The NBA’s Body Whisperer | Fabrice Gautier | ACEO #60

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Episode Summary

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

We believe the best investment you can make is in yourself - your human capital.

Our guest, Fabrice Gautier, has created outsized returns for some of the world’s best athletes like Rudy Gobert, Giancarlo Stanton, Kevin Love, Carmelo Anthony, Tony Parker, and more, and he has served as the French National Basketball team’s osteopath since 2009.

Described by Kevin Love as “the swiss army knife when it comes to optimizing your health and performance,” Fabrice is a licensed physical therapist and osteopath who has been particularly noteworthy for his approach of viewing an injury not just as an injury, but looking at the comprehensive solution to resolve the root issue causing that injury, which requires assessing the full person – body, mind, soul. Ultimately, the goal is to address the problem, not the consequence.

Fabrice joins Erik and Brandon and covers a range of helpful topics from his experience discussing everything from how he’s seen some of the best athletes build out the teams that surround them, to finding the root of chronic injuries, and why he thinks a strength and conditioning coach and a chef are the two most important people to have on your team.

Episode Highlights:

(1:47) Seeing the person; not a patient
(6:07) The European vs American approaches to physical therapy
(10:11) When should someone show up in Fabrice’s office?
(14:28) How should an athlete handle building out the team that surrounds them?
(20:29) The importance of having a plan
(23:24) How should a new athlete just starting out approach building a core team that can help keep him or her healthy throughout their career?
(28:54) The importance of investing in yourself
(30:49) Why you need a chef – and maybe even a masseuse
(33:31) Is lifestyle assessment becoming more normal in the performance space?
(39:20) At the end of the day, it takes hard work
(42:35) Learning from other sports

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Erik Averill (00:00)

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Athlete CEO podcast. We are your hosts, Erik and Brandon Averill, the co-founders of AWM Capital, where we partner with our clients to unlock the full potential of their wealth for maximum impact. And what we believe at AWM is that the greatest driver of your net worth is your human capital. It's your own skillset and ability to earn money in the future that is going to be that greatest driver of your net worth. And so this podcast, the Athlete CEO podcast is all about bringing you the knowledge, skills, and access to the world-class experts that is going to help you unlock your full potential.

Erik Averill (00:45):

And so today we have an absolute treat of a guest for everybody to learn from. He is known for being quoted by Kevin Love as the Swiss army knife when it comes to optimizing your health and your performance. And so today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Fabrice Gautier, who is a licensed physical therapist and osteopath with over 20 years of experience. And so Fabrice has worked with just incredible legions of athletes across many different sports, but names like Rudy Gobert, Giancarlo Stanton, Kevin Love, Carmelo Anthony, Tony Parker. And what he will make sure everybody knows is, he also serves as the French national basketball team's osteopath since 2009. And so Fabrice, welcome to the podcast.

Fabrice Gautier (01:44):

Thank you. Happy to be there.

Erik Averill (01:47):

Fabrice, we have had the privilege so many times to sit down with experts in the athletes circle when it comes to their health and their performance. And a lot of times, what we see is there's this segmentation or really this approach of like, "I'm here to solve a specific need or condition or an injury." But you have this quote on your website that I just love. And I want to hear more about your approach, but the quote says, "I see people, not a patient with a condition or a need. It's a process of constant exchange and learning a body, mind, and soul. Can you talk a little bit about that approach?

Fabrice Gautier (02:33):

Yes. I mean, it definitely comes from my European osteopathic diploma and studies where you... A lot of the time people ask me the difference between chiropractic and osteopathy. And one of the main thing is that globality of the body. The body is a unit, and you cannot dissociate the emotion from the physical pain and the physical pain from the emotional pain. You cannot dissociate the mechanical aspect and the visceral aspect or the fascial aspect. And when I say fascial, it's tendons, it's ligaments, it's muscle, it's capsule. It's all the different structure that makes the body, water, all of this. I always say, it's not so simple. It's not just one thing. People ask me, "What's my problem. Why do I hurt my knee?" And just to use that knee as an example, a lot of time, I have people coming with a knee issue and the knee is kind of being locked up between an ankle issue and a sacroiliac issue or something as... Everyone is very different.

