Our story

Beyond Skills Training (BST) idea originated from the book I wrote in 2019 "Track and Field: Beyond Technique Training." I wanted to help athletes & coaches think deeply about problems in my sport... Soon after publishing the book, I realized that no real change is possible unless implemented at grass roots levels. I had to ask better questions.

Then the global pandemic came... During the first Covid wave I was working as a strength coach of a youth baseball club in Prague, Czech Republic as well as pursuing my own Olympic dream in the decathlon. Since the lockdowns prohibited gathering in groups, I had time to do what I always wanted to do – record exercises that I had learned over the 15-year decathlon journey. My wife and i filmed about 200 videos, and I put them together in training routines. i started thinking that maybe i can take this a step further...

Suddenly life threw a big punch and knocked me sideways. In September 2020 my father back in Latvia got in a terrible car accident. He experienced severe brain trauma and was left fully dependent on mom's care. Writing helped me deal with the pain and gave some order to my life. I put all my effort into thinking what could help improve mom's situation caring for dad if he'd pull through. Once more I was revisiting the conclusions I had drawn from the book I published a year earlier, as well as wondering, what would have made my dad proud if he could still understand me...

Everything suddenly connected. Empowering coaches to build resilient youth athletes. Globally. The missing links? Consistency, variety, and accessibility in the very basics. My background in kinesiology, experience in the decathlon & curious observations from the youth coaching, were plenty for the start. The problem was – I had a techno-phobia. In other words – I didn't understand much from computers, but I knew technology was necessary to maximize the impact. For a few years I had observed a hardworking, committed Czech 400-meter sprinter, Jan Tesař. Over the years I learned that he had climbed out of nowhere into being on the Czech National relay team. I had also heard that he was an instructor at a university and had developed an app on his own.

We accidentally ran into each other at the doctor's office. Both had some injuries to address. I shared with him my project vision, and he took notice. Two months later our roads crossed again at a training camp in Slovakia, and he told me he had thought about my idea and would like to look at it more. A month later we started laying foundations for BST.coach together. We are excited to see what the future will bring – lots of challenging work ahead of us to serve youth coaches and build the next generation of athletes together!

may this project be dedicated to my dad who showed me that no challenge is too great to be overcome. only the right tools are necessary to accomplish the right task.