Season 3, Episode 12

Season #3 Episode #12 May 24, 2025

Professional coaches face immense pressure from above, with owners and board members often questioning decisions without understanding the complex factors involved. We explore strategies for managing these challenging relationships and discuss new approaches to measuring athletic workload across different competitive environments.

• Building a strong career in sports coaching requires significant work and sacrifice
• Owners can create inappropriate pressure, as seen when Nottingham Forest's owner berated their coach publicly
• Presenting to boards is challenging when they lack the technical understanding to grasp complex performance data
• Establishing clear processes and KPIs from day one creates a foundation for communication
• "Drip feeding" education to leadership during non-crisis periods builds understanding
• Not all game minutes are equal - 60 minutes in a top-tier match is physically different than in a lower-stakes game
• Future load management may combine linear measurements with analysis of body positioning and mechanical stress
• Developing metrics for contested efforts helps distinguish between different types of physical demands

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For more on leadership and technical development check out OLDBULL PERFORMANCE.

Episode Transcript

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPISODE 12-----
Speaker 1:
0:13

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches in a Coffee, darren and Jason.

Speaker 2:
0:17

With you, mate, we have been Sorry, mate, you just cut out there. Yeah, it's been a while in between, oh mate.

Speaker 1:
0:25

I tell you, like Shafir, I'll put it out there For young practitioners who are trying to build your career goes through some weird changes, some things that you don't expect. Some things are good, some things are bad, but I will tell you categorically. People say to me oh, it's so great, you know you're doing your own thing, your own account. I'm like do you know how much work it takes to get a really good side hustle going like really good, it's fucking. Excuse me, I'll swear it. I shouldn't be swearing on our podcast, but you're right, isn't it Like you do plenty of stuff late at night. We've talked about you doing FIFPro stuff at 3 am in the morning and I sometimes see young coaches going. Oh, you know, I've got to be training and I've got to be in bed by 10 o'clock and I'm like man, I finish work at 10 o'clock most nights.

Speaker 2:
1:19

So anyway, just having a rant. You've got to make that decision about the personal, not personal sacrifice. But you see a lot of strength coaches, fitness coaches, who are an incredible nick and you're just thinking are you training with your athletes, how are you getting time to do that? Obviously, maybe a very patient partner, or maybe they're single or something like that, but anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about.

Speaker 2:
1:43

I sent you an article a while ago now which was a video of an owner coming down to the Nottingham Forest coach and berating the coach after a game In public. Yeah, essentially, without obviously knowing all the details, but going into too much details the owner was unhappy with a medically-based substitution that the coach had made because that sub got injured and so he was ropeable. Coach said oh no, it's fine, he's just passionate. You know, that's one of his strengths. The owner came out with a statement afterwards saying I will continue to ask the hard questions or words to that effect, but interestingly, like I wasn't watching the game or anything, but a few people said it to me and those people were talking about is this workplace harassment? Certainly toward the coach it was. Is there a? You know what sort of pressure does that put on doctors, physios, high-performance coaches? And it just made me think well, that would be an interesting topic in terms of the pressure to perform from above. I'll give you a quick. I'll give you a quick. Oh, you're going to give me something.

Speaker 1:
3:03

I was going to give you a question, mate. Let's take it away from the coach. Let's put it back into our space. No matter which we Whatever we do at best we're middle management there's always going to be a coach above us. How do you work? You've worked in some big spots. Do you work well when there's a coach above you who's grinding hard at you, like right at you, or do you work better with a bit of space or a bit of both? How have you responded in those spaces?

Speaker 2:
3:32

oh look, I'll probably work. I'll probably work well with a more with a coach who's putting pressure on than, um, ceo, owner, board members, because the coach is kind of in the trenches with you. So I probably prefer that model than necessarily a model of an owner or a board. You know, as an example I won't say which club, but we had an impeccable record and in two weeks in one week, sorry we lost two players to hamstrings at one training session, and good players, and I might have spoken about this so somebody might be able to guess the club. But I was presenting to the board the following week about our hamstring crisis and so I presented it as we've had three hamstrings in three years, whereas they were presenting it as you had two hamstrings in one night.

Speaker 2:
4:29

So, yeah, that was pressure for sure, because that was a bit early on in my career. And so you're presenting to these board members some of whom knew the sport, some who didn't, but that's okay, they wanted to ask the question. But you can either act on that pressure or you can act as if you're under pressure, or you can choose the right process and hope that it takes care of itself If you're constantly worried about what a coach or a board member or an owner is going to say. I would think more often than not that leads to poor decision-making.

Speaker 1:
5:05

Here's a problem for you. You present to the board, the board are only going to be able to absorb as much as they can understand. Quite possibly the information that we need to convey is more complicated and challenging than they might be able to absorb. As much as they can understand. Quite possibly the information that we need to convey is more complicated and challenging than they might be able to handle, simply because they're businessmen and they're whatever.

Speaker 1:
5:23

I presented to a board once the same thing on a series of injuries. Now, the run of injuries we had was predicated on the fact that we were recruiting players into the club that had horrific injury histories. So then we get them up to a certain level for a bit and then maybe predictably, they break again and suddenly our injury data has gone through the roof. Anyway. So I go to the board meeting, I present this and I actually did a wider survey of a bunch of things, used some machine learning to bring it together and show how it worked.

Speaker 1:
5:54

Do you know the number one question I got about? Like when I concluded, I said this is what I thought, this is our actions, blah, blah, blah. I got asked how did you do that machine learning thing? Could you do that in my business? And I got drilled for the next 20 minutes on how could that be applied to other things? And at that moment, at that moment, I thought this is the most redundant, pointless meeting I've ever been involved in. I agree with you, the coach has the insight to be able to go right what's going on. But you go to a board level and they don't understand, they don't get it and it's, I think, absolutely futile, absolutely futile, that type of meeting.

Speaker 2:
6:41

I put yourself as the owner of the club and you're fighting for Champions League, as Nottingham Forest are and were, and they had a draw in a game that they perhaps thought they should have won. Yeah, there's obviously no excuse for running onto the field and berating the manager. There's clearly no excuse.

Speaker 1:
7:02

Except that he was Greek, and he's probably off his brain.

Speaker 2:
7:05

Well, he is Greek. Yeah, but they have, I would imagine, board members, ceos. They have a right to ask questions.

Speaker 1:
7:12

Of course, but you need to have someone who's plausibly capable of understanding the answers. The answer is often, as we know, multifaceted and difficult at times, and I just think that.

Speaker 2:
7:26

Yeah, I think it's Sorry, go on.

Speaker 1:
7:30

No, you go mate, please.

Speaker 2:
7:31

Well, I think it's more the question or the approach. The discussion that you and I should be having is what approach should we take in those circumstances and the approach and what advice can we perhaps give? And most big teams other than in Australia have ownership models. Yeah, yeah, so you're ultimately beholden to somebody who's pouring the money in, so is it a case of educate them when we're in non-crisis mode Now often?

Speaker 2:
8:07

we don't get exposed to those owners and CEOs and things like that, but a lot of the time we do so it could be a case of drip feeding that information, which perhaps opens you up a little bit for misinterpretation, but in times of crisis, if you do have that education behind you, then they know that. Okay, this is a good process. We've spoken about this process. I understand the process and these things happen about this process.

Speaker 1:
8:36

I understand the process and these things happen, mate. The one that still resonates with me is one. You said, I reckon, go back to episode two or three or something, when we had 11 listeners and you said we go to the coach and first day I stick on the wall. These are the things we're going to look at, these are the KPIs we're going to look at. I still go back to that and you go well, okay, if we're clear with the coach, who's our immediate report and we've got a good system based around that, that we would, then, if there's regular communication with the ownership which may or may not be the case, different environments you would do the same thing.

Speaker 1:
9:12

I like your idea of drip feeding. This is what we do, this is how we will report and then, if it comes to it that it's an acute meeting out of nowhere, the coach should support, like this is our process and I think you can only go with what you said. This is the process, this is what we're working through, this is what we've done. We're not. You know, nothing's as bad as it seems, nothing's as good as it seems, that type of thing. So I'm in the corner of your thing drip feed, of educate, of start from the outset. This is what we're going to do, and if there's new processes that occur along the way, fine, bring that to the table and say this is the change. This is the amendment we're doing, but I think the biggest one is keeping it clear in front of the coach what you're doing.

Speaker 2:
10:02

And if that goes up to leadership and management, so be it. Yeah, and in situations where you have the first few months where I had a Spanish coach come in at Arsenal, it was quite hard to do because he brought his own fitness coach and there was a language issue, so it was quite hard to educate on. This is the way I like to work, so you're not always able to do it, but I think you should at least attempt the process so that everybody is on as similar page as possible as to how each other works. I think that's pretty important. Hey, I know this is going to be a short one because you're under the pump a little bit.

Speaker 2:
10:34

We had our fourth FEEf Pro High Performance Advisory Network meeting on Monday night, which was a few nights ago, starting at 11.30pm my time. So it was a fun night. It was a couple of hour meeting and one of the things we spoke about, the topic for discussion, was how can we get a global and by global I mean you know different club perspective on if a match or a training session is easy or hard, because one of the things Fipro does is collect rough training, but more so game minutes played by a whole bunch of professional players around the world so we can assess whether you know minutes played are increasing or decreasing, but the conundrum is a 60 minutes when it's say 15,.

Speaker 2:
11:31

Liverpool versus Arsenal is very different to 60 minutes if it's Chiesi versus Sampdoria in Syria, you know when there's nothing on the line.

Speaker 1:
11:44

Not all minutes are equals.

Speaker 2:
11:46

Yeah, so we went around the room to have a bit of a discussion and these are people who work in clubs as big as Manchester United, Bayern Munich, American clubs, Greg King from Shanghai, Jordan Milsom from El Edifax, so clubs all around the world. Is there, in your opinion, a single figure? Is it a combination of things? How best can we assess a training load or training intensity?

Speaker 1:
12:17

Mate, I think it's a tough, tough question, really tough, I don't I think so I went to you with it, Jason.

Speaker 1:
12:25

Yeah well, could make more of my hair fall out. Look, mate, I'm going to tell you that my short tenure in Australian A-League I started working on an idea I was trying to simplify. I would be guilty at the end of my tenure at Fremantle of being too complicated for the coach. No question, I admit to that. I was trying to push the boundaries. I still am, but trying to do it differently. So I tried to start working on.

Speaker 1:
12:52

Could I bring a number of things together? So we've got the distance, we've got the different speed metrics, the speed bands and the like. We've got xld cells, which are a function of change velocity. That's fine, but we really need to understand then as well, how much, like how much, is the body position rapidly changing? Because when you think about the games you just described, so when we've got a high-pressure game which is obviously, let's say, at the level of Liverpool, arsenal, there's good possession on both sides. So we're trying to push defences, it's stop-start, but your body's pivoting, you're moving a lot, whereas when it's lower pressure, let's say Australian A-League, it's more straight line running because you're losing possession and you just have to transition up and back. There's not as much rapid movement of the ball of the body.

Speaker 1:
13:44

So I still think there's a possibility, there's a a way to bring that information into the, into the metric as well. Uh, like what? What is the body going through? Like how many positional changes? Like we're doing some stuff with field hockey at the moment. Same thing, trying to understand. Well, if you run from one end of the field to the other in hockey, standing upright, that's one thing, but what about when you're bent over carrying a ball? So that's hockey running, that's normal running. They're two quite different things. So I do think there's probably someone smarter than me to do it. But I think we could get to a place where, yeah, we could start to understand that, but what you would need is to prove it in reality. So have the data of.

Speaker 1:
14:28

Could we disseminate the difference between, let's say, that high-level EPL game versus, you know second or you know, an A-league game in Australia, that they are physically demanding a different thing on the basis of mechanical output, not so much the tolerance of the athlete. I think we'd have to almost assume that at some level everyone was recovering the same, which is not true, but you'd have to make some assumptions. But if the assumption is the mechanical stress of more speed. But even if you ran more, you actually had more movement. So we did this in AFL.

Speaker 1:
15:06

We built what are called contested effort metric, which used gyroscope and accelerometer to understand when the player was pitched over and how much movement they were doing. And we could see the players that ran really well, that had, you know, 140 metres per minute. They looked great but they had contested effort score of five, whereas the midfielder who goes, let's say, 125 metres per minute but contested effort 17 units per minute, they're in the middle and they've got more contested possessions, they're more bashed. So it's a different metric. So I think somewhere down that path is where we'd need to go. That's my short 30-second assessment.

Speaker 2:
15:44

That's longer than 30 seconds, but do you think it's a combination of for want of a better term sort of linear load, and then not necessarily metabolic but perhaps structural load, and change of body position, change of direction, acceleration, deceleration?

Speaker 1:
16:03

So again, you're making the assumption that if the unit's moving around more and it's twisting like the athlete is actually in, like those changes are rapid and high, they're experiencing more changes and those changes have greater mechanical cost and, ideally, metabolic cost as well.

Speaker 1:
16:22

But no one's going to like the metabolic cost is a thing, but I wonder about the fatigue of muscle associated with many like high demand of forces, associated with quick change of direction, which is like if you've got a football, if you're playing a really high press game in football, they've got to sprint up and then they've got to try and zip around to try and defend and keep the ball forward, like forward pressure in AFL. So I think in there somewhere I certainly don't have an answer immediately, but I think that's where I'd have to go. And can you believe it? I've got a dude outside my door going like this, waiting for me to go to a meeting. So I'm going to have to excuse myself. My apologies sincerely to.

Speaker 2:
17:11

No problem, mate, I appreciate your time. It's a short one.

Speaker 1:
17:15

I just asked the listeners to hang out. We want to keep going. We're both still into this and passionate about it, but we just got life in the way. All good mate, it's a free service.

Speaker 2:
17:27

so we're doing this voluntarily. We're doing our best. I'm sure people understand. Thanks, mate, let's catch up next week.

Speaker 1:
17:33

Good luck on the weekend, man see you see, you.

-----END SEASON 3, EPISODE 12-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPISODE 11-----
Jason Weber:
0:12

you know, welcome to two coaches in a coffee down Burgess and Jason Weber here with you today. Darren, real coffee and we're back on it proper coffee yep how you going mate my going.

Darren Burgess:
0:23

Okay, it's uh time stamping this, as I've heard some podcasts too. It's 10 40 am sunday. Uh, we played bad, like crows played. Carlton yesterday had a, had a decent win after a pretty bad loss the week before. So we're, um, yeah, we're well and truly in that. Um, you know, there's a couple of horrible games during the week and over the weekend and we're eight games into the season of a 23-game season, so we're just getting into that middle third of games that are generally, it's a lot colder. There's a bit of rain about the surfaces are not as good.

Jason Weber:
1:03

I always like thinking about a season like a 400 metre run. You come out of the blocks and you feel awesome, that first 100 you come into the first bend all feels great. And then it suddenly strikes you that I'm in the back straight and I'm already full of acid and this is not going to be pretty. And that's where we are now. Certainly the AFL. You can see I'm in my slightly cooler attire here in Western Australia this morning. The desert has cooled off quite a bit. So yeah, we'll start to get into some wet games.

Darren Burgess:
1:37

Yeah, it just gets into like there was a lot of high scoring.

Darren Burgess:
1:43

You know, even from an objective point of view, the running outputs and BPS outputs when the grounds are a bit firmer, they're all super high and, yeah, we're just coming into that phase where it's now a bit more of a slog. Everything is a bit colder, a bit wetter and relatively speaking, of course, for overseas people, but it's the same thing in the Premier League. You know those early games from August through to October and then you get in this cold grind and then you come out of it in sort of March, april, running on top of the ground and feeling good and looking forward to summer. So there's an interesting management piece and we can get into the sort of staff personal management piece shortly. But, um, a management piece of players. Because I reckon you know you, you and I have some differences in our philosophies when it comes to um sort of preparing a team, um, but by the end of that pre-season there's not a huge amount of difference really in the physical fitness of a lot of AFL teams, and I'm sure it's the same in soccer and in football and basketball, but it's the individual management of those players throughout this process.

Darren Burgess:
3:06

Did you have a philosophy of? You know some of your older players? They were showing signs of wear and tear. Firstly, how could you tell that? And secondly, what was your strategy, because some have rest games, others have rest training, manage game minutes. Is it all of the above?

Jason Weber:
3:27

look, mate, you bring. You bring up a massive, a massive area. I was actually before we entered the green room and we're just writing down some notes about things to discuss. I had thought about saying, well, the whole monitoring piece, which is another big thing. But I will say one of the things that happens in AFL is you go through these periods of you have a more experienced team, we've got some older bodies and if you're around long enough, you end up with a team that is very young, and so at the moment, we've got you know in the AFL, you've got Richmond running around with a very young team. Then you've got your older squads, like Geelong, who have got a much more experienced group. How do you manage them? I think one of the big things that comes down to and we talk about this all the time what's the major predictor of an injury is having previous injuries. That's certainly relevant for hamstring, but I find it to be relevant with many things. So, understanding what players you've got and the balance of their output. Now, I always harp on this stuff, but you come to the point of when you get a player, that is no longer what they were, and I think Patrick Dangerfield at the moment is a magnificent example. I don't know exactly what he's doing but just for overseas viewer, patrick Dainesfield plays for Geelong. He's a midfielder forward elite player, absolutely elite, but he is in the AFL. He is a high-speed player. He is not your characteristic long, tall, skinny AFL player. He looks like a sprinter and he actually runs like one. But when you look at his management at the moment, from what I understand and this is again from what we normally do, looking at the outside in when we don't know, but my understanding is, his volume has been managed very, very well. Patrick's made a few comments in the media. His training volumes have been reduced but his intensities have stayed high. His game minutes have probably come off a little bit, but his impact in the game is just awesome and he is reporting again in the media. Not that I have any input or any knowledge specific, but he is reporting that his ability to impact the game from a speed perspective has been phenomenal and when you watch that watch their games, that would be true There'd be nothing I would no evidence. I can see in video that he's walking around slow, so that's an older player.

Jason Weber:
5:58

If I can revert to another, I've worked with another player who is playing at another club at the moment smaller player, very, very speed orientated. I'd worked with him a couple of years ago. He came to WA to see his family. I got asked to look after him for a couple of months and the training regimen he was under was volume length based, like time, very, very slow and it did not suit him as a player. I spoke to the staff, the boss there, the club. We were able to change him back to a speed orientated program. He went extremely well. He's moved on to another club and done some magnificent things.

Jason Weber:
6:38

So I guess the point I'm trying to make in all of that is I think the key to managing your players through these tough periods of the season is knowing what they are like, really trying to understand at a deep level what this player is like. What's their nature? Are they speed orientated? Are they distance guys? I know when I worked with in Australia the great Matthew Pavlich was an elite power athlete, had a good lactic base to him but we didn't have to put volume to him right, he didn't require it. He was able to, as long as you were able to keep his speed work into him and keep some good, high-intensity repeats which we generally got in football.

Jason Weber:
7:18

We can keep his volume down. The other thing that I did with him specifically is not pound him with volume in the gym. He was very, very good in the gym but we would spend more time on warm-up in the gym, making sure he was ready to go, making sure his flexibility was up To the extent that we would often do a very track and field thing. I would have a physio plinth in the gym and we would do treatments like small, like if you're thinking F1, like pit stop type stuff, just to get mobility up in his hips so he could come out and, in his case, clean or do his squat that he was very, very good at. So I think my answer to your question is the key to managing your players through the tough parts of the season is really understanding what is, for lack of a better term, the minimal effective dose they need to get out there and to do their very best. Long-winded answer again from me. I'm just warming up on the brews, mate.

Darren Burgess:
8:19

That's why yeah, I think you make a good point. Did you ever with those players in terms of load management? Was it always during the week, did you? You know you mentioned Geelong.

Jason Weber:
8:32

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
8:32

Historically they've managed some players. I think even Collingwood have done it so far this year Managed players out of games, I should say, and given the rest, and you know, for the overseas people only play 23 games a year, so to miss a game is reasonably significant. It's big yeah, did you ever do that, or was it more the management?

Jason Weber:
8:52

during the week. No, if I spend the majority of my time in AFL was with the great Ross Lyons. We didn't tend to not, we didn't take people out for games, we tended to manage the week. That was where you made your changes. You would manipulate the game. So particularly let's use Matthew Pavlich as a full forward. Typically, certainly in his later days, if he had a period where he went out in the first half and really put in more distance or speed than we would be normal we would try to taper him back Equally when we were at our best, if things were going really well, they would be able to pull him from the game early, reduce his minutes, but not pull him out of the game per se. Which brings you. There's another great example, like if you change tact around my time in the Wallabies we had some elite athletes in that time, so someone like Lottie Takiri, who was a magnificent, magnificent athlete.

Jason Weber:
10:06

Year Now, rugby is the same. It's not as dense as EPL, but it has this length to it because you play super rugby. If you play finals, you'll play a very short break into an international season, into an incoming international, so international teams will visit Australia. Then you play in a tournament South Africa, new Zealand, argentina short break. Then you go to Europe at the end of the year and so you come back by Christmas time and it's four weeks and you've got to start again. So there was a period there where we were trying to sell the idea to Rugby Australia to say, look, this is a four-year cycle, it's like an Olympic cycle. You want to get to the World Cup, but there has to be periods where athletes are allowed to take a break number one but then train to get their base components back up again. They can't be at the top of their game all the time. So that worked to some extent, but that's not been universally adopted at all.

Darren Burgess:
11:04

Yeah, I think missing a game is the last resort. If I'm honest, and if you're monitoring shows that a player is declining or struggling to maintain the high standards that they're normally used to, I think you've got it spot on the training management happens, but I really think you have to keep the intense periods of training there. So let's say, I don't know, you do an hour and a half on your main training day.

Darren Burgess:
11:36

That person might only do half of that, let's say 45 minutes, but you need to make sure that there's a lot of intensity in that 45 minutes, and so it is the volume that suffers or that's managed, but the intensity is maintained. And I think then with that training history, particularly with the older players, of course, if you have an injured player or someone who's carrying some tendon issues or things like that, you would modify according to the type of drill. But certainly when it's this time of year where I'm certainly looking at players who've done 100% of the load and to say, right, how can I give them a little bit of a chop out to keep them fresh because they've done really well? We're coming into round nine. Yeah, it's about that time where you're just reducing the volume but keeping the intensity high.

Jason Weber:
12:28

Mate. I'll twist it to another point which I think is relevant, given some of the results, certainly in AFL over the weekend. If you start chopping people out a lot and let's say you have to because, like you said, they're carrying tendons or whatever mentally they settle into this mode of I'm doing it easy and some do, some do more than others. Keeping that intensity is incredibly important because in this period of the year what you're starting to see in AFL is how critically important heavy defensive structures have become. So when in AFL they tend to, they want to flood one end of the field, the defense, and if you can crush a team and squeeze the life out of them from a defensive perspective they can't exit the ball from one end of the field. And the AFL field's like 150 meters long, 165, whatever it is. It's a long way. So if you can't get that exit, you're draining the team.

Jason Weber:
13:23

So my point being, when you're looking at those intense efforts, those intense efforts that you do keep need to be ones where you work with the coach on what's mentally the most important thing for the team. So, for instance, we used to do our contested ball like mini handball games and stuff in AFL same as in soccer, small spaces. They're physically demanding because there is contact, there is change direction, but they're intense, they're fast and they're very quick draw from a skills perspective. So ensuring that I think to your point. We keep working with the coach on not just what we think is like there's the physiological type balance to their program, but there's got to be the mental side, like what's the hard things they need to do to keep them in the game, but also for the other players to see that they're still in the game.

Darren Burgess:
15:22

Yeah, it's a great point. And if you take, let's go to the physiology. Then You've spoken about the non-physiological components. You know the tactical and the team perception and things like that.

Darren Burgess:
15:35

If you are continually whether it plays 35 or 25, if you are continually reducing their volume, keeping the intensity high, and what happens at this stage of the year is the game outputs are typically not as high.

Darren Burgess:
15:50

Also, and whatever metric you're looking at, just because the season is a grind and people are managing themselves through that, what I can tell you is that once you get to the back end of the season and you need the game outputs to be high again because the grounds are a lot harder and it's finals coming up and you know there might be a quarter that you must win in order to make the finals, so the intensity that person may not have that underlying physical or physiology or it might have deteriorated over that sort of eight, nine-week period where you've decreased their volume too much. So I think that only works if the game output on the weekend provides that stimulus to maintain that person's physiological fitness. If you're finding that the game output is declining, and that could be because of an individual reason or because of a team reason or weather, opposition, all that sort of stuff.

Darren Burgess:
16:47

But if it happens three or four weeks in a row, I think you really need to have a look at that and make sure that person is maintaining some finals-like outputs.

Jason Weber:
16:56

So here's an interesting point. I do like doing. This is in terms of trying to connect research to what we do in the real world. But if you look at and this is for all young operators watching this, go and have a look at Gareth Sanford's work around anaerobic speed reserve Now it's all very specific to middle distance running, but one of his key concepts is that for a middle distance runner to compete well, like if you go on 800, more, so up to 1500 and 5k and all the rest of it you've got changing speeds because you're racing. It's not a test, right? You're not doing a static speed, how long can I hold on for, type thing. It's like we're racing and the speed of the race is going up and down and you might need to sprint the first half of the race and then just hang on. You might have to go slow and then do a massive sprint at the end. My point being in that that the way Gareth talks about his training and what you're developing is that ability to change and manage speed, which I think is critical then, in a team sense, is that, as you know, the game towards the end of the year when it becomes critical. Have you got another gear, Can you go to another space? Can you slow it down, Can you speed it up? And when it does go, can you go with it?

Jason Weber:
18:14

Which brings me to things like understanding how we overspeed team training. How do we overspeed drills, or how do we create drills that, let's say, for AFL, have extra contested efforts. So we know absolutely, we've quantified that that drill is an over and overs drill. So we know that if the contested game goes past anything anyone else is prepared to offer, we can go. We can take it another level. If the coach turns around and says, right, boys, we're flooding defense in that forward 50, and we're just going to squeeze the life out of the oppo, we've got somewhere to go.

Jason Weber:
18:50

So if you go back to your monitoring piece understanding what you're measuring so that you can communicate to the coach how do our drills change? What are the key elements of our drills that we're trying to emphasize? Which gives you the ability, then, to do what you're saying? We can take a player in and out as we need to. We can adapt what we're doing relative to what we did or did not do in the game, what we're doing relative to what we did or did not do in the game, but then also from a tactical perspective, if you want to call it that. We understand what we can do. So when you know, you see in AFL now people put the signs up, you know they put the signs up to communicate to the players.

Jason Weber:
19:28

hey, we're changing this tactic, we're going from, whatever it is, tactic A to tactic B. All I want to know when that sign comes up, does everyone go?

Darren Burgess:
19:37

yeah, let's absolutely crank and get on it, you know so um I think there's a lot of threads there, man yes, in in um other sports you might be able to um manage the clock a little bit better. In basketball it's quite hard to because there's a shot clock, but you can certainly slow the tempo. In AFL there are modes. Yesterday we we happened to get pretty lucky and play a really good game and so you could see the other team were trying to slow the game down to say, right, we need to hold the ball for a little bit because you know we're down a few points and we just need to calm down a little bit and then go again. And that was the same as us last week when we were getting belted. We were trying to come up with different ways to just slow the game down. And it's both from a mental point of view as well as a physiological point of view. But you're right, knowing me being able to say to the coach, or alec butfield, our sports scientist, being able to say the coach, when you go into this mode, you are actually giving the players a rest. So if you feel like it's getting too big, this is the mode to go to, or this is the style of play to go to, and you need to have those drills uh catalogued so that you know, um, which which drill overloads you know whatever physical capacity, yeah, um. So okay, it's midway through the season.

Darren Burgess:
21:06

Most of the AFL staff have been going since mid I'll say beginning of November and going flat chat since then and we're now in. What are we in? Early May and you're only eight games in? There's still 15 games plus finals, if you're lucky enough to go. How do staff, what should staff be looking to do to? What did you use to do to try and keep yourself fresh and keep yourself motivated and keep yourself ready to go? Because you played in a bunch of finals when you were with Freya.

Jason Weber:
21:48

Yeah, I mean the same. If you go to the competition structure or the championship structure, like rugby, where you go to a 10-week world cup program, like you've done, that too, you know where you've got the pre-camp that goes for everyone, and there's week in, week out games building in in not only intensity but stress and all the rest of it.