Fabrice Gautier (03:52):

And through that process, through that studying over six years and through the experience of trying to fix people, to try to help people, you go for some moments where you think, "Oh, it's his lower back." And then you realize there's a tension on his soleus of course, but it's not so much that soleus is the problem. When you ask the guy or the person, is he stressed right now? "No, no, everything's fine." And then you ask the question again, and he's like, "Well, yeah, I'm kind of almost going through a divorce." And you have your hands into the fascia, into the muscle. And suddenly as the guy stopped talking, the fascia release. And that kind of humbles you, because you think you can fix anything, but you didn't do anything. You just asked the right question.

Fabrice Gautier (04:45):

So there you go. I mean, I hope that gives you a little tour of how I see the treatments that I do with my patients. And for example, I have patient that comes with an ACL. I always tell them, "First, you're going to use that time to not just rebuild your knee. You're going to rebuild you, as a whole, as a unit. You're going to use that time to make sure every single compartment of the..." I always use the Formula One image. You're going to make sure every single bolt is tied up and everything moves right.

Erik Averill (05:25):

Super fascinating and helpful. I've got to imagine you've built this reputation of having players come to you in some of the most vulnerable parts of their careers. They rupture their Achilles, they think... Inevitably in the NBA, I'd read some of your research that it says players typically on the last two years after that type of injury, they might be out some of this amazing time. How do athletes and individuals respond when they think they're coming in to get a quick fix and you start to go down this process of treating the person holistically?

Fabrice Gautier (06:07):

That's a great question. The main thing it's for them... There's a transfer of energy when you start putting your hands on someone. So because that's one aspect that we do, that's a little bit different from Europe, the way we study physical therapy, for example, we study massage for a full year. So there is that connection of the hand on the body, while in the U.S. it's physical therapy. It's a lot of modalities. It's a little bit more modalities than... You're a little bit less hands on. And again, I'm not trying to compare. You have some amazing physical therapists that are very hands-on in The States and some physical therapists in Europe who just use modalities. But that first contact, your hands on the body.

Fabrice Gautier (06:56):

And I would even say, because they always ask me, "Why did you put your hand right there when I didn't even tell you?" The first thing is also the observation, taking the time to observe the patient coming into your office, coming into your room, not knowing that you're watching. So it gives you a lot of information. It's like a little police investigation that you do, and you look first, then you ask question and then you put your hands on it. So that process makes them feel... I get the thing a lot to say, "Oh, you're a magician. You're a magician." No, I'm not. I'm really just like... I just learned how to read correctly the sign that you're showing me of your body, your posture, your attitude.

Fabrice Gautier (07:45):

And so when you go through all of that within like a quick 3, 4, 5 minutes, not even, and then you go straight to the cause of the problem, not the consequence, the cause, and that's just approving them by the results, which is another thing that I always say is that, at the end of the day, you have more than one methods to go from A to Z. But what's important at the end is the results. How many game did you play this season? Did you play 82 games, 81 games? And I'm using the NBA because that's where I'm more familiar. Or did you play 25 games? What did you do wrong during the off-season or while you were done with your season that you think led to this? Who did you listen that you think led to this? What you didn't do?

Fabrice Gautier (08:38):

All of those questions they need to be asked. So there is a whole... And like you said in the introduction, I'm going to be straightforward. I've been doing this since '96. So I'm at the point where I'm going to be straightforward with you like, "You missed 60 games. I don't know what you did, but you did something that didn't work out. The results are not there." So there is that discussion that it's important part of the process. And there is what the patient or the athlete is going to feel. Like if you have a stuck hip, if your hip doesn't move, if your ankle doesn't move, especially for a basketball player, after the session when you open it up, when it moves better, trust me, they know.

Fabrice Gautier (09:25):

You don't even have to do advertisement or nothing. They know, suddenly it's moving again. Suddenly they have range of motion again, and they feel better. And through the next few days of the first session, it's almost like if that body is going to entangle by itself. And they're going to start reappropriating themselves some new range of motion. So it's a mix between that mobility and the stability of it. So of course you need to train, you need to lift weights, you need to get stronger. But the initial part, when they come to my office, it's that little bond, that transfer of energy and the results, fixing what's not moving.

