“On A Mission” showcases leaders who are going the extra mile each and every day. Each of the people we interview is on a mission to serve, inspire and educate. Our hosts highlight their impact and explore what motivates, engages and fulfills individuals and teams to be more productive, more effective, better at what they do, and happier to do it. Today our hosts, Tony Davis spoke with James Walsh.
James Walsh
Owner, Director of Sports Performance at Ground Force Strength and Conditioning Training Systems
Website Address: www.groundforcestrength.com
Short company description:
Ground Force Strength and Conditioning Training Systems is a sports performance company based in Jacksonville, Florida, specializing in youth athletic development with a focus on soccer. We use a personalized, data-driven process—starting with movement analysis and progressing into structured training systems—to help athletes build resilient movement, improve speed and power, and perform consistently in-season and off-season.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome in your business?
Client retention during economic fluctuations
What is a tip for success that you would provide someone in your same industry?
Plan
What volunteer experience has impacted you the most?
The ability to share experiences with entry level coaches
What’s one cause you’re passionate about?
Injury prevention through exercise selection
How do you encourage your team to make a difference?
The feeling of safety
What are your company’s strengths?
We individualized clients success paths while keeping competitive pricing
What is the most enjoyable part of what you do?
Watching the success of athletes or clients reach their goals based on their trust in your product.
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Transcript:
Speaker 1
Hey. Welcome to another episode of Making a Difference. I’m your host, Tony Davis. And with me is James Walsh, owner of Ground Force Strength and Conditioning. And not only is he a business owner, but he’s a friend of mine. Our sons used to play soccer together way back when. Yeah. James. Welcome on.
Speaker 2
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. This is awesome, man.
Speaker 1
It is. It’s good. It’s good to see you again. Good to reconnect. Absolutely good to get you the opportunity. Yeah. Tell us about your story. Your business.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Ground Force. Well, we found a ground force in 2014 with a way for youth athletes to find different approaches to training. It wasn’t always about lifting heavy. It was always about finding the movement patterns first. We saw a lot of injuries and we try to find the root cause of injury. And then it just kind of progressed, escalated from there.
Speaker 2
And it’s grown into what it is now. We work with hundreds and hundreds of soccer athletes and basketball players and football players. Yeah, yeah. So awesome.
Speaker 1
So I bet with what you have done to help these high school athletes. Yeah, you’re finding a huge connection to not just helping them physically, but also with mindset.
Speaker 2
Yes. And I’m really it’s funny you brought that up. There was a few of our old players that even Reed or whoever was with, they just recently wrote. Hey, do you remember when you used to do this thing called this is just the warm up and and we would go they still remember the training in the intensities and kind of the little nuggets that I would tie in to life lessons along the way.
Speaker 2
And they would figure it out. They still bring it up. So it was it was awesome to hear just a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1
And that’s such a testimony to making a difference right there, because it transcends just the physical attributes and what we’re doing. I mean, with our wellness, we all know I mean, hopefully we all should know it’s all tied together. And it’s not just physical.
Speaker 2
No, it’s mental.
Speaker 1
Emotional, spiritual and social.
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1
So when you are training these young athletes and I’m sure your mindset is I’m not just training you to be stronger, I’m training you to be a better person.
Speaker 2
Yeah. You want to build the character with them, right? You want to you want to go test them a little bit deeper, a little bit. But you’re also if I and I really think that if you’re, you’re pushing them, you’re looking at five years down the road, where are they, where can they go five years, three years down the road?
Speaker 2
Can we make their own goals. And a lot now is right to microwave society. We’ve got to have everything right now. But there is a we try to focus on long term athletic development and that comes along with the character development. We want to make young professionals and all of our athletes that go into college. The feedback that we get is they’re they’re the most well-prepared athletes, right?
Speaker 2
So they know how to go into the weight room. They know how to manage themselves in the weight room, on the field, off the field. We want to make professionals. We don’t want to just send kids just to, you know, take parents, money, etc., which is always that’s easy to do.