Jason Weber:
22:10

Look, man, I think we've talked about this before and I certainly have mentioned it sometimes when I'm on my own soapbox, when I can't catch you, but I think, historically, there's been parts that I haven't handled well in that I drive myself too hard. If you look really close at the video of this, you can see what my eyes look like. It's not always the best right, but what I did learn towards the back end of my rugby tenure, which was certainly mid-2000s, was things that you need to do to keep yourself operational. Let's put it that way, right? I don't think it makes you better or worse, but you've got to. If you're going super hard, you need to find a way. Now there's all the we can talk about. You know the time to exercise and diet and all the rest of that and all that.

Jason Weber:
23:05

But I think where we want to get to is what we were talking about just before the meeting that, yeah, around those mid-2000s I learned Transcendental Meditation. I'd looked into that with respect to it, trying to keep my health where it needed to be, because when you're under stress there's all sorts of things that can go on and you need to be able to reduce that. It's funny Transcendental meditation has documented medical evidence and its impact on particularly blood pressure. But interestingly and this will twist, you see how you handle this is I also like Stoic philosophy, epictetus, marcus Aurelius, all that sort of stuff but in Stoic philosophy they talk about it's not the thing that you see or the thing that you experience that creates stress. It is what it is.

Jason Weber:
24:00

So how a coach responds, how someone speaks to you, that's what they're doing. You create the stress by going well, this is how I'm going to react to that, and I think Transcendental Meditation helps you settle that view, to say, well, I'm just going to calm myself. And the specifics of Transcendental Meditation are that you learn how to one breathe, which is really important, which is subsequent to all that stuff. I then found that breathing is a huge part of what special forces soldiers do and how they control themselves for lack of a better word in a gunfight. But it helps you settle and you can learn to do it not only in a single block, but you can do it in small moments, so when something goes sideways and you're about to lose your shit, which I never do. That's a lie. You can calm down. You can calm.

Darren Burgess:
25:00

What's your experiences, darren? It's funny that I was, from a more personal point of view, going through some stuff just over 10 years ago and so I went and paid a small fortune to do a transcendental meditation. Yeah, yeah you do.

Jason Weber:
25:14

It is a cult. It is a bit of a cult, but it works.

Darren Burgess:
25:18

I will say Look, I think most of the research now is really good on meditation generally and pick your poison. I'm not here to say one's better than the other, but pick your poison. So I found that helped me. Yeah, be grounded and be perhaps more self-aware, which I think is really important, and that's you know. I'm a fan of Stoicism as well and I truly believe that it's not the event, it's the reaction to the event, and that can be in your personal professional life. So I think that's helped me navigate what's important and what isn't important. And what we do anyway at the Crows, and what I've done previously at other clubs, is just make sure that I get staff to write out their individual calendar and then make sure that they're getting time off when they need to, or if they come in and show me their calendar, because we've got a couple of staff that are working in different programs so the men's, the women's, the reserves, which is a sand full, and often we're training on different days. So just making sure that they're getting time off.

Darren Burgess:
26:28

Look, a lot of the podcasts that you listen to now and we could go on forever on this I remember listening to I think it was a huberman podcast and he was talking about his morning routine, and his morning routine was um cold plunge sauna, cold plunge sauna, and he said you can't go 10 minutes, you have to go 15 minutes and you can't go six minutes. You have to go 15 minutes and you can't go six minutes you have to go 20 minutes, that's fantastic.

Darren Burgess:
26:51

If you're a single bloke with no kids and you're a professional podcaster with a bit of lecturing on the side, yeah, that'd be an amazing routine. I'd love that. So find out what works for you, but do something in this space that works for you because, as we know from the Christian Cook research of the early 2000s, if you believe it works for you as we know from the Christian Cook research of the early 2000s if you believe it works for you, then it will. If you put me in an ice bath I don't care what research says about ice bath. If I have to stand for 10 minutes in an ice bath, there is nothing relaxing about that for me. I'll go and dunk in my pool and make sure it's deliberately below 10 degrees, and throughout winter I'll jump in and in my pool and make sure it's deliberately below 10 degrees, and throughout winter I'll jump in and jump out again. But don't say no, you only get the benefits if it's nine and a half minutes as opposed to three minutes.

Darren Burgess:
27:41

So find out what routine gives you energy and gives you that motivation and that renewed sort of vigor for your job and life in general, and do that.

Jason Weber:
27:51

That's the seven-minute abs thing, though, mate.

Darren Burgess:
27:55

It can't be six minutes. It's got to be seven-minute abs. Yeah, exactly.

Jason Weber:
27:59

All right, before we throw off to this, I'm going to bounce one more for people who are obviously people on the way up hopefully listening to this there's probably some guys listening or guys and girls that are already in good jobs hopefully listen to this, there's probably some guys listening, guys and girls that are already in good jobs. I would say the other element is, yeah, you've got to get yourself up for your job and all that. I would make sure everyone thinks about the other thing, which is protect your family.

Jason Weber:
28:22

So, what you've got to make sure you're doing is when you're coming home, you're bringing your best. Don't leave your best at work. I would say I've been guilty of that at different times. You've got to be bringing your best home. So when it means you've got the drive home or you've got whatever you've got to sell yourself, because things get out of hand, work gets intense. And when you're managing multiple projects, like you know, everybody under the sun has got a side hustle. Now I'm clearly and you are too, mate the king of side hustles Like there's lots of stuff going on. So when you've got multiple things, I think and I've been trying to be more better at this myself recently is making sure that, as you're going home, you're going right.

Jason Weber:
29:09

Stop, I've got to leave that at the door and try and bring my best self, because it's not the work's not the most important thing. It's your family, mate, and I've found if you mistreat that, your life can go sideways. So, yeah, make sure we focus on that about coming home properly.

Darren Burgess:
29:31

Yeah, find what works for you and don't get caught up, and I'm sure there is in a lot of industries. There's a really big podcast culture in our industry and I'm sure it's you know.

Jason Weber:
29:41

And we're part of it, mate.

Darren Burgess:
29:42

Well, I know, but in terms of, you must do this for longevity and you must take this and you must do this and you know. So just be a bit uh, self-aware, a bit kinder to yourself in terms of, uh, if I'm not doing, um, you know, four high intensity bouts a week, then I'm not doing great for my heart and you know all those sorts of things. Just just work out a routine that's good for you, include all the major elements in terms of, you know, exercise and well-being and all that sort of stuff, and go that way. We're getting a little bit….

Jason Weber:
30:15

We're on the back end a little bit.

Darren Burgess:
30:17

Yeah, a little bit holier than thou I don't know.

Jason Weber:
30:20

Look, I would say this, mate, the podcast culture thing, barring my odd jump into this feed, sick thing we're not selling anything.

Darren Burgess:
30:31

No, I'm not preaching. No, I'm not preaching anything. We're not selling supplements.

Jason Weber:
30:38

I think what we've just spoken about is legitimately the two experiences that we've both had and I agree, mate, I find it personally incredibly difficult to exercise right at the moment because I feel like you know the old hey, we've only got so much in the bucket and that's all you've got.

Jason Weber:
30:57

I feel like sometimes, by the time I give to work, give to family, I've got nothing left. So if I spend myself doing what I feel like I'd like to do training-wise, I would come home with nothing and then family would have nothing and I'd be a dick at home, and then that ends up bad.

Darren Burgess:
31:15

So you're prioritizing that for?

Jason Weber:
31:17

the moment yeah, yeah For sure. But I try. I tell you what's funny is watching a 55-year-old dude on his son's mountain bike riding to work, because I've been trying to do that like just to ride to work and back.

Darren Burgess:
31:30

Yeah, yeah, nice.

Jason Weber:
31:31

But when I'm trudging along and there's all these dudes through the suburbs, the western suburbs of Perth, riding on their $10,000 bikes and their flashy pink body suits, and I'm trudging along in my black shorts, my black T-shirt and gripping on the mountain bike like there's no tomorrow, you've got to do what you got to do right, mate.

Darren Burgess:
31:54

The amount of times I get overtaken these days on runs is just is ridiculous.

Jason Weber:
31:59

And the old days I chase them down and then I think yeah, it's not that important no, no I can't do that the worst part is when you're in the gym and you think, oh yeah, I could lift that. No, you can't once. We're warriors mate. Oh yeah, I could lift that. No, you can't Once, we're warriors mate, that's it.

Darren Burgess:
32:12

Yeah, something like that.

Jason Weber:
32:14

All right mate on that note.

Darren Burgess:
32:16

It's been a pleasure, as always Been a pleasure.

Jason Weber:
32:18

And I hope you have a restful Saturday before AFL kicks back in. And mate, we'll catch up next week.

Darren Burgess:
32:25

Speak soon, mate.

Jason Weber:
32:26

See you, buddy.

-----END SEASON 3, EPISODE 11-----

-----BEGIN THE EPL HAMSTRING CRISIS: WHAT CAN BE DONE?-----
Jason Weber:
0:01

Hi, welcome to a rather impromptu version of Two Coaches and a Coffee. Today you only have one coach. Unfortunately, Darren can't be with me right at this moment. One coach Unfortunately Darren can't be with me right at this moment, which is just a complication of being a very, very busy guy and myself. So I'm recording this at 8.30 at night, literally running on the last bit of gas I've got.

Jason Weber:
0:36

But as we probably won't get to catch up for another couple of days, and in light of an article that I just had put across my desk, I thought it really pertinent that I get on my soapbox and have a chat. So the article that a friend of mine has just sent me from the US. He sent me an article from the BBC, Sport are hamstring injuries getting worse in the Premier League? Well, most of us probably know the answer to that, but it's interesting to have a look at the data that they've put out. So in 2024-25, we currently have 124 hamstring injuries as of 28th of April. Now, at that rate, with the remaining, I think, five rounds to go, they'll get estimate maybe 142 injuries, and I think in the article the author actually says 140. I estimate 142. We'll see how that goes, but 2023-24,. So last season was 163. 22-23, 138, then 129, 122 the year before. So you've got an escalating number of pensions 22, 23, 138, then 129, 122 the year before. So you've got an escalating number of hamstrings. This year, if it goes to 142, as I loosely predict, it'll be a little bit less than last year. But what's more disturbing is the data that they bring in about the length of injury. Is the data that they bring in about the length of injury? So this year, 22, 23, 24. My apologies, 23, 24 is. Last year, 52% of hamstrings kept the player sidelined for longer than 30 days 22, 23, and 20, 21,. It was 46 and 30 respectively before that. But this year, this year, where it's in theory a little bit lower, it's 61 percent of players are longer than 30 days.

Jason Weber:
2:43

Now, for everyone listening, we should understand the time frame. That means, so in theory, a 2b injury, so an injury that is a significant cross-sectional area. Some of the 2Bs can be plus or minus a little bit of tendon, but they're going to be around about. You know that eight weeks mark six to eight weeks, six weeks. Theoretically it should be 2B, 2a, 2b should be getting in around that Now if it's starting to stretch for 30 days.

Jason Weber:
3:05

The article points out quite accurately that some teams take a conservative approach. I understand that, but we're just working with the numbers, as Darren and I always do. We're working with hypothetical but we're also balancing out the facts that are given to us. So a 30-day hamstring is a pretty solid hamstring, to be really honest. And in the EPL that's missing a lot of games because you know in theory you're playing twice a week, sometimes more. You know that's a ton of games that players are out for, so it's an expensive issue. So, reading through this article a bit further, they don't really give us much insight.

Jason Weber:
3:45

We get the quote from a gentleman who's been involved in Premier League clubs as a physiotherapist and his big point which is very accurate but it's not really helping us is the biggest indicator for having hamstring injury is having a previous hamstring injury. Go figure, we already knew that. That's great, but I mean that is for the BBC Sports, so he's giving that out to general population. That's cool, but what it means is that we've got to be on top of this, that once you get a hamstring injury it means you continue to have it. So there's a couple of things going on there. Why are we getting them in the first place and then, once we have them, why do they continue to be issues? Now, this is something that plagued me, and not specifically just hamstrings, but the whole return to play. When we're bringing a player back, are we bringing them back at the highest level of their being, as far back as we can get them?

Jason Weber:
4:40

Now, I've been involved. Anyone who's watched PC watched Two Coats and a Coffee with me and Darren. We've been involved. Anyone who's watched PC watched Two Coaches and a Coffee with me and Darren. We've been around a long time. I'm 30 years in the gig this year. I've been around a long time A lot of time in professional rugby, a lot of time in AFL, spent time in professional football and now I'm doing stuff in and around athletics and all sorts of other sports.

Jason Weber:
5:04

But here's the rub we need to be better. As sports scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, whoever you'd like to label yourself as, we need to be better. What it means at the moment is what we're measuring isn't good enough. Now, I'm not saying people aren't trying, and I'm not saying people aren't smart enough not by any stretch. In fact, what I'm probably arguing is that the technologies that we've got and the technologies that we're using presently are insufficient for the demands of what we're doing in our sport.

Jason Weber:
5:40

Now you go, why are they getting injured? Look, Burgo and I have talked about the game load and he's been very, very clear on that. The game load's going up. Players are doing more and more. There's multiple competitions. Epl teams are playing across multiple tiers, but not all of them. Some of them are only playing once a week because they're not involved in those competitions.

Jason Weber:
5:59

Nonetheless, the injury rates have gone up, by the sounds of it, for the most part certainly over the last five years. But worse than that, it would appear that the magnitude of damage is becoming greater. Now no one's speaking to in this article how many of those injuries are recurrent. So are they new injuries? Is it 61% of new injuries? But we don't know. We don't have those facts.

Jason Weber:
6:23

But nonetheless, for the physio to come out and who's quoted in the Ni ck Worth, and say that it's previous injury, you know, you think there's a portion of them are going to be previous injuries. So we've got to stop them and we've got to stop them re-going. The games aren't going to change. I'm sorry to say that, like. I know guys like Darren are working with FIFPro and the like and they're going to bat to try and figure out. Can we recommend that there's less games? The players need to survive all that sort of thing. I get it, I hear it, I actually believe in it, I'm there for it. But football's a business and business moves on, it rolls, it's going to go and if you're not ready to do it, the next guy is going to come in and they're going to keep pushing. I'm sorry to say that. So from a strength and conditioning, high performance, sports science, physio perspective, our job is really to deal with it and we've got to figure it out the best we can.

Jason Weber:
7:22

If I go back to my point about what are we looking at? The data we're looking at is not sufficient to explain the variability in the issues in the athletes we have in the environment and the issue of the athlete themselves. What does that mean? I sound like a nerd when I say that, but there is a degree of nerd about me, there's no question. But that understanding the variability is that when we measure something, if we do something as simple as ground contact, time versus speed, right, we want to understand that as the athlete goes faster, ground contact comes down. So we know there's a relationship between those two things. But in a broader sense, as sports scientists, professionals, whatever you want to call it, let's just call it performance and rehab specialist In those contexts we want to be describing the amount of information, or we want to use our information to describe the variability in our athletes, because athlete A and athlete B are not necessarily the same thing, but they might be doing the same thing. Therefore the cost could be different.

Jason Weber:
8:26

And then we have the issue of previous injuries. So is there a weakness there in the first place? Now, if I harp on my piece, which anyone who's seen me present, we do a lot of great stuff in the gym. We do a lot of awesome stuff and in the 30 years I've been around, we've gone from doing absolutely nothing. You know stopwatch I grew up with a stopwatch and a pen and paper well, pencil and paper but we now do a ton of stuff.

Jason Weber:
8:50

I think the isometric strength measurements are great. I think the eccentric stuff to a point is fine. I think the work on force plates is fine. I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. I think when I'm clearing an athlete to say hey, are these guys ready to run?

Jason Weber:
9:06

Back in the day where we used to do five hops in front of the person and we'd stand there and go well, is it? Yes, there's another famous physio I work with. Dr Jeffrey Ball used to say do they jump with gusto? Which I always liked right, because we were evaluating if he's really given it a punch. Well then we've got some confidence. But now we hop on a force plate, we get the numbers. We say is that where they were from before? All good, all good.

Jason Weber:
9:32

But the reality is this that once you go on the field and once you start to run, all those things become just steps on the way. They're no longer the facts. They're no longer the facts, they're no longer a clearance test. Once you get on the field, the speed of ground contact, even at low speeds, is faster than most of you do on a force plate. The angle of velocity of all the joints and limbs that are operating is far more complex than on a force plate. Far more complex than on a force plate, far more complex than an eccentric hamstring contraction.

Jason Weber:
10:09

It's such a small thing, the number of people I see hanging their hats, hanging everything, hanging their careers of players on the output of an eccentric hamstring whatever you want to call it lower is disgraceful. Right To think that the only thing we're going to do to solve a hamstring whatever you want to call it lower is disgraceful. Right To think that the only thing we're going to do to solve a hamstring injury is we're going to just make it stronger. We're going to make it stronger than anyone's ever made it. That's what my thesis is, and don't get me wrong, I've seen people do that. I've got the published data from some teams. Now that has proven to be absolutely false. I think eccentric hamstring strength gives you an indicator. No question, no question, I'm all for that, but it's not the be all and end all.

Jason Weber:
10:56

Too many people are hanging their hats on GPS, force plates, isometrics and eccentric hamstring. I think they all have their place, but once you get on the field even measuring speed and I did this for years survivability, let's run them at a certain speed and if they survive, they're okay. The next day they must be okay, which drove me mad. Drove me mad because it can't possibly be the way, because I could see athletes that were coming back from a variety of injuries that I know had changed their gait. Now that happens. That means they're achieving the same speed. They are doing it in a different way.

Jason Weber:
11:36

Imagine driving down the road. Let's take a number, random number AFL average player wage is $350,000 Australian. Give or take Somewhere in that market. That's the average, the average, and that's nothing against what's in the EPL and the NFL and the like, probably not even college football now in the US. But imagine you had a car worth $350,000 and you're driving it around and it's smooth and it's flying and it's great, all good. But then you blow a tyre and you get the tyre replaced. But it's not the same tyre, it's a slightly different tyre Because clearly you take a $350,000 car down to your local tyre shop. He probably doesn't have the whiz-bang tyre, so this thing gets clonked on. Now you can still go and drive it at the same speed, but it doesn't feel the same anymore. It's different. You're achieving the same speed, the same output using a different method. That's what happens in running.

Jason Weber:
12:39

Now it's not just hamstring injury, it's ankle injuries, it's plantar fascia, it's knees, it's backs, it's grinds, it's everything. You change your gait. So what I've been harping on for for a long time and everyone keeps telling me I should be marketing better. All I can tell you is the truth of what I've got and what I've tried to do. I think my thesis, my personal thesis, is that gait does change. Gait does change with injury. It also changes with fatigue, but it changes specifically with injury and it's our job as performance and rehabilitation specialists, it's our job to try and figure that out, to understand that and to understand that variability of the individual. What's changed? How much has it changed? What do we need to get it back to where it was? Can we get it back? If we can't, what's now the deficit and what impact does that deficit have on other elements of our training interventions? This is what people aren't thinking about.

Jason Weber:
13:46

It's not good enough just to use GPS. Gps was a wonderful technology in 2004 when I got my first set of GPS when I was with the head of performance for the Wallabies. That is now 21 years ago, 21 years and we're still doing the same stuff. We haven't pushed on. So I'm blowing my own trumpet. I'm blowing my own trumpet. I'm blowing my own trumpet. This is what I built SpeedSig for. SpeedSig uses those GPS units to identify the features that are falling apart biomechanically. Now people will say, yeah, but we can measure that another way and this way I'll tell you this. This is for my. Again, I'm biased, but I'm going to tell you what's not good enough and you go out and compare with what else you're doing.

Jason Weber:
15:43

What's not good enough is a classification model. So a classification model usually in machine learning right, it's unsupervised. So what it means is we take data and we just put them into buckets and we put people in buckets. Now there's a lot of great research that's used that and I'm not going to quote that. But there's awesome bodies of research around that using that technology which helps us understand from performance perspective, this person should be focusing on stride length, they should be focusing on frequency. Somebody else should be focusing on whatever else. That's fine from a global performance perspective. But if we're trying to be smarter and we're trying to beat the odds of these hamstring injuries which are, in this BBC article, obviously prolific, now we know in the AFL it's probably about the same.

Jason Weber:
16:34

I work across the NFL and American college football. We see similar things and there are other issues. Obviously the NFL plagued by Achilles injuries for whatever reason, but we need to try and understand that. So a classification model is just a generalization. It puts people into buckets. That's fine, but it isn't going to help you specifically address the left versus right issue of individuals, which I take that further. There are obviously technologies out there. Now I'm not going to labour on my direct competitors and things like that, that's not. I'm not about that. So you can figure it out for whoever you like. You can figure out who I'm speaking about if anybody but kinematics alone don't do it.

Jason Weber:
17:21

So understanding ground contact time, stride frequency, stride length doesn't cut it. It's not enough. It's not enough information, particularly when ground contact time is not a direct function or it is a function of other features. So if you put more force into the ground, which is a kinetic variable we push harder on the ground, ground contact goes down. Ken Clark has illustrated if, with triangular velocity goes up, if our leg comes to the ground faster and our foot is positioned better, all forces improve horizontal force, vertical force. So if we're not measuring kinetics, or at least in our case we have a representation, a surrogate representation of force, you're missing part of the story.

Jason Weber:
18:10

Equally the ubiquitous debate that every single S&C coach in the world has had with every single S&C coach in the world has had with every single physiotherapist or athletic trainer. For those in the US where we stand around and go, hey, his pelvis looks anteriorly rotated or it's moving a little bit differently left to right. Get it, 100%, get it. I agree. I spoke to Johan Lathi recently up in Finland. He's written some brilliant articles. He loves it. He's written a lot of work through the JB Morin group on hamstrings, him and Jordan Mendogucia, who I don't know, but I love their work. They've written some fantastic stuff. But they are speaking about what's happening in the frontal plane of the pelvis. Is that a contributor? We know, theoretically, anteriorly rotated pelvis. It lengthens the hamstring. So if you've got an overstriding guy with an anteriorly rotated pelvis, it stands to reason the hamstring's in a bad spot. Not only is it lengthened, but mechanically its ability to pull horizontally is vastly challenged. Now I know, 100% agree.

Jason Weber:
19:17

Peter Wayne's told us and illustrated that there's more vertical force. That's the major push in running, no question. But JB Moran has shown categorically that the amount of horizontal force is critical to velocity. So you lose that and you're in trouble If you lose that because you're positioning your foot differently because of a hamstring injury or the threat of a hamstring injury. We've got problems.

Jason Weber:
19:40

Now there are a couple of great papers that this too one by Bregeli, one by Lord that show categorically, post-injury, there are differences in the ability to produce horizontal force. Now I will also note at this point Paula Barrera, who's the first team performance coach at man United with Ed Lang and the boys up there. I had the pleasure of meeting him, those guys last year. Now Paulo wrote a great article looking at the similar thing with high-grade EPL athletes. When they came back and ran on treadmill, did they see a difference in horizontal force velocity? Sorry, horizontal force production? Now they didn't show any difference, which is cool, which is great. I thought Polo's paper was awesome and if you're listening, mate, at some point I hope mate appreciate your work Awesome.

Jason Weber:
20:29

Now I went through that paper in detail and I've actually produced my own review of all that which, if you go to my website, if you go to SpeedSig and join up, join up to our website, we'll download that paper for you so you can have a look at it. That's speedsigcom. This is fortuitous marketing. I've got to get it done, otherwise I'm not going to be able to feed my family. But Harlow's paper was awesome in that it showed that he didn't come up with any false positives. So it's quite possible that their rehab was so good. They just didn't have anybody that was actually had a decay. On the other side of rehab they're equally using a curved treadmill which, again for reasons I go into in my paper, that changes your mechanics because you're running uphill. It's actually a way that we should be rehabbing hamstrings. Nonetheless, that's another whole thing. So between those three papers I think there's enough evidence to suggest that.

Jason Weber:
21:29

Then I layer on top my work with SpeedSig. We can see the hamstring. We can see the lack of force horizontally post-hamstring. We can also see it post-ankle. So how's that one? You do an ankle and all of a sudden you're not pulling to the ground the way you were before. You're not attacking the ground. Thigh angular velocity drops, . Your foot places slightly in front of the center of mass. Your spring mass model becomes elongated. Now we're in a bad position mechanically to pull using the hamstring and glute function. I'll throw you another one, and this is another thing that we need to be looking at. I encourage this all the time when I'm speaking to clients every single week. I've done two reviews in the NFL this week and this subject was front and center.

Jason Weber:
22:23

In my opinion, one of the biggest things that happens in a hamstring injury is we lose frontal plane control of the pelvis. Hip lock gone, all right, it drops away. What happens when you think if we're in stance phase on our right leg and our left hip starts to drop, it elongates bicep femoris on the outside and the lateral aspect of the right leg, the stance phase leg. It's mechanically disadvantaged. The hamstring tries to stabilize the pelvis when it should be contributing to propulsion. So we've got a big problem there.

Jason Weber:
22:58

And this is my thing. This is what I've been doing for 12 years now and I can't be any more honest than I'm being is I'm trying to say I don't think I can solve hamstring injuries. I don't think that at all. I think we can improve the situation. That's what we need to be doing. We need to be taking the technology, and I say we people who stand up like me and go right.

Jason Weber:
23:23

We're in a technology company. This is what we do. We've got to be better. That's as simple as I can make it. What we have now we have a camshaft, we have isometrics, we have GPS. Good, great, that's a good start. We need to be better.

Jason Weber:
23:40

What's the next thing I'm offering you? The next thing I'm offering the next thing based on our work using the GPS units, you've got Catapult and Staff Sports Alright, use those units. We're about to start work with Connexon Same deal. Use those units. We're about to start work with Connexon Same deal. Use those units to collect the data. You measure it.

Jason Weber:
24:02

The thing that we do different to anybody else is because you're using those units and those units are on every single player, every single day, in every single team, in every single field sport in the world. You've got the units there. 30 second job to put them into a lumber belt. Do a couple of reps done? It's also no good.

Jason Weber:
24:24

I talked before about what's not good enough. What's not good enough is taking one or two samples or taking a video. Taking a video of one rep and being able to distinguish hey, we know what's happening in their gate, not happening. You need more data. You need more data. You need more data across more speeds to understand the changes in velocity and changes in mechanics when you get things like what we call a divergent pattern. Divergent pattern simply means that when we're looking at a variable, let's go simple ground contact. As we go faster, we would expect ground contact to come down. What happens when you've got one leg that comes down but one leg that does not, and it's repeatable and it's been seen over a bulk of 20 to 30 reps. Now that's a problem. When you've got ground contact going fundamentally not changing, not getting lower, you have to go deeper. Why is ground contact not changing?

Jason Weber:
25:28

Let's look at the force components. Let's look at the dynamic stability of the pelvis, because you know what a pelvis does. Pelvis is the biggest articulation between the application of force on the ground and our biggest source of mass, which is our torso, between the application of force on the ground and our biggest source of mass, which is our torso. If that articulation is off, imagine you're trying to punch somebody with your fingers wide open. That's what happens. We push force into the ground. As that force travels up, we go to displace it or transmit it to our torso to create a projection. It gets dispersed because the pelvis is all over the place. That happens, that happens a lot. And when we're seeing guys come back from injury, we're not doing enough of that. Frontal plane control work, acl same thing, one of the biggest.

Jason Weber:
26:18

Now I've gone on for quite a while and I apologize. I hope I'm not driving anyone mad, but I keep being told. I've got to tell my story. This is my story. Bbc, two days ago, produced this article. I've got a strong story. I can demonstrate exactly where your athletes are at. All you've got to do is reach out and connect. We're already operating in the US, australia, uk, right across. We're just starting into Europe.

Jason Weber:
26:50

But if there's people who are interested and this is my thing I choose who I work with. Right. I want to work with people who are engaged, who are looking, who want the next thing, who want to ask the questions. More importantly, they want to answer the questions. Challenge yourself to find the things that are not working.