Brandon Averill (10:11):

I think that's so interesting, Fabrice. We're focused so much and rightfully so, because I bet most people come to you when... And we're all broken. I guess it's when you realize you're broken is when people show up, but I'm curious your perspective. And I think I've probably a pretty good hunch, but your perspective on, when should somebody show up in your office? Should we wait until ACL's blown out.

Fabrice Gautier (10:37):

Again, that's a very, very good question. I can relate to what you're saying right now, because at first, when I started, I was only seeing guys that were fully broken. And I was seeing them at their... The mark was like 28, 29 years old. And I was seeing guys... My first kind of athlete here, WNBA patient, she had five ACL when I started with her, Jacki Gemelos. She was highly recruited by Yukon. Before at that time, she was such a great player, but before she was the first woman to go in WNBA without going to college, way back then, I mean. And she blew up her first ACL during her high school career. And she went to USC and blew up four more times both knees. And at first, that was the type of patients that I was getting.

Fabrice Gautier (11:37):

And little by little over the years, like Rudy Gobert, I saw him when he was 2, 3, years in the league. And now I've seen them more preventively and we accompany them over their career. And I think the preventive approach is really the most important one. And again, it's what we said in the introduction is, being able to surround them with the knowledge and with a team around them, because they are so much solicitation, so many people talking to their ears. So they feel confident all that team has their best interest at heart. And they are not going to try to do something that they're not specialized at. I could give nutritional advice, but I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a shrink, I'm not a strength and conditioning coach. I can plant the seed for the athletes to understand, you're going to need to get stronger if you want to last, but I'm really very specialized osteopath and physical therapist. So that's my wrench. I'm not going to try to do things that I don't do.

Fabrice Gautier (12:52):

So yeah, the preventive approach, it's really what should be, but basically you encounter those new patients because they get injured. And you can see it from the agents, the encounter with the agents is almost like, "Oh, I need you, it's in his contract here and his knee, he hasn't been able to pay for two years and I need you." And after you develop relationship... And most of my clients heal, it's always been word of mouth pretty much, which I think is the best type. I never really forced for anyone to come to see me. And the few times I tried it didn't work out, has to work organically, I think.

Fabrice Gautier (13:41):

And so little by little, I get them much, much, much, much younger, like 21 years old or rookies. The other aspect is for the athletes to be ready to hear and to listen to what you have to say and understand it. So it takes also some cleverness and some also the entourage is very important. The family, the parents, the friends. If you have friends that want to be in charge of everything, then it's recipe for disaster. Or family, most of the time. You see it a lot in tennis, like the dad coaching the little girl, and usually they don't really let go. You see that.

Erik Averill (14:28):

I want to sit on that point there for a second. There are a lot of athletes listening to this, and this is our background, personally. When you come into your career, there are older adults, a lot of times, whether it's our family or agents or just coaches. And even know you're the athlete and we talk about and can make the comment on, "I'm the boss." It's this difficult thing at times, I think, to really evaluate who should be on your team and how to develop a skillset on how to manage even an entourage, through your experience of when you've seen things go wrong and also gone right, what is the role? How should an athlete handle who they're choosing to build out on their team, whether it's their health team, their agent, evaluating their friends? I'd just love for you to talk a lot more about what you've learned over the years.

Fabrice Gautier (15:27):

So it's another good one. You have a lot of different example of, I mean, you can take LeBron. He took all his friends and everyone ripped him off at first say, "Oh, you're taking guys that have no experience." They made their mistake and they'd build an empire, all of them. So you have that example that worked really well because there is a connection between them and a trust. And you almost really like a family and their values that carried that team over the time. Of course, you get the big Formula One, which is LeBron, but they made their mistake, but he didn't get rid of them. They learned and they got better. So you have that example of an assembly of friends that are no... But maybe they had skill and they had will and they were loyal. So that's one aspect.

Fabrice Gautier (16:35):

You're going to have athletes that's going to go with the people that were with them at the beginning of their career. And maybe at some point, even so you love them and you owe them or maybe they become limited a little bit, or maybe they want to do too much, like I said. So for me, it's very hard to answer that question because I think it's a case by case. I would say, if my advice would be to an athlete, also what I see a lot of time, is they are not trusting their instinct. They're not trusting their guts. And on the self aspect, you're a professional athlete. You've been a professional athlete, pretty much all your... an athlete all your life. You've been dealing with your body and what you feel in your body. So you know if you trust your instinct, if you trust your guts, you're going to know.

