This week, Gunnar and Jen sit down with Shane Wallen, who spent a decade as a strength and performance coach in Major League Baseball before walking away this past off-season to open a Nashville location of the iconic social performance club, The Kollective. Shane gets candid about the real math behind pro sports coaching pay across the NFL, NBA, and MLB, the lack of a pension for strength staff after years in the league, and how losing his father last November made him rethink what he was actually trading his time for.
From there the conversation moves into what it actually looked like to leave: the phone calls he made, the players he didn't want to let down, and why he now describes it the same way Gunnar once did leaving the Lakers, missing the clowns, not the circus. They dig into building a client-first coaching philosophy, why so many good coaches undercharge for what they're worth, and what it means to build an "environment, not a gym" as he gets ready to open the doors in Nashville.
Whether you're weighing a similar leap out of a team setting or just want to hear how a decade in pro sports shapes the way you coach everyday people, this one's full of real talk on money, family, and building something of your own.
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About Shane:
Shane Wallen has spent his career in the trenches of elite performance — first as an athlete, then as one of the most trusted strength and conditioning voices in professional sports. A former walk-on running back at Oregon State University, Shane worked his way from an internship on the strength staff to a scholarship spot on the football team, a path that set the tone for everything that followed: outwork the doubt, and don't take no for an answer.
That relentlessness carried him into a decade-long career at the highest level of professional sports, holding performance and strength coaching roles with the San Francisco 49ers, the Cleveland Browns, the Chicago Cubs, and most recently as Head of Performance for the Detroit Tigers. Along the way, he built a reputation for a coaching philosophy rooted in relationships — treating every athlete interaction with the same care whether it was year one or year ten, and never losing sight of the person behind the performance metrics.
After nearly ten years in professional baseball, Shane made the decision to step away from the team setting to build something of his own — trading the travel and the front-office politics for time with his wife and family, and a shot at creating the kind of community-driven training environment he'd always envisioned. That vision became The Kollective Nashville, a private performance and recovery space built for high performers — founders, entrepreneurs, athletes, and everyday people alike — who are looking for more than just a gym. As Shane puts it, "we create environments, not gyms."
Alongside running The Kollective, Shane advises several performance and wellness brands, including Aion, Pathwater, and Speede Fit. He's a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and holds a degree in Exercise and Sport Science from Oregon State University.
Produced and Edited by: The Cast Collective (Nashville, TN)
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