longer, but it, you know, holding so high Isn't as consistent as holding a little bit lower. Yeah, I love the. I love the analogy of if you have a long stringy rubber band and you have a short fat rubber band and you're trying to shoot a piece of paper into a cup over and over, it's going to be much easier with the short fat rubber band because the disparity at which you can pull it back is much smaller.
Austin Miller:Right, and so, like end of twenty twenty two came around and I was, like you know, Like my body feels great, I just had a great season, I finished healthy and I think I need to have confidence in my poles. So I'm going to, I'm going to jump on my pacer poles, I'm going to jump on spirit poles and I'm going to jump on these Essex poles, that these, Jeremy Essex poles, and see what which is my pole? And if it's the pacer poles, it's the pacer poles. If it's the spirit poles, it's the spirit poles. If it's the Essex, it's the Essex. I just want to know OK, these are the poles that I jump best on, and there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. And so did that whole experiment and it came up with like I was just jumping undeniably better on the on the Jeremy Scott poles and they just like lined up better with me and they're just a little bit different. They just bend higher and like they have a more progressive role. And so I can't I can't get like two into the engineering.
Jake Winder:I can't reveal the secrets.
Austin Miller:The secret sauce but they just bend higher and they just kind of roll in more, like it's a much more progressive kind of a role. And that just really lines up for for me as a jumper. And at the time they weren't looking for, they weren't looking for vultures, and so I bought, like well, I, thankfully I had like a sponsor who covered like three poles for me and he bought three poles to finish out the series. And that season is when I started, like last season, I started jumping in the 80s and it was what. What I noticed is that I was, it was easier to jump closer to my PR with more consistently, with less effort. I didn't have to be so on to make it work. And when you're trying to make a living overseas, when you're trying to like secure your spot over and over and over in these meets, you got to perform, you got to be able to jump close to that PR, because it's not just Americans that are jumping high, everyone's jumping high. And if you don't perform well, guess what? There's seven other Americans who are waiting to take your spot. And so consistency is the name of the game and it just those S6 poles. Allow me to be more consistent. And we over the past. Yeah, like over the past year or so have like tried to fine tune, like, ok, this is like like, hey, you can see on this pole when I jump, like this is what happens. Like not good, we don't like that. You can see when I jump on this pole, though, like this is what happens and that's money. And thankfully, you know getting to work with Ty Harvey and Don Herig and Lee all at all at Essex. You know they're willing to have those conversations again. They're, they provide the space to explore curiosity and they leave that ego at the door and say like, ok, well, maybe, yeah, maybe, like this design isn't like the one design to rule them all you know, and which is hard as a company. It really is. You know it's like because it's like it's like it's not as cost effective, but like when you just like pump out, like you have, you know, your two or three poles that you just like pump out over and over and over and over and over, you know this is what we have, this is what you're going to get. That's, that's more cost effective, you know.
Austin Miller:But I think, from a perspective of trying to advance the sport and like it's something I like from now acquiring this set of poles where, like, I don't have one pole that I'm like, oh, I love this pole, every pole in my bag. I'm just like, oh God, I cannot wait to jump on this thing. This is so good. Yeah, like that's awesome being able to advance the sport like that and really say like, ok, well, what does this jumper need to maximize their potential? You know, like, imagine I love using this idea of you know, obviously, pole vault is not a billion dollar industry, but imagine, if you got Mondo right, he's already rewriting the record books. You have like a team of biomechanists working with a team of pole engineers and they have just unlimited time and resources to like work with him hand in hand, give him as many poles as he needs and as many throwaway poles as he needs to figure out, ok, this is like, by his feeling and by our data, the best possible pole to athlete match up that we can come up with for this athlete.
Austin Miller:Dude, what, what could possibly happen, and who knows, maybe that, maybe the way, that maybe his spirit poles right now are the ones for him. Like that, maybe, but maybe not. And it's it's a big question of what if. But you know, you don't. You never find the answer if you don't even ask the question and you don't try to explore that.
Austin Miller:And as someone who's like hasn't like, again, that wasn't a really just naturally gifted athlete and I don't know compared to like everybody else in the field, but like where my like physical metrics lie. But you know, I'm trying to get every tool I can to make myself a better Volter and that's not to take away anything from like my time with Pacer, my like. They were so unbelievably supportive of me Anytime I needed a pole. They're like you got it, guy, and they'd send me the pole. I had every pole I could possibly need, but it was just a matter of like is it the pole for me?