Fabrice Gautier (17:25):

Again, we go back to the feeling of feeling healthy or not healthy. Does that work out make you feel stronger or does that kills you? Do you feel like you're getting stronger from that guy or do you think you're getting exhausted? Because he wants to show so much, he wants to burn you out, but by doing so he's not focusing on the recovery aspect. So at some point I always tell also the athletes to trust their instincts, because even so I'm a decent professional with what I do. The highest level of play I had was Division 2 rugby in France, which is not too bad, but it's not like professional playing in the NBA, playing in the Olympics, playing on the center court of the USL. Even so I can understand, it's hard for me to tell you exactly what, because I never been there.

Fabrice Gautier (18:22):

So that's another thing I tell the athletes when a physical therapist come to you, listen, because he might have some good insights for you, but also trust your guts. Also trust what you feel. If you don't feel it's right, don't go through it. And at the end of the day, we go back to what I said earlier, is the results, check the results. If you're going to go buy your house, you're going to check a broker. You're going to check how many houses did he sell? You check the records, and that's important. And at the end also, I think that's a very underestimated parameter, is the personality of the person. My personality doesn't fit with everyone. And I had athletes that came in, we had the session, but there was nothing. There was no connection. It's all right. I don't need to treat 450 NBA players. I'm happy with the ones I have. And like I said earlier, there's more than one way to go from A to B. There's different strengths codes, different physical therapists, but at the end of the day, how many games did you play?

Brandon Averill (19:36):

I think it's a great analogy too. We talk about this quite a bit with our clients, but building a business and relating it back to the athlete, right? At the end of the day, and your example of LeBron, he found a supporting cast that is about making that empire great. Whether it's LeBron on the court or what they're building, I feel like that's a lot of times where it goes. The motivations of people are what need to be evaluated, right? What are they truly in it for? And that's a good lens to go through. But if you're thinking about building something up, you're always going to want to surround yourself with people who are going to be additive. And I'm hearing this from you and it might not be the same people. It might be the people that you started with. I mean, every company is different. You may have a startup CEO and there comes a life cycle where that's-

Fabrice Gautier (20:29):

You need to switch.

Brandon Averill (20:29):

... no longer a fit, you got to switch. And so I do think that that's a really good point too, but it all goes back to having a plan. And I think that's what you go to.

Fabrice Gautier (20:39):

And I also believe really, and it goes from my experience with my kids I train, where if you build on principle and good values, it works also for a business that you start. I think there's a book, it's Ray Dalio, Principles?

Brandon Averill (20:56):

Principle. Yeah.

Fabrice Gautier (20:59):

If you start with that too, and it doesn't need to be complicated. Again, if you start with loyalty, truth and hardworking, that's already a good place to start. And also, again, what I was saying, know your place, know your position. In LeBron's team, Rich Paul is doing something, Maverick Carter is doing something. They have their role, and staying to your role and enjoy the journey. I always use that example, that image of the Formula One, where when you see them in the paddock, there are 15 different engineers. So if you get the guys that in charge of the bolts of the wheels, and you put him on the gas, you're going to be in trouble.

Erik Averill (21:55):

Yeah. Actually, I love that. I love that analogy. I truthfully had no idea what Formula One really was, or the intensity of it. A, being an American kid, but then thanks to Netflix, right? A lot of things, you start to watch these documentaries and you go, "Oh my goodness, you want to talk about one of the most intense sports in the precision and expertise that it requires into your point and absolute teamwork." And it's also very truth telling, right? And there's a lot at stake. If we operated all of our lives in this way. We talk a lot about, you've put the work in to be the best in the world at what you do. It's not easy to play on the court, to be on the field. You should expect that of the people that you surround yourself with.

Erik Averill (22:48):

And so a large part of just even being able to say, "What are the results that I expect of the people in the positions that I've put them in?" And then it becomes even easier to say, "Well, that person's completely out of their lane. I know they don't have the skillset to get me to what that desired result is." And then having the, I would say, the gumption or the maturity as the athlete to realize you can put them back in their lane. And I think that that's just one of the things too, to be able to see.

