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Kessa Kuyper DPT, CSCS

@kessakuyper

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Coach | Editor | Facilitator
Building high performance across people, ideas, and systems.

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I love being the person who gets to welcome people in. Even a brief interaction at the door gives someone a point of connection in the room before they ever enter it.

One of the things I think we do @aocoaching especially well is remember that community starts with attention. Before you can serve people well, you have to know who’s in the room: why they came, what they’re carrying, and what they’re hoping to leave with.

The goal isn’t to manufacture intimacy or insist that everyone become “family.” It’s to build enough familiarity that people feel comfortable approaching and engaging with you, while also working to understand the people in front of you.

So much of what we call leadership, coaching, culture, or community is built when another person receives the message: You belong here, we’re glad you came, and there is a place for you in the room.

#ArtOfCoaching #nobsconference by @kessakuyper

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2 hours ago

Y’all. There is just no way.

I understand these apps are supposed to make us more connected. In practice they’ve made me worse everywhere at once. I’m instead of being fully present anywhere, I’m partially present in eleven places.

My brain can barely keep up with email, text, and phone calls, and those are the three I actually agreed to.

Maybe you can show up in all of these places and be a fantastic communicator in every one of them. Sincerely, respect. I can’t. And this isn’t me announcing that I’ve stopped trying, because I am trying. I’m just also aware that I’m failing, in real time, across multiple platforms simultaneously.

You cannot expect a person to be responsive in fourteen places, do their job, have a life, and maintain actual meaningful relationships. Pick three.

So if you genuinely need to reach me: call, text, email, or talk to me face-to-face. Follow-ups are encouraged and will never be held against you.

Anywhere else, I’m still happy to hear from you. Just know my silence is almost never intentional. Usually it means I haven’t seen it, I composed an excellent response in my head and never sent it, or I forgot that app exists.

There are too many inboxes, guys.

I cannot acquire another inbox. by @kessakuyper

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2 months ago

CRC Sevens Nationals 2026.

I love coaching rugby. It’s fun, chaotic, physical, strategic, and sometimes completely ridiculous in the best way.

But what keeps me coaching rugby is what it gives people a platform to practice beyond the pitch.

This weekend, and throughout the season, I watched this team chase goals, hit highs, take losses, battle through injuries, and find ways to contribute even when what they usually bring to the field wasn’t available in the same way.

And through all of it, this team is just so much fun. They compete hard, they care deeply, they make each other laugh, they bring the energy, and they remind me over and over again that all of this is absolutely worth it.

You don’t always get the game, the tournament, or the moment you wanted. Sometimes you lose the first game. It happens. You sit with it, you own it, you feel it, and then you move forward.

You do the best with what’s in front of you.

And in rugby, you do it with the person next to you.

That’s the part I always come back to. “With you” is not just something you call out on the field. It is the whole lesson. You run hard, you get back up, you keep working, and you do it for the people to your right and your left, knowing they are doing the same for you.

This year, we lost our first game, then came back and won the next three to bring home the bowl. I am so proud of how our team responded, how they competed, and how they showed up for each other.

There’s a reason the “man in the arena” idea sticks around. There is something powerful about people who are willing to step in, take the hits, care deeply, risk disappointment, and keep going anyway.

I am inspired every day by the athletes and coaches I get to work with, and by the people I get to meet through this game.

Wouldn’t trade it.

Proud as hell of this bowl.

Still chasing the cup. by @kessakuyper

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6 months ago

I know we all learned General Adaptation Syndrome in school, but a full blown stress response not the training effect we should be chasing.

Training should challenge the system enough to stimulate adaptation, not drive it toward the alarm → resistance → exhaustion response described by GAS. If your programming is intentionally trying to create that kind of disruption, you’ve gone well past the amount of stress required for productive adaptation.

To drive my point further so people don’t mistake what I’m saying: You do not need to push an athlete into a GAS-like alarm reaction in order to create adaptation, and if your periodization model assumes you should repeatedly drive athletes toward that level of physiological disruption, you’re much more likely to be overtraining them than optimally training them. The goal of good training should be enough stimulus to adapt, not the maximum stress they can survive.
#strengthandconditioning #periodization #stress by @kessakuyper

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4 days ago

This one is a bit delayed, but I haven’t stopped thinking about this conference.

The Non-Superficial BS Conference was one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to. Skipping right past the neat, fake answers that conferences are know for, and instead diving into the tough conversations and challenging the assumptions underneath the questions.

So, belatedly: Day 2

@coach_brettb on reinvention. Change is inevitable, so how do you evolve with it? How do you become something new in a way that is still authentic to you and receivable by the people you are trying to reach?

@thereadystate on pain and the danger of looking at a multifactorial problem through a single lens. Pain asks us to stay curious, shift perspectives, and recognize that the first frame we reach for may not be the one that helps the person in front of us.

@jasonleydon on identity, and the much harder question of who are you when the things you built your identity around disappear. Who are you when the praise stops, the thing you were trying to prove doesn’t work out, or your value can no longer be attached to a specific output?