Jason Weber:
27:09

Because if we've gone in the EPL, as we've seen over five years, the injuries have gone up, but not only that, they're getting worse. 61% of arguably 142 injuries this year are greater than 30 days, and we know that if you get an injury, it's the highest predictor of getting another one. So we either need to stop the first one or we need to be more accurate about what happens after. Ideally, we do both. We do our best to stop it and we do something different, because what we're doing at the moment is not working. And if it does, come down to the total amount of games, jumping on a force plate and measuring neural fatigue is not cutting it. Either that or it's being read really well but no one's actioning it, which is possible, absolutely possible. What I know through my PhD work, which is interesting, has been redacted because I wanted to make it into a business, but in my PhD we showed across the course of 12 months in AFL that the high-frequency, very neural features of running, the primary one would be the frequency of stride rate, number of steps per second drops, with fatigue drops in association with the high and long, consistent lows. So at the end of pre-season coming into the buy rounds. So if those things are happening, does that give us more information to rotate our players? Does that give us more information to keep our players sustainable across time? Listen, it's coming up to the limit of where Darren and I usually stop.

Jason Weber:
28:46

So I appreciate anybody who's got this far, but I would ask if you're even the remotest bit interested. All I do in my life at the moment is talk about running and SpeedSig and how we can help people. I'm more than interested to have a chat. Reach out speedsigcom. Really simple I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn. Reach out and have a chat. That's all you've got to do. We get started, get a trial, get a feel for it. But what I want, what I'm aiming for, which is my total utilitarian self, I want my profession to be better. That which is my total utilitarian self. I want my profession to be better. That includes me. I need to do my job better, all right, and part of us doing it better is us getting better data about and understanding the variability in the systems we're working with. Anyway, thank you. I hope you've made it this far. I hope there's something in it for you. I want you just to think and challenge your environment. Challenge what we're doing to be better. Look forward to being in contact. Thanks.

-----END THE EPL HAMSTRING CRISIS: WHAT CAN BE DONE?-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPISODE 9-----
Jason Weber:
0:15

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Weber. With you here. We're back two weeks in a row, Burgess. It's been a struggle, but we got here again. We're back two weeks in a row, Burgo.

Darren Burgess:
0:23

It's been a struggle, but we got here again. We got here again, mate, and as we predicted last week because we're back the Crows had a win, so we're not going to miss another week.

Jason Weber:
0:33

No we're going to keep at it. Crows had a mighty win and we won't get into it too much. There are a couple of other things on our agenda, but there's some interesting trends you see around the AFL at the moment, like because all the data or not all the data, but a good portion of data gets pushed through the Telstra apps. It's actually I watch what people are doing, what teams are doing, not people what the teams are doing collectively. And you know there's a couple of teams that are succeeding really well without running particularly hard, but other teams, if they don't run, they bomb, they absolutely bomb.

Darren Burgess:
1:11

Yeah, it bugs the trend a bit. Footy in terms of global sport by and large.

Darren Burgess:
1:17

If you're skilled, you don't need to run, and so you can control the game by and large, but I've found this year more than ever the athletic component of the game is related to performance, particularly if you break it down into segments or quarters. And we played a game where there was very few goals scored, so the ability or the need to sprint wasn't there, because the ball never went out of play, so it was just a grind and you didn't get that sort of 45-second break at the end of each goal.

Jason Weber:
1:49

So what was what I was interested in? I've used that data and for any young industrious students out there, here's a project for you. But what I did over three years was look at the difference between the team and the team they were playing. So it's not an absolute, it's how much differential was there between you and the team you played, and I ended up getting to a global, you know, predictor of about 65% probability of getting the right answer for a game. But it is interesting that there, as you said, there are teams that can do it. That other teams just got to run. That's their thing, but it is differential. That's a big, big difference.

Darren Burgess:
2:28

For sure, and there's a whole bunch that goes into that as we know. You said something in the two-minute preamble.

Jason Weber:
2:35

In the green room.

Darren Burgess:
2:37

Yeah, you said something that you wanted to have a chat about around. Do you want to do the attitude one first, or do you want to do the attitude one first, or what do you want to do?

Jason Weber:
2:45

Well, let's first things first. I've just had a conversation with a guy I work with which I think is really pertinent and I've felt it a lot, so we'll get to that. But that's the idea of how much time am I giving to this job versus what's the personal cost. And so the question was well, do we start coming in on extra days? Is that really part of what we do? And I've made no fun of it. I work at a government institution now, so it's a lot more regimented how things work.

Jason Weber:
3:17

But my response was pretty simple. I said I think I've gone too far in the past and I've taken a big physical, a big personal toll. I've probably neglected my family at different times because of big work commitments, and lots of people do that. But I think you've got to weigh up.

Jason Weber:
3:36

If your career is on the way up and you've just got your first big job or you're on the way, maybe you do have to go over this and you have to super commit and all that. And then, when you get the big jobs and you've been in plenty Birger, but I know, working 12 years in the AFL and even with national rugby like you were giving everything to it. But I'm at a stage in my career now where, legitimately, you're getting paid maybe a third of what I've been paid elsewhere for similar timeframes and it's just not there Like I'm coming to work, that's when we're in, that's when we're doing our thing, that's it. So I think there's a real balance to that too far and not ensuring family wellbeing and then your wellbeing within that, because I would be guilty of maybe making some errors there over time.

Darren Burgess:
4:33

Yeah, it's a good point and I think we're more aware of it now than we ever have been in terms of the work-life balance of both yourself and your staff. The other thing and this maybe leads into the second part if you follow people on Instagram or TikTok or X or whatever, your poison is and they are working with let's say, they're working with the New England Patriots or New York Knicks, or Pick your Poison and you follow them and very rarely are they posting about their work.

Darren Burgess:
5:08

But what they are posting about at times is, you know, a great day with the kids in the snow here, or amazing in Disneyland, or whatever. The chances are that those people like influencers and you know prominent people, even your mates on TikTok and Facebook. I've got no mates on TikTok, but on Instagram or whatever.

Jason Weber:
5:36

I'm on TikTok mate.

Darren Burgess:
5:37

Yeah, the chances are they are.

Darren Burgess:
5:40

They're just snapshots and you can get seduced by it and think, oh, that guy works for the patriots or that girl works for the knicks and she's doing all this stuff with the family, like, and yeah, the chances are it's a snapshot, they're making sure that everybody knows when they do spend time with the family or do go on that run through the bush or whatever it might be. There is a reality to the sport that we're in and you can get, or to the profession that we're in, you can get the like. I could name you eight players who are living, eight high performance managers who are living away from their families currently, and that's okay, that can work, you know, no problem. I'm leaning sort of insights into people's work-life balance from social media, because we never had it at the start, so you just assumed that everybody was either working too hard or getting it right or whatever, whereas nowadays there's that perception that you know it's so great working for the Cleveland Cavaliers because so-and-so is doing it and look what he or she is doing.

Jason Weber:
6:43

So you've just got to be a bit careful. I think I couldn't agree more. I would say to you that as jobs get bigger and you get paid more, there is a cost not the cost of the company but you get that new wage that's going up and up and up. The cost to you becomes more and more. I think you've got to give more because there's more being demanded of you. I think if you're in a high-paid job really high and you're sitting back with your feet on the desk like, well, you've clearly done something I'm not doing. But I think there's always a cost Be careful of you know.

Jason Weber:
7:20

Some people say be careful what you wish for. You get the big job, but it would cost you. Now I'll be honest and say November last year I got offered a job to go back in the AFL in Melbourne for a lot more money than I'm on now. But I remember going over there to interview and hanging out in this hotel room and thinking is this what I'm going to be doing for the next couple of years? Like living in a hotel or a small apartment and my family going? I just went. No, it's not happening, because that wasn't a price I was prepared to pay for that income and for that job. So, no matter what, the presentation, that team, the management were awesome and all the rest of it, but you've got to balance out what you're prepared to do.

Darren Burgess:
8:07

I think you just have to understand that there is a cost there and that may not be like what you just described. Some people, that might be their dream. Oh yeah, live away from your wife, that's it. Yeah, live away from the family. Absolutely no judgment.

Darren Burgess:
8:23

No, no, no, that's absolutely fine and and sometimes you know what people have to do that because it's the only job going and the only job they can take, and I'm okay with that as well. Well, just understand that there is a cost to it and get in front of it. And, um, you're probably right. You know there's a part of me that wants to say, no, you should treat the Perth Flyers, the amateur Perth baseball team that you're working for Jase, the same as you do the Perth Glory or Fremantle Dockers or West Coast Eagles. But there is a reality of dealing with. If you live in a $50 million house versus a $50,000 house, you're probably going to treat it a bit differently and that's the reality of the assets that you're working with.

Jason Weber:
9:15

Well, I think, yeah, look, man, I'll go to the first point. I'll come back to how we treat our athletes and so forth. But, like again the last couple of years for me, I've taken a big wage but I've worked in the military overseas and that the cost was I was away from home for two months at a time, you know, doing what I was doing. So there's big costs. That was a big cost to me. That's why I chose now that I don't want to be away from family, and that's my thing. But to see your next point, which is really again a green room discussion we had, I think, your attitude to the Perth Flyers versus being at, you know, a national level or an EPL club or something, your attitude and your application, your professionalism should not waver. You should be.

Darren Burgess:
11:11

Agreed.

Jason Weber:
11:12

Now, I went back to high school coaching a bunch of years ago and I went back in and I said well, listen, this is where I've just come from. I'm not coming down to your standard, You're coming up to mine. That's it. That's the line in the sand.

Jason Weber:
11:23

I'm not coming down to your standard. You're coming up to mine. That's it. That's the line in the sand. Now I will say that I was also in a conversation a couple of weeks ago where I had a coach who was quite experienced say to me. He said what do you think about the athletes? What type of athletes do you want to work with? And I said well, look, I'm in an environment where there's lots of different stuff in Olympic sports there's lots of different sports and where I work now I have Paralympians as well. I said I'm really not that concerned. I'm really more concerned about what they bring. If they're into it, I'm on Great.

Jason Weber:
11:57

He said, no, I need to work with the best. I need to work with the very elite, because that's where I'm at my best. Need to be at work with the very elite because that's where I'm at my best. I can really fine-tune them and do that. And I thought you know what? You're a crock of shit, right, because I've seen you coach and, yeah, you can do some good stuff, but a good coach can coach in any level for mine, and you shouldn't be saying, hey, I don't coach the lesser ones, I don't coach the development athletes. I think you should be working to coach. Like I said, I feel like I want to coach those with enthusiasm and their bringing which means I think, if you're learning to coach and you're on the way up and I guess we try to give takeaways in this podcast for young coaches coming up and I guess we try to give takeaways in this podcast for young coaches coming up my opinion is you need to be great with anybody who you can encourage to train with you, someone who gives you the I don't know the right, like they're going to do what you say, so they're putting their trust in you. You should be doing the very, very best you can say. So they're putting their trust in you. You should be doing the very, very best you can.

Jason Weber:
13:09

Now again to my current situation. I've been I don't know if you want to call it blessed. I've been given a magnificent opportunity to work with a couple of paratriathletes who are phenomenal people, but not only that. I've learned so much from having to adapt skills to people who don't have a limb, who have compromised limbs, whatever, and you start to apply all the things that you work on and I talk all the time about speed, speed and running, biomechanics. You start trying to talk about running mechanics with someone who doesn't have a leg or doesn't have an arm. You know, it becomes a really, really fascinating challenge to what you understand.

Jason Weber:
13:45

And to that extent I had the pleasure of meeting with the great Dan Faffer a couple of weeks ago and after a long conversation where he tested me, he didn't say anything, we got into some of his stuff, he was loving it. But you know what he brings out. He brings out video of an athlete running with one limb. So they've got the heavy, you know big recoil limb on the other side and we're looking at spinal engine and what the pelvis is doing. And I'm fascinated because he's a coach who's at the highest level of his game.

Jason Weber:
14:20

He's not saying, hey, I only work with the best Olympic athletes. He's not saying, hey, I only work with the best olympic athletes. I'm working with a person who's, you know, a paralympian or a compromised athlete, but he's learning exponentially, having learned there. So again, my opinion is I think if someone puts their trust in you to be coached by you, you should give them everything you can like, the very best of your ability, to which I was. Again, the conversation I just had was that's what fatigues you when you're coaching heavy, when you've got a heavy coaching load, is you're giving? You're giving to your athletes, you want to give them energy, time, whatever you've got, and that's what becomes a personal cost.

Darren Burgess:
15:04

Anyway, that's my rant, yeah, I think so to summarise for the young folk out there, to summarise yeah we made the point at the start about yeah, there's a demand to the high-paying role. So if you're getting paid a lot to work in the, I don't know.

Jason Weber:
15:27

NBA or.

Darren Burgess:
15:28

NFL or AFL. There is an expectation because there's a salary which is hopefully commensurate with your experience and the role, and there's an expectation because you are dealing with expensive assets, but certainly the attitude, the enthusiasm, shouldn't differ. Maybe the time commitment is going to differ as you go down the levels, because the time commitment of the athlete is different, but the cost per session should remain the same. Is that what you're suggesting when you're elevating through the ranks? That's perhaps not the case, though. No, it's not the case.

Jason Weber:
16:10

So I think there's two parts to it. I think the number one. The first part, was really about time. So if you're paid a certain amount, well, you're going to give everything you've got in a limited window of time, whereas when, let's say, afl, my attitude was I was being paid a really good wage. That means my opinion was that if I had to stay and solve something, or something needed to be done or there was more, and we all work overs, but I was always prepared to give whatever it took because I thought that was what I was being remunerated to do. So the time became more.

Jason Weber:
16:43

You would stay for that meeting, you would stay for that meet, you would stay for this or that or the other thing, or you would come in early, or you would facilitate. You know, let's say, an athlete who wanted to do an activation on the morning of a game. It's a relatively benign thing for a game that goes two hours. You know, do they really need to do it? But you know what? I'll come in and do it because I think mentally it's good for you, it fits Right, let's go do it, whereas I'm in an environment where I'm not being paid to go to that extreme. Right, I'll tell you what to do. You go and facilitate it elsewhere. That's where I'm at.

Jason Weber:
17:21

I don't think like I would be at that if we go to the second case that person's in scheduled training and all that. I'm in and I'm giving them everything I've got, but I'm not being paid to be there on a Sunday morning before a game to do something that, in my opinion, relatively low level of return on task. You can get it done. I'll give you a list of things you can do wherever. Go and get them done. I'm not coming to work specifically. That's my beef.

Darren Burgess:
17:49

Not beef, but position. I guess what you're talking about, though, is from an attitude point of view. There can be a scenario where people say my dedication to my profession or my craft or whatever you want to call? It only applies when I work at the top level. I'm not lowering myself to go and work with. Paralympians or with part-time athletes.

Jason Weber:
18:13

Well, the conversation I was in a few weeks ago implied that very strongly. That was what I was getting off it Like I don't want to work with those people over there. I'm going to stay where I'm at now. Yeah, I, my opinion with that is I don't care, I'll work with whomever I've got. I've got a real interesting mix of combat athletes, olympics at the moment, all sorts of things, um, but my interest is in where they're at. If they're into it and focused, I'm going to bring as much as I can. But if they all start saying, hey, we need to come in on Sunday morning, like not happening because that's not where we're at at the moment, but I'll give them what I've got when we're here, when we're scheduled to be here, and that's all happening.

Jason Weber:
19:02

But I think the attitude of hey, I'm only going to work with the best athletes because I'm who I am, you know, I've got some years of experience. I don't believe in that I very much. I think the attitude of I think I learned from the Russian text years ago the youngest athletes should be with the oldest coach or the most experienced coach.

Darren Burgess:
19:26

Yeah, yeah, we spoke about that. That's an interesting concept.

Jason Weber:
19:31

So I'm in a position at the moment where I'm overseeing some teams that need more experienced coaches, coaching the youngest athletes. All right, Berger, I'm going to throw you one, because you're a very well-travelled pro. How did you feel when you went from Arsenal and you'd done heaps of years in AFL? You've gone to Arsenal, you had a bunch of years, and then you come back to the AFL. Now there's all sorts of differences. There's geography, there's income, there's the whole thing. But as a professional, how did you approach that?

Darren Burgess:
20:13

To be honest, I didn't treat the Arsenal players any different to what I did the Melbourne players when I came back. Yeah, there was no difference. There was a large difference in the pay packet and probably the value the commercial value of the athletes that you're dealing with, the number of staff that you're managing and all that sort of stuff. They're all obvious, but you don't treat them any differently at all.

Jason Weber:
20:41

No, and that's the attitude. I would hope that young coaches coming through. If you're coaching high school kids or you're coaching, you know, a semi-professional team, you should be doing the very best you can, because every opportunity you get to learn which goes back to my thing I'm. I'm way older than most dudes getting around at the moment and I'm learning. I've learned so much in recent times from my parents. My parents have taught me heaps Again because, they've trusted me to impart some.

Jason Weber:
21:13

But when you listen to what they're trying to do and you go why have we? We need to go this path and do some things they've never done before? Like it's really intriguing when you see things like an athlete that has one limb, one limb deficit, the amount of changes that occurs throughout the kinetic chain of the body, and then you've got to work around that. So when you start thinking about things like spinal engine and that and I'm like, relatively I've been a bit ambivalent to that, but now I'm looking at it where you've got people who are compromised upper body, lower body and seeing what their pelvis can generate independently of limbs I'm like, well, maybe there's more to this and how we approach it. So I stand by. I don't have any absolute conclusions in that area but, like I said, mate, I'm learning so much from these folks because they've given me the privilege of the opportunity to coach them.

Darren Burgess:
22:10

Yeah, for sure. No, I completely understand that and yeah, that's how it should be, and there's sometimes needs, must, like your situation, your personal situation, means that that's going to suit you the best at the moment. Yeah, but I think, regardless of that, the attitude and application should not change. And this, I don't know, this tendency within the industry to say no, I'm only going to be at my best when I'm coaching my elite athletes is concerning I'll tell you.

Jason Weber:
22:46

You know that I'll throw one technical one. The one I hear a bit periodically is when we're doing complex lift, we're doing cleans or whatever snatch, whatever, I'm better when there's lots of weight on the butt. No, you're not, because you can't do it when it's light. I said to someone the other day I said so if I put you in a little uh you know fiat or a little uh honda or something with four cylinders in it and you're on a manual and a stick and you can't drive it, does that mean if I put you in a formula one, you're going to go better because suddenly your skill gets better? No, it doesn't. Skill is skill regardless. If you can coach someone to drive a Fiat really fast, then you can coach them to drive the next one and the next one and you'll get to the top. But yeah, I think the attitude to mine would be if someone gives you the opportunity to coach them and they're going to listen, do your very best and respect the opportunity would be my thing.

Darren Burgess:
23:43

Agreed mate. I think we have time to wrap up on that.

Jason Weber:
23:50

The rest of life is calling us.

Darren Burgess:
23:52

So we've got two in a row.

Jason Weber:
23:54

All the best to the Adelaide Crows on the weekend. I look forward to seeing that one go the right way against my old troop.

Darren Burgess:
24:03

Oh, your old mob. Yeah, of course, my old mob. Okay, well, let's see how we go.

Jason Weber:
24:07

Good mate. Well, you look after yourself and let's all be well, and we'll catch you next week, Bob.

Darren Burgess:
24:13

See you next week mate Thank you.

-----END SEASON 3, EPISODE 9-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPISODE 8-----
Speaker 1:
0:11

All right, welcome to Coaching in a Coffee. Joe, and Jase Webber here with you after a break that neither of us wanted to have, but just the way life got in front of us.

Speaker 2:
0:21

How are you doing? Going okay, since we've been off air, we've had two losses at the LA. Crows, so I messaged you urgently and said we need to get back on track, jase, we need to start recording.

Speaker 1:
0:33

We need to debrief.

Speaker 2:
0:34

Yes, we do.

Speaker 1:
0:36

Well, it's funny, mate. I remember very early in my career, for a stupid period no matter how logical I consider myself I had a lucky pair of shorts. I used to have to wear the game. So, yeah, we all have. That didn't work, mind you. I got rid of that very quickly. But yeah, there's no, you never know A little bit of magic. Somewhere you go to baseball, mate. You know the old Bull Durham.

Speaker 2:
0:57

You've got to respect the streak Exactly. A little bit of magic doesn't hurt anybody, but we had. We had a game, 33 degrees. The afl, in its wisdom, scheduled us to play at midday on the gold coast in march, which I guess.

Speaker 2:
1:14

No, it was april which then we played the following thursday night. But you know, that's, that's. That's been and gone. But what did happen is afl had a thing every year called Gather Round, which is where every single team plays in Adelaide. So imagine for the overseas listeners if every Premier League team played in Manchester for the weekend. So it was quite a big deal.

Speaker 2:
1:39

Adelaide's a small enough town to make it a big deal if it was in Sydney or Melbourne. Basically, every weekend in Melbourne is Gather, gather round anyway, isn't it? Because there's about eight games that go on there.

Speaker 1:
1:47

There's so many going on yeah.

Speaker 2:
1:50

So what it did is? It gave us an opportunity for all the high performance managers, fitness coaches, strength and conditioning coaches to try and get together, at least those who travel with the team. So we got together on Saturday morning at 7am in typical fitness coach sort of tradition at a coffee shop.

Speaker 1:
2:11

Up and out of fashion 7am coffee shop.

Speaker 2:
2:15

We had a guest speaker in, laura Mimosley, which was great Basically just interviewed him on stage. Not that there was a stage, it was a coffee shop, but one of the things that sort of came from that, and there was probably about 50-odd people there I think 55 or something like that, so it was a good turnout. One of the things that came from it is people want advice and yeah, let's just say advice on contracts, on what should be included in contracts for people in our industry. So I thought, completely without notice, that might be a good way to start. There was a few other things that they mentioned. You know that they were interested in, but we did a quick whip around and a quick survey. What are some of the things that ought to be in? Let's start with a strength and conditioning coaches contract. I'll tell you what shouldn't be in there. Jason, I'm going to answer my question first. We interviewed for about four positions in October last year, which I think I mentioned on a previous podcast and one of the interviews who was really good on paper.

Speaker 2:
3:24

Do you have any questions for us? Was what I asked and he said yeah, do I have to work weekends? I just went okay, so that should be in a contract and should be made very clear. Yeah, very clear that flexible working hours which everybody sees on a contract and says, yeah, that's okay, I can handle that. You know, the odd hour after five o'clock, Anyway, what are some of the things that, as if a young strength and conditioning coach is negotiating his or her contract, what ought to be in there?

Speaker 1:
4:01

I think one thing you should always look at is like you can get a contract. Let's say you get a contract for, like, a first up contract might be two years, it might be three years if you're lucky. I check the exit clause, but what are the conditions under which the employer can spontaneously, you know, dissolve the contract? You would like, most of these days, a minimum of a month's notice. Certainly you would want no less than that, like one month. Can you imagine that?

Speaker 1:
4:33

So a guy comes in, a boss comes in the door and says it's done, we've made the position redundant, right, your position is no longer in existence, so so you got one month and you're out, which also then leads to one of your other things we talked about really quickly before, which is networking. But I would always seek to try and get that a little bit longer and remember there are conditions under which a good exit cause or a short exit cause may suit you. So, as you're moving up the chain, you may not want not that you ever get super long ones, but let's say it was six months, but you'd have to say then well, what if another job offer came up and you wanted to move and the team weren't real cool and it was going to be six months. The other team might lose.

Speaker 2:
5:18

So I think understanding your exit clause is always really important, and how it pertains to where you're at super, yeah, I think I think the other point, just just to jump in there, um, the one month exit clause. You've got to think of these things. What does it mean in practical terms? So in practical terms, conversation happens, you get let go, for whatever reason, you will be paid out one month. So that's if that happens. If on the other side of the coin, you think no, no, no, I'm going to negotiate hard, I want more than one month, I want six months, that's great. If they sack you, you will get six months' pay. If you want to leave, to go and get a better position, they also have the right to retain you for six months. And some clubs and bosses and owners will do that and do enforce that. So just sorry to interrupt there, but just to understand that that's what that is, no, no that's a really good point.

Speaker 2:
6:19

What you might include and what you can include is six months, unless alternate agreeable terms can be negotiated to both parties, and most of the time that's okay. For example, in the Premier League, the contracts that I've had over there have been a one year, but I've always had a catch-all phrase at the end of it because, basically, if the club sack you, they're not going to want to pay you for a year. If they sack sack you, they're not going to want to pay you for a year. If they sack you, I'm not going to want to. If I leave, I'm not going to want to be held there for a year. So you can generally negotiate that. So you need to have that catch-all phrase in there.

Speaker 1:
6:56

From a story perspective. I know a guy who was working in pro rugby in France and got terminated and he had a year on his contract. So he was like, yeah, I'm going to get paid out a year. And the owner said, no, in fact, what you're going to do is sit still for a year. I don't want you to come to work, but we're going to pay you once a fortnight or once a month or whatever it is for the next year. So he could have taken paid holiday for a year, but that was his career for a year stopped. So he ended up having to walk away because there was no other negotiation element.

Speaker 1:
7:30

So I reckon that combination right there that you mentioned, that manipulating the exit, is understanding the exit. The other one that's worth having in there is big sneeze. Excuse me, that really snuck up on me. It's changed. My train of thought Is negotiation. So even if it's a month having it in there, that if another job of a higher level came up, that you can work with the club to get out, because I think the club being of an understanding that when bigger opportunities come up, you're going to need to operate, you're going to need to move on those. So I think, having that general understanding, which does come back to a principle that is worth trying to follow, which is trying to be honest, trying to be honest with your employer to get the contract fair and equitable, but making sure you protect your rights.

Speaker 1:
8:20

The other one that I always have for a long time kept a very close eye on is IP intellectual property. So most employers will say whatever intellectual property is developed here is the property of the club. Now I can tell you from a speed sync perspective if I'd have done that, if I'd have had that signed in my contract, I wouldn't have been able to start a business. So I made it very clear. I got to a certain point, I renegotiated a contract and I said like, okay, everything that we're working on with the team per se, but I'm going off on another tangent. I'm doing these other things in my own time, in my own study. They are sacrosanct, they are mine, they are no one else's. I had that signed into my contract so that when, like if the possibility came up that there was an opportunity, I was able to execute on that, which I've been able to do.

Speaker 2:
9:14

So that's another one to think about. Depending on where you're placed. The temptation is, let's say, adelaide Crows, young strength coach, first job in the industry. They're just going to sign anything that's put in front of you. You may not need that clause, that IP clause or that external consultation Like. I have an external consultation clause currently in the contract so that means that I can do the Fief Pro stuff, western United and whatever else without having to. But as a young strength and conditioning coach I never had that clause in there and it's understandable that the Adelaide Crows might not want that clause in a young strength coach. They want that young strength coach. They want her to concentrate solely on her job with the AFL. So I understand that. What about? So? We've covered exit clauses, we've covered external contracts In terms of salary, just with understand that. What about? So? We've covered exit clauses, we've covered external contracts In terms of salary-.

Speaker 1:
10:08

Just with the external contracts, mate. Just before we finish, just sorry to butt in on you but just be mindful this is an early growth thing.

Speaker 1:
10:16

If it's your first contract, yeah, you're not going to have much wiggle room. But as people go along, I've got people all the time asking me questions. I've got mentorship clients that I'm working with and they're in their let's say early 30s. So they've had a couple of jobs and they're on their way up the chain. I think at that point you should be considering all of these elements. So, yeah, just put it in your back pocket. I think it's something nobody discusses. So, yeah, put those in your back pocket. I think it's something nobody discusses. So, yeah, put those in your back pocket. Sorry about that.

Speaker 2:
10:48

No salary stuff. I don't think it's appropriate for us to talk about that here. But what I will say is one of the frustrating things with coming up through the industry was when people wouldn't tell you their salary. So you know and it can be a personal thing, I get that but I've always you and I, for example, whenever we've negotiated contracts have been the first call each other have made and said right, what are you on, what am I on? How can we?

Speaker 2:
11:16

It's only going to improve the industry because I can assure you let's talk AFL but this is same in NBA, nfl, premier League the person who's sitting on the other side of the desk knows exactly what the industry standard is. They know what Liverpool, arsenal, manchester City, manchester United are paying versus Sheffield United, respectfully, or Wrexham, or whoever else. They know what Collingwood versus what St Kilda are paying. They know all of these things. The more we can share and be honest as an industry, the more it's going to help this industry, and that's something that the AFL High Performance Association is actively doing at the moment is trying to get along with. People like ASCA are trying to get minimum salary bands for different positions. So, whilst we're not going to sit here and say a first year strength coach should earn X and a first year sports scientist. I think the more open we can be within our industry, the better it'll serve us.