Erik Averill (23:24):

I'd be interested to hear, I know there's not a one-size-fits-all, as you said, each person comes in at a different point in their life. But if in sports we know part of it is to stay healthy as long as possible. We know that load management and longevity of careers, equal bank accounts that are bigger. If you're talking to the 21-year-old kid, who's just starting the journey and he asks you, "How do I build out at least that core group around me when it comes to keeping me healthy for as long as possible?" What is the advice of how to build the blueprint the right way from the beginning?

Fabrice Gautier (24:14):

Like you said, it's so much different from one kid to the other, but for the blueprint, there's work and there's recovery. And in work, I have a good great friend who's a nutritionist, who always say, "You don't build muscle in the gym. You build muscle in the kitchen and in the bedroom." So those two parts, sleep, mental health, nutrition, super important. And then as you want to be, you are professional athlete, you want to perform at the highest level, so you need to work out. Within those workouts, you need to surround yourself with a strength coach that understand that you're going to make the body more robust if you load the body, if you start putting the body under stress, sufficient stress, but not too much stress. So that strength and conditioning coach needs to have an understanding of that, and an understanding of periodization, you're not going to do the same workouts when you come back from vacation that you're going to do during the season. But you still need to work out, ideally.

Fabrice Gautier (25:29):

Most of the guys that I see playing those full seasons, they lift. For a little while we went away from the lifting. We went to the bands, we went to the correctives. And I'm a physical therapist. I do those, but they're warmups. They are there to prepare you to do more. I'm a big believer in Olympic weight-lifting if it's well taught. And usually as a young age, when you come out from college, you going to have one, two or three summers to learn those moves, to learn those techniques. So you're going to be more powerful and more explosive, which in all sport, basketball or any sport, if you are explosive and powerful, that's a nice recipe to be successful.

Fabrice Gautier (26:17):

And then when you get powerful, strong, you name it, you also have to be able to control it. So from what I see, I see a big lack of proprioception, a big lack of, I would call it, proprioceptive challenge. You see guys worrying on Erik's bad. There is a big debate into [inaudible 00:26:40] because you play on a hard surface, you should not train on an unstable surface. But I also believe having played basketball and rugby, then when that playing field, even so it's stable, when the game starts, it becomes a very unstable environment. So you need to train the athletes into that range, into the range where he's going to be playing. And after that comes the recovery.

Fabrice Gautier (27:07):

So how does he build a team from that aspect? A lot of the time we actually help them. We're like, "Okay, you're going to be in Charlotte. You're going to be in New York." We know of some guys there that you could work with and you can also work within your team. It's not always... There's a lot of good people all over the league. So you need to find a good balance between what you're going to get from your team and what you're going to assemble for you, because you might not stay with that team. So you want to be sure you have some people around you that have your best interest at heart. It starts with the chef. I think that's the chef and the strength and conditioning coach are probably the two most important person. And then after, you're going to find someone that's going to get you a regular massage.

Fabrice Gautier (27:58):

I don't know where I saw it. I think I was talking with one of my athletes, or I heard it on TV. Someone was saying, when he came into... It was a football player. He came into that league, and that was a Hall of Famer player. And they were in the hot tub together. And he's like, "How many massages do you get a week?" He's like, "Well, I get massage, I get two." "How much are they, $100?" He's like, "Yeah, 100." "All right, do me a favor, get three a week. How much is it going to cost you over your career?" And he was like, he made the math very quickly. It was like nothing. And at the end of the day, he stayed healthy. And had a stellar career for following... It was a quarterback, who told me that story.

Fabrice Gautier (28:54):

So you've got to invest. It's not a spending. You got to invest into your body, into your health, because like you said at the beginning, that's what's going to keep you on the court. That's what's going to get you contract. And the longer you stay... If you look at a kid that came into the NBA eight years ago, and what they make now, there's a big gap. And five years from now, there'll be a bigger gap. So you got to invest. There's a lot of ways, you guys know that better than anyone else, where you can build, you can create a corporation, you can write off things, you can write off equipment for your house. You can build yourself a compound. Even so if you're a rookie, you can start with recovery boots. You can start with a cold bath. You can start the chef. You can start with food delivery service. But a lot of the time when I see young kids, they are protective of their money, which is very important, but they don't necessarily see it as an investment. I hope it answered your question.

