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Every master was once an apprentice, and true mastery demands this rite of passage. Let me walk you through a day in the life of my apprenticeship with Raph Ruiz aka The League of Shadows in 2014.
Here is a clip from Part II of my interview with Raph where we walkthrough minute by minute of my apprenticeship. He even recounts the time we stumbled upon a shark during one of our open water swims in Tampa Bay🦈☠️
Full episode available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Apprenticeship Daily Schedule
5-5:30AM Show up & set up.
🤔 Decipher Raph code workout cards & prepare Jungle gym.
5:30-8:30AM Athlete Training
🏋️ Coach up Group 1 - Train w/ Group 2.
8:30-11AM U of Tampa
🏊♂️ Pool Swimming, 😵 Drown Proofing, 🏃➡️ Parking Garage Sprints, or 🥷 Filipino stick fighting
11-12PM Smoothies 🍍
12-2PM Classroom 🤓
📚 Breakdown training day physiology & ASAP: Accelerated Skill Acquisition Program University
3-4:30PM Northeast High School (St. Pete) Football S&C
🏈 The rustiest weight room of all time under the bleachers, no AC. No pictures exist. Legit.
5:30-8PM Club Volleyball S&C
🏐 Accelerate skill acquisition intra-practice.
🌊 Oh, and on Saturdays, either rearranged the entire Jungle layout every 3 weeks OR Surf 'n Turf workout rotating beaches selected by proximity to delicious donut establishments 🍩
Value Learning Over Money
The richest experiences were asking Raph quick ?’s during training that turned into impromptu masterclasses on movement. He never just explained the technique – he connected it to real athletes training around us, their history, mental/emotional space then reverse-engineered their sport performance through said movement mechanics.
This is the true value of apprenticeship – not just learning exercises or programs, but developing the eyes to see what others miss. Communicate to guide movement. Leading a team to value process over outcome. Understanding that movement reveals everything.
4 months, 6 days on. BRUTAL schedule, so much so it killed my roommate 22 days into the apprenticeship (that's a different story all together...)
The constant push beyond mental/emotional/physical comfort, immersion (in the pool AND) both practice and theory – it wasn't just training for coaching, it was transformation into capital "C" Coach.
11 years later, those lessons still form the foundation of everything I do with my athletes. Struggle was necessary. I would do it all over again. Except for open water swimming past sharks unknowingly in the Bay. Thanks for not telling me until we were safe with donuts 🙃
Did you ever have a mentor like this?! What lessons do you still apply today? What quirky stories do you still tell to friends and family that are almost too wild or weird to be true?