Speaker 1:
12:17

Yeah, I agree and I also so on that I was going to flick really quickly. Your networking will come back to that. But I think the value in understanding and having people in the industry that you speak to regularly is that camaraderie, to be able to say, hey mate, what do you think? This is what's on the table and I don't think, from a networking perspective, you can go past that. I've had a few of these conversations recently. But having a strong network of a handful of people that can reference and say, hey, mate, what do you think? I think that's super important. I do think if we're just talking finance for a second, particularly that first contract, finance for a second, particularly that first contract, I'm not trying to rip anybody off at all, but what I would say is that that first job is probably not unlike anything else you purchase in life, like what's the value of a car, what's the value of a house? It's what you're willing to pay for. So what am I willing? What my first job? What was I willing to do? I was willing to do anything, so give me the job.

Speaker 1:
13:14

When I first went to the Queensland Reds in the late 90s, I went for almost nothing. I was, you know we're on nothing. And I went up there as a nobody and I proved myself. And then the next year when I got another contract, whatever it was 12, 18 months later, waratahs came and said hey, we'll offer you more, come back. And all of a sudden Queensland Reds said well, actually, you're important, we'll offer you quite a bit like a lot more. It doubled easily because I was on two times. Nothings only, just nothing anyway.

Speaker 1:
13:53

But I think in that first job, like it's not unusual to say, well, if they're not offering much, just get in. And I'm not saying, I'm not advocating for paying early career people, nothing. What I'm saying is that goes with the weekend thing, you've got to be. There's an element of you've got to get in the door. There's got to be a desperation. But I'm very privileged with the SpeedSig thing to meet a lot of young coaches around the world and that attitude's still there. Can do, just get it done, I'm in. And that then softens as you go further up the chain. You don't have to be as desperate, you can pick, but you've got to get in and get some experience. And that is the hardest part, without question these days, I think getting harder. You know there's more teams and all that, but I think there's a lot of people trying to get in.

Speaker 2:
14:43

Yeah, I don't want to be old man on the porch saying you young folks, so I won't but develop resilience. It'll help you take a job for less than what. You had a conversation with a guy not so long ago who turned down a job over $4,000 and now, a year and a half later, massively regrets that decision. And you're just like it's $4,000.

Speaker 1:
15:10

His view at the time was yeah it's only $4,000.

Speaker 2:
15:13

Surely they can pay. You've answered your question. It's only $4,000. They probably can pay, but they'll find somebody to do it, 10 grand less, anyway. I agree with you 100%. What else in the contract to try and keep us on task? What are some of the things that you might include or you might suggest when you're negotiating, in lieu of salary, that you might be able to put on the table to say, okay, I understand, you might only have $100,000, $50,000, but what about A, b and C?

Speaker 1:
15:47

I'll go with the study one. I've used that a couple of times Good Excellent.

Speaker 1:
15:52

Don't give me the okay, I won't take the cash in terms of a payment, but for everybody who's got a hex debt in the world, I got hex debt paid by a contract. So I had that in my. I had an education component because from a tax perspective, the club can write it off differently, because from a tax perspective, the club can write it off differently. And so I left. I finished a contract. And this is one where I finished a contract early because I had a bigger job offer and that was all negotiated and good. I just said, right, hey, I'm going to give you notice, I'll work through it. And it was actually like a. It was like nearly a six-month lead out. So I gave notice and said, hey, I'll run this out for six months. But in that there was an education component and I got that education component paid off my HECS debt.

Speaker 2:
16:44

Excellent.

Speaker 1:
16:45

And because that was I just said hey, it's ongoing education. But you're going to put it on HECS and that got done. Yeah, that got me me out of HEX very early in my career.

Speaker 2:
16:55

The versions of that would be CPD courses, those sorts of things. Go into that negotiation armed with. I want to be ASCA level three by the time I leave. I want to be ESSA high performance qualified. I want to do a master's of high performance sport. This is how much it costs. I want 110 grand, you want $110,000. You want $90,000. Let's meet in the middle $100,000, but you pay for this $10,000 course and I think that shows initiative and it's a good way of doing it.

Speaker 2:
17:23

So there's the education component. What about things like flights, things like apparel? Those things are all on the table, depending on you know your level and the club you're going to, because, again, as you said, from a club point of view, they can write those off a lot more easily than what they can. 10 grand in your pocket In wages yeah. So those are options. Have a look. Most clubs are only too happy to tell you who they're sponsored by and so go through their sponsorship on the website and say can we do? You know, I've done house renovations, things like that, and this is that you know later on in my career not in the early part of the career plumbing, anything like that I've done. And uh, yeah, it's, it's um some of those start.

Speaker 1:
18:11

I don't know how they like. I agree with that one. I'm not sure how they continue. I'm actually I mean, I'm on a government contract now, so I don't. There's none of that available.

Speaker 2:
18:21

You've got about a 98% super hose, so you're fine.

Speaker 1:
18:25

Yeah, but 98% are not much. There's not much dude, and I think there's a reasonable point. It's not a bad thing. Like, yeah, I have a government job, so I have alluded to this before. So just for clarity, because I'm not trying to play ducks and drakes, I'm now the lead S&C coach at the West Australian Institute of Sport. Now why am I doing that? Because that suits where my life's at. It's a different job. So from where I've been in the past, a lot of people would consider, hey, it's a lesser job. It is very much so from an income perspective. But technically, the people I'm working with and we can go into that later the people professionals and athletes I'm working with at Olympic level and that type of thing. But what I'm saying in all of that is is understand that there are times in your career when there are certain moves that you're going to make that are not always what people perceive. Like people go, oh, why I got this all the time when I first got the waste job. Like, why are you doing that? Like, well, I'm doing it because it suits what I do.

Speaker 1:
19:29

I'm very clear on my speed seeking business and again, just to share that, I suppose I negotiated that in. I said I'm coming to do this job. I agree, but this is the conditions under which I'll do it. So I've taken less money, so to speak, compared to what I would have gotten the AFL and I had an AFL job offered to me end of last year significantly well, way more than double. So there you go. But it's allowed me to do speed sig, which is my number one thing and I'm sorry employer, I'm sorry WA government Speed sig is my thing. So it's manipulating not manipulating, but managing your contract so that it fits what you're trying to do.

Speaker 2:
20:08

It's your circumstances as well, which is completely I'm quite certain I wouldn't be in Adelaide if it wasn't for my kids. So I'd still probably be in Melbourne or you manage it where you can.

Speaker 1:
20:21

But a lot of this stuff just for the young pups listening and I'll be. I am the old man on the porch is you can't go in on your first contract going, hey, I want this Like, add a few things. But as your seniority goes up and again, think of it like a house. A house is only as valuable as someone's willing to put the money down for it. If someone wants you to come and work and it's really important to them that they have you, they will accommodate, they will change rules. They will say hey, like I said with Waste, I'm doing my business, that's what I'm doing. You will acknowledge that that's happening. We commit to certain hours and all the rest of it, but I'm in the commercial space, that's what I'm doing. Okay, good job.

Speaker 2:
21:05

I guess that's the final thing that you should negotiate, which we're trying to, I guess, provide a bit of a service here and a free service to anybody who's listening. If it is that the club says no, because of soft cap or because of whatever else, we are not going to pay for a salary.

Speaker 2:
21:26

If you need to relocate, then obviously you put that in. But if it is that, then here's what you do. You say, okay, I'll accept this job, this entry-level job, for 50 grand. I will accept that. But after one year I want to renegotiate the salary for over and above the CPI. So the club will have to pay you the 3% or whatever the 3% is but I want to sit at this table and then you back yourself in, which is 1,000% my first three jobs in the industry.

Speaker 2:
21:58

I accepted whatever they put in front of me and then said I'll see you this time next year and I want the conversation to be different and back yourself in, or you put incremental increases, if you can do that, but come back and negotiate. So there's some uncertainty on that, no doubt, and you've got to back yourself in, but I wouldn't be signing a three-year deal at $50,000. I would say, yeah, I'll sign for three years, but we're only going to agree on this salary for the first year, and then I want to negotiate for a minimum of CPI for the second and third year.

Speaker 1:
23:36

Yeah, yeah, 100%, mate. I will make a quick mention of one I started using, which is what I call a boomerang clause, which when you have to move, you have to move from. I've moved from Sydney to Brisbane, from Sydney to WA. I had in the contract so, yes, you will pay for me to move and my family, I think when I came to Perth. I think for two contracts. You have to put me back where you got me from. So if this contract finishes.

Speaker 1:
24:11

if this finishes for any reason, it gets terminated or it just runs its course. Right, you need to pay to relocate me back. Yes, because that's only fair and I had that free man who were very good. My contract with Steve Rossich was the man down there now doing great work with a company in Melbourne called Brainite Very, very interesting stuff. Keep your eye on that, literally. But Steve was very good in that. For my first couple of contracts, that boomerang clause remained because I was never sure would we go back to Sydney and as it stands it's now whatever. 17 years I'm in WA and not going anywhere.

Speaker 2:
24:51

Yeah, nice, that's a good point. Fighting to stay here yeah, good point. The boomerang calls is a really, really important one. That I didn't put in my first contract and I paid for the total relocation back from Adelaide to Sydney. Yeah it's a really good point. Thus ends the lesson on contract negotiating, so I'm looking forward to when I next have to advertise for positions, for people to come and use these against me which I encourage and welcome.

Speaker 1:
25:22

Yes, I welcome it. Line up and throw darts at you. That's what they're going to do.

Speaker 2:
25:28

Yeah, good stuff, we got anything else before we shut off. On our return, we got a short one on our return.

Speaker 1:
25:35

Let's very, very quickly. I think you mentioned just in your AFL thing that what are the professional development things people are looking at. I think we'll go into this in heaps of detail, but it did get me straight away when you talked about tendon injuries versus just straight soft tissue like just muscular mid-belly ruptures. Really think this is an area that we all need to be better at. On the weekend in Australia this past weekend we had the Australian Track and Field Championships here and I had the fortune to catch up with a good mate of mine from Melbourne, adam Larkin, who's coached international track and field for and consorts to international NFL players and all kinds, isn't he?

Speaker 2:
26:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolute star.

Speaker 1:
26:21

He's probably done 20 years in track and field but he's working. He works with Canadian Athletics now but anyway, and consulting in the NFL. But we've again, he's part of my personal network, as is Darren that I've known for a long time and we always catch up. Anyway, that aside, we had a dinner and a couple of beers on Saturday night and just talked through a lot of technical stuff around tendons, around mobility in the foot, the ankle, how that relates to then intramuscular tears, intramuscular tendon tears and then the rehabilitation of that. Now, the intramuscular tendon stuff is super challenging, as you will know, because it's a thing in AFL.

Speaker 1:
27:07

But what I would say is to anyone who gets confronted with tendons my basic operating premise at the moment is strength comes back relatively quickly. So you're in the gym, you're doing whatever. It comes back quick. The elastic component of the tendon and its interaction with particularly high speeds takes time. Don't rush. That would be my number one thing.

Speaker 1:
27:35

We see too quickly and I think this back in that probably in the 90s, before MRIs really got off and going, we saw a lot of in AFL. There were a lot of guys would have a hamstring and they'd go out for three weeks. The great. Nathan Buckley was one of these. I met at Collingwood when he was still playing Hamstring for three weeks. Go back in maybe one or two weeks and he'd be out for another three. And that just kept going over and over.

Speaker 1:
28:00

And you look at that and go, well, that's likely at that time was intramuscular, like it was a tendon injury. So you're getting the muscle strength, you're getting strength back. Things look good, you feel great, but it's not there. And I've got again to harp on the speed seeking I've seen this enough times to see where we lose. Like this is what JB Morin's data would predict that we lose the horizontal component on the ground, we lose the ability to pull to the ground.

Speaker 1:
28:29

Ground contact goes up, that limb's under stress and that tendon just gets hammered. Now you tie into that. I think the work Ken Clark's done around triangular velocity is going to start to bleed more into this about how the tendon has to preload before it contacts the ground. But what I would say, without delving too much into that, is take your time. Strength will come back really quickly. It will look impressive in the gym. You'll do whatever test in the gym and everything will look, and even hops will look pretty cool, but you've got to take the time in running because that elastic, particularly when you're getting them to preload that tendon before it hits the ground. So we're getting really sharp ground contact just takes more time and I think we don't pay it enough respect.

Speaker 2:
29:17

That's my two bobs worth. Yeah, to finish a couple of things. On that I agree totally what I've found. In a practical sense you can get people to 80% really quickly and you think, hang on a minute, two and a half weeks in, I'm going to get this guy or girl back in four weeks from a talent industry. What a great practitioner I am. But it's that last 20% speed which does take time. So enjoy that period, get some volume, get some resilience.

Speaker 2:
29:51

Get some robustness in the athlete in that sort of three-week period that you have to keep them at about 80%, but keep them at about 80% whilst working on a whole bunch of stuff, because that's how long it takes to then move them up.

Speaker 1:
30:04

I'm going to put a case study out soon. We did one of my men, mitchell White, up in Ranges in Scotland, who's just now made a move. I won't say where he's moved to yet but it's a big move for him. Young man's made a great, great progression. But he's one of my, these young guys who just push, push, push.

Speaker 1:
30:21

When I offered some time with Speed Sig when I was up in the UK a year or so ago, mate, he was on the phone ringing but top, top practitioner, really good, sharp young man. Anyway, he and I did some work on just this. Player went to the sideline in soccer like stretched for the ball but got pushed in the back, so your classic proximal hamstring tendon. But we were in a position where, medically, around about halfway, about four or five weeks in, we could show, demonstrate with speed sig where he could go to six meters per second but then he'd lose horizontal force as he went past that the medical staff got MRI and said this is not healing, he can't run for another six weeks. Anyway, we were able to present data back to their team to say like no, we shouldn't be going full gas, but he can still go 60%, 70% and get his running speed in. Anyway, they all bought in. He was another four or five weeks, got back on the field and played and has not had an issue since.

Speaker 1:
31:20

So I think that your exact words like that they're going to get back quick and they're going to feel great. But just respect that last bit I mean clearly, however you're doing it. But I mean that's obviously the speed-sick thing is, you want to quantify that because once they're on the field, gps is lying. It's not lying, that's wrong, but GPS is telling you what they're doing. They can find another way to find speed and that's where people adapt their mechanics and I will make a point on that.

Speaker 1:
31:49

I've had the privilege of working the last couple of months in the Paralympic space and I will tell you categorically I have learned more in that last couple of months, working with amputees, working with other compromised athletes, about how they move and how the body adapts, how it finds another way to create speed. And that's when I bring that back to that tendon thing. Your body's going to find a way and you've just got to be. We've got to be as a profession, we've got to be better at identifying. They're now starting to use a different strategy. Let's just contain that. Like you said, get the volume. Let's work some 80%. Let's still do reps tempo work, but not let them off the leash. I think there's a lot more to be discussed there.

Speaker 2:
32:38

Jason, let me finish off by saying one it's almost worth having three weeks off, two coaches and a coffee to have you this up and about. I'm loving the content that you're producing here, Jason, but it's not worth it because the crows are going to suffer as a result of us having three weeks off. But I'm loving your up and about-ness.

Speaker 2:
33:02

Number two, and this is a story for another day, but my last month's reading has been all about right and left hemisphere. I've watched a couple of docos on it right and left hemisphere, brain thinking and how that relates to performance. I'm not saying and I don't even want to comment on it now because I don't quite understand it, but for the last month I've been delving into a British philosopher and professor who's produced a whole lot of stuff on this, called Dr Ian McGilchrist and how it relates to performance, and I'm getting some help with some people over in the UK. But what you've just described around amputees and the body finding a way is a classic case of us looking at GPS and you know left hemisphere work. We must know it and therefore we implement it versus the body will find a way. Just watch, just watch how magical this is and the body will find a way. Just watch, just watch, how magical this is and the body will find a way.

Speaker 2:
34:01

So that's about all I want to say on it, because I'll say something that I don't quite get yet, but in about three months' time I'll be better Mate.

Speaker 1:
34:09

we should go there later. Happy to.

Speaker 2:
34:12

Next episode happy to, I've done some more reading by then. But we've. We've gone well over our 30 minute limit based on your caffeine consumption and yeah, yeah, your enthusiasm. So, oh, I love it mate.

Speaker 1:
34:25

So our three weeks off. All I've done is amplify my coffee intake. So yeah, it's well and truly well and truly over the limit. So I'm gonna go have another one and then uh and head off. But, mate, great to see you again. It's been a while. Let's get back on the horse a bit more regularly and hopefully we haven't lost too many listeners along the way.

Speaker 2:
34:46

Good to see you and we'll speak again soon, all right.

Speaker 1:
34:51

See you folks, See you folks, Thank you.

-----END SEASON 3, EPISODE 8-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPIOSDE 7-----
Jason Weber:
0:13

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. A little bit of a different look for Darren and I this week. How are you going, mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:20

I'm all right Just taking a stroll mate, Not taking this seriously or what.

Jason Weber:
0:24

Yeah, no, no, no, very seriously, but I'm not one for multitasking generally, but because of the beautiful day here in Western Australia, I am going to have a bit of a stroll in between, just to keep my health up.

Darren Burgess:
0:39

Nice, well done. I'll do the same, but it's raining in Adelaide for the first time in four and a half months.

Jason Weber:
0:47

Yeah, I bet.

Darren Burgess:
0:48

It's been ridiculous.

Jason Weber:
0:51

Mate, first week in the AFL, it's all happened Now for our international viewers. We've talked a little bit before. We've had 15 weeks of pre-season, We've had breaks over Christmas, We've had surgeries, all sorts of stuff. So now it's all systems go, Mate. I'm the viewer on the outside. What did you see? What was it like on the inside for week one?

Darren Burgess:
1:15

Yeah, it was a bit of a build-up here for week one. We were playing at home against a team called St Kilda. For those who finished, I think they finished 14th and we finished 15th last year, so but they had a few injuries, to be fair, so they were coming in a bit underdone. So we got a pretty easy win in the end, which was good.

Jason Weber:
1:37

Mate, tell me where's your injury status at? Can you tell us that?

Darren Burgess:
1:42

I'm glad you asked. No, we're having a good run. We don't have a single player out at the moment, which is pretty good We've got a clean sheet. Yeah, yeah, it's only ever happened one week before in my life, which was the 21 grand final. We had every player train on that week leading into the grand final.

Jason Weber:
2:02

So yeah, we've had a fair bit of luck.

Darren Burgess:
2:04

And obviously it was yeah, yeah, so it's not going to change, but a good situation. Well, it's been interesting because, as we spoke about on this podcast, we had four really good, experienced staff leave to go on to promotions and better jobs, bigger and better jobs. Bigger and better jobs, yeah it was yeah, yeah, and good luck to them, and they all went with our wishes.

Darren Burgess:
2:33

So there was a fair bit of hiring and, yeah, the staff that come in have done an amazing job. So, look, you know as well as I do, Jason, that this week we play Essendon at the MCG and there's every chance there'll be, you know, ankles and knees and hamstrings and calves and groins and concussions and all kinds. So you've got to ride it while you can.

Jason Weber:
2:56

So one of those discussions. What Darren's talking about is the surface in Marvel Stadium in Melbourne is a change of surface. So we often this is often a conversation you see it in the NFL a lot they talk about they're going from artificial turf to grass. Sometimes you know they're playing up north, they've got snowy conditions. How much impact does it have?

Jason Weber:
3:18

Now, marvel Stadium is like a false floor. It's not like it's a building. You can actually feel the floor vibrate when the guys are running on it. It has very, very short, thin grass so that you quite often will get players struggling to get their cleats stuck into the earth. So what God's just getting at there is what is the like, what happens, what's the change? And that you know we can. We can send teams off to, uh, places like narvel state and they come back with groins and all sorts of things because guys slip and they, you know, get overly extended. But in the same breath, um, we also get athletes that just get cooked because the ground's a little bit harder and it's really a thing. It's no question the change in surface, change in footwear, particularly if you're going from wet surface to a very hard one.

Jason Weber:
4:17

Now one of the conversations that I've just lost Darren in our little connection, but one of the points I was going to ask him and we'll get to when he's back, I'm sure is temperature last weekend. So on the first round, from a thermoregulatory perspective, which we don't often talk about a lot of physiology directly, but the question was asked I was just talking before the podcast about the point of the heat was thermoregulatory question. We had players going out to play and there was a lot of talk, particularly in Melbourne, in Geelong, very, very hot, 35, 36 degrees, which is centigrade, which is getting up there in the 90s in Fahrenheit. Yeah, virgil, trying again, he's back, mate. Oh, he's back, he's back. So, mate, the community, which I know is now more than 15, we think. But the community and I were just talking about the thermoregulatory impacts of last week.

Jason Weber:
5:23

So particularly the Frio-Gelong game, which was an interesting one. It was hot, but Frio train over here in hot conditions in Perth. So you've got to kind of ask yourself were they prepared for that heat? Did they handle it? Melbourne's had some hot stuff through summer here. So how hot. Like Birjo, you think when you go into a game first round it's always hard, it's always a step up. First round's hot. What do you reckon? How much impact do you see that on you all guys? What did you play this week? What temperature did you guys have?

Darren Burgess:
6:00

We kicked off at midday so we were anticipating, you know, enormous heat. It was 37 degrees on the Saturday.

Jason Weber:
6:09

We played on the.

Darren Burgess:
6:10

Sunday and it was 26 or 27, so it was pretty harmless. But it's interesting. We did as much prep as we possibly could for the heat, and I'm sure every team does it. Players were cramping on both teams. No, you know, we weren't cramping any less than what they were and they weren't cramping any more. But a lot of coaches were talking about summer football or summer AFL, where the grounds are a bit harder, the running is a bit more. There's more mistakes. Therefore, people are running more. Therefore there's the physical demand. We certainly our GPS suggested that we ran a whole lot on the weekend and we've got a six day break. So it's, you know, it's been an interesting week.

Jason Weber:
6:55

Did you see speed come up this year or is holding about the same, just more volume?

Darren Burgess:
7:00

speed. No speeds come up. Definitely it's one game, so we'll see, and it's one game on a hard surface in summer, so it's like the Premier League playing trial games in July when it's pretty hot. So yeah, it's been interesting. Certainly the adaptation to players, both physically and mentally, because our first four games all start at sort of between 12 and 2 o'clock one on the Gold Coast, two here in Adelaide where it's supposed to be 30 degrees. So yeah, it's going to be a factor for sure. Cramping and education on heat management, but not overhydration, and all that sort of stuff has been interesting. And also there's game management stuff which you can't really control. But you know, if the game's getting a bit too hot.

Darren Burgess:
7:50

How can we manage the game a little bit better?

Jason Weber:
7:55

So we'll see how we go this week, one of the interesting. I was going to say mate real quick. Do you guys pre-cool? Yeah, we do, you guys do pre-cool yeah.

Darren Burgess:
8:06

So, just with ice baths, we've tried gloves as well. We've tried on the bench using gloves, but when you've got to grip the ball it's a bit tricky. We had a misting fan on the bench as well as ice towels, yeah, but it didn't get used too much.

Jason Weber:
8:27

Ice towels are always great. Yeah, I think the ice towels are nice and simple. It was interesting. Just before you jump to that one, I'll go to a quick story. 2003 World Cup semifinal was really hot and we knew it was going to be hot. It was predicted anyway. We'd spoken to a bunch of scientists out of University of Sydney and we're looking at like how do we cool these guys down at halftime? You know ice vest and they said no Ice vest. Typically you put the ice vest on, it stops the flow of air over the skin so you get that immediate hit of the cool but you don't get cooling over more of a period. So they said get your room as cold as possible and, within reason, get them stripped down to skin. So we had these guys craft air-conditioned, yeah. So we used an air-conditioned room, we mandatorily took jumpers off everybody and we got guys really cool really fast. It was interesting when you look at the whole ice vest thing.

Jason Weber:
9:29

it's conductive versus convective heat loss and that air across cool air across the skin, made it fast, as I've seen.

Darren Burgess:
10:43

Yeah, watching that Geelong Freo again. The Geelong guys went inside in their air conditioning rooms.

Jason Weber:
10:48

Frio probably didn't have that ability because of that wonderful stadium down there at Geelong so they went a quarter time the oppo always get the worst rooms yeah, yeah, exactly.

Darren Burgess:
11:01

So who knows how much it played an impact, either mentally or physically. But one of the interesting things was in round zero, or opening round, collingwood played GWS and GWS won and won comfortably. And one of their players came out and said we had a clear athletic advantage over Collingwood. Now Collingwood came out the next week because they played two games. We played one and smashed their opponent and, you know, looked physically dominant, all that sort of stuff. So it was one week. But the media circus went wild here, and probably the overseas people don't understand how many journals and shows uh on in afl, but anyway they went crazy about collingwood's fitness and I've just not seen a player come out publicly and say that we had a clear athletic advantage and and we know that that doesn't necessarily equate to wins and losses, but probably at this stage of the season it has more of an impact, would you say early on in pre-season, early on in the season in most sports.

Jason Weber:
12:13

I think. So You've got to wonder how teams run into that first game. Like, do they take it? Like, do teams try to taper? I've found that you taper a football team, you get them too far away from the football and too far away from the work they don't do. Well. So, keeping the work up to them and not trying to deload too fast. But the other one I must say is I think it depends a lot on how you've trained. Like, what's the contest like? Because nothing's like the game. Right, we try to get as close as we can, but clearly there are some things closer than others.

Jason Weber:
12:55

Now in AFL one of the biggest metrics is contested ball. You've got to go in and win that ball Like. For anyone overseas watching AFL, yeah, it does look like a slippery bar of soap jumping around all over the place. But the guys who can physically get in there and get it or obtain possession changed the course of the game and it seemed to me like there were certain teams that just didn't seem to be on that in their first outing. I don't know why Was Collingwood not that in the first week, but they were in the second week. It's almost like they had to flick the switch at some point.

Darren Burgess:
13:31

It's a bit like when we look at, say, small-sided games in soccer and people come out and say, well, that doesn't change, that doesn't train your high-speed running or your sprint exposure, because you know it's in this small area. What they do really well is repeated contest and repeated metabolic conditioning small, solid games. So in football IFL it's almost the reverse of that. We tend to train running a lot and aerobic conditioning a lot, but maybe we don't train that metabolic conditioning of repeated efforts. And you can simulate it a little bit if you want, with a lot of change in direction and those bronco runs and up-downs and whatever else you can do.

Darren Burgess:
14:23

But I think you've really got to expose players to contest work and tackling because, otherwise you just get in the game, especially when you start wrestling opponents and things like that.

Jason Weber:
14:35

That takes a lot out of you Right fighting for the ball. Mate, given the nerd that I am my last bunch of years in AFL, it probably was last five I'd build a metric using the GPS or the gyroscope and accelerometers to measure contact or at least estimate it, so that you could comfortably say this session represents an overload of contact. Saying this is an overload Because I agree, man, if you're trying to prepare an athlete for contact, you need to go past the rate that they would do it in a normal game, same as speed. We want to run faster than we're going to go in the game so we can come back to it. Mate, I'm training a few fighters at the moment in a bunch, mainly wrestlers, boxers and some judoka athletes, and we're looking at the same thing. Like you need to be making sure that we're going to the repeat speed in the spaces that you need to, in the timeframes that you need, otherwise that isn't going to work. So, mate, I couldn't agree more.

Jason Weber:
15:37

I think that contact piece did teams miss it? Maybe I don't know. Like again, I and this is my ongoing thing about sports science is are we measuring things that answer the questions we need? So Berger's saying do we know what they did in contest? Well, I think we need to try and figure those things out. They're the bits of information that we're missing at different times. Anyway, that's my blurb again, mate.

Darren Burgess:
16:05

Yeah, hey. No, it's hard to know because of the accuracy of the tool as well, but anyway, go.

Jason Weber:
16:12

Hey, quick question. Don't worry the accuracy of the tool, mate. I measure my tool. Hey, tell me this week this is your backyard. So international break this week in soccer across the world.

Darren Burgess:
16:24

Yes.

Jason Weber:
16:25

So, mate, what are we going to see? So we're going to see a bunch of young guys who don't play internationals, who are only going to play one game for a week, and they're going to feel fantastic. And you're going to get another bunch of dudes who have to play extra and probably fly all over the world to get it done. What's going to happen in the next couple of weeks for those guys?

Darren Burgess:
16:45

Well, I reckon you get an idea of what's going to happen by what happened last weekend.