Erik Averill (30:02):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's fantastic. You're preaching why we started this podcast of literally talking about their human capital because most financial people are trying to get you to put money into their portfolios, and there's incentives in those things of why, when we look at it, our job's to help you grow your entire net worth, which you have the most control over your own career. And you're in a job that produces very, very high salaries, right? The return on investment of taking 10 grand and getting massages that turns into an extra 10 games on the court, turns into millions of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You literally cannot reproduce these returns.

Erik Averill (30:49):

So this podcast it's hopefully, our clients hearing this and our athletes of understanding that we're the first ones that want you to... We actually see this as stewardship, as being fiscally responsible by taking money that we know we can look and say, "There are results, there are returns on that investment." So it's super helpful. I mean, what's interesting to me is that you started with the chef, of all the things. It wasn't even, "Hey, you need an osteopath or [crosstalk 00:31:20]." It's a chef.

Fabrice Gautier (31:22):

Yeah. I always tell my, I call them my everyday athletes of life, because I still consider everyone as an athlete. If you're going to sit at a desk for eight, 10 hours, you're an athlete to me of every day. And I always tell them, "When I'm done with you, when I'm done with my session, I'm going to see you five, six times a year." Of course, with athletes, it's a little bit different. Like Rudy Gobert, I go there twice a week during the season. But I don't need to be there full-time. And that's also going back to what we were saying. It's knowing your lane, knowing what you can do. I mean, I could be working full-time for an athlete, but is he really going to need me full-time? No, he doesn't. But a chef? Yes. A strength and conditioning? Yes. Full-time. A masseuse? After every game. After every game, you should have a full-body massage for two hours. And again, make sure that your body stay loose.

Fabrice Gautier (32:25):

So it's really prioritizing what your spendings, understanding, yeah, I'm not going to take Fabrice on a full-time basis, but I'm going to make sure he comes to see me every three weeks or every two weeks. And I'll fly him and he comes to me and I'll see him. And since we've been doing that for the last six, seven years with my athletes, knock on wood, weirdly enough, they've been staying pretty healthy.

Brandon Averill (32:58):

Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. I was going to ask you, as far as your type of approach, you had mentioned, there are other obviously great professionals. Are you seeing more people take approaches like yours, or would you still say yours is more the rare exception to the rule of how you're approaching really athlete lifestyle consulting of athletes?

Fabrice Gautier (33:31):

No, I mean, it's a matter of experience and skillsets, I think. And there's plenty of amazing people. And usually those amazing people, they're not insecure. They're okay with where they're at. And they collaborate together. One of my colleagues, his name is Barrence Baytos. He was with Kobe Bryant for 20 years, and he was doing deep tissue work, neuromuscular therapy. Kobe called him a genius when he did the Jimmy Kimmel Show. He's not on social media, he's not anywhere, but most of the really great athletes, they know [inaudible 00:34:09] because he was able to stay with Kobe Bryant for 20 years. So he's one of my best friends. We share our patients, we share our patients with no problem, because again, he's the specialist of the deep tissue work, and I'm a specialist more of the mechanical aspect of the body and the rehab.

Fabrice Gautier (34:30):

So is there people working like me? I don't know. I mean, over the last 25 years, seeing 15 to 20 patients a day, if you seeing athletes, I have different skillset. I almost created my own protocol of working with people. So there's probably better people than me. There's probably worse people than me. Again, it has to be a match with your patient, it has to be a match with your athletes. You have Warren Buffet, you have all of the... I don't know the other guys, but you have different... But with which one do you actually connect and do you have a great relationship of trust? Which is super important over the years, because like we discussed before, if you don't see him when he's injured, if you see him at the beginning, when the injury occur, because you build that trust, it's already out of the battle. It's already won because the athlete trust you, he's going to listen to you. You're going to direct him to the right surgeon or to the right professional to get that surgery done.