Austin Miller:And that's scary as a, as a Volter, you know it's like OK, well, what I'm doing is like it's working well as far as I can tell. I'm getting better each year. But wait, what if there's something that I can't do? Wait, what if there's something that could work better? If you ask that question, the other hand, the other side of that coin, is like it might work better but it could also not work as well. And now you're eating into time of the season. You're eating into potential meat performances, you're eating into training blocks trying to figure out. You're changing all these variables in a sport that already has so many shifting variables at all times, and so it can be scary to kind of jump into that unknown water without a guarantee of return.
Jake Winder:Right, yeah, 100%. And when you the the issue is, when you start talking about these pole companies, they have a very difficult task. They have a very like the number of of decisions that they have to make and and I've, I'm lucky enough to have good relationships with all, all three of the big pole companies but like, like spirit, like, for example, like they, just they, they've, they've figured out a very consistent pole, like it's just like the thing is just consistent. And I mean you can't, you can't argue with the success that people have had on it and like I couldn't imagine being in like Chris Chappell's shoes and just being like, okay, we've been making this is the same product you know, like. And then we have probably people like yourself, like, knocking on our door like hey, can we try this and can we try this and can we try this? And that must be so difficult to as a company, to try and make that decision of. Are we going to mess with the formula that's been working?
Jake Winder:for so long and and I mean and then and then, so, so that's very difficult. But then to even muddy the waters even more, then you have Pacer, which Pacer has had its issues in the past, for sure, and if we've went through that time where you know the, the carbons were changing and like all of those things, but you know what man hats off to them for trying, and for really just being like you know what, we're gonna be the company that tries it Everyone wants to talk about like we're gonna try to innovate.
Jake Winder:We wanna talk about innovating. I mean Pacer, in the early 2000s they were innovating. What the problem is is that they came against some adversity, you know. And then how much would that scare you if I was UCS Spirit and saw what happened with that and just be like, oh crap, I saw that happen. Like I don't know if I wanna do that anymore. And I mean so hats off to Pacer for like they have really tried to innovate and mess with pole shapes and mess with composite materials and all of these different things to make things better. But you know it's a risk. Anytime that you change up your formula, like you were talking about, like we produce these three poles or these poles and this is what you get Anytime that you start to veer off of that I'm not a pole manufacturer, by the way Everyone like please take this with a grain of salt, this is just my own like thoughts right now Like if you got something that works, anytime that you start to deviate off of that, you do incur some risk, you know what.
Jake Winder:I'm saying as a company and that would be very, very scary. But with Essex, I've had long conversations with Don at Essex and you know he always says he's like I'm just an expert at making carbon tubes, you know.
Austin Miller:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Jake Winder:And he really, if you get on the phone with him, man, you better be ready to learn a lot about carbon tubes, because he has such a long history in that and what you were talking about earlier, like imagine if Mondo had the ability to, or somebody like yourself had the ability to be, like, okay, we're gonna throw a bunch of this stuff at you and we're gonna see what things work, what things don't work, and we're gonna invest a lot of cash into this and labor into this and make you know that innovation possible. He did that. He worked on that for a long time with golf shafts, and so like that's exactly what they did. I'm pretty sure like I've talked with him about it, like it was just like we're trying to innovate the golf shaft.
Jake Winder:Now the difference between a golf shaft cost of production and a pole vaulting pole cost of production is probably a little bit different. And think about the capital and the resources that you have in golf compared to the resources that we have in the pole vault. And so that's where it's difficult and I do applaud them for, you know, allowing you, like giving you this opportunity, because I mean I will say like you can't really argue with how successful you've been like on those poles. You know like they seem to have found a shape for you that works and this certain you know the combination that works really well for you.
Austin Miller:Yeah, and it was. And you know, like, looking back on it now, they were definitely they were upfront with me about like, hey, you know, we're gonna try and make this work Like, but you know, if we pull the trigger on like, we think we were kind of running into a like a time crunch as well, because it was one of those things where it was like, hey, you know, season's coming up, need some poles. Because I was on the poles that I was on from from 20 steps last year, I was on from 16 steps this year, and so I was like, dude, I need poles, like I need poles, and but like they wanted to make sure like okay, yeah, like we're, we wanna get you the poles, but we also wanna make sure that you know we're measuring twice cut. Once you know we don't wanna like go with what we think is gonna work and then it doesn't work.