Darren Burgess:
16:51

So Newcastle play Liverpool in the Carling Cup or the League Cup or whatever it's called these days, I should know. In the final it was Newcastle's first chance of silverware in however many years, and Liverpool who are clear favourites to win the league, but they just got knocked out of Europe. The Champions League extra time penalties against Paris Saint-Germain yeah. So the last six weeks I think Liverpool played some astronomical amount of games like average two games a week for six weeks, and then Newcastle, the last two weeks, played one game and so they had two weeks to essentially prepare. So you talk about a clear athletic advantage. Yeah, the mental effect we can't ignore of them crashing out of Champions.

Darren Burgess:
17:52

League of Liverpool crashing out of Champions League on penalties. Devastating way to go out and then try and get yourself up for a final three days later. Yeah, but there's a clear advantage, and then they only went 2-1 against Newcastle.

Darren Burgess:
18:04

Yeah, but there's a clear advantage for those teams that don't play in Europe and in this back end of the season. So all you gamblers out there who you know, this is the research you should be doing on who's playing one game a week. Versus the teams that are still in Europe, there is a massive difference, both mentally and physically. So this stage of the year the international break you'll see a lot of players come back to their clubs fatigued after the two internationals, especially some of the Aussies who are playing a home game against Indonesia tonight. Yeah, and they've travelled from Europe to play a home game, then got to travel. I think we played China. Maybe go to China, play there and then travel back to Europe and play for their clubs.

Jason Weber:
18:55

Back to Europe.

Darren Burgess:
18:56

Yeah, the club Back to Europe.

Jason Weber:
18:57

Yeah, it's a pretty tough scenario and it's some of the stuff that we're doing at FIFPro to try and address this as best we can Mate. I think, yeah, that's a hugely demanding area and I think, if you know, I talk to a lot of people and this is a subject that's been put in front of me a lot recently is this whole idea of professional development. Yeah, you can go and do courses and all that, but I think taking I'm not saying this podcast is the be-all and end-all by any stretch, but taking that concept that Darren just said of observing what teams are doing, having a look at where they're playing, and looking, looking at just trying to observe, what sort of results are you getting for that, the teams that are backing up, how they go, what players are coming out. I know that all sounds laborious, but that's how you learn. I'll go a step further and say I'm working with a bunch of different athletes at the moment and different practitioners and looking at things like Jack Daniels running that's not Jack Daniels, the bourbon Jack Daniels running formulas, jan Albrecht's formulas in swimming, and starting to understand how those things work, because they describe fundamental physiology against speed. So starting to understand those things really helps build understanding around how you can build programs.

Jason Weber:
20:23

I think in terms of professional development, if any podcast is worth anything, maybe you should be taking some of the ideas that get spoken and explore them a little bit. Don't wait for people to put out a course. You've really got to be in my bonnet at the moment about people just waiting for things to come to them. From a professional development perspective, I think you've got to go out and look and figure out and rationalize and discuss where you can how things are working out, Like hey, call your mate. What do you think this podcast is? Me ringing Birger up and going, hey, let's have a cup of coffee. And that went for a while and then we pushed record. That's what it is. You know, get a group of peers around and discuss stuff, see how it fits.

Darren Burgess:
21:07

Yeah, I just think maybe it's for the next podcast, but we just had our staff reviews at the Crows sort of the post-preseason, before the start of in-season, and PD comes up. A lot in all of it and it's always the same to all staff members is go and speak to people. Go and people think, oh, we need to go here and have a look at this facility. And go to Red Bull in Austria and have a look at that and go to wherever. But it really is. Go and spend some time in Brisbane with some really cool people working at the QAS. Go and spend some time in Sydney with some of the great clubs there. Go and spend some time in Melbourne with some really cool people doing some good stuff there.

Darren Burgess:
21:53

That's how you do it, and one of our interns had an assignment. What's the one advice you could give to an aspiring high performance manager? And it was go and take a team. I don't care if it's your sister's team or your brother's team, and go and take them while your personal training or delivering pizzas or working in a bar or whatever it is that you do want to get some money. Go and take a team and make your mistakes there.

Jason Weber:
22:21

Mate, do you know? That was one of the same bits of advice I got as a young coach. When you get the chance, coach anybody, coach anybody who will listen and no matter who you're coaching, respect the job that you're doing for those people. And, mate, also I was working with an Olympic judoka athlete this morning and I actually said like I appreciate you guys listening to what I'm saying and to engaging, and they were really humbled by it. I said like I've got to respect what you are and you've got to respect that from people at the very lowest level.

Jason Weber:
22:57

People say to me oh, why did you go and coach've got to respect that from people at the very lowest level. Like people say to me oh, why did you go and coach high school the last couple of years? And high school is one of the best coaching things I've done in recent times because you're re-engaging with people who need to learn motor skills from the bottom up. Now you can't just coach at the top. And I've had a few people say to me recently hey, I'm much better when I'm coaching the elite. I coach the best ones. Nah, dude, you coach the. You know what skill you coach the youngest one, the worst one, the injured one, right, you know what. You tell you. Where I'm at at the moment, I'm also coaching a couple of Paralympians.

Jason Weber:
23:32

Tell you what that's me learning now. Like you, try to figure that out and these people are unbelievable characters. Mate, like you talk resilience, people have had to deal with some of the things they've dealt with make so much respect, but that's how you learn to coach, in my opinion. I agree with you, man go out and coach whoever you can, bro. Bro, what's on you gotta? You gotta get off to afternoon tea or something. Is that what you're gonna be about?

Darren Burgess:
23:56

about. No, this is today is a day off. So, as you know, no days off, no days off, but we travel tomorrow to Melbourne to take on Essendon.

Jason Weber:
24:07

Every day is a work day, yeah something like that what are you? Doing so. You go tomorrow. Were you playing Saturday.

Darren Burgess:
24:13

We play Saturday. Yeah so, we play Saturday. Yeah so we have our captain's run, just a light kick about tomorrow morning and then jump on a plane and we're playing at 1 o'clock or something, so it's a pretty early game.

Jason Weber:
24:25

Yeah, it's a nice short flight, High probability of success that flight.

Darren Burgess:
24:30

I hope so.

Jason Weber:
24:32

I've seen some duds coming out of Western Australia, that's for sure. Anyway, mate, a pleasure as always. I'm going to keep talking to you while I'm walking in the park. I think that's a good way to go for us in the future. Thank you for everyone for tolerating us for missing last week, but between a bit of work commitments from both of us, you just know we're on the tools, so if we're not talking, we're actually banging away somewhere trying to help. People know we're on the tools, so if we're not talking, we're we're actually banging away somewhere trying to help people, so I hope you guys got something out of it.

Darren Burgess:
25:03

We'll see you next time. Cheers, mate.

-----END SEASON 3, EPIOSDE 7-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPISODE 6-----
Speaker 1:
0:13

G'day and welcome to Coaches in a Coffee Bit of an early morning fast one. Darren and I are still figuring out some new schedules, but as I'm going with the bleary eyes, I'm keeping my glasses on. Darren's been good enough to get his off. He looks too younger than me. So, mate, welcome. How are you?

Speaker 2:
0:29

Yeah, going, okay. What are we 10 days away from first?

Speaker 1:
0:34

game AFL kickoff 14, 15-week preseason.

Speaker 2:
0:39

Yeah, it's been an interesting time. A couple of things that we can throw to because we're going to make this one short and sweet because of your schedule. You're now looking after a bunch of strength coaches and end of season presents an opportunity to have end of season staff reviews, and I'll layer that with. I listened to Dave Carroll on Martin Bouchard's podcast. Yeah, not sure what it's called, but those outside will know what it is, but excellent. I listened to Dave Carolyn on Martin Boucher's podcast. Yeah, not sure what it's called, but those outside will know what it is, but excellent. Just a tremendous conversation between two experienced practitioners.

Speaker 1:
1:14

I might even yeah, if you just go to Martin Boucher, just look him up, look at his website. It's on his interval training website, his podcast there. He's awesome yeah.

Speaker 2:
1:26

Yeah, I mean, obviously we've mentioned Dave a lot on this.

Speaker 1:
1:31

Dave we mentioned Dave a lot.

Speaker 2:
1:32

Yeah, but.

Speaker 1:
1:33

Martin loves the.

Speaker 2:
1:34

Guinness, you know how to brand yourself and market yourself and whether that's doing good or bad for the industry, and the positives and negatives of LinkedIn and I won't steal their thunder because we don't have time, but it made me think of some staff reviews and how to manage extremely ambitious staff who want to climb and quite rightly climb the high performance landscape.

Speaker 2:
1:59

And I'm mentoring a couple of people now as well, in and out of the sporting world, and had a conversation only this morning before we spoke with one of the people that I'm working with and he wants to progress in his field, which is couldn't be further, more further removed from sporting, the sporting world. But the themes are the same, jason, so staff reviews are interesting because most people want to, jason, so staff reviews are interesting because most people want to progress through. And how do we temper that with what we think are the best things for the staff versus what they think and what their ambitions are? So, given that you've now taken on a suite of young strength and conditioning coaches, and without naming names, how do you manage that walk, that tightrope between what you think is better for the person and their career versus their ambitions to?

Speaker 1:
2:50

get. Yeah, I'm gonna, oh, look, and this isn't. This isn't aimed at anyone in particular at all, not, not one bit. But this is something. Just I'm gonna go with, just what I do, my, my approach.

Speaker 1:
3:02

Like, yeah, I was a young one when I came through, like in the late 90s, in pro rugby, the world was physiology. It was just like everything we did at university at the time just physiology. There was no understanding of strength training. I was very lucky to have been educated lifting through the Australian Institute of Sport as an athlete, so I learned that path. Now, as I went on, I was just desperate to learn everything. And back in the 90s there was no internet, there was no this, no that. So you were writing away to people for books et cetera. But the point of that all is a movie that came out back in those days, a movie called Wall Street.

Speaker 1:
3:41

The great Gordon Gekko right, greed is good, irrespective of greed is good. He also said that if you want to know money, if you're going to be that, you need to be the smartest person in the room. So you need to study, you need to know everything, you need to know as much as you can At the ripe old age of 55, I don't know everything, and I think my PhD taught me that right. You don't know everything, but you've got to strive for that. So if you're doing a job, if you're a strength coach or you're a speed coach or you're a rehab coach, you need to absolutely saturate yourself with every bit of information you can, because your next step up is predicated on the knowledge you build there. And what I see, I've seen for a bunch of years in younger coaches, is almost this, and I'll be an old man, I'll say it's like an Instagram thing. We're going to go that and we're going to zip, zip, zip, zip. How about learning all the steps, learning all the components, right, really starting to understand.

Speaker 1:
4:43

If you understand the mechanics of an exercise, understand the physiology, the set and rep structures, how they work, what am I trying to do? I have a simple question to most people why are you doing that? Just explain it to me simply. Why are you doing it? If you don't understand the influence of velocity, balance and force on a weight and strength exercise, you can't get caught in the middle. We all bag physios and we do, and that's fair. They sometimes deserve it. One of the things physios will do. They'll tend to get their exercise selection. I'll just use that as an example. So it's not got much force, it's got no real velocity, it's got a bit of balance in it. So it's kind of doing a mishmash of what, like you're not really challenging a particular aspect of a muscular contraction. So that's where I get to.

Speaker 1:
5:40

I think some of the younger ones really need to work harder at studying in more depth about what they're doing, so that then they come to a job review and you go Darren, I've worked hard at this, I'm on it and, as someone doing the review, you're going to be looking at them going wow, these guys are impressive. And from my perspective I'm an old boy but I should be learning off young guys. They're studying something new. Now we know the proliferation of research. There's more research than you can keep up with. So those younger, as you said, coaches on the rise. They should be pushing, pushing, pushing, and I don't see that. I think they're pushing, but they're pushing without depth of knowledge. That's my rant.

Speaker 2:
6:26

Yes, and yes, one of the things that Dave and Martin spoke about was the generalist, specialist thing I think that's where I'll start is that if you're a sports scientist, everything looks like sports science. If you're a strength coach, everything looks like strength, and that's okay, that's fine, and you might have a PhD by the time you're 26, which is way better than what I certainly did, way better than me, I think. The way to expand your knowledge is a couple of ways. One is studying and research articles and, you know, maybe doing a master's, and some of the masters, by practice and the professional doctorates at the moment are outstanding and so, yep, big tick. But again, I'll lean on those guys, and you talk about this a lot. Go and spend some time with physios about why they do the things they do. Go and spend some time with doctors about reading mri, so you have a basic thing of it. Go and spend some time with a sprint coach or do an Alters course.

Speaker 2:
7:28

I used to hate doing psychology as an undergrad, and so this is a long time ago, jason. But one of the statements that I can't remember the American Psych at the University of New South Wales used to say was all knowledge is personal knowledge. Go and, um, go and learn how to disagree with it, don't just disagree with it from the outset. I've spent some time with chiropractors recently and straight away people go oh, chiros, they're you know, but understanding why they do and how they do things that they do. And we've got players who go and see movement specialists and you know people who post prolifically, prolifically, prolifically on instagram about, you know, about how they work with players and things like that's fine, go and spend some time with them, okay, yeah, I disagree with that.

Speaker 2:
8:14

Um, that's not the way I would do it, but now I'm better informed as a result 100% what I would say you get at your job and better in a more general space, before I get to, before I let you speak, people you know there's a lot of questions about how do you handle difficult players and how do you handle difficult coaches and how do you? That's all great and I'm happy to have those discussions with people, but get the basics right first and get your knowledge of sets and reps and physiology and and programming and medical and physio and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2:
8:52

Once you're good with that, then we'll start about talk about handling managing up and managing down and communicating with boards and things like that.

Speaker 1:
8:59

I think, mate, that's another subject that gets raised is professional development In changing. Now I'm in an institute system there's a lot of discussion about I'm like, okay, there's courses, but I think, again, the investment I've made in career is what you just said Finding a few coaches and physios. I've worked with a lot of physios who are unbelievable and have impacted me massively. Right, but I spend a lot of time with just those people, as opposed to a course that goes for three hours where you get the maybe you get the top of the iceberg To go deep with people. I really think there's value in that.

Speaker 1:
9:42

We've talked before about visiting.

Speaker 1:
9:43

Like do we go to the US and we visit three universities, being there, done that, not real fussed with that, because I don't think you'll learn much, but embedding somewhere for as long as you viably can and I used to have when I was in AFL, we would have coaches come in.

Speaker 1:
9:58

I'd have them stay like for a week and really just like be in as long as you can, and in that time, you know, you can hang out at lunch and like really talk through, like why are you doing this? Well, I'm doing this, what are you doing? And then you're getting this flow both ways and I just think there's so much more development from that. So the obsession with PD and getting and that's the thing, because with qualifications these days or different institutes that you have to have a certification with, you have to keep your PD up, so I'd be trying to figure out how you get PD time for those meetings that you have and those conversations and the time and I spent a lot of time yesterday with a guy on the gym floor like just talking through all the elements and there's so much more in that than there is in, you know, as I said, a three-hour course. Not blowing off all the courses, that's a thing, but investing in developing your skill.

Speaker 2:
10:59

Yeah, I think just lean outside your area as well a little bit.

Speaker 2:
11:05

If you're a generalist it was. We had. So the AFL High Performance Association. It's a great association. We had Damian Austin speak last night on a call. We had 42, 43 people on the call. It was great and hearing how Damo managed, I think they had four years of bottom four in the AFL. And then in the last six years Brisbane have barely missed a prelim final and have been unbelievable and obviously won the flag last year. But he said I never knew how hard it was until I stepped into the show. I always looked outside at high performance managers thinking, yeah, I can do that, I'll be able to do that, no problem, that looks okay. But then sat in the chair and just went my goodness, that's um. There's a lot more to it than that. So I think you can arm yourself as best as you possibly can before you sit in the chair by broadening your skill set a little bit.

Speaker 1:
12:05

You more, you brought up the subject of generalist I, I think, to be honest, I couldn't agree more, man. I don't think you can go to that position of management as an absolute specialist in one area, because your skill set has to, can, has to transfer across multiple people. Um, I think that generalist I think it's a harsh term I think you can be very good at a number of fields. But you mentioned before the whole spending time with docs. Understand their language. That would be one thing I'd say to people Listen to how they communicate, listen to the terminologies, understand them. No different to when you have to learn to speak. Coach, right, you and I have talked about this. Every coach has their own anomalies, their own little bits and pieces. It's our job to learn their language. But I think it's the same. Becomes of medical physiology. Well, whichever field you're stepping into from yours, same for physio learning S&C, they should be coming in and understanding that language. So, yeah, working that. I think it gives you a great empathy.

Speaker 2:
13:09

It's not a bad thing, by the way, being a specialist, and it's more. We're just trying to give advice for anybody who's willing to take it no, no, it's not a bad thing, of course it's not a bad thing. It's that gap and and what you're saying is is really clever in that we could sit here and say you need to do a speed course, or we could, or you need to do an altus by the way, you should do a speed secret you need to do a ask, a course or something like that, and they all have their values, but they all have their passions.

Speaker 2:
13:38

Yeah is spend some free time, you know, just free time. Yeah, investing in yourself by learning a few different skills. And I'll throw in one more listen to a podcast after dropping the kids off at school, from michael gervais, who's a sports psychologist, and he says some really good things and and some stuff I don't agree with, but that's just fine. But he's a sports psychologist and he says some really good things and some stuff I don't agree with, but that's just fine. But he's a successful sports psychologist that's worked with Seattle Seahawks and Red Bull and a whole bunch of stuff. I've come across him a fair bit with Nike and Red Bull in the past was put to him how do you become, how does a tradie or a fitness coach or a stock market worker become better at what they do and live their best life? And he just said regardless of your profession, whether you're an athlete or high performance manager, you've just got to be a little bit uncomfortable and you've just got to go to places that and the metaphor that he used was great For those who have kids you would do anything for your kids If you saw them upset.

Speaker 2:
14:43

You would climb over whatever you needed to climb over to do anything for your kids or your partner, whatever your poison is. The really successful people in any walk of life would do that for themselves to get themselves better. Not to climb a career ladder or anything like that, but to better themselves. They are constantly and almost callously looking at ways in which to do that in an uncomfortable often in an uncomfortable setting. And by discomfort you might mean when everybody else is going to bed, you're doing a bit of studying. When everybody else is taking the public holiday're doing a bit of study. Else is taking the public holiday off. You're not doing that. When everybody else is having three weeks holiday, you're spending that time meeting a doctor or physio. That's what I'm certain he meant. So it's not for my, I'm with you.

Speaker 1:
15:29

I'm with you. I'll throw. Let's throw one on. Throw one practical to pay, because I think you said making me self uncomfortable. I'm gonna say, throw one practical to people, because I think you said making yourself uncomfortable. I'm going to say to people present your data, present your information, talk about what you do Right, do the master chef thing, you know, walk up and go. This is what I've got, this is my heart on a plate, right. And by that I mean you don't have to go to a conference and present, but present to your people you work with. Present to hey. Boss, can I talk to you about this? I've got this idea.

Speaker 1:
15:59

This is what I'm thinking, because every time you speak and I've said this a number of times this week every time I speak, even now on this podcast, I am testing myself, I'm making sure that what comes out of my mouth makes sense to people. If it doesn't, the feedback comes back to me. I've got to change, I've got to adapt, I've got to fix. So I think, getting people out of your comfort zone to present, present your ideas, get off the fence, don't sit there and have an opinion one way or another. Yes, you may be absolutely wrong. But mostly people are going to say, hey, like you said, it's not the way I do it, but here's another view, but you learn in that. So I think putting yourself out there like to do a professional development thing at work and have your youngest staff member present on something they're working on is ideal. They get the opportunity to put their ideas out.

Speaker 1:
16:53

The only other thing would be humility. Be prepared to take some honest feedback. Hopefully people aren't terrible about it. But if you're in a good environment the old military thing after action review like you do a job, you've got to discuss it. If you don't discuss it, you'll never get better. And if you look at you talk about being absolute. You look at any special forces unit. Irrespective of all the weird things they do, what they strive to be is as perfect as possible in an environment that is absolutely uncompromising, unpredictable, ambiguous, a very hard place to be perfect. But they review, review, review, and it's always every book you read about. The more people you meet. They always say it's about being absolute in your review. And surgeons do the same thing. To be honest, surgical teams do a very, very same thing.

Speaker 2:
17:45

We spoke about recently people saying, yeah, we review, we review, but how well do you review and how often do you review that presented data is interesting because, again, martin and Dave spoke about this and martin suggested that put your stuff on linkedin, put your stuff on instagram.

Speaker 2:
18:00

Make yourself open for interpretation if you don't have another platform, put it as much as you can release information about your club. But I remember speaking to jake jennings, who's a sports scientist up at Brisbane Broncos and a really talented sports scientist and strength coach, and he put his stuff on Twitter and I wouldn't have come across him had he not put some of his dashboards online. So, yeah, it can lead to criticism, but it can also lead to people saying, hey, how did you do this? And I'm curious to why you said that, and so, yeah, I think it's ballsy. I wouldn't do it, but if I was an up-and-coming youngster I probably would. So, yeah, rather than taking Instagram videos of your athletes doing, you know, squat jumps or plyos, or, yeah, he put his dashboards online, which I thought was really, really innovative and ballsy.

Speaker 1:
18:53

It is, and it's a different mate.

Speaker 2:
18:56

the social media world's a different world, and you've You've had to really embrace that You're just so prolific these days, Jason.

Speaker 1:
19:05

I would like nothing better than to hide and do. I'd love to do my speed-sig thing and all that. Just do it Like, just talk to coaches, work with athletes, but that's not the nature. You've got to get it out there. So you know I'm a great example. I suppose I put myself out there. You know, I've put out a product that is completely disruptive, completely new and, to be honest with some people it blows their minds Like literally they cannot grasp it, because thinking about the way you've done your job for the last 20 years in a completely different way is challenging.

Speaker 1:
19:43

So, yeah, I'm putting it out there and no doubt, like you've got to have a thick skin, no question.

Speaker 2:
19:49

In my involvement with Peak, the performance team here in Adelaide as well. It's been A great Sean Baker With Sean Baker. Yeah, it's been uncomfortable being on social media and doing it that way. Yeah, I'll probably have to get better at it. Now you have to go and We've got to go mate.

Speaker 1:
20:07

We've got to go. We've got athletes waiting. Athletes take precedence. Mate it's been a pleasure, as always, and we'll try and figure out a more constructive time.

Speaker 2:
20:18

Look forward to it, mate.

Speaker 1:
20:19

See you, buddy. Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.

-----END SEASON 3, EPISODE 6-----

-----BEGIN SPEEDING PAST INJURY: RETHINKING HAMSTRING REHAB-----
Jason Weber:
0:15

I'm Jason Webber and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Unfortunately, Darren and I have really been challenged on schedule this week, so what I've got for you now is just a little rant. I went on yesterday, got a lot to do wit spee s, but it's really about our industry and how we address information and running mechanics, specifically with respect to injury. So I really hope you take something away from this with respect to challenging your thinking and I look forward to speaking to you again real soon with darren, as soon as we can find time to get together. Thanks, and in this blog I'm just looking to overview an injury that's come up in the press in the last 24 hours. It's now February 27. In Australia, just this last 24 hours, we've seen a young AFL football superstar of the game, hayden Young. We've seen a young AFL football superstar of the game, john Hayden Young, come out with a repeat hamstring injury.

Jason Weber:
1:10

Now the purpose of this blog is not to have a shot at anybody but, much like I do with Darren on our podcast, two Coaches and no Coffee, I want to look at the components that are publicly available here. Just examine them for the point of coaches starting to or trying to learn from experience and learn from what's going on. Now I don't know what's happened and I'm not having a shot at anybody by any stretch, but I am suggesting that maybe, if we consider this ongoing problem that's endemic in all field sports, can we approach it differently, and it's something that I've tried. I've been working on trying to figure this out for the last 10 years Now. I've been in the game of professional field sports rugby and AFL predominantly for over 27 years, so this isn't a new problem, but what I think we need is a new way of looking at it. So this little blog is just about examining what's gone on and possibly understanding it a little bit better from a hypothetical perspective. I don't know the facts at all, I don't claim to know them, not having a shot at anybody but I just want to examine it for the point of sharing information with my industry, because I do believe and I say this publicly quite a lot.

Jason Weber:
2:25

I think our industry strength and conditioning, rehabilitation, physio need to be better. I think docs need to be better too. Like medical, we need to be better. Now, some of that is because of the information available to us. It's not because people aren't working hard and it's not because people aren't smart enough. I think people are trying to extraordinary lengths to get things right, but when we don't have necessarily the information we need, how can we create an intervention that will serve a great purpose if we don't know exactly where we need to go?

Jason Weber:
2:58

So if I look at this incident, so this incident was originally reported on February 4th, so it's February 27th today, so 23 days ago. He's come out and trained sometime in the last 48 hours and it's gone again. So you look at that, it's a 23, 21 day injury maybe. So that's sort of like a grade 1B. You don't know where it is, but for the sake of discussion we'll make it bicep fem, mid belly, distal muscular junction, anything around that. So we're not saying that it's complicated, we're just guessing. Remember, I don't know the information, but that's 23 days. So of that 23 days he's probably only trained meaningfully, maybe two to three times. From an AFL standpoint, maybe two to three times, and I mean going at ground balls, sprint, repeat speed. You probably only got two in there maybe one bit of match sim, something to that effect, before it's gone again. So in 23 days, let's say he's trained twice, it's gone again. Now they're saying publicly in the paper he won't be available for the March 15th game. We're surmising that he might be available March 22. That's another 23 days. So again, we'd expect that he'd probably only train maybe twice in that. So that's four days in 46 in the lead-up to a competition that is one of the hardest-running sports in the world. So the compromise to the athlete is enormous, is enormous and, as Birgit and I have talked about, the biggest risk factor to predicting injury is previous injury. So if you've got two back-to-back, you're now red lights flashing, alarm bells are on.

Jason Weber:
4:41

So what might have been done in that period? I've no doubt it would have been MRI'd. They would have got a great diagnosis. They would have looked at it clinically, right. What's the function? What have we got? What are our clinical signs in the physio or the medical practice? Have we got range of motion? Have we got strength, et cetera, et cetera. All would have been systematically done right, no question they would have gone to the gym. They would have gone right. We need to regain strength before we gain speed and I'm sure they would have ticked off the going of. A common trait of the mutt would be we look at eccentric hamstring, right? Okay, no doubt they've got some parity left to right. They would have some confidence in that.

Jason Weber:
5:26

We go out to the field. This is where I come in. We go out onto the field and what do we do? We use gps. We measure speed, we measure how many reps. You know what speeds, what distances, what reps, all of that stuff. Same stuff we've been doing for the 20 odd years. How long it's inside gps? For 20 years, same stuff. We've been doing nothing different.

Jason Weber:
5:50

Now, was there any analysis done in the field of how the running was done? Not sure. I would say no, right, and I'm not. The team he's with may have done something, but I'm suggesting that he probably did, and most teams around the world that I'm seeing, and they're not. Now, my bent in all of this is okay, we reduce clinical symptoms, we can demonstrate strength, we go on the field. All we do is run them and we have this survivor mentality. So if we run them today at 60% and they survive tomorrow, they must be good. Now, you've got to question that logic. I question it because I've lived it for a long time. You've got to question that logic. I question it because I've lived it for a long time. My bent is when we run a percent, ideally we've got pre-data about their running mechanics and we know where they sit. They come back and they run 60, we can say, right, that's where they are. And they run 70%. That's, we know where they are, exactly where they are.

Jason Weber:
6:46

There's a couple of great papers and I've put together a couple of papers on this and in fact for anyone looking at this blog reading it, I'm going to put a connection in down below somewhere. I'm not social media savvy but we're going to get that. We'll get a link down there to some of the reviews I've done on this. But there are a couple of great papers that look at the deficit in horizontal force on the ground during running after hamstring injury. There was a great paper out of the EPL that showed that that didn't exist. Now I've talked to the authors of that paper and I'm adamant that what they did was they rehabilitated the injury really perfectly and they got great results. But I think in the two studies that showed there were poor results or poor rehabilitation of the hamstring, they're in a lower level sport and what I'm suggesting is are we making mistakes even at levels like the AFL where we're not getting absolute recovery of that hamstring Because we're not measuring it.