Fabrice Gautier (35:40):

And you're going to do the rehab or you're going to bring another consultant that knows what to do. And you're going to work as a team and fix him and bring him back fast. And bringing him back, so he's ready to play. Not that he's going to be on minutes restriction for seven minutes. That's to me, ludicrous. Why would you put someone on seven minutes? Where do that number comes from? Could be injured at six, it could be injured at 10. Of course, you're not going to play in 48 minutes, but all those fees, if you're going to bring back an athlete on the court, he needs to be ready to play whatever comes, I think. That's part of the... some of the stuff that I believe that are a little bit different. Also, it's that what I call common sense.

Fabrice Gautier (36:25):

And in our field, I feel that we lost a lot of that in some aspects. There's new trends, there's new things, and there's sometimes there's a little loss towards common sense. And towards the things that have been working for years. Like recently someone came up and like, "Oh, ice is not good for you anymore because it reduces your recovery from strength." Okay. But what if you use it for your joints, for inflammation? So you don't use ice anymore? And again, some of the athletes that you know, like the LeBrons of the world, they still use ice because it makes their body feel good. Are they going to stop using ice when they've been using it for 20 years? Nope.

Erik Averill (37:19):

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so helpful because in a world of more information, we talk about this on the investment side, and there's a famous Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama, who is famous for knowing factor investing writer or discovering it. And he always makes the comment like, "Just because you want to create more factors, it doesn't mean it's better."

Fabrice Gautier (37:44):

There you go, yeah.

Erik Averill (37:45):

There are only certain ones that actually provide the drivers of return. And we see this in this world of the analytics and load management, and it's getting so nuanced and precise to like, well, is that truly what's driving the returns? And to your point, sometimes it is the simple thing that has proven over the very long-term and it's not going to get the fan fair, and it's not going to get these things. But a lot of times we're introducing more noise and confusion in how we're approaching life and our health than sticking with what works sometimes.

Fabrice Gautier (38:27):

So we go back to what I was saying regarding the athletes. So even the young athletes, is trust your instinct. Trust your instinct, because what was the data analysis? What was the load management? What was the... All of the above on two things, on LeBron James blocking Andre Iguodala and on Kevin Durant blowing up his Achilles after having rehabbing his leg. What were the numbers?

Erik Averill (39:00):

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think it's super, super helpful.

Fabrice Gautier (39:09):

And I'm not under-valuating them. I think they're important in some aspect of it, but they cannot regiment everything. That's what I'm really trying to say.

Erik Averill (39:20):

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that is, we want the perfect pill. We want the perfect formula. But at the end of the day, what I'm hearing from you is you still have to work extremely hard. Life is not a controlled environment. So train as much as you can for the uncontrolled environment, right? And then also understand the importance of innovation and adapting that-

Fabrice Gautier (39:52):

Adaptation. That is what I was going to say.

Erik Averill (39:54):

It's really, really helpful. And sometimes that's adopting what you're doing, who is on your team, but really to have the longevity of the career and the health for as long as possible. It's going to take this adaptation, and also being very honest with yourself, with where you're at. I think being truth tellers, not only making sure that people around you are telling the truth, but you have, A, given them permission and then B, you're speaking truth to yourself about where you're at in your career.

Fabrice Gautier (40:27):

Yep. [crosstalk 00:40:28].

Brandon Averill (40:29): Also invest, right? I think I keep hearing this, but invest in yourself. Fabrice's like, this stuff costs money, but it's not a cost, just to reiterate your... I love your comment that this is an investment and really making sure that you're making that investment. I think as athletes, and I'll throw us in this, because you get caught up, it's like, "Everybody should do something for me." From at a young age, you're told to show up the way it's on time. And this is provided to you and this and that. At the end of the day, you got to take control of your own destiny here. And you got to make those decisions to invest in yourself in the best do, I think we continue to see that. We keep going back to him, but LeBron's famously said he spends what? A million bucks a year on his body. Everybody, you might not be able to spend a million dollars, but we all can spend something and we [crosstalk 00:41:22].