Austin Miller:And now we're out that capital and you're out poles that don't work for you, and so it was very much like it's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, because I understood that and I appreciated that and I was like, you know, I wanna make sure I'm getting the right thing for me too. But it was also like look, I like we're running out of time and like I'm like physically I'm ready to go. And I was like, and I really had to be my own advocate. And thankfully, you know, scott was an advocate for me as well, because he buys a lot of Essex poles for Vault Allison, for High Point, and so he was an advocate for me as well, saying like, dude, he's ready to go, but he needs the material to do it, and you know, so they, we kind of like ended up having to like almost skip a couple of steps of the experiment. We did one experiment test where it was like you know, we're gonna send you two poles and they are made differently, but we're not gonna tell you which is which.
Jake Winder:Oh, that's cool.
Austin Miller:Yeah, compare it with your, with one of your Jeremy poles that they should be similar size to, and let's see if you can like tell the difference in them. Like untaping, like they're all gonna be wrapped the same, Untap your Jeremy pole so you can't tell which is which and jump on them back to back to back and see if you can tell the difference.
Jake Winder:That's so cool.
Austin Miller:And it was cool and dude and I love that and I could feel the difference, like and I don't know if, like I would imagine, every elite Volter would have some semblance of feel that. They could feel like, oh, this pole bends a little lower, this pole really picks me up at the takeoff, this pole recoils, like that. And they took that data and they were like hey, yeah, you picked all the, you picked them right, like, and so we're gonna that started the experiment. But then it kind of like got to this point where it was like a little bit of pushback, like just like a little bit of company pushback, because it was like you know well, how much money are we gonna spend like on an experiment before we actually put out a, before we actually put out the product that is gonna be the final product? Because, again, losing capital here, and at the end of the day, a company needs capital to be able to be a company that's even gonna build poles, you know, right, right, and so there needs to be a company in existence to be able to do that. And so we kind of had to skip a couple of steps and say like, yeah, so we know that this design is the one that works.
Austin Miller:We think, if we make it with this material because they actually didn't source the material anymore that was originally used to make Jeremy's poles, and they're like we don't source that material anymore, but like we think if we use the material we use now, that it should still be fine. We're not a hundred percent sure on that, but we think that's about the case and they're like, but once we make these poles out like these are gonna be the poles that you have. You know, like we're like, going forward this year you're gonna have to buy whatever poles you need. And I was like, dude, I totally understand that. I'll happily do that. I'll like, I'll make it work. I'll like, you know, I'll reach out to whoever I need to reach out to if I need more poles, to like acquire the capital to purchase those poles. And so it's kind of this leap of faith. And then it was kind of also this kind of a stepping point where the company was like okay, we put a lot of work into developing these poles for this person. We're gonna see if it's worth it to make poles for a person. Like we're like, and this is, you're kind of the guinea pig on this, you're the field test and if it doesn't go right, then like we're gonna have to reevaluate what we do about making custom poles.
Austin Miller:And that was kind of a lot of pressure. It was a lot of pressure, a little bit Right. And so, like they got the like, we started with two poles and they sent me two of them and I like went and picked them up from the airport down in Charlotte and turned around and drove up to Virginia Tech to go jump in a competition and, like, took them out of the tube, taped them up and, like, jumped on the first pole, jumped 42, 52, 62, 62, 72, 82, all on first attempts, and then took the second pole out, taped it up, put my marks on it and first attempted 90 on it for, like, the first jump ever taken out of the tube. And that was such a huge proof of concept and it's like you know, you hear all those stories all the time, especially from the spirit side of people being like, oh, like this pole broke in the competition, they need to borrow somebody else's pole, and it was the exact same thing which, like, again, that consistency is like you, amazing, amazing dude, and that's something that you gotta be able to depend on as an athlete. And so same thing like this is the Essex side of that story. It's like you know, they built out one pole and then the next one was exactly like it and then fast forward over to USA's and Ty and Lee are both there and watching the competition and I knew they were there and it was again kind of like this is gonna be a proof of concept thing, because now I was trying out the 520s that they made me before I was jumping on the 515s and now I'm trying out their 520s, let's see if it works. And again it was another proof of concept of like sick, like the work and like what we, even though we had to skip a couple steps, like this is undeniable in its effectiveness here. Oh yeah, and so it was really cool from a just from trying to be a, you know, a part of moving the sport forward and growing the sport.
