Two Laps is ELEVATE's signature practice: a walking conversation between a coach or mentor and an athlete, structured in two parts. The first lap builds rapport with a low-stakes personal question. The second lap goes deeper, surfacing what the athlete is actually thinking, worried about, or working toward. Walking side by side removes the hierarchy of a desk, making honest conversation more likely than in a formal office meeting.
Two Laps
Two people. One track. No desk, no office, no hierarchy of furniture between you and them.
Why an office closes people down
When you bring someone into your office, they walk in already defensive. In their mind, they are either in trouble or there is a problem. The desk between you reinforces that dynamic. It says I am the authority and you are the subordinate and this is a formal interaction. That is not a conversation that opens people up. That is a conversation that closes them down.
Two Laps flips it. You take a player, a captain, or a colleague and walk two laps around a track together — two people moving in the same direction, side by side, with space to talk. People talk more honestly while walking. It reduces the intimidation, the "performance," and it builds trust faster than any classroom instruction can.
The two laps do different jobs
The first lap has nothing to do with the team or the job. It puts them at ease and tells you something about who they are. A favorite icebreaker: if money was no object, what kind of car are you driving? It makes them think, it makes them smile, and it opens a door. The purpose of the first lap is to earn the right to the second one.
By the second lap, the guard is usually down enough for a real conversation. That is where you find out what they are actually thinking, what they are worried about, and what they want that they have not said out loud yet. That is where the real development happens — one relationship at a time.
What a walk can surface
Before a recent beach volleyball season, a walk with one player — someone who would be central to any success the team was going to have — surfaced things no meeting ever would: a history with an incoming transfer, an honest recognition of how her own energy affected the people around her, and a desire to play at the next level that she had never fully said out loud. Maybe some of that comes up in other conversations. But not all of it, and rarely with that kind of honesty. The walk created the space for it.
Before an indoor volleyball team advanced to its first Final Four in school history, that same kind of walk happened with its captains — players facing a team they had never beaten, hearing from someone who knew them but had no stake in the outcome. The walk did not win the game, and it would never be claimed that it did. It was simply a chance to check in and offer confidence before they did something they had never done. That is what Two Laps is for.
"The foundation of ELEVATE is relationships. Two Laps is where those relationships form."
It does not have to be literal
Two Laps can be a drive. A meal. A walk to the parking lot after practice. The format is not the point. The point is getting out of the office, getting side by side, and letting them talk. And it does not always have to be with you — sometimes the better conversation happens between a player and an assistant. Creating the space matters more than being the one standing in it.
See where Two Laps fits
Two Laps is one of four components in the full ELEVATE pathway — a full year of leadership development, not a one-time talk.
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