Jason Weber:
7:44

All we're saying is you can go from A to B, create speed, but how they're doing it's changed. Now I know for a fact from Spesic one of the biggest changes we see with hamstring injury and with an ACL reconstruction with a semi-tendonosis graft is we see a change in hip lock. Now I've had two discussions in the last two weeks with three Olympic-level, multi-gold medal-winning Olympic coaches and we've been talking about hip lock, its impact, what happens to it when you get a hamstring injury and what happens to it in acceleration. So we've got this position where we know hip lock is super important In team sport. We're not measuring it. We're not measuring it. We're not doing it. We're doing the same stuff we've been doing for 20 years. So that's where I design spacing and no question this blog's about that.

Jason Weber:
8:33

I'm trying to share what we're doing. We're trying to use that GPS, imu unit, catapult or stat sports on the lumbar spine so we know where the body's center of mass is, or estimated center of mass. From that we can look at both legs, we can look at the vectors forward and backward, we can look at what the pelvis is doing. We can communicate this information. The other thing I'm going to add for anybody watching this video blog or reads the blog that I write with it, we'll put in a case study as well.

Jason Weber:
9:04

A great case study we did out of UK football last year, end of last year. Five repeat hamstring who did? We've got all their strength data in this, all strength metrics ticked off, including ridiculous levels on eccentric strength. If that blows your hair back, it doesn't blow mine back, clearly. But they also had markless motion capture data. So markless motion capture. Some good data came about. Performance, but there was no left to right. There was no designated difference. To identify the issue, speedsig were able to detect ground contact problem and a horizontal force problem which we were able to work with the team to come up with strategies to repair that, to fix it, to take what we'd already developed in the gym and we've obviously got going, get them back on the field but know more about what we're doing.

Jason Weber:
9:56

What drives me insane, and drove me insane for many years in team sport, is we don't really know. We have what I call a water cooler conversation, so we all stand around and we watch the athlete run and we go. Well, my opinion's this and your opinion. What are we about here? This is just prescription by jury. That's not good enough. Our industry is better than that. We're all calling ourselves scientists, we're using all the tech and we talk about the number of people talking about AI. How about we just figure out what the athlete's doing and we use it in a highly reliable, valid and scalable manner so we can capture data? That means something. Now, if you want to have a look at what we're doing with SpeedSeq, get on the links, jump on our webpage, speedcigcom. Yes, we're doing that. We're doing that with teams NFL, epl, afl, rugby League in Australia, nrl, national Rugby Union, six Nations teams. What we're trying to do is bridge that gap. We're trying to take GPS and it's the good stuff that it does to good stuff people doing in the gym.

Jason Weber:
11:04

But get onto the field on the field filling that blank spot so we know what's going on, so we can prevent the forlorn figure of a great player like Hayden Young walking around the boundary in running shoes because he can't run. Remember four training days in 46, minimum. That's if he goes back in 23 days after this most recent term. There's maybe a bit of now. They might be going well. Let's give him another week. So then that becomes, you know, six, seven days training in inarguably. You know 33 days, sorry, 53 days. That's an enormous miss and that's where our athletes get burned. The hamstring injury might be that bad and he comes back and that's fine, but then he hasn't trained, he hasn't done everything at the speed he would expect and he's a young player, so he might bounce back pretty well, but then in a couple of years there's an older player. You have the same thing. The older player doesn't bounce so well. Then we start seeing the repeat injuries and what we see in older players is, once they start missing this bulk of training, then that training load comes down and Birgit and I have talked about that a lot.

Jason Weber:
12:15

Like getting this right means asking harder questions and, more than that, asking how do we get the answers, how do we find the next bit of information? Not sitting in our laurels and thinking, hey, we've got a noise board, hey, we've got force plate, hey, we've got GPS, we've got everything. We don't. And I'm not suggesting for a second that speed is the absolute answer to everything. It's not. But you know what it is In the continuum from we come on the field sorry, leave the gym to the field. It fills an important gap here and what it might be is. It's basically the step before we do something else and we move forward. But what we can't do is sit on our laurels of 20 years of GPS data and go well, that's it right. What's next? We need to be better Again, like I said valid, reliable. We need to be better Again, like I said valid, reliable, scalable. We need multiple touch points of information in order to understand validity of running.

Jason Weber:
13:12

I had the pleasure of working with the great Professor Joe Hamel at the University of Massachusetts and he was very clear to me when we were speaking on this subject about how the variability in running. You need data to understand that variability. Capturing a couple of steps in January and capturing a couple of steps in June, not enough. Not enough to know. I had a great chat last night with a young coach up in the UK, a former resident of Alabama, but he was doing the same thing. He was saying to me hey, man, I'm videoing all of these guys. The best I can do. Of the squad of 40 young athletes he works with, I can video 10 and I can analyze them to the best of my ability. We've got to be better. We've got to be scalable. If we're going to use tech, it's not just AI. We need to use tech to multiply our abilities and our liability.

Jason Weber:
14:05

I hope everyone got something out of this, really hope. I want people to walk away from this thinking that what's the next thing we can do. If you read Johan Lade's work Johan Lade and I met on this. We've discussed it multiple times. He's thinking down this path already. He's looking for solutions. He's looking for ways to do this, and I know I'm not the only one in this space. There are plenty of other great practitioners thinking of. But I've chosen a technology path to follow because I know valid, reliable, scalable that's what we need, because I've been in the gig for 20 years, so I know what coaches need. So all the very best. I hope you walk away from this with something to think about and challenge yourself and we keep getting better.

-----END SPEEDING PAST INJURY: RETHINKING HAMSTRING REHAB-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPSIODE 4-----
Jason Weber:
0:13

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Birchow and Jase Webber. Here we're back on opposite sides of the country. How are you travelling, mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:21

I'm all right. I'm in the office, as you can see at the hospital-like background.

Jason Weber:
0:28

I'm in the library. I'm in the library, I'm in the world of knowledge. I've seen your library.

Darren Burgess:
0:32

That ain't what it looks like, but if some players come in, we'll either get them involved in the conversation or I'll be momentarily distracted. But let's go.

Jason Weber:
0:41

No, it's all right, mate. I've been sworn to privacy. My family walked past the glass door behind me and I'm not allowed to have anything showing, so that's why we've got the false bookcase.

Jason Weber:
0:51

Righto mate In our little preamble mate. I saw this interview yesterday published on LinkedIn. It was part of an interview which you might be able to elaborate on what it was, but there was Roy Keane, amongst a number of other people who appeared to be coaches of some description. I didn't really I didn't recognize them, nor know any of them, but they were slagging on sports science pretty hard and I I've got a position on and I want to discuss, but who? Who were these? Who was this?

Darren Burgess:
1:19

so do you know who it was? Who were they? Our english followers will be swallowing their cup of tea at the moment. They were Gary Neville, roy Keane and Wayne Rooney. They have a podcast.

Jason Weber:
1:29

Oh, is that Wayne Rooney? Jeez, Wayne Rooney's put on some weight, hasn't he?

Darren Burgess:
1:33

I got sent the link a few times. I think it was maybe a week or two weeks ago. And essentially they were talking about injury crisis in Tottenham and how, you know, managers are blaming injuries and you know, and there was a bit of debate about it's quite right that your manager can blame injury when you've got eight first-team players out.

Jason Weber:
1:54

No, no, no.

Darren Burgess:
1:55

So. But what they were saying was sports scientists have got too much of a say. Sports scientists are telling people they can and can't train. And Gary Neville who's obviously a very good footballer in his time but now he's probably the premier football pundit in the UK he said quite rightly your body has to build up a resilience to what you're asking it to do on game day. So if, for whatever reason, the manager, the sports scientist, the high-performance director, is not training the team hard enough, come game time your body will go hey, what the hell is this? Couldn't agree more, yeah.

Jason Weber:
2:33

Could not agree more.

Darren Burgess:
2:35

Probably the point that he made, which I think a lot of people in my experience anyway get undone by, is, he said you've got to harden your body to play Wednesday, Saturday, wednesday, saturday or Thursday, sunday, thursday, sunday, if you're playing two games a week, and so that's where, if you do play Saturday to Saturday to Saturday to Saturday and you have coming up after that, so four weeks of one game a week, and then you have coming up Saturday, wednesday, saturday, wednesday, saturday, Wednesday for four weeks after that, if you don't prepare the body for that, then that's a massive spike in load and you're asking for trouble. Now we can say, as sports scientists and high performance managers, whatever our profession is, yeah, but the coach should rotate and all those sorts of things, but the fact is, prepare for the worst case scenario, which is Saturday, wednesday, saturday Wednesday. So, although they were criticizing our profession which I get, I did like some of the points they were making You've been just chomping at the bit, so go ahead.

Jason Weber:
3:33

No, mate, look, I saw a snippet right so it was fine and it wasn't that I disagreed. I think you said Gary Neville's point. Absolutely agree, If we're not conditioning for, as you say, the worst case scenario, but straight up, what do they have to do? When do they have to do it? How frequently do they have to do it? It's pretty straight forward stuff. So on that front I couldn't agree with him more.

Jason Weber:
4:00

The idea of hardening them up, that's a very ethereal types like output, when we're starting to talk like even AFL is nowhere near the financial system that EPL or anything else is. But even with players of that value and their careers, we should be a bit more accurate than hey, we've just got to harden the body up. My argument is with, like, I think there are sports science guys and we talked about this last week with your experience with the Indigenous camp there were some guys coming in saying you know, they've got to play 23 minutes and this and that it's just too cute to use the phrase of a coach I used to work with. Far too cute, but so phrase of a coach I used to work with, far too cute, but so acknowledging that there are some dudes who have gone way too far and they are radically overstating their capabilities from a sports science perspective. But my note, my thing, was the notion that because you're a head coach, which means you're exceptional at understanding the tactics of the game, the nature of the game, all that sort of stuff is that you know is absolutely flawed, Absolutely flawed.

Jason Weber:
5:13

I've had two massive examples in my career of coaches going I know what to do, we're going to do it my way, and it breaks 100% and that we end up with. In both cases we end up with a raft of injuries that crushed the entire team. So while I disagree with the notion that coaches should know everything, I also think sports science doesn't know anything. So maybe somewhere in the middle there has got to be a point where coach and that senior whatever it is high-performance manager, they've got to come together and say this is what we do, this is our plan. What do you think, mate?

Darren Burgess:
5:56

Yeah, I think in the best-case scenario the coach and the director of performance, high performance manager, general manager, whatever your title, vice president of player health, as is the case in the US need to be on the same page, as this. So often what happens is either the coach brings their fitness person in in the case of soccer or global football and they just rely on that, or, in the US, the coach comes into a system whereby the general manager has employed the director of performance vice president and the coach comes in and fits into that system. So either way, it's not always the case, but there is a disconnect between coach and club staff and that's where the problem lies, because the coach has to trust that the club staff doctor, physio, performance person has the best interests at heart and obviously the performance people need to leave the coach to do the coaching. Where they start to intersect and a performance person says oh, I don't think they can do this drill, but that drill, but this drill, because that drill has too many left foot touches and not enough right foot, and you know that's where we get into some problems.

Darren Burgess:
7:15

Generally, keep it pretty loose and say this person can do 70% of a session. Which session? Which drills? Is it absolutely essential for this striker to do. Well, we're doing some defensive clearances from um set plays, okay. Well, maybe he doesn't have to do that, maybe she can go and work on some finishing, or maybe she you know that that's the sort of conversations broadly, rather than, as I said to you last week, I reckon um, this person can only do 50% of their game load of sprints and they sprint 200 metres in a game. Therefore, at 100 metres, we are taking this person off training. I just don't think that that works and the margin for error is too great and the precise nature of your diagnosis is just flawed on so many levels.

Jason Weber:
8:07

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think something you said to me years ago resonated right when I was going with the coach. I don't know if you still do it, but you put a piece of paper on the wall and go right when the shit hits the fan. That's what we're going to refer to, I think the biggest issue I'm going to go with. I think it's our responsibility to go to the coach. We have to take the information to the coach. They're the boss, right? They're the gaffer.

Jason Weber:
8:40

I think we have to get our language right. I think we have to get our language right. I think we have to get our communication. I think we need to be clear from day one what we can do and what we really can't do. So, coach, when I come in and tell you that, hey, they can do 50-meter sprint, but they can't do 75, you probably deserve a swat over the head with a heavy object. Right? You should be able to say to Coach hey, this is the concepts we're going to work with, this is what we're working with. But what I would say is establish a language. Don't be a smart mouth. Don't be a smart mouth and think that because you got a PhD when you were 23 in some ridiculous loading study that you can enforce that and throw that around on people. I think it's our job to communicate what we do in the most understandable and digestible language for the coach.

Jason Weber:
9:33

And I think establishing that language early, Like don't like Something as simple as they talk in metres per second, you talk in kilometres per hour, like whatever. Something as nomenclature, simple as that, I think, will break those relationships and if you can get them squared away early. I must admit I worked years ago, like I'm happy to say. I worked with Ross Lyons for a long time.

Jason Weber:
9:58

Ross is a tough coach but we had some not hiccups but hurdles early. But I remember that as soon as we got our language right and he understood what I was talking about, his ability to plan training was unbelievable. Like so fast but so accurate. Like we had some like projected metrics, so like, if this is what you're doing in training, we could predict within reasonable accuracy what each player would do, which is not brain surgery but his ability to. When I came in and said, hey, these are some of the parameters we're after, he would be able to go bang, bang, bang, bang bang, Because we had that common language and I always think that was a massive thing for me and I think that if anyone listening to this is in the sports science game, it's your responsibility to communicate well to the coach. Don't force them, and I can only imagine it's worse when they're Spanish and English is not their first language. It must be incredibly tough, right.

Darren Burgess:
11:00

Yeah, I think keeping, like you said, keeping it generic or generic is not quite the right word, but Consumable, yeah, and also Usable Makes sense, enabling yourself to say to your sports scientist or your physio or your whoever listen, we don't want this guy to go above, we don't want this girl to go above 100-metre sprint, if we can help it, like that might be a language you use in your morning meeting, but then when you go to the coach, it's OK, we're going to restrict this player to 50% of the session. Then if they go to 120 metres, as I said last week, it's 20 metres of sprint.

Darren Burgess:
11:49

It's okay, everybody has targets, of course, we all have targets.

Jason Weber:
11:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darren Burgess:
11:53

But don't be obsessed by the targets, because, as we know and I got a message from our man, dave Carillon, during the week and he said great pod this week, mate, so much resonated.

Darren Burgess:
12:04

Got me thinking. When you spoke about the red flag review, did you ever review the orange or the green status guys that get injured? And it was remiss of us not to talk about that last week. We certainly did and it was extraordinary. The um, the green people got injured almost as much as the unadjusted red flags. The problem is the red flags were acted on so you could never tell the accuracy of your flagging system, which is how it should be. That's exactly how it should be. But yeah, even though you've given these people the green lights by your wonderful, by my wonderful monitoring, they still get injured, dr Andy.

Jason Weber:
12:49

Roark. But let's take a step back and a little bit of humility. What does it tell us about our monitoring metrics? We don't know everything. The purpose of science is to understand the variability in a system.

Jason Weber:
13:01

If we can't describe the variability accurately with the metrics we have, then, just because we have metrics, we can't say that's 100% right because we don't know. That's the thing that bugs me is that we try to imply so much from so little information that it's ridiculous, mate, look what I've done for the last 10 years with SpeedSig. I've done nothing but try to figure out the gap where we have no information, and the difference is like remarkable. I had a conversation this morning with a university in the US like entirely about just trying to. If we had this information, what would it help us do? That's like it changes the landscape. I'm not saying it's just basic, but back when I started in the late 90s, stop watching a pen and paper. That was it. All you could do was use your eye, and your eye was not always great.

Darren Burgess:
14:00

No.

Jason Weber:
14:04

You had a biro. You were more advanced than me.

Darren Burgess:
14:07

To finish the conversation and move on to the next topic, because I am under a bit of time pressure today. Neil Craig, one of the premier sports scientists in the country for some period and then he went and was a very successful senior coach and now he's a coach advisor with many different successful organisations. I went and doing my hon honors using a thing called Track Performance, which was a pen on a scaled field of.

Darren Burgess:
14:33

AFL and I remember sitting up in a cherry picker almost like a crane Got a crane Yep Running my pen over a miniature field and tracking players during training for him. And I came and said what did you want out of training? And he said I want about 10K. What do we get? And I said, oh well, this player got nine. Do you need to do extra? And he goes is it going to change your decision on that player? Only give me metrics. If it's going to change my decision on the player, I can't argue with that.

Jason Weber:
15:08

No, 100%, 100%. It's all about decision-making. But that's why you were up there doing that and I was working with the Wallabies then and that's when Neil Craig introduced that to Eddie Jones and the Wallabies. So, yeah, it was interesting, but same thing we went from having no information to having what you'd call canary in the coal mine, because you could only track one or two players, but straight away that gave you this new body of information For sure.

Jason Weber:
15:37

Mate I'm going to throw. I've got one other quick one which I think just stays close to this. This is for the S&C and sports sciences out there. But I reckon stay close is something that I did well for Tom sometimes with coaches, but I think you've got to keep a tight relationship with them, in that you need to be constantly having conversations, because when you just deliver information and then skip because you're doing something else, I think that relationship is so critical and I think I would be critical of myself for not facilitating that relationship in some parts, or sometimes because I was in gigs for a long time taking it for granted and letting it slip. I think keeping tight in that relationship with the boss is really important so that you can have conversations that don't go from zero to all our mma in fucking one second.

Darren Burgess:
16:34

Um, you know, and that does happen periodically yeah it does I think, yeah, you've got to navigate that and it's a balancing act. You've got to navigate the? Um pissing off the coach versus having the uncomfortable conversation early so you don't have to have it later, versus, um, keeping your job, which is a realistic um. Uh, worry for people versus doing what's right for the player versus doing what's right for the club, and all of those things can be.

Darren Burgess:
17:09

We could simulate maybe we'll do this next week. We could simulate a conversation between a high-performance director be that a doctor, physio, fitness, whatever and a manager, with me saying okay, I'm going to do what's best for the club here. How would the conversation go? Me saying I'm going to do what's best for the club here? How would the conversation go? Me saying I'm going to do what's best for the player? How would the conversation go? Me saying I'm going to do what's best to protect my job? How would the conversation go? And they would all go differently. Oh, yeah, yeah, it depends on your motivation and how you can sleep at night, depending on which angle you're going down.

Jason Weber:
17:44

Yeah, but I think the closer it's like anything right, Like, I think, any relationship you've got to keep them closer so those conversations are more easily facilitated, right. Hey boss, I've got something we need to discuss. It's shit, it's shit, but we need to just go through it. Okay, you know. So I think, yeah, staying close to your gaff is important. What else? You got any on the agenda, mate? Or you got to fly because you're under the pump? Something for us.

Darren Burgess:
18:12

Yeah, we've got a first game against opposition this week in trial game against Port Adelaide. We've got two games in two weeks and then it's the season starting, so we can keep talking about that as we go through that process. But yeah, it's 1.30 in the middle of a training day and I need to get off, but I'm glad we could squeeze this in, mate. Love your work mate, yeah, start going through that library behind you and see what you can get from it.

Jason Weber:
18:43

I don't know. We'll cast an eye over it and see what happens. But thanks, mate, appreciate you and stay in contact, mate, I don't know, we'll cast an eye over it and see what happens but thanks, mate, appreciate you and uh, let's stay in contact. Thanks, mate.

-----END SEASON 3, EPSIODE 4-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPSIODE 3-----
Jason Weber:
0:13

G'day and welcome to a very special episode of Two Coaches and a Coffee. Today, you actually have your two coaches and your coffee all in one spot. So, Darren, how are you doing, mate? Welcome to Perth.

Darren Burgess:
0:30

Doing all right, mate, Good to be here. It's a little bit odd in that I can look over there and see you and yet we're on here. But this is the modern technology that we're working with here.

Jason Weber:
0:41

We're using a bit of new tech, yes, but it's good to have you in one spot, mate.

Darren Burgess:
0:45

No, it's good to be here for the Indigenous All-Stars game later this afternoon, which will be an incredible game. Really genuinely privileged to ask to be part of the All-Stars staff. So yeah, we've got 31 of the best Indigenous players in the AFL playing against Fremantle, so it should be. If nothing else, it'll be an extremely entertaining game.

Jason Weber:
1:10

Yeah, mate, they're going to bring some passion to it, because you watch on the news through the week, there's quite a lot of lads that are genuinely behind the concept and represent family and culture and all that. So I think they're going to have a big crack. Yeah, and we've had a fair few cultural events concept and represent family and culture and all that.

Darren Burgess:
1:25

So I think they're going to have a big crack. Yeah, now we've had a fair few cultural not education, but immersion sessions and the boys have got a few surprises when they kick goals at the start of the games. It's exciting to be here, mate, good to see you.

Jason Weber:
1:41

Just as an aside, mate, the All Blacks do that really well With their haka and and they have what you'd say cultural immersion around that. So, yeah, it's awesome. I will say the Wallabies now do it because we have so many Polynesian descendants playing. They actually have Polynesian culture, dave and things. So, interesting aside, mate, so back to the world that we live in and communicating to our brethren two things we're going to go through today, probably briefly, but one might drag out a bit. We were just discussing survivability of players because, in the role you're in for this game, you've just been asked. You get so from all the teams around the country who supply players. They give recommendations. So your call to me the other day was the old bulls have just said, yep, play him, play him. The young ones are saying, oh, it's got to be. You know, 5.2 kilometers and 33 and a half minutes are really very minutiae orientated numbers.

Darren Burgess:
2:43

It's interesting because there's a cultural aspect to this and there's a physical aspect to this. So, 31 players from 17 clubs, and these are, by and large, their star assets.

Jason Weber:
2:56

Yes.

Darren Burgess:
2:56

And that's what they are, their assets.

Jason Weber:
2:58

In a business?

Darren Burgess:
2:58

yes, exactly, and so the staff have said to me, or some of the staff have said you know, can this player get this many kilometres and can this player, if this player doesn't get this many kilometres, can you do some extra work with them afterwards? And so there's been some quite specific and some quite generic, and so the cultural aspect is for, and that's not what we're here to talk about, but I feel like I should mention it.

Jason Weber:
3:24

Yeah, absolutely.

Darren Burgess:
3:26

This is as big a game as any for these players. Some of them will never get to play in a grand final and so playing with their brothers on a big stage. There's 37,000 tickets being sold, so it's probably 45,000 crowd for a trial game is enormous and some of the vision that I've watched in the last 24 hours and talking to the players. This is so big for them. So I feel a responsibility to A give the players enough game time so that they can show themselves. But the physical aspect is we've got to respect the requests of each of the clubs, because tomorrow morning at am they're all going back to their clubs and there's two weeks till the season, so to get an injury now would be an absolute disaster. So, yeah, there's some of the players, but certainly the older players are. Just no, I'm playing. You know you rotate me on and off. So in a normal game you've got four on the bench, we've got 11 on the bench to try and get them on. So it's going to be organized chaos.

Jason Weber:
4:38

And I bet they want to go too. They'll want to get in there.

Darren Burgess:
4:42

Yeah, imagine. You know, trying to get players off when you know you're on the bench is pretty tough. So anyway, it was an interesting sort of experience getting the limitations placed on players. I don't know their history, but some of the high-performance managers just said no, just play them. Whatever. We trust you, we'll back you in to look after our guys. We've got live GPS, so some of them have given us metrics to hit. Trying to get them to run after the game is going to be challenging, jason, as you know. No.

Jason Weber:
5:15

Not in a cultural game like this, no way. I mean I think it was like. I mean it's an amazing thing. I will make one quick comment. Which I think I didn't get as a younger guy when I was in some of the roles, is the enormity of the culture in some of these events. And I think when you're looking at what you, as you said, you're privileged to do, a guy I worked with for a long time and will work with again soon, michael Dobbin. He ran this Indigenous program for many years. It's awesome, but you've got to respect it and you've got to, as you're doing, try and make it happen for the guys, because it is such a big thing and I think when it comes to this will sound silly. But broader things, like other stakeholders in your job, you know the importance of what the marketing people do and the sales and all those things that you know you've got to, really got to support that because ultimately it's the business. But anyway, let's not talk about that stuff too much. What I will say was it was interesting when we sat down with a chat and, just about this, we're estimating we need this many kilometers or that, and the level of accuracy or the merit in some of those things. I'm not saying they're right or wrong, I don't know, but it's been interesting.

Jason Weber:
6:32

And I pulled up a point about your journey through EPL. I'm doing a lot more now on the periphery of EPL with SpeedSig and looking at the guys who can and those who can't. And is it just truly attritional Because we discussed a player which I'm not going to name? And is it just truly attritional Because we discussed a player which I'm not going to name but we both work with, who just had this litany, this list of reasons why he couldn't go Central tender miss da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But he's a great footballer, so we'll try and keep him going. But, mate, I think sometimes there's no question and SpeedSig contributes to this too is it just starts to rack up evidence as to why this guy can't go and he's never going to go.

Jason Weber:
7:09

He's just attritional at some point.

Darren Burgess:
7:11

Yeah, I think I was listening to a podcast from Ender King talking about rehabbing and Aspartame.

Darren Burgess:
7:19

Aspartame, yeah, talking about and he's one of the best around talking about how he likes to put together the puzzle and why this player ultimately. I believe that some players are not genetically equipped to perform at the highest level and we both work with players like that, correct? I can listen to a thousand podcasts on how to piece together the rehab puzzle for somebody with chronic hamstring tendon, chronic calf. Just genetically, they were gifted with many things, but one of them was not the durability to play at the elite level. Oh yeah, so we could spend all day going, yeah, but if we just improved the stiffness of the tendon. But it's just not going to happen. But on the flip side and I'll say this till the cows come home and very few people will listen to me, jason, Look, I will mate GPS.

Darren Burgess:
8:12

I did my parents, steve, I don't know I've said this a few times, probably on this podcast, but GPS is a guide. If I took the 32 players that are going to take the field this afternoon and I put them through whatever model you want to use, whether it's Acute, chronic or whatever it is and I added 40% every week, which is unhealthy, and people will go, what the you're ruining it. I guarantee you there would be um 28 red flags by any system that you and I could set up, and I'm going to guess 26 of them would get through. If I did five weeks of continuous add 40 percent of load, 26 of them would get through and three or four of them wouldn't make it. Yet every sports scientist in the world, being a journalist here, would be saying oh you can't.

Darren Burgess:
9:13

Red flag, red flag, red flag. You can't do it, you can't do it. So it's a guide. Some players can handle it, some can't. For as many red flags and we do this analysis every year for as many red flags that have got injured versus red flags that have got through is ridiculous.

Darren Burgess:
9:33

The amount that get through compared to those who get injured yeah, so overwhelming if, if a coach wants to do a certain amount of training, we do ourselves a disservice as an industry to continually saying no, no, no, no, there's a red flag there, there's a red flag there. No, he can't. The difference between 60-metre sprint and 80-metre sprint might be 33% and that might be too high, but it's 20 metres.

Jason Weber:
10:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is where we get down to really starting to understand what's true and what's not. You say GPS. Right, it's a guide. Gps is what, what reps, what distances?

Jason Weber:
10:18

I think when you get into the enderking level, and what they're doing and certainly what I aspire to do in the field with Speedsink is how. How are they doing it? Because if how changes, that's a big deal. So my view would be, let's say, asymmetry, and there's a hole in running. The asymmetry thing is much more complex than force plates. But if you've got an asymptomatic asymmetry, that's got no history, but that's just the way they run. Who cares? Move on.

Jason Weber:
10:50

My perspective with that is model it, understand it and keep an eye on it. Yeah Right, but that's when we get to the loading parameters is we don't actually model players and understand how they recover. What we're doing is just saying, globally, you can't add more than, let's say, whatever, it is 10% per week. We put caps and we're doing population-level evaluations. So, as you said, you give everybody a smacking. Well, 4% or 5% are going to go unbelievably. Four or 5% will fall off the edge of the earth and the rest will survive. So yeah, man, I think, for the level of. I think there's just got to be a reality check to what we know and what we don't know. That's the one.

Jason Weber:
11:37

The one that gets me is the young coach, the young sports scientists who go. This is the law, this is the thing it's like, dude, you don't know that You're making as big an inference call as anybody in the world, like the one of mate. God forbid, you know, I jump on a force plate or a Nord board. We'll predict whether you can run or not. Like, give me a break. Like it's totally different.