Fabrice Gautier (41:22):

Yeah. And we got to find an inventive way of doing so. Some of the players, big players, their guy on the payroll of the team. They got ways of... If you're a young athlete, you can find a physical therapist around you and you can go and learn and get some knowledge. You can go on YouTube. There's so many things now that are available, that going to make it things work and going back to writing off from your taxes. So if you have a good CPA, if you're an athlete, you should go to a CPA that has been handling athletes before. And you should be able to tell you every year you can write off. I don't remember what it was. I think it's 100,000. You can write off 100,000 for equipment, medical equipment for your wellbeing, for your health. So you buy yourself [inaudible 00:42:21]. You buy yourself, I don't know, a cold bath, and you don't have to buy the full thing, but once you start making a lot of money, you should actually try to maximize your deductions.

Brandon Averill (42:35):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think find partnerships too. That's the other thing, there are so many people out there that are building companies that would love for any named athlete to float in their cold tub potentially, It doesn't mean you're going to get it for free. And it goes back, we've talked about this on previous podcasts, but also keep in mind, what's it mean to be a good partner? And if you're really into this stuff... Noah Syndergaard famously in baseball, on Twitter, on Instagram, he really invests in himself. And so he finds people that he really cares about their product. He provides feedback. He's a good partner to those companies. In an exchange, there's a trade off of information and he learns a tremendous amount about his body, about himself by going through this process. So I think there are alternative ways to your point, Fabrice, to go about it at times to get creative.

Fabrice Gautier (43:32):

A good example of people are sending good teams also sometimes, not all the time, but his individual sports, tennis, golf, you can see like the team around Djokovic, what he walks, what he puts, what he invest, time, money, everything, dedication to his craft. I mean, just look at the grades. I mean, again, results. The guy has been winning what? 25 majors, he's doing something right. He's doing something right that works for him, that might not work for everyone, but he's doing... Maybe he doesn't work exactly the same for Nadal, but those big three, they've been full their career, they've been doing something right. And try to inspire yourself from that. Try to do your research, try to do your due diligence if you're in a tennis player or even...

Fabrice Gautier (44:24):

I remember it was Tony Parker when he already won a championship and his shot wasn't good. And the decision to change the shot with chip angle and the player's development coach came when he saw that Tiger Woods decided to change his swing. So he's like, "If the best golfer in the world is deciding to change his swing, who am I not to give it a try and change my shot?" Took a summer, about two summers, and then he changed his shot and he became more accurate. And he became MVP of the final.

Erik Averill (45:00):

I think-

Brandon Averill (45:01):

That's amazing.

Erik Averill (45:01):

... there's so much wisdom there of learning from the other athletes in the world. Like you said, especially that individual sport athlete that doesn't have a team that kind of, you assume should have all these things to help you is the benefit, you can say, it's an extra cost that, "Oh, we don't have a team strength coach or a team nutritionist or XYZ," but it means that individual athletes had to do the due diligence, had to figure out who do I need on my team to be successful? And they're also far more likely to adapt and innovate season by season.

Erik Averill (45:36):

And we've been talking a lot internally of, I think another sport to learn from is the professional fighter, the boxer, the MMA fighter that, they set up their camps. I think one of the things we've talked about is a lot... And I get it. You return in the off season and you're like, "Man, I want to be home." But if you watch what these fighters do, they go, "Who is my opponent? What do I need to win this specific fight given the context? I'm going to go seek out who's the best in this situation." They may even physically move for a period of time in there. And so I think there's so much to be learned from looking around and saying, "Hey, how do I adapt to this and learn from these other athletes?"

Erik Averill (46:23):

Well, Fabrice, I want to be sensitive to time. You have given us tons of value and information that I know our athletes are going to love. And so I just want to say thank you so much. I would ask about social media and all those things, but you are a word of mouth, like the best kept secret in LA. So athletes, if you want access to Fabrice, you're going to have to come through us. But surely, thank you so much for spending this time on the podcast.

Fabrice Gautier (46:52):

It was a pleasure. Pleasure, really, thank you very much for having me.

Erik Averill (46:58):

Perfect. And for you athletes in all seriousness, if you'd love to reach out to Fabrice, let us know. You'll be able to access the show notes over at athleteceo.com. Once again, athleteceo.com. And until next time, own your wealth, make an impact, and always be a pro.

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Athlete CEOAWM CapitalSeptember 23, 2021Erik Averill, Brandon Averill