Hlas: Chris Doyle's favorite muscle is the brain

IOWA CITY — Last week, Iowa football strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle tweeted this passage from the late Hunter S. Thompson:

'Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'

That semi-stunned me because I'd never seen or heard a football person quote counterculture author Thompson.

In fact, the day Doyle endorses Thompson's substance-loving lifestyle is the day pigs collide while airborne. So I was intrigued.

In the same 3-day period as the aforementioned tweet, Doyle used Twitter to share comments from Winston Churchill, Gen. James Mattis, and legendary playwright (and Iowa graduate) Tennessee Williams. One quote was motivational, the other two offered advice.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely...December 7, 2016

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely...#wednesdaywisdom pic.twitter.com/rB5qudkOcZ

— Chris Doyle (@coach_Doyle)

It all boils down to learning from the wisdom of others. That can be done from reading, an activity Doyle enthusiastically touts.

If only more people with public platforms would encourage others to try to learn from everyone rather than just the voices that share their views. Maybe that's a crazy dream. It shouldn't be.

Said Doyle Thursday: 'This is what's important about reading: I think good people learn from their experiences. The best people, the people who climb to the top of their professions or the top of their passions, learn from other peoples' experiences as well.

'By reading, I can accelerate my learning much faster than just making mistakes on my own. So I can sit down and have a conversation, so to speak, with some of the most-brilliant minds in the history of the world. Why would I not take advantage of that opportunity?'

"I am an optimist- it doesn't seem to be much use being anything else."December 5, 2016

"I am an optimist- it doesn't seem to be much use being anything else."#mondaymotivation

— Chris Doyle (@coach_Doyle)

-Churchill

Attack the week.

Doyle knows weightlifting, conditioning, nutrition and proper sleep habits inside and out. He builds bodies who can sustain the rigors of major-college football, and does it masterfully.

'He's probably the most important coach, including me, in my mind,' Hawkeyes head coach Kirk Ferentz said Thursday.

No Iowa football coach spends nearly as much time with the players year-round as Doyle. He has to win their hearts and minds for the team to have any chance to succeed.

'If you're in front of a group of people every single day,' Doyle said, 'it's really easy to get boring. It's really easy to repeat the same messages over and over again. If you're going to be charged with talking to 114 young people of ages 18 to 23 daily, I think it's our obligation to make sure we are learning ourselves.

'My manner better be of a learning mind-set. I better present myself as someone who's constantly learning and constantly pushing. It expands my opportunities to share the experiences to these kids, so I'm not giving them the same-old every day. I'm giving them a new message.

'The better I read, the more that I read, the better dialogue I can have with the players. I think the more experiences I can grab through reading, the better I can relate to people from different areas, different backgrounds than myself.'

Time after time, year after year, you hear former Iowa players praise Doyle. I've wondered if it's mostly because they were young and impressionable when he trained them, but the appreciation seems to grow with perspective instead of ebb with time.

Former Hawkeyes/NFL linebacker Pat Angerer usually chooses to be lighthearted over heavy-handed, but was as serious as one of his hundreds of tackles when I recently asked him about his former strength coach.

'Without Doyle I have zero shot at playing in the NFL,' Angerer said, which is impactful enough for a player.

But Angerer added 'It would be very easy to be as successful as he is and get stuck in your ways and not change, but he's constantly evolving to give his athletes the best tools they need to be great men.

'He's an extremely well-read and educated individual. It's not just heavy weights and protein shakes with him. I gained more useful knowledge from him than I have in any classroom on campus.'

If your boss or coach or congressperson was in the habit of sharing the best insights of polar opposites like Winston Churchill and Hunter S. Thompson, the effect would have to be positive.

Read. Get out of your own heads on a consistent basis.

'There's so much more out there,' Doyle said, 'but it all comes back to people who are trying to pursue excellence regardless of their field of endeavor. They go through the same emotions, they go through the same ups and downs, the same failures, successes.

'If you can learn from those and bring it into your realm, I think it expands our experience.'

Now that's coaching.