Austin Miller:And I truly believe to my core that pole engineering is a way that we can like boost the heights that people jump around the board or like across the board, and really maximize the potential of what people can jump. I truly believe pole engineering is the route to do that. Again, it's hard with capital because it costs a lot to do that, but it's cool to be just an example of proof of concept. You know, they're like I'm certainly not the first person to do things like this. You know, like the, the BGA guys were doing this back in like the late nineties, early 2000s with, like the fastback poles and stuff like that. Right, you know, and people are too, and people have been doing this with, like you know, cutting poles and stuff like that.
Austin Miller:I'm not the first person to experiment like this, but it's cool to have shoulder a little bit of that responsibility in this particular context and to have been able to like to make a fruitful result from it and say like, and be kind of a proponent for the athlete side of it.
Austin Miller:You know, it's easy to be a proponent of the company side where it's like, look, we got to save our margins, we got to do this, we got to do that, but to be a proponent on the athlete side there's there's execution required for that and there's that little bit of, you know, the as Daniel Rylan likes to say, the three Fs the fast, fearless and stupid factor that you got to be able to send into that and it's like I hope it works and like for more, for more reason than one. So it was. It's been an incredible, an incredible, an incredible exploration. And another piece of that puzzle that contributes to the picture of my, of that brazen confidence quote, unquote is like I have the poles that are my poles. Like I have the pole where every pole in my bag, I'm like, oh, I can't wait to jump on it, I'm going to jump so freaking high. This is going to be so good.
Austin Miller:And it's yeah, when you, when you trust your equipment like that it's, you know it's hard to, it's hard to not feel like you can, like you can do anything that you want to do, absolutely man.
Jake Winder:Yeah, I that's pretty, pretty freaking cool and I think that's where we probably should just wrap it up. That was. That was really an awesome pod. We actually went longer than I anticipated. So that's, you're an awesome dude. I really appreciate your time and before we get off, let's see like can you share how people can follow along with you and your progress and everything?
Austin Miller:Yeah, man, just real simple to find a underscore a million 29 on Instagram, same thing on Tik Tok and yeah, I Austin Miller on Facebook. You know all the things, all the things I'm, I'm trying to be visible and just you know, look for the shining bald, shining bald head at the meat that you might be at, and if it's there, there's a good chance that it might be me jumping.
Jake Winder:That's hilarious, all right, well, you're the man really appreciated Austin. And yeah, this is the one more jump podcast. See you guys later.
Austin Miller:Thank you so much, buddy. I'm honored to be a part of what you guys are doing here.
Jake Winder:Beautiful. We're done Awesome, man. Thank you so much. That was fun, that was great. Yeah, I knew we were going to just be going for a while. We've we've talked before and it just I really enjoyed talking with you, man. It's, it's really. It was a really really good time and I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of value out of it.
Austin Miller:So I appreciate it, man, I know I can get long winded sometimes. It's funny I was telling John, when he was asking about my setup, like I was like dude, I actually do some like have done some podcasting on the side as like a side gig for music magazines and yeah, like all the time my conversation they're like hey, you know, try to keep it to like a like a 30 to 40 minute window and it's just like the end of the conversation. It's like an hour 40 minutes. I'm just like God, dang it.
Jake Winder:Not this podcast. I don't like that. I like, I like going to eat. You got to go to eat.
Austin Miller:Yeah, I mean, I'm a sucker, for you know, I'm a sucker for the, for the vulnerability, for the, for the honesty and just for all the things it's, it's, and I think that's why that's probably why we get along so well, because I think you value that as well. And it's why our communication goes so well so yeah, man, hopefully we can do it again. We'll do it again after I jump six meters at the Olympics to take a medal.
Jake Winder:Beautiful.
Austin Miller:Beautiful, all right.
Jake Winder:That's a deal. That's a deal, man. All right, dude, we'll have a good rest of your day and I will talk to you later. All right, all right, Deuces buddy Later, dude.