@mountaineeringa on leadership through the lens of caregiving. We spend so much time talking about what leaders owe the people they are responsible for that we sometimes forget the leader is a person too. You can’t pour from an empty cup is a cliche because it’s true, and no better arena exposes that than becoming a caregiver for another loved one.

@fingermash on heuristics, complex adaptive systems, and the humility of realizing that just when you think you understand something, you discover how much you don’t know. We work through models- imperfect, but actionable models. The skill isn’t finding the perfect model, but rather knowing which one is useful, what deserves priority, and which frame gives you enough clarity to act.

I left with a full notebook, a lot fewer neat answers, and much better questions.

Cannot thank @aocoaching @coach_brettb and @jasonleydon enough for creating a room where people are willing to talk about the messy parts: identity, uncertainty, failure, change, leadership, and what it takes to keep moving forward.
#NoBSConference by @kessakuyper

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6 days ago

The @aocoaching Non-Superficial Bullshit Conference may be officially wrapped, but I’m still catching up on sharing everything that happened over the last two days. So, first: Day 1.

None of the performative nonsense. Just people who have built, failed, rebuilt, and stayed honest about what it took.

@coach_brettb opened the room and set the tone.

@julietstarrett on risk, reinvention, and the often invisible work of being the strategist, operator, and force behind the person everyone else sees.

@missymmcbeth on boundaries, being honest about how you work best, and building systems that give you the space to do great work while still honoring the other roles and demands in your life.

@physio_elis on leadership and navigating high-performance environments.

@jenwiderstrom on continuing to move forward through the highs and lows, and recognizing that the road is rarely linear. Sometimes the thing that feels like the low point becomes the springboard for what comes next..

@askjeevers on doing things your own way. Intentional over efficient. Do it messy. Go all in. And stop assuming there’s one formula you have to follow, because# the things that make you uniquely valuable probably don’t fit neatly into somebody else’s blueprint anyway.

Then everyone came back together for a panel and open Q&A, which is where some of the best conversations of the day happened.

Small room. Real conversations. The kind of people you stay in touch with for life.

Grateful to have been part of it with @aocoaching.

Day 2 recap coming soon!

#NoBSConference #ArtOfCoaching by @kessakuyper

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14 days ago

So hear me out:

I was wrong about injury prevention. If we are using the language of epidemiology and preventative medicine, we should probably use their actual definitions and not our straw man versions.

Admittedly I’m not the best at explaining this yet, but for your own deep dive:
Teutsch, S. M. (1992). A framework for assessing the effectiveness of disease and injury prevention.

Shrier, I., Impellizzeri, F. M., & Stovitz, S. D. (2023). Prevention versus risk reduction or mitigation: Why create unnecessary battles?

National Cancer Institute. NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms: Prevention.

Go read fellow nerds. by @kessakuyper

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2 months ago

OHMYGOD WE GET IT

VBT is not magic.
VBT is not useless

None of these are hot takes.

“VBT is bad if you use it poorly.”
WOW. GROUNDBREAKING.

“VBT is useful if you use it well.”
INCREDIBLE. SOMEONE CALL THE JOURNALS.

Congratulations we have rage bated everyone in the field. We have made everyone collectively stupider while pretending lazy debate is the same as progress. Now can we move on to something productive please.

Go coach your athlete.
Learn something.
Teach something.
Touch some grass.

Good lord. by @kessakuyper

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5 months ago

We LOVE a good chaser drill!!

Competition raises intensity.
Creativity builds better movers.

Acceleration in sport is not always clean and textbook. Sometimes you will find yourself needing to get up and go from weird angles, awkward starts, and imperfect setups.

So for this one, we let the athletes choose the start. Only rule: make it fun!

Vote for your favorite start:

* Leapfrog
* Roll & Run
* Kick Up by @kessakuyper

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6 months ago

Moments from morning practice 📸

Photo creds @kj.shevlingmajor by @kessakuyper

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7 months ago

2026 Hawkeye Classic Champions!
Automatic qualifier secured. See you in April.

This weekend was a full-team statement. We showed up with two squads, asked people to stretch, adapt, and step into bigger roles, and they handled it all day.

What I’m proudest of isn’t just the trophy, it’s how we earned it: resilience when things got weird, composure when legs got heavy, teammates stepping up without being asked, and a group that kept choosing each other over ego. Fearless, selfless, and locked in.

One of the best all-around team performance I’ve been a part of, and the season is still just getting started.

Proud coach. Back to work.

#stella #collegerugby #nationalcollegiaterugby by @kessakuyper

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8 months ago

Fatigue limits repeat performance.

Endurance is the ability to resist that fatigue.

We all agree conditioning matters in rugby. But too often we treat exhaustion as the goal instead of identifying what’s actually limiting performance.

Fatigue is multifactorial. Endurance is specific. And if you can’t name the limiter, you can’t train it to stop limiting you.

Early phases of training aren’t about chasing intensity. They’re about building the layers that allow speed, strength, and power to hold up across matches and across a season.

Getting tired is easy.
Training the limiting factor is coaching. by @kessakuyper

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8 months ago