Darren Burgess:
13:05

I was speaking to Matthew Inew innes recently, one of the great high performance managers and and the great humans going around, and he said a lot of people said um to him when he when he started at various jobs in the past. We're overfilling this bucket with. You know, the bucket's just getting too full, and his reply was we make the bucket bigger and then see if we can't fill it up. So, you know, make improve their capacity and the only way you can do that is by adding load. Now I understand you don't want to add load on dysfunction and all those wonderful gray with the gray terms, and it was the american guy that did the. I'm looking over to get the answer. It was the american guy that that did the?

Darren Burgess:
13:43

sorry, who was the American guy that did the? I'm looking over to get the answer. Who was the American guy that did the?

Jason Weber:
13:46

Sorry, who was he? We're getting all the reverb now.

Darren Burgess:
13:50

I can't remember, can't remember his name, but load on dysfunction. Yeah yeah, you can't do that, I understand that, but it's amazing how much the body will adapt within reason. And then you find out, like we said and we'll get on to another topic shortly but like we started talking about the Premier League, those guys and girls playing 60 games a season, and now up to 80 games a season, some of them this year. So the human body can handle it. There just are some that might not be able to.

Jason Weber:
14:20

But there's also mate. There's also some really simple metrics. Like the kid who played through his age groups and just survived, got through, mate awesome. The guy who's had injuries for five, ten years before he even comes to the pros probably gonna have an issue. I had I think I've talked about this before, mate, back in in 2005 in the Wallabies we had these three rugby league recruits come in, three great guys, but, mate, they come from a nutritional system where you just get belted and they survive. They came into rugby. They never got injured. They always performed. They got on the drink a hell of a lot, but they were just resilient humans because they'd probably to some extent gifted, like mum and dad, good breeding. They were excellent, but they had problems. They had one of them in particular super powerful but super tight, so range of motion was horrible.

Darren Burgess:
15:15

The dude could go.

Darren Burgess:
15:17

We'll finish this topic by. There was a I don't even know where I saw this, but I promise you it's objective. It's not just in the back of my head somewhere but there was about five different AI tested models of injury prediction, and the common theme of all of them was previous history. That's what they all used to lean on more than anything else. So as much as we can talk about this injury prediction and go, oh, Sam Robertson said it'll never happen, and I agree with him. We're in the risk mitigation business and the biggest risk is previous history.

Jason Weber:
15:54

Have you.

Jason Weber:
15:55

Yeah, yeah 100%, 100%, which is why I think, when we're picking players and I preached this for a long time in AFL and for a long time no one listened Number one if you want speed, buy it. Yes, Because again the same thing. I can make people a little bit quicker or a little bit more efficient, but I can't take slow and make them into super quick. You want quick, go and buy it, right, Go and buy it and we'll keep it healthy and all the rest of it. But buy speed and, I think, buy resilience. Buy the kid who has shown ability to back up games and he's played. Oh, she same thing. Same thing, I think, particularly in Australia with the AFLW very, very difficult because you've got girls coming out of other sports so you don't really know. But again, that's another hole.

Jason Weber:
16:47

Matt had his basket full of crazy, very tough and demanding metrics there.

Darren Burgess:
16:53

We can chat about that another time. But what I want to talk to you about is something you've experienced recently, Jason. I know hair loss. That was an awesome um is the job interview process. Talk to me about that well the job interview process.

Jason Weber:
17:14

So I mean to be blunt and fair. I've been through two job interview processes in uh inside the last six months, one in the AFL and one just recently. Both have been successful One I knocked back and one I've accepted for the purposes of making my life simpler. But I do think what was really interesting is you know when you talk to people about how do you do it. And so one job interview was, as I said, afl level, so it was three or four meetings. It was then a presentation, it was the whole piece. The other job was really just one meeting. It was not as quite a high level, so it was a little bit more simple.

Jason Weber:
17:57

But the importance of getting yourself organised and being structured I mean, as an older guy obviously you know it's, you're a bit more confident, but I think the the ability or the necessity to get everything organized and to get your mind really clear as to what you're presenting, so that when you're in conversation not just presentation, but you're in a conversation you can convey very comfortably where you're at. So massive experience, very interesting experience. I think there's a bit of humility to it. Like you're going back to the job interviews, I'm 55,. I'm not a spring chicken as much as I look like a spring chicken with bags under my eyes. But yeah, I think you've got to. I think there's an element for younger coaches of preparing for this stuff before it comes.

Darren Burgess:
18:59

How would one prepare for it, though? Like how can you know the um proliferation of people and culture, um infiltration into interviews, where I'm gonna say to people so recently we, we hired a physio and we gave them, uh, an hour before the interview, we gave them a scenario, and so they were emailed a scenario and they had to prepare for it An hour before Holy cow An hour before yeah, so how can you prepare for that?

Jason Weber:
19:31

So you know what we do in this podcast a lot Hypotheticals.

Darren Burgess:
19:36

Yep.

Jason Weber:
19:37

I'm a big believer in hypotheticals, in that you can test things out, you can walk a mile in someone else's shoes, so to speak. In that I think you can prepare for different ideas. I think it's something that I don't I would do. I did, certainly in the lead up to the job interview, the big job interview, particularly the AFL, because it's the same thing. I was going into an interview and I was wondering, like what might they ask me? If they ask me this, which direction would I take the discussion? If they ask me, if they ask me this, which direction would I take the discussion? It's like preparing for um, a debate. I don't know if you remember that back in school, uh, yeah, or anything like that. Like you've got to prepare for arguments, you've got to understand the, the landscape. Where could people go, man? I think that's really like getting the scenario an hour before. That's really interesting, but it's gonna be. It's not going to be something that ideally, it's something you should know and understand. So what are they going to give me? So let's do this.

Jason Weber:
20:35

Let's say righto, if you're going to prepare for a reasonably solid level job, let's say senior S&C coach, physio, like you did, solid level. So you should be looking at scenarios around that and I'm going to give you something else. So there's two ways this could go. You could interview with Virgil and he could give you an hour before prep. You can interview with me, and my interview process is quite different. Once we go through that, oh, we've met and this is okay. I'm going to take you into the practice and into the gym and I'm not going to give you an hour. I'm going to say, right, let's do this. I'm not that aggressive like, but I'll make it conversational because I want to know what you know. I'm not interested in, um, what you make up, I want you on the spot so then again.

Jason Weber:
21:15

So, so they're different scenarios like what.

Darren Burgess:
21:18

It's hard to prepare for that other than um know your shit.

Jason Weber:
21:21

It's pretty hard to prepare for that yeah, but what you can do I, I would argue then it's pretty hard to prepare for that. Yeah, but what you can do. I would argue then that the way you get really good at that stuff is sharing your shit with other people. So take what we're doing, for instance. Right, we're doing a podcast where we're speaking about the things we believe and know and well, things we believe, not certainly we know, but we understand and we put out into the world. You've got to practice it and you practice that, in my opinion, by working with your peers. Yes, you're going to do the job. I think there's no question of that, but there's nothing to say that if you're in an industry where, let's say, I've got a job, I'm mid-tier in an AFL team or at any club and I'm trying to move on, I think there's something to be said for getting in front of your mates and your peers and saying, hey, man, just drop me a couple of questions, let's interview me. I think you said before sorry you go.

Jason Weber:
22:19

No, I can hear you over there. He's doing that at me behind the camera.

Darren Burgess:
22:25

I'm just saying let me get a word in I think you've made the point more than me in this podcast A scenario planning where you say to your staff, your peers, can you tell me what happened in that meeting so I can prepare for when it is that I'm going to be in that meeting? Can you and we might sit down and as a group and say, right, we've got a pretty fortunate so far the Adelaide pros, for instance, we've had a pretty fortunate off season in terms of a pre-season, in terms of injuries. But now's the time where if you get a little hamstring or a calf or a quad or something like that, you've got three weeks to get it right for for the season. It becomes pretty crucial. So you could scenario plan that situation and say, right, let's do this. Um, we had a hamstring pre-christmas that took probably eight weeks to to get back because we had eight weeks in fact we had 16 weeks, so we used it.

Darren Burgess:
23:19

So what? What are the risks that we could take in that process? So I understand that you can scenario plan but you do you.

Jason Weber:
23:25

You're falling now to a leadership thing which is dead right, mate, like. So I'm very big on like. In hospitals, when you have an incident where someone passes, they have an after action. Same in military after you finish. You finish an operation or even in training you finish training, you have an aar after action report, so you review everything. I think there's a massive learning experience in that for everyone.

Jason Weber:
23:50

Now I do that now with meetings. So, as a businessman, if I have a big meeting with a prospective client, I'll review the meeting. Like how did I go? Did I present well, what did I do? What would I do differently? And that's the same thing. So we used to do it with a couple of my guys who are now running AFL Jump themselves. If I went to a meeting that I knew was going to be heavy with coaches but I couldn't bring them in, I would say this is what it's about. Go and do the meeting, come back and go right. This is what happened. How would you do it? How would you handle it? This how would you do it? How would you handle?

Darren Burgess:
24:25

it. This is what they posed to me. I think it makes sense.

Jason Weber:
24:27

That's a leadership piece from us, but I think that the ability, like there's some things you can't learn- unless you do the job.

Darren Burgess:
24:36

Do you agree?

Jason Weber:
24:36

Yeah, and so when you're interviewing for a position, generally it's up, so you probably haven't done that job. Practicing the elements man, I'm a big believer. I read the Google book years ago about how Google was built, but part of it is having time every week to work on projects. But there's also time every week If you're in the business of going up a tier, of preparing yourself, of practicing. Getting those, of testing and I still think that's part of just getting better at your job is all right, I work with you. I saw Darren make this decision. Would I have done it differently? And if I did, what's the point for and against?

Darren Burgess:
25:21

And then, in some regards, hopefully being in a position to discuss that with someone then, in some regards, hopefully being in a position to discuss that with someone, I think, when a lot of people say, how do you improve your leadership and how do you and there was, look, I'm doing a master's in leadership, so you hope that's helping Nothing is helping more than on the job and having to make those decisions. I remember and I know we're running out of time here, but when I was at Arsenal, we changed managers from Arsene Wenger been there 23 years, built the club to Emery Spanish, brought in his own Spanish analysts, and I went up to the analysts who were under my remit in that role and they were really frustrated because they were using the Spanish system and we had this advanced system and they thought it was you know.

Jason Weber:
26:11

So I looked at them and thought we're not doing much.

Darren Burgess:
26:14

And I said well, I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're going to review every game. Well, the manager doesn't need it, yeah, but it's good practice. What happens if the manager goes to Real Madrid in six months time and another manager comes in? This is good practice to review every game. So let's just pretend that the manager wants it because at some point he's going to.

Darren Burgess:
26:35

It's like the story that I told a hundred times when I started with Pim Verbeek and the Socceroos, who had no interest in GPS, no interest in heart rate. It was just me downloading one cradle after another cradle after another cradle, and I'd slide the report under his bedroom door in hotels and write a little handwritten note on it. I reckon six months it took him to actually ask me a question about it, and so I imagined him playing basketball with the crumpled up bit of paper in the in the in the bin in the hotel room and just laughing at this stupid Aussie. But after six months he asked me a couple of questions and and then we, we established it's good practice to do it. So you do it. It's scenario planning um it's forward planning.

Jason Weber:
27:25

For sure, man I'm going to throw one last thing before we go, mate. I'm I'm doing some mentoring stuff at, so you do it, it's scenario planning, it's forward planning, for sure, man, I'm going to throw one last thing before we go, mate. I'm doing some mentoring stuff at the moment with a good young coach out of Queensland, and one of the things we've talked about which is what you just talked about then is connection. One of the biggest things in this gig is the connections, connections you have with all your up down sideways, but how you manage that and that's ultimately when you're doing job interviews, what you're trying to establish really quickly is a connection with the person interviewing you. So figuring out how you can cut down time and space to create connections with people is awesome.

Jason Weber:
28:02

Righto mate, we've done our dash. We think Coles is going to be finishing the gym by now, so we need to pull this thing up. Mate, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure having you here sitting a couple of meters away from me and listening to the reverb, but my awesome made all the very best tonight. I hope it goes really well for you and the boys thanks, mate cheers.

Darren Burgess:
28:22

Thanks, mate Cheers, mate Cheers.

-----END SEASON 3, EPSIODE 3-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPSIODE 2-----
Jason Weber:
0:16

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Weber with you. Second one for 2025, b, we're back and we're being a little bit consistent.

Darren Burgess:
0:27

Hey mate, good to see you two weeks in two down. Yeah, sorry, a bit of background noise for anybody watching this on YouTube. I'm at the airport Virgin Lounge in Melbourne after spending a day doing a conference, which is something that we're going to talk about today. I've just been told oh yeah.

Jason Weber:
0:47

Well, we've got a few things to dig into, but I guess the pressing issue at the moment that we're seeing is what's happening in AFL land A few injuries about. I actually just heard about another one.

Darren Burgess:
1:00

It's all over. It's all over the news at the moment. It's all over All over the news at the moment and I'm doing that there's an Indigenous All-Stars game next week in Perth. So we'll be doing two coaches and a coffee in the studio.

Jason Weber:
1:15

We will, or the pub, or the pub or a cafe. Yeah, yeah, it might be two coaches and a beer, exactly.

Darren Burgess:
1:25

And, as part of that, the best Indigenous and First Nations players from Australia are going to play against Fremantle. Anyway, I'm on a coach's WhatsApp group and almost daily every oh so-and-so's going to miss so-and-so's out.

Jason Weber:
1:39

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
1:39

They've selected sort of 30 players and a lot of those haven't made the media alert.

Darren Burgess:
1:44

But within the media there are people going down like flies and a lot of speculation is on the length of the pre-season.

Darren Burgess:
1:57

Now our overseas counterparts are going to laugh when we say that a lot of comment from within the industry have been that the pre-season is too short, even though we start in November and don't play games until March. But I think probably more appropriately or my view anyway is that it's not too short at all. The length of time is fine, but it's the intermittent nature of it. We've trained for two weeks, then there's three weeks off, then we train for another train for two weeks, then there's three weeks off, then we train for another week and a half, then there's another four days off, then we train for that three weeks and the season starts. So it's very intermittent in nature and therefore the consistency of training is not ideal. So we're seeing a lot of tendon injuries, a lot of hamstrings that are hamstring tendon, not stress injuries, and certainly a lot of ACL and Achilles. So much of some of the discussions we've had in the past about the NFL.

Jason Weber:
2:57

Yeah Well, mate, there's no debate. If you go to the other side of the spectrum like, yes, there's the breaks and we've talked about that, but the game has evolved and the league has created a game where it's got faster. It was supposed to get slowed down because of rotations, but, as always happens, like in the environment, mate, water always finds a way In a building site. Same thing Water will always find its way in there. One of the things I've always found with rule changes is coaches will find a way to figure it out and to work the rules to their advantage, and what we've done is we've hybrided players. We've now got players that I think you correct me if I'm wrong just getting a little bit smaller. They've just reduced weight just a little bit, but the running's gone through the roof.

Darren Burgess:
3:49

Well, what's happening is because the defensive structure. So for those of us who are not familiar with AFL, if you imagine, a bit like basketball now, where the defences are encouraged to retreat back into their half or press aggressively, there are only two options. And if you retreat back into your half and then get the turnover, you are demanded that you explode and sprint in offense and get to the other end of the ground as quickly as possible. It's not maintain possession like in soccer or football. It is genuinely of the ground as quickly as possible. It's not maintain possession like in soccer or football. It is genuinely get to the goal as quickly as possible, like a fast break in basketball. So the decisive actions are all explosive, yeah.

Jason Weber:
4:36

But just to be clear on that, that fast break's 150 metres ballpark.

Darren Burgess:
4:40

Yeah, that's right.

Jason Weber:
4:41

If you go straight line from goal square to goal square it will take its 150 and they usually go around the arc a little bit. So it's a big fast break and if you're trying to get to the end of that fast break, man, you've got to.

Darren Burgess:
4:54

You're trying to beat your opponents back and then even the last line of defence.

Darren Burgess:
4:58

So the full-back is demanded, that that full-back sprints from the goal square to halfway as quickly as possible to compress the ground. So the decisive actions are explosive. So maybe the people at AFL land are looking at league-wide GPS numbers and maybe the metres per minute are the same. Maybe I don't know, but maybe they're the same. But what I know from collecting carter over the years, the explosive actions are just going through the roof and, as you know, they're the options that cause injuries. So it's no, and people, because there's less time to train match play than there has been previously, coaches are understandably and justifiably getting them to match play sooner. And so often a lot of that match play is also because you know you can't play 18 on 18 in training every week because you don't have that many players on the park. So you're playing 15 on 15, bigger fields, more explosive. So it's a recipe for disaster, disaster, and that's exactly what's happening here's a question, my friend, here's a question.

Jason Weber:
6:08

If we were training sprinters, let's say, let's say we're training a 400 meter runner, so a 400 meter runner is not going to run maximum velocity, the whole 400, but maximum velocity is still an important part. So same in afl. You can have a guy that's got super high speed, but really it's. It's the same in AFL, you can have a guy that's got super high speed but really it's the maximum fraction of that that he can sustain in reps up and down, because that's the running he has to do so when you're in training and don't give away any secrets or anything, but do you as a professional work towards drills that are actually over speed so they actually get guys to change direction, like change polarity, like defend into attack but, do it super explosively to create that overload.

Jason Weber:
6:54

Do you guys go down that path?

Darren Burgess:
6:57

Yeah, we've done it a lot this preseason, which we probably haven't done. We've done the max velocity part, but we haven't done the overspeed and the react from defence into attack or, more importantly, attack into defence as quickly and in an overspeed manner than we have done this year. We've done a lot this year, so we're trying to prep the boys as best we can. I'll let you know in about eight months whether we've got it right or not.

Jason Weber:
7:27

Just to be clear on terminology there for everyone listening.

Jason Weber:
7:30

I'm not talking about attaching a rubber band to somebody and making them go. I'm talking about doing football drills that are actually faster than we would expect in a game so that the athletes acquire a capacity to deal with that. Like Darren's saying that maximum change of, not just change of direction, but hey, I'm defending, now I'm attacking and I've got to go. And having that in your plan and the ability to do it with a coach is challenging If the coach doesn't get it it's difficult.

Darren Burgess:
8:04

And the difficult thing about it, as you know, jason, is you can do things like, say, bronco runs and those sorts of things which are pretty popular in rugby and becoming more and more popular in AFL. And so Bronco runs was a particular distance, but basically shuttle run over a decent period of time or a decent distance. So not just 10 and 5 metres shuttle, but that's teaching repeat shuttles In a game. You might do one of those every 25 seconds or 5 minutes or 7 minutes, you don't know, but that one has to be absolutely flat out. So it's not you make it up and back within this time, it is you get one effort, otherwise it's a goal. And then you walk into the centre square and you know your coach has got the shoots with you. So it's an important part of training. We try and do it pretty well, but who knows?

Darren Burgess:
9:06

But what I do know is that you know we're even talking now about a lot of jump landing stuff, a lot of jump landing under fatigue and just things like that, because there are just so many injuries that are happening throughout the whole league and they're all innocuous. They're all seemingly innocuous, but there is a reason for them. And even last year. Just to sort of round this up, my footy manager came to me with a stat only recently saying that by round seven, round eight last year, there were a record number of missed games within the AFL. So this just isn't media speculation. This is fact, and the Players Association have demanded these changes, and it's the players currently who are suffering. So I'm not suggesting that we need to scrap all holidays and give them money for a week, but I think there just needs to be a middle ground somewhere.

Jason Weber:
11:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no doubt I would also be interested as an outsider. So I know and we talked about this a bit last week that we're at that week in the year where training's peaked and we're about to start tapering off Right now. Right, Everybody's sweating bullets because it's high risk. It's like going to camp, you know, in the NFL college football.

Darren Burgess:
11:32

It's bang.

Jason Weber:
11:33

It's on. My question it is a genuine question is and there have been times that I've seen my team get to a point well before that where I go like they're ready, they are ready to go, yet you're still marking time for maybe another two weeks. And the question is much and this is not dissimilar from the soccer thing how quickly can we get them up to the appropriate volumes? Like, do we drag volume a little bit too long? Hard to say.

Darren Burgess:
12:07

That's a good question, you would argue. I have objective loads to suggest that in soccer we get to similar loads within 2-3 weeks of preseason, but they've had less time off. They've only had 4 weeks off. They've only had four weeks off, whereas our guys have had 10 or four weeks away from the club. There's a range of confounding factors which might influence that, but I think generally they're more conservative than myself.

Darren Burgess:
12:40

I'm going to pick any other announcements, what I would create. I love having time off. I don't want to work more. In case anybody from the Players Association is listening to this, I want more time off. Give me more time off so I can spend time with my family. You know no problem. But it's not the clubs who are suffering, it's the players who are suffering, because the clubs are on an even keel. All the clubs are the same. They're all suffering the injuries. No one's getting away with it more than or less than others. It is the players who are suffering and their careers and their capacity to earn and all those things are suffering. So, um, I'm not coming at this from a club point of view because, hey, if they say, come back in january, so we had 14 weeks off over Christmas, I'll be the first to book a holiday in and take the kids somewhere.

Jason Weber:
13:31

Well, if that's the go mate, I might have to jump back into AFL.

Darren Burgess:
13:34

Yeah, yeah, get back in.

Jason Weber:
13:36

This entrepreneur business is way too difficult. Way too difficult 25 hours a day, seven days a week. Like it's madness.

Darren Burgess:
13:44

But in a seamless transition into our next segment. Jason, think of all the things that you learnt in that time, correct, which I don't get to learn if I only stick to Clubland.

Jason Weber:
13:58

No, that's true, and I guess you've done such a brilliant job at connecting our threads. I had an interesting conversation this morning. One of them and most of that conversation, a lot of it pertained to question was professional development. Like we've got a group of people, got a young practitioners, and they're saying we need more professional development. Yet in the particular job they're in, they're actually exiting the building pretty quickly so they're not sticking around to study a bit more or to see what somebody else is doing. Or when we have, let's say, we had guests coming in. So I'm in a particular environment and I get Darren Burgess in Mate.

Jason Weber:
14:40

If I was a second year, third year coach, I would be sticking on Virgil like you know a fly on you know what, because you're going to learn something. I mean, I remember. I mean I'm a failed rugby player from way back. But I remember my dad saying when I first went to senior training when I was a kid. He said that guy, you know player X, he plays for the Wallabies, he's the best. Blah, blah, blah, follow him. Everything he does just get in his pocket. And I nearly got in a fight with the guy because he wanted me to go away, but that was the point.

Jason Weber:
15:16

So here's my question is given your experience, what do you think for young practitioners and I'm talking maybe five years experience and I'm not talking serious experience, I mean, I think they've done a bit of, they've come out of the personal training, they've done some team stuff, sub-elite, right, mate? What do you think? Mentors courses rush off and do you know? There's a plethora of people doing PhDs that all seem to be the same. They're either load monitoring or force velocity profiles. What do you think, mate? Give us your two bobs worth.

Darren Burgess:
15:56

I think you can't beat talking to people within the industry within not necessarily where you want to go but if you are an NFL strength coach or American football strength coach, in any system, don't just talk to people within NFL I'm not necessarily talking and go on secret the CEO of Google I'm talking. Start off with strength coaches in soccer, in tennis, within elite sports that have similar issues to yourself and might offer a different way about it. Don't go to if I'm a strength coach at Birmingham City. Don't go to Liverpool for a strength coach, because they're going to have almost identical issues with you. They just have a shiny authorities and a better facility. Go to the strength coach of the Sky Cycling team or many rugby league teams in that area. Go there and chat to those professionals more experienced the better.

Darren Burgess:
17:11

But even then it doesn't have to be that. It can be fellow young professionals who. That is the number one path that I would go down a booked podcast, audible, you know they're all fine, no problem, and you pick up little bits of gold nuggets. I spent all day today at a conference in melbourne and picked up a few things, um, but I picked up way more sitting around the table with um matt innes, nick poolos, alex sagajan um josh manual must coach a couple of the coaches from hawthorne talking. Talking with them Matty Hash and Mike Young from QAS. Those people I got a lot more out of spending half an hour with them than I did listening to some very good presenters, mate.

Jason Weber:
17:55

I'll go on another one Mate, I agree, and I'm going to push it even further. I think you talked about a strength coach going from football to like a rugby code or vice versa, or cycling. I'm going to take another view and say that you know, you've got people all the time asking me you know, how do we? I want to become a high-performance manager. I want to like do where you're at the moment. We're overseeing performance and medical, and I just hung out with an old mate of mine, michael Dobbin, who's running an institute of sport, but he's overseeing everything medical, performance, psychology, nutrition, everything right. So I think you've got to also the high value in getting outside of your profession. Now I spent a couple of hours on Tuesday with the great Professor Craig Purden, a couple of hours on Tuesday with the great Professor Craig Purdom. Now Purdom is the preeminent physiotherapist out of like I don't know how long five decades four decades at the AIS, but one of the you know tendons.

Jason Weber:
19:00

You know big patella tendon, achilles tendon, central tendon, calf central tendon, hamstring. I've seen all, had all those discussions with him, but I had a great. I had about two hours with him on Tuesday discussing running and various bits and pieces. Obviously you know a bit of speed stick action, but just having a conversation with a guy like that right is unbelievable. And here's a learning experience that you don't expect. I think is the one where you have to explain something to somebody. So Darren asked me how does your program work? I've got to explain it. When you can explain something, you understand it.

Jason Weber:
19:38

In my opinion, I think the ability to have concise understanding about why you're doing things can fit into those conversations. So I think so. You asked me about my experiences With SpeedSig. I've presented now NFL, we've got clients NFL, nba, college football, epl, rugby, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Now, yeah, that's great, but you know what I've had to meet those people and speak to them and learn the language.

Jason Weber:
20:09

And so when you say in AFL, we're pushing back in defence, you go to football, we're parking the bus, you've got to get those nuances but when you hear yourself present and you start to understand that I'm conveying my message clearly and that then when someone asks the question and I always say to people like what I talk about, it's like a fire for a, um, a caveman. Imagine a caveman the first time you saw fire whoa, be just like a shock. The second reaction is they rub their hands and go well, this is actually quite all right. But the third reaction, the most exciting reaction, is the caveman who goes well, you know what, If we throw more wood on this and make it bigger, then all the saber tooth tigers stay away and we cook food and all that.

Jason Weber:
20:59

So then you start speaking to people who go hey, I do this with tendons, Would it work with you? And you go wow, there's something new. And straightaway you're forced to think and I think to support what you said. I think if you can have conversations that are challenging, so you're forced to rationalize your answer and you're forced to start to join pieces together quickly, is incredibly important. But to all of that I will add one caveat that the moment you walk out the door or you shake hands and say thank you very much for that person's time, you start writing notes.

Darren Burgess:
21:38

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, like I'm doing a to add weight to your argument. I've probably mentioned on here before that certainly you and I are talking about. I'm doing a Master's in Leadership at the moment for a UK university and the best thing that I'm getting out of it one of the really good things I'm getting out of it is going back over, looking at various case studies and applying my own, let's say, leadership style or leadership philosophies to case studies of which I am not part of or they're not decisions in an AFL landscape. So being able to apply what I might do or my leadership style in a cycling, in a surgeon, in a pilot, in all of those things.

Darren Burgess:
22:35

It's fascinating and the only way that I'm getting anything out of it is by taking those notes feverishly and then trying to apply them in in, uh, you know conversations with senior coaches, conversations with elite players and all that sort of stuff. So I I think you're um, I think you're right. Whatever knowledge you obtain from those pd things, it's no good if you um, uh, if you don't write it down. I'll give you a quick example of that. Today in um, in this conference I was at the leaders and performance conference we had a um.

Darren Burgess:
23:12

It was a navy fighter pilot instructor and I sometimes get a little bit jaded with the number of people in our industry who keep going to the military, keep going for surgeons or keep going for sometimes they sort of think yeah, I understand that, but we're not life or death, so don't pretend that we are.

