Unconventional Movement Philosophy Saving NFL Stars from the “Death Loop"

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Bennie Fowler, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

The following is adapted from Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success.

Almost all professional athletes face a constant struggle to stay healthy. Many end up in the “Death Loop”—they go into the weight room, overtrain, and break a bone. Then they get sent to a physical therapist to get ready for surgery. The PT sends them to the surgeon, and they have an operation, and then the surgeon sends them back to the PT to recover from the surgery.

When they’re done there, the PT sends them right back to the weight room to start the whole process over again. Some athletes get trapped in the Death Loop for years, never fulfilling their potential, or even getting out onto the field. Resistance training only worsens the Death Loop because it does nothing to address or allow for the systemic weaknesses that created the problem in the first place.

Seth Minter is a brilliant coach, known as the “Foot Doctor,” who helps athletes find a way out of the Death Loop. His views on the Death Loop have won him a lot of friends—and a few enemies. Strength coaches and trainers don’t like to hear that their methods are outmoded and hurt players.

But the players are listening to him. They understand the Death Loop all too well, and they’re very interested in anything that allows them to escape it.

Seth’s Background

Seth isn’t an actual doctor, although I doubt there’s a sports medicine textbook he hasn’t read and absorbed.

He grew up in Baltimore and was an outstanding athlete in football, baseball, and basketball. But football was his passion. He was a wide receiver. He might have played professionally if he hadn’t torn his ACL in high school. Despite the injury, Seth played football at Bowie State, a Division II school in Maryland, and became the first person in his family to earn a college degree.

In college, Seth loved drills involving the agility ladder. He could no longer explode off his dominant left leg because of his previous ACL injury, but his footwork was phenomenal. There is more to football than the average fan thinks. Highly skilled players break their technique down into subtle, discrete movements that, when reassembled, combine explosively. Seth understands this, both as a player and a coach. Although his injury prevented him from fulfilling his potential as a player, he has more than made up for it through coaching.

Seth admired Chad Johnson, a wide receiver from Oregon State who played eleven years in the NFL before retiring in 2012. Johnson was a devotee of footwork. He once said that football teams didn’t pay him for his hands, but for his feet.

Seth watched a video Johnson made with Antonio Brown, Andre Johnson, and Santana Moss. The video showed the four NFL receivers running their routes and practicing their footwork around cones in the field. That video, combined with his own love of footwork, convinced Seth to develop a training program. He recorded and posted videos of his own drills.

Word got out. Athletes from his neighborhood started training with him. First, it was neighbors, then some high school athletes, and then college guys started calling him.

Then the call came from Ray Lewis.

Lewis, the All-Pro linebacker for Baltimore, heard about Seth from Juan Dixon, the former University of Maryland basketball star. Dixon recruited Seth to work with his cousin, a player in the Canadian Football League. Lewis watched videos and was blown away by how Seth approached footwork drills and training. Lewis had done and seen a lot of drills but nothing as specific and detailed as Seth’s. Soon, players from around the NFL contacted Seth for help.

The legend of the “Foot Doctor” was born.

A Different Approach

How does Seth bring players out of the Death Loop? He trains them in a different way, one that encourages them to move in a way that’s more—wait for it—feminine. Yes, really. “Everyday movement has a lot of curves,” Seth told me once. “It’s feminine, really. Nothing is a straight line. We move more like snakes than robots.”

Seth challenges the assumptions of the people he works with, forcing players to look at the world differently. His explanations for his work and ideas about human movement are often philosophical. He’ll mention that the body has 137 trillion cells and that the key to success is getting each one involved and working synergistically. He calls this “omni-involvement.”

Get into a conversation about movement with Seth and you’ll soon be way further down the rabbit hole than you anticipated. When you’re working with him, he raises questions such as, “How does a fetus’s heart know to beat when the brain hasn’t formed yet?” He works to develop your physical skills but also your mental abilities. Your heart, he’ll tell you, is the real brain. Your brain is just trying to figure out what your heart is doing.

How is this relevant to movement? Imagine moving as though your heart is leading the way. It’s a completely different experience from leading with your brain. Seth never allows himself to believe that he has all the answers. He constantly raises new questions, always with the intent of learning something new.

Coming Back to Life from the Death Loop

Seth’s unconventional techniques may sound weird at first, but they’ve changed the way many players, myself included, think about movement. Even if you never set foot on a sports field, there’s a chance you’re living some version of the Death Loop.

What pressure do you put on yourself, day after day, that grinds you down and damages your performance? In what ways do you push against reality, aggravating your existing stresses and dysfunctions?

Now, how could you move differently, accounting for those stresses and dysfunctions? What benefits would that bring in terms of ease and functionality? There’s no need to get stuck in a Death Loop. Seth’s unique brilliance demonstrates that there’s always a way out.

For more advice on Seth Minter’s philosophy of movement, you can find Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success on Amazon.

Bennie Fowler is a six-year veteran of the NFL. He began his career as an undrafted free agent signed by the Broncos in 2014. He spent four years with the Broncos and was a member of the Super Bowl 50 championship team in 2016. Bennie played college football at Michigan State University, where he was a member of the 2014 Rose Bowl championship team. Bennie holds the annual Bennie Fowler youth football camp in Detroit, Michigan, is an in-demand speaker trained through the NFL Speakers Bureau, and lives in Denver during the offseason.