Speaker 1
And that is so important because we’ve heard story after story of these D1 high profile athletes that go into, you know, their athletic D1 careers and can’t handle it.
Speaker 2
No, they really can’t. And I think it’s because the the, the structure before wasn’t there. So giving them the solid foundation just to understand doing the simple things and doing those repetitively are going to make you into the high end D1 prospect, the pro prospect, etc..
Speaker 1
Because those scouts out there, those, you know, colleges that are looking for people. Yeah, yeah. Not just athletes. No. And anymore, the programs that are high profile look for character.
Speaker 2
The 100%. Yeah. I, we had a conversation a couple weeks ago with a few of the pro guys, that we they come back to our program. So they go into their offseason, they go come back to us, which is nice. So a lot of the programs really talk about, hey, they just really talk about really two things character development and how are you carrying yourself.
Speaker 2
Are you coachable? Yeah. And those two qualities outside of that, then you can build on those. So if you can build on those and you’ll be fine.
Speaker 1
Coach ability is so important. Yeah I remember my days of being a youth. Oh my coach and you’d have those kids. That was just like sponges.
Speaker 2
Yes. They will take it all in. They.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And they just want they have the growth mindset already. Yeah. I don’t even know what it is. But they had it.
Speaker 2
Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1
And then you have the kids with the fixed mindset. Yeah. And they thought they knew it all. And here they are 13 years old right.
Speaker 2
The experience of a 13 year old right. Oh yeah. They see their, their their their idols or their pro gods. But now it’s a little bit different. The even in certain aspects of the game, they don’t even watch the sport as much as our kids were watching the sport. Yeah. Now it’s like they’re more betting on college football and the league or whatever’s going on.
Speaker 2
And I’m like, you guys are into kind of real that back down a little bit. You know that it’s fun and it’s fun to speculate and it’s fun to do all those things. But if you really want to be professional, you want to focus on the goals. There’s certain things that you have to remove.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And the word professional just doesn’t resonate or just doesn’t relate to your athletic rank.
Speaker 2
No. You know, at least.
Speaker 1
To us as.
Speaker 2
People. Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1
Whether you’re an athlete or not, if you don’t have a level or a degree of professionalism, you’re not going to be credible. None genuine or authentic.
Speaker 2
Credible is a really good word. Yeah, credible is a huge word. I really when we founded Ground Force, that was one thing that we really wanted to stand on was how credible is this information that we’re going to pass along to the parents, to the players? We’re not going to go outside, you know, scopes and want to make sure I’m doing a bunch of information that’s not necessarily accurate, but we want to give them the foundation can you could do a pull up.
Speaker 2
We got to make sure you can do pull ups. Can we. And is it going to translate to the sport. And right now we’re in a one sport society where the kids only really play baseball, basketball, football, soccer, whatever it is. So we want to make sure that there there is some overlap qualities that will happen. So if they decide to change sports early, they they’re still athletic enough to do that.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Great stuff. Yeah great stuff. So if you’re out there and you’re an athlete and you’re watching this or a parent and you want to get your athlete ready to go to the next level, I highly recommend James. I look him up. Legacy leaders TV.com. He focuses on the person, not just the.
Speaker 2
Not just the athlete.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Love it. And worship facilities.
Speaker 2
So we actually have a corporate office downtown. No. Okay. So we do all of our assessments there. And the great thing is because we’ve kids grow, right? They grow to colleges. Well, sometimes colleges don’t always fulfill those needs of all the players. So we in 2019, we invested into an online platform, and that platform is with us now.
Speaker 2
So we use it as a way to deliver training programs. So now all of our training is remote. We do all of our assessments remote, from youth to professional. It’s all done online.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Speaker 2
That’s awesome.
Speaker 1
Well good stuff. James. Hey, thanks for being a guest. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Making a Difference with your host, Tony Davis. And, we’ll see you next time. Great.
