We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Scheid. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.

Daniel , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

First, I would like to disclose that I am currently working on two different ventures; one is highly mission-driven and relies on grants and “non-consumer” funding sources, while the other is much more geared toward revenue generation. For the rest of this interview, I will be using the two somewhat interchangeably because the lessons I learned from one experience directly translate to the other. Iron Core Adapted strength and conditioning is the first, and Stage Fit is the second.

Back to the direct question, in my early days in the health sciences career field, I was exposed to many different settings and organizational structures. Examples being boutique exercise studios, collegiate rec centers, volunteer fitness programs, etc. Almost every different setting had things that I thought really served their clientele very well, but each also had its own constraints, staffing, scalability, you name it. The cool part about starting something of your own is that you can keep all the things you like and dump all the extra crap that seemed to drag things down. However, to get in a place to be able to do that, you need to get some set of experiences to build your “program design toolbox”. I’m not saying purposely go slug through 10 years of terrible jobs just for “the exposure”, but being very intentional to gain an understanding of the way that an organization ticks on the back end has never done me any dis-services.

In an addition to knowing What I wanted and didn’t want, I also had to learn Who I wanted and didn’t want. In the early years of undergrad, my go-to move on the first day of any lab course was to get to class early, wait by the front of the room until one of the attractive girls stood at a lab bench alone, and then immediately make a beeline for the spot next to her so I could have a pretty lab partner for the rest of the semester. That, as it happens to be, turned out a terrible way to select the academic fortitude of a lab partner. This is not at all to say that people can’t be both attractive and good at chemistry, but I never even took a second to have a preliminary conversation with any of my partners to see if we would work well together before just going full send and hoping that it would work out. Having a good team backing me, whether it is mentors or partners, or even just moral supporters, has been the decisive factor in either accomplishing something amazing or an idea eventually fizzling out. In selecting those people, I’ve found that it is totally okay to be very intentional about how you engage. Back to the chemistry example, today I would still probably have done the first class with just about anyone, but then ALSO been able to evaluate our time together afterward, and if it was not a good match, sought out a different partner next class vs just trying to stick it out. Your time is important, and wasting it on dead ends doesn’t do anyone any favors. Conversely, If I come across a person that shares the same mission and vision as I do, even if I currently don’t know how to engage with them, I will make an effort to periodically keep checking in and maintain at least a professional level of acquaintance. The opportunity to engage that person usually is not very far off in the future, and being able to call on them and bring them into a project can frequently be very rewarding for both of us!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

All my goals stem from one basic idea: to provide high-quality, scientifically grounded performance science and strength and conditioning resources to populations that currently do not have access to them. This idea is so impactful for me because I am not the only one who shares it. More than the idea are the fantastic people whose lives I get to be a part of by working towards making it a reality. I am currently involved in two primary organizations, as well as pursuing a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from the University of Cincinnati

Iron Core is a non-profit started by myself and two others from the University of Cincinnati. Our mission is to give adapted athletes access to the same resources as able-bodied athletes and provide an environment where they can work towards their own individual goals and discover their abilities. We do this by pairing one adapted athlete with two allied health students from local universities and teaching the students how to progress the athlete through an individualized Strength and Conditioning (S&C) program. All of this is free of charge to the athletes and students. The benefits of this program are twofold. The students are exposed to athletes with disabilities at the undergraduate level, which was historically not possible until much later in their academic careers, if at all. The Athletes gain access to safe, effective S&C programming not available at typical recreation facilities, and the monetary barriers that would traditionally come with such specialized services are entirely removed. Our program has already served over 30 adapted athletes, including a current women’s national sled hockey team member. We have worked with over 50 student coaches, many of whom return for multiple years and create a lifelong passion for adapted S&C. Our long-term goal is to generate adapted S&C literacy in young health science professionals so that future generations of adapted athletes can access the same resources as their able-bodied counterparts.

In addition to adapted athletes, another group that I am very passionate about enabling with high-quality S&C/scientific resources is performing artists. As an undergraduate, I completed an internship with the University of Cincinnati Athletic Department as a performance scientist/athletic training manager. While there, I experienced first-hand the number of resources given to typical athletes regarding sporting analytics, medical care, and performance optimization. While some athletes from the NCAA go on to play professionally, the reality is that the vast majority do not. Comparatively, a confident majority of students entering a collegiate dance performance program intend to pursue a 10+ year professional career. Assuming that the average collegiate athlete will play for four years, this is not even 1/3 of the time that an average professional ballerina will need to be at the peak of their physical ability level. After spending time in the University of Cincinnati Conservatory training room and seeing the tolls that recurrent injury and lack of health/performance resources have on even 1st and 2nd-year dance students, I became very passionate about closing this resource gap. Within the last two years, my wife and I have worked tirelessly to open Stage Fit, a performing arts training company run through our family’s pre-professional performing arts academy. Taking my experience at the collegiate level and bringing it to the earliest stages of athletic development for the young performers at our studio is one of the most rewarding accomplishments of my life thus far. I hope to be able to grow our practice to reach hundreds more young performers in the coming years so that they can avoid the unfortunate reality of the profession that professional performers have had to endure up to this point.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I currently have three partners that I am closest with. Tommy and Renee from Iron Core, and Holly from Stage Fit. In a really funny “learned my lesson” setup, I met Tommy because he was my first lab partner in an advanced musculoskeletal anatomy class. Due to my previous debacles with lab partners, I decided to go for the person that looked like they were the smartest in this particular class. Tommy must have given off intelligence vibes because we had never met before, but he seemed to be the right dude in this instance. We then went on to do a presentation on adapted S&C together and met up with Renee, who was the magic third ingredient in our Iron Core founders group. We have been building Iron Core together for the last four years, and I can honestly say that that lab partner decision in musculoskeletal anatomy was probably one of the most important I have ever made. Now I wish I could say that I am a changed person because of that and that I have never again selected partners on looks along, but that’s not entirely true. The long short is that I met Holly on Hinge (dating app) :). We were both bored during the COVID quarantine and swiped right at just the right time. As we talked, we found out we shared many of the same passions for performing artists, as she grew up dancing at her family’s performing arts academy and got her BFA in Musical Theater from Baldwin Wallace. She had all of the applied knowledge of performing arts, and I had all of the exercise science backgrounds to create what is now Stage Fit. We also just got married a few months ago! Now I am definitely not recommending that everyone hitches up with their business partners, but when the passion is there, it can make some really cool things happen.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

You HAVE to be able to communicate. You can be the most knowledgeable clinician/practitioner on the face of the planet, but if you can’t convey your knowledge to your clients, they aren’t going to buy into it, or you. This goes both ways. In the health sector, there is a very broad spectrum of education levels, cultures, ages, you name it. You need to be able to scale your interaction to the party you are communicating with. In order to have an intelligent conversation with a fellow coach or therapist, displaying competence in your area by using an industry-specific lexicon will most likely establish the trust of that partner. However, if you take that same conversation and have it with the 9-year-old dancer who doesn’t understand why doing 15 squats holding a piece of heavy metal will make her grand jetes better, she is going to check out 15 seconds into the session and tell her mom that she wants to quit right afterward. If you can scale your information to the appropriate audience and convey your competence in multiple settings, you will have that many more opportunities to make something amazing happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ironcorefitness.org/ https://www.stagefitbymoss.com/
• Instagram: @stagefitbymoss @ironcorefitness

Image Credits
Jessica Lyne Ross