Darren Burgess:
23:35

But he started talking about briefing, debriefing, the military vernacular which you'd be more familiar with than I am, and before I even thought of it and I was gonna he said I know what you're thinking. You're all thinking yeah, I do this, but let me explain how we do it and then let's see if you can pick something out. If you can't fantastic, you're running a great program and so I was a bit unfolded. Yeah, I've heard all this before, got to do a review after action review everyone always does it but the detail that he went into I literally wrote down, I reckon, about five pages of notes and I'll spend the plane trip home putting them in a PowerPoint presentation to present to the coaches. I'm not saying that's a sign of a good presentation, but also I think you have to action it really quickly.

Jason Weber:
24:26

Yeah, you do. I think there's two parts that I really like. One is the challenging yourself to think differently. I think if you go down to brain plasticity, that's how you create new neural links, right, Because your brain's challenging itself to find, push that, bring that memory into something else, build something new. So there's number one, that You've got to challenge that space. If you get into your groove and I see this a lot in the States, in the guys who they say they're older they're about 10 years younger than me but they're doing the same thing every week, every year what's going on?

Jason Weber:
25:03

you're not solving problems now yeah but that second piece which I really believe is philosophically like bringing those ideas. So you're taking that fighter pilot's ideas and bringing them into your philosophy, into what you believe and what you action every day and again I've talked about this. I've written on podcasts and other places where I think you do need to have a structure. You know you have to have this construct, an idea of you. Know what do I do?

Jason Weber:
25:35

I made a comment this morning to someone I don't believe in fake it till you make it. What I believe in is I like the hypotheticals. So if, let's say, I'm in where I am now and you know Arsenal ring me up and say, hey, we want you to come and run this program, I'm like, well, I've never done that before. You'd have to work through the principles. What would I start with? Who would I speak to? How would I do this? How would I organise all these things? But there's no problem with doing that when you don't have that job offer right. So I would use to say to my staff that, frio, it's okay.

Jason Weber:
26:15

You're not coming into this meeting now because the coach doesn't want you there and it's going to be a shit show. But we know it's going to be a shit show. How would you handle it?

Darren Burgess:
26:24

How would you handle it?

Jason Weber:
26:25

When I come back, you tell me how you think you would and I'll tell you how it went.

Darren Burgess:
26:29

Yep.

Jason Weber:
26:30

That's a hypothetical, so you're starting to, you're building those experiences before you have to have them, and I I think, that's. That's a big one, and even for if I, if you're thinking young coach and you're watching someone, you go hey, why are they doing that? Why are they doing it?

Jason Weber:
26:48

in that order at the right time just saying, hey, listen, I saw that that's different to what I do. Why, yeah, like talk shop, like that's what it comes down to. But I do think. Look, I think there's a big place for mentors in the world. I think it just has to. Too often now I'm seeing environments where younger guys are getting employed, and actually I talked about this with Perds Medically there's younger staff being employed, so they're actually losing the leadership at the top end.

Jason Weber:
27:21

So that means people are going to have to go and look for mentors, and I think that's getting the right mentor. Man, if you're ever going to put your hand, if you're going to say to someone I want you to mentor me, you need to run them through the absolute ringer. Are you the right person for me, do you? What do you bring to this, this panel? Because, look, man, I'll be first to say, like you see, all these courses that are out there and there's, there's a proliferation in all industries and there's people saying, hey, you know, you can put a course up, doesn't matter if you don't have any expertise, what?

Darren Burgess:
27:56

why would we want to?

Jason Weber:
27:57

learn off you if you don't have expertise.

Darren Burgess:
27:59

So many runs on the ground.

Jason Weber:
28:01

Yeah, that's unbelievable, and it doesn't matter how nice it all looks in AI and all that BS.

Darren Burgess:
28:07

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Weber:
28:09

It's people have got to have. If you're going to learn off someone, learn off the people who've been in the trenches, who've done the jobs.

Jason Weber:
28:17

Matt I had the privilege the other day to meet with an international S&C coach who is not particularly well academically qualified, but man, he knows what he's doing and it was a privilege to speak with him and to really spend some time. Obviously, we were doing some speed sick stuff, so I was teaching him, but when I'd ask him questions about what he was doing in the environment, man, he just had this great spin on it and so I'm sitting there going. You know, this is good for me because I'm learning from how this guy approaches it, and probably he approaches it in some ways that I can't because it's just his personality and skill set, but yeah, I think the PD.

Darren Burgess:
28:57

No, I agree, mate, I will finish on what you said Too many people go to shiny facilities or things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get nothing out of that Anyway.

Jason Weber:
29:07

One thing to wrap up, I think without a shadow of a doubt. I can't stand people who say hey, darren, you're my boss. What's my professional development? What's my professional?

Darren Burgess:
29:17

development plan.

Jason Weber:
29:19

How about you drive your own? Yeah, you haven't given me a PD plan.

Darren Burgess:
29:25

No mate, it's more like Come on, people, we're better than that.

Jason Weber:
29:27

That's right, hey Berger, I want to do this, this and this. Can you help me? Can you connect me? You you know, hey, is you okay with this? I'm gonna go and check out the australian ballet. You know, physio, who are amazing people. Um, that's what we should be doing anyway. Young bucks, get out and do it all right mate, all right now you're off, you have a nice flight, get one more coffee in there at the uh virgin lounge and uh, we'll catch you next week.

Darren Burgess:
29:54

Actually live in person. Yeah, baby, see you, mate, yeah.

-----END SEASON 3, EPSIODE 2-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 3, EPISODE 1-----
Speaker 1:
0:13

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. We're back G'day, Darren good to have you back, man.

Speaker 2:
0:19

Good to see you again, jason, looking well and fit over the Christmas period.

Speaker 1:
0:24

I don't know about fit man. I think I'm one of the great weight gainers in this world. I think I, as an athlete as a very poor athlete, which is what all S&C coaches are yeah, I put weight on as a youngster and I continue to do it to this day, so not a good thing. Bit of fun, though. How are you traveling?

Speaker 2:
0:48

day, so not a good thing. Bit of fun, though. How are you traveling?

Speaker 1:
0:50

yeah, going okay um, yeah, decent break and a few things happening, but uh, all good mate, all good I think, uh, real, real quickly for the, uh, the folks around the world, um the afl mandate, a three-week break for players and staff over Christmas, which I, having been out now five seasons, I miss radically. I think that's a great break.

Speaker 2:
1:12

Yeah, it's interesting because I understand there's a bit of media around in the last day or two because there's some pretty serious injuries in the AFL happening. Last week we had you go three weeks training before Christmas. So the players have 10 to 12 weeks away from the club, three weeks compulsory sort of training before Christmas. Then you have a compulsory three-week break over the Christmas period, which will work the life balance. So let's put that on the shelf. It's really good. So it's a great league to be part of in terms of comparing to global leagues, because you get that free time to spend with your family and travel and whatever else you might need to do. Then you come back from January 9th I think is a compulsory day back, and then there's two compulsory four-day breaks between then and the season starting.

Speaker 1:
2:04

Oh, I forgot about that, yes.

Speaker 2:
2:07

So then you have to put those in somewhere and you start, you know, semi-meaningful games mid-Feb. So you've got to, and then the season starts sort of some early March, but most of it's mid-March. So when you put that together, combined with compulsory one day a week off sorry, compulsory two days a week off, not allowed to train past 8am or 9am- On a Saturday.

Speaker 2:
2:36

Compulsory half day off. And then the other thing which I think is important to throw into the mix is the AFL have all these compulsory educational sessions which you have to do within those times during the week, so they come and do you know respect and responsibility and indigenous and and things like that, which is which all valuable, all valuable valuable then you also have for interstate clubs like us. The AFL take your young players' date for an induction, then they take the AFLPA players' interstate for an induction, then the media broadcast, people say you can't go to Melbourne on this date so that we can film all the promos and things like that.

Speaker 1:
3:24

For this season. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
3:25

Well, it all adds up to an interrupted schedule and you get no continuity of your training, unlike, say, in the, let's say, the NFL, they have an interrupted, sure, but once they're in, they're in for that five, six-week Right to play. Yeah, yeah, without my understanding these interruptions, certainly in the Premier League, once you're in for that five, six weeks you're in. So, yeah, there's some, you know, some talk at the moment my understanding because my text message has been going off this morning about media are finally sort of cottoning on to the fact that, hang on, you know there's some work-life balance ticks, for sure, but yeah, you know the nfl went away from this model because of the tendon disruptions and things like that, because you just don't get that continuity of um of training which allows you to build up the resilience and and so it's been an interesting period and touch wood, the Adelaide Crows have you know sort of escaped, but last year we didn't.

Speaker 2:
4:33

This is the period of time where we copped some really serious injuries to some of our better players, which undoubtedly affected your season and just your continuity of training. Again, it's worth it.

Speaker 1:
4:45

Yeah, mate no, no, it's awesome your response because again, five years out, I forgot about all those things. I was really commenting more from a personal level over the three weeks, because it's not just three weeks before Christmas, that's when the senior players come back You're back. Usually, let's say, you exit the finals early, you're back november. So you've been going, you've got eight weeks of of of chaos. What I would say um, just to add the probably to the argument you're sort of staging is is that this period of time, like everyone's ramping their load to get ready for games. So there's not only have you got all the compromises that Darren's just mentioned, but you're also trying to run sessions that are the longer, bigger ones that you might be bookending.

Speaker 1:
5:33

We used to do a Monday and a Friday where we have big sessions and then we would have the other ones spread through the middle, and so in the space of that, then you've got all those demands that Darren's placing on you. So, yeah, it's an extremely challenging time of year because, as Darren said, I've had conversations through the week and there's even news. So not always in Western Australia do we get news about what's happening in Victorian teams, but there was news last night. One of the young guys at a club over there again big hamstring injury, but they'd all be symptomatic of exactly what Darren's saying. So, yeah, very, very challenging environment.

Speaker 2:
6:10

Everything that gets thrown into that mix, which I don't know many people think about. But let's compare the Adelaide Crows, my club, to say the Brisbane Lions, who won the flag and have played in the last two grand finals. We finished whenever it was earliest to finish because we didn't make the final. So Brisbane trained all through September, obviously played some pretty intense games and win the flag and best team in the comp, so fantastic, well done. But we come back only one week apart to pre-season. So we had a bigger break, which worked life balance, yes, but we actually get less training in, you know. So the shitter teams are getting less training in, which is, yeah, it's not amazing. I don't know what they can do about it and if my players heard me saying we should come back earlier and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, there's just a few little interesting things that you have to navigate.

Speaker 1:
7:13

So here we go, just from a context perspective. There you go. There's my phone pinging because there's a football conference in the US at the moment and all my U, all my US guys are messaging me saying what about this presentation or what about that. Anyway, we might talk about that again later. What I was going to say, just for context right, because we're supposed to be talking about performance and the like just quick comparative.

Speaker 1:
7:36

I had a meeting last night with a guy named Dr Alex Ross who's the Director of Strength and conditioning at the Miami Marlins and we've worked together over a bunch of years. Anyway, he was explaining to me what they're about to walk into. So they're just about to kick off their preseason for Major League Baseball. He has something in the order of 160 players coming in over the next five to six weeks and he's got 14 staff and the way they organize himself it's very, very vertical. So he's got all the S&C guys with him and he said literally what's like you know, 50 to 60 new players every week for the next, you know, seven, eight weeks, they just keep rolling. And I just we were talking last night. And you know, seven, eight weeks, they just keep rolling. And I just we were talking last night and I'm like man, just the scale of that is unbelievable. So, mate, appreciating all the work-life balance and all those things which are awesome, it's interesting particularly for people coming from another environment. So you're Australian, maybe you're EPL, you're soccer model, where it's fairly straightforward to the model where baseball is. You know your major league teams, all through your minor league, all your development teams, which is what they do. They bring in all their like they get a lot of guys from Cuba, all their development teams and they get them all going simultaneously. And I'm just like man, that is such big scale and, in honesty, like Alex is one of those like he's a genuine pro, like he's not a talk, the talk.

Speaker 1:
9:20

He grew a lot of miles working for Auckland in the super rugby. He's worked with US rugby. He was at the New York Mets for a number, a bunch of years. So he's done a lot of. He's done some big gigs. But even he was saying, look, man, like at the end of the day, if we can get a 7 out of 10 for the whole program, that's probably the best we can hope for. He said we don't have massive facilities and it's just getting them through and keeping them healthy. And again, there's another argument not argument but perspective to this that their direction as a team is that they want to develop players, as opposed to some baseball clubs will say, hey, whatever they do, they do, we'll just get in and play and you buy your talent. It's interesting.

Speaker 2:
10:09

And I guess that lends weight to your external consultants, because I mean, we talk about athletes being CEOs of their careers and things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Situation how could you not and there might be some people who might disagree with this, perhaps, I don't know but how could you not deliver your best guess at a one-size-fits-all program? Like you know, you're kind of, um, you know, even in our situation we've got 45 players yeah which is much more than an nba or a premier league squad, and yeah, yeah so you know we're trying to individualize and we've got the staffing and, hopefully, the knowledge to individualize 45 different programs.

Speaker 2:
10:46

But at the end of the day, it is a responsibility on an athlete to to come up to you and say, listen, this doesn't quite work for me, or that doesn't work for me, or I'm used to doing this and um yeah, so in that I can't imagine that situation. How interesting no, unbelievable.

Speaker 1:
11:02

And I think in in many cases you're doing what you just said, like you're creating, you know, buckets, threads for people that you know, based on assessment, you fit into that thread and then, where possible, um, you know, you use the old theory everybody's equal, some are just more equal than others, and if you can get the ones that are super valuable and make those those, those greater levels of tweaks, that's what happens. But interestingly, talking about external consultants, I had a conversation around the AFLW just yesterday and one of the performance managers in that space was saying to me he's only just come back into the system and he was saying I'm shocked, absolutely shocked, at how many of the female athletes will. You know, obviously the clubs provide programs and support and all that, but they can't train them face-to-face. They all go out and train with consultant conditioning coaches, but don't tell anybody. Is that right? Yeah, and so you're on that path, which you do see in the US, where guys will go and train.

Speaker 1:
12:13

A big thing in the NFL is you go back and train with the college team that you came through with, because you spent a bunch of your formative years with your college team. A lot of them will go back and train with their guys down there. But my question is what do the staff at the club know so that when they come back they just go? Well, they're ready, who cares? Or hey, what have you been doing? Have you covered everything off? Are you doing something new that we should continue? That communication channel just seems very difficult, and I have long heard people in the US say it's so hard to keep track of the cowboys that are out there.

Speaker 2:
12:55

Yeah, I think your responsibility when the players athletes come into your program so in the AFLW instance, because they have such a long break, because they're not full time, um, your responsibility is to assess them as best you can when they come into your program, um, but I don't blame. You know some of those, uh, the afl athletes and the crows have been, you know, one of the more successful aflw program. Um, they, uh, they would hire trainers and things like that, because some of them are on, you know, decent money and so in order to continue to earn that money you know it's smart they're investing in themselves, exactly so, and it's just up to you know the mostly part-time staff We've got a couple of full-time staff now in the AFLW program, but mostly part-time staff to do the best that they can when the players walk through the door.

Speaker 1:
13:54

Yeah, and look, it extends all the way up. I mean, we had the Australian Open just this past week in Australia. Funny, that's where the Australian Open might be. Yeah, it might have been. It was in Victoria, in Melbourne, the centre of Australian sporting capital. So they would have you believe, um, but interestingly, um, I had occasion to be not involved but certainly hear some conversations very directly, um, from some of the players who actually played in the final.

Speaker 1:
14:23

But what I would say is that even at that level, that the staffing, they're always looking for other connections and for other professionals.

Speaker 1:
14:32

And I know a very good friend of mine that was involved, not putting any names out, but was involved in one of the athletes and helped them with a very specific treatment protocol and got some amazing results that were even quantified on TV by looking at the way the balls, the rotation of the ball and serving speed and all that. But it's always, everyone's always looking, everyone's looking for the next thing, the solution, and when it comes to certainly, medical issues, I think again, I would still argue this everywhere I think what we do, I would still argue this everywhere I think what we do in teams is we're doing the best we can with what we have, but I think there's a need to do, there's more to be done to find out answers to bigger problems. Do we understand loading completely? No, I don't think we do. I'm not entirely sure I have an answer for the next level, but my point probably with that respect, is we've got to keep looking.

Speaker 2:
16:31

Yeah, it's an interesting question. So I had a conversation yesterday with Selwyn Griffiths from the D's yes, and he was talking about the day in the life, I guess, of a high-performance director or whatever, and just the decisions that you need to make. So you mentioned loading. It's my view, and always has been, that loading is the number one factor that dictates injury.

Speaker 2:
17:01

I had a conversation with an athlete yesterday, one of our players, who has had a history of groin pain and he was sort of just asking you know, what can I do to make sure that doesn't come back again? And I said well, that's my job to to monitor your loads. As long as you tick your boxes on all the gym and the physio and and things like that that we've put in your program, then leave it to me to um, uh, to sort out your loading. But you also need to have that responsibility a to tick your program off. B to let me know if there's any issues and don't don't play through them. But it is loading that will effective.

Speaker 2:
17:39

Loading strategy, that will be the number one strategy to make sure that you don't have the issues that you've had over the last couple of seasons. So there was that conversation which led me to think about your loading stuff. Then there was a conversation with one of the strength staff at the club, josh Emanuel, who's done an amazing job while I've been away and one of the up and comers in the strength and power and high performance industry, and he was talking about a conversation that he or a podcast that he was listening to. That was talking about biometric fatigue assessment, so just an eye scan as you walk into a facility. I think Chris McClellan was talking about it on a podcast and so that is another way in which you might assess fatigue and player readiness. But you're going down a really yet to be sort of validated and very passive which can be good pathway in that load monitoring place which is fancy and new and exciting, but yeah, I'm not sure it's ready to be.

Speaker 1:
18:56

So just to distinguish man, I think obviously I agree with you the training exposure, game, exposure, number one thing, but it's how everybody adapts to that. So it's not that everybody, you know everyone is going to adapt slightly differently. So we're trying that everybody, you know everyone is going to adapt slightly differently. So we're trying to always assess has the athlete backed up? Have they recovered? You know, I always love. I love when we do rehab, the one where we go, oh, we'll run them. We run them today and then we'll see if they survive tomorrow. And if they survive they must be okay, which is fundamentally flawed logic at the best of times. But it's a lot of what we do. The same thing comes, like the big Chris McClellan over there in Florida. It's an amazing world.

Speaker 1:
19:41

Yeah, yeah man, I was in Florida last December and we flew past each other. Same thing with Alex Ross. He's in Florida. You go all the way around the world and you miss people by 25 minutes. It's ridiculous. Anyway, chris McClellan is one of the big brains of the world and a big man too, but that flicker rate stuff when you're looking at eyes, that's an old Russian thing Originally. I remember reading that early research. Damn, that was probably late 90s, something like that. I remember reading old papers on that.

Speaker 2:
20:14

That was your action time and progress yeah yeah, yeah, it's incredibly interesting.

Speaker 1:
20:19

But when you look at people doing jumps on a force plate or looking at the, the uh, the change in um, your accelerometer signals in running, and we're going, well, that's neurological, it's neuro fatigue. Well, is it? I, I don't know, I can say that it's fatigue if someone jumps and then they go on train, they come back and they can't jump anymore, it's fatigue. But is it? Is it structural? Is it is neurological? I don't know. But I think if you go, if we get down that path of being able to say, hey, the rate at which your eye responds to light and to signal, whatever, um, that is a genuine neurological response. It's like, okay, well, maybe we, we can see something there. But I agree the, the research. I haven't read anything on that recently, but I'll tell you what I'll be bringing chris after this to um connect and see where he's at with it. But remember, um one, you and I actually we shouldn't actually bring up brands that I'm going to hang shit on. It might not be in our best interest, but all right.

Speaker 2:
21:26

But that's the art of what the science can't tell you. And we had a quick chat before we came online to talk about what we're going to talk about. We haven't even got there yet. The the, the art of it is apply your loading strategy, detect your response and then recalibrate. And it's that response detection. You and I might get the same loading strategy. Um, but I've been crooked the last few days. So, correct, my response is going to be completely different. But how do you get that?

Speaker 2:
22:00

that's that's the trick, man, yeah yeah, you've just got to choose you poison and stick to it and um, until such time. As you know, the jump testing is a really interesting one, because we could go down a rabbit hole with that oh, it's a rabbit hole, man, I've been there I lived there for 10 years yeah, but um, it's the, the, perhaps the combination.

Speaker 2:
22:22

As long as you're assessing in a either internally or externally validated, reliable way, both internal and external response to load, then I think you're okay I think I'll probably make a quick point there.

Speaker 1:
22:37

I one of influenced fairly strongly back in my early career. One of the things I was taught was when you look at a problem, so let's say we're trying to understand fatigue, right, there's no absolute method. Right, like Darren, what we've just described, there's no absolute method. So therefore, assess it from different angles and then you can combine the information again, as long as they're reliable, but you can combine the signals to say, hey, this is a genuine response and I think that's critical. So it's the same as when you look at something like fitness we're assessing fitness. What is fitness? Well, it should be assessed from multiple angles to give you a perspective holistically. So, yeah, there's certainly.

Speaker 1:
23:27

I think that is a minefield, but I will say that one of the ways I learned to program years ago was on fatigue rates, so trying to understand. So instead of saying, hey, here's a 10K session, whatever you say, we're going to do a session today that will cause a 12% fatigue that will take four days to resolve. So we know that when the next session comes in, we can create a three day fatigue. Now, that's all well and good in theory. Never done it with a team, but I've done it individually and it works incredibly well when you have time and space, but how you, and that's what you understand, within the bounds of the technology and the effort you have or knowledge you have at the time of that person, figuring out when that decay like how much decay is there? When are they ready to go again. But that's the art of team sport, right is? We can't move training around to suit everybody, so you're doing your best to get the sessions in and to fit everybody into that bucket.

Speaker 2:
24:35

Yes.

Speaker 1:
24:37

It's crazy.

Speaker 2:
24:38

And that's why there's a responsibility on the staff, of course, but there's also a responsibility on the athlete, and that's where knowing your athlete becomes great, which, in your baseball example, is virtually impossible.

Speaker 1:
24:50

Oh, but that comes back to the everybody's equal. Some are just more equal than others. Ross Lyons-ism, right, which is what you're going to do. You're going to say, hey, man, you're worth, you're one of our key players, so I'm going to have my attention. I might spend more time there. We all do it in different ways. Sometimes, you know, the HPM looks after the top 10 players and really zeroes in on them, whereas you might have staff looking after your development guys, Everyone's going to do it. You want to. There's no question. Availability is the key to everything. Keep your players on the park. You're more chance, but keep your highly valuable players on the park, it's way more important.

Speaker 2:
25:33

Yeah, and so for people who the one size fits all, yep, that's important. But it's also really, really, really important that that one size fits your star players, particularly in, you know, sports like, say, nfl or NBA, where those star players can make such a difference.

Speaker 1:
25:57

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And I don't think there's anywhere any sport that your valuable players make all the difference. And I say, like you, look at the American college football which have you know they finish and they're straight back into winter off-season now. So we're getting lots of testing data happening and we're into all that, but they're the same. They've got 120 kids on the roster, but I can tell you now the amount of work that goes into the top 10 to 12, like most guys will say in college football. If you've got 10 to 12 players on six either side of the ball offense and defense you've got enough to really do something Because you can the rest of the team you can. The guys are good enough to fill a gap. But if you've got 12 really good ones or maybe less say it's 10, five each side you can really go well. So they're going to put more time into that. And that's the, no matter which way you cut it, man, like we are a profession of science and art. There is no question.

Speaker 1:
27:05

There is no question.

Speaker 2:
27:08

No, 100%. Now, on that note, mate, I really have to head off.

Speaker 1:
27:13

You do, mate. It's been awesome to catch up again, mate. I hope that we've uh, our numbers have dwindled massively over christmas break. I must say I needed it, so I hope you got a break but we're back we're back on the horse and we'll get them going. Good to have everyone back and uh let everyone know we're back and uh catch you later, Mike. Good luck.

-----END SEASON 3, EPISODE 1-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 46 - MERRY XMAS-----
Jason Weber:
0:15

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. A Christmas special, Berjo and Jason here. Berjo's just sucking back the last of his one-litre latte that he just had on his desk.

Darren Burgess:
0:30

He just called me and said I'm hitting record. I just anyway.

Jason Weber:
0:33

How are?

Darren Burgess:
0:33

you mate.

Jason Weber:
0:35

I'm well, mate. Now you've got that litre worth of latte in you, how are you doing? It's very much Christmas prep time.

Darren Burgess:
0:43

It is, mate. We finished training with the team on Wednesday and then sent them on their way with a three-week Christmas program.

Jason Weber:
0:55

So yeah, boys did well. It's not bad, is it the AFL three-week break for staff and players? I must admit I miss it. I think it was fantastic.

Darren Burgess:
1:04

Yeah, for staff and players. I must admit I miss it. I think it was fantastic. Yeah, as an industry to work in AFL or as a sport to work in AFL's. Great for two reasons, or for many reasons, but for a couple of ones that are worth mentioning. One is the impact you have on the program is large. So that's the respect that they have for guys like you and me, for anyone in the performance industry. The respect that each club has on performance staff is large. And the second one is in the last 10 years, the work-life balance has improved enormously.

Darren Burgess:
1:38

So, through, predominantly through the good work of the Players Association, the work-life balance between you know time at work and time holidays and is excellent. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's a good time to obviously spend with family and friends and and the boys all get to do that and hopefully stay fit, because once we come back in january, it's it's a pretty quick countdown. What about you? More more importantly, you've just had had a fairly whirlwind tour. Tell me about it. I don't want to hear these guys have got a good facility or this team's great, I had a beer with this team. I want to hear some learned lessons Learned lessons.

Jason Weber:
2:17

Well, I guess the summary is 42,000 kilometres in roughly 23 days. 42,000 kilometres in roughly 23 days. Uk, us, us was very sharp. Short and sharp was the Major League Soccer Performance Association. Ah yes, but I think the learnt lessons. I reckon and this is we were just talking off air about we'll come to the what the Wallabies have done in a little bit, but it's really interesting when you say what's the impact you can have on an environment.

Darren Burgess:
2:51

Now.

Jason Weber:
2:52

I had the privilege of going to the big EPL teams thanks to some of your connections, undoubtedly, but I was at Arsenal, manchester United, man City, liverpool, everton. You know there's a big array of teams right there. Chelsea we caught up with a little bit, not as much detail, but that's one in the works. The facilities are unbelievable. What I was impressed with there were a couple of facilities where we had 30, 40 people in a room. So I was presenting to everybody first team staff, women's academy, everyone and, okay, the pitch and the story. The presentation is all great, but then, like quite often, it's interesting. Here's it for any entrepreneurs in the crowd if you book a meeting for an hour and it goes for three hours, I reckon that's a pretty good thing, right.

Darren Burgess:
3:46

Yeah so.

Jason Weber:
3:47

I would be hanging back and people would. Some people would leave, but you'd have this core staff and you'd have this mix of people and what I was really impressed with was the level of acute thinking. So what I mean by that is I obviously come in with a speed sick thing and it's different. It's a new body of information. But you can see the people who just go right, if you give me that, if I got A, then I can connect that to B, to C, to D, and when I'm presenting I talk about like I say speed sigs, like imagine it's like a fire. If you were showing a caveman the first time you saw a fire, you see people pull back from it, but then suddenly they go hey, you know, we can warm our hands on this, this isn't bad. But then you see the people who throw wood on the fire. Hey, if we light, if we put more wood on this thing, we can keep the animals away and we can cook stuff. But so when I say to people I learnt or I saw people throwing wood on the fire, my view is that the young and not only just young ones, but all measure physios, docs, performance guys, rehab guys, guys and girls, like connecting dots, and for me, who'd worked in this space for a long time, to see these people go, oh, bang, bang, I can connect that and that and that, and what if this and I'm standing there going? Oh, that's a cracking idea.

Jason Weber:
5:08

And there were things about, let's talk. One I would say would be like the decay of mechanics associated with fatigue. So we bring an athlete back, we do a sprint over a couple of efforts and we go right, they're good to go. We do a sprint over a couple of efforts and we go right, they're good to go. But in fact, do they fatigue after 10, 15, 20 minutes? And how might we describe that? So you've got and I had multiple people coming to me with that, with concepts like that so the fact that I think these practitioners were so good at taking new information and like they hadn't tested it yet and there's all those things to be done but they were able to connect and put it into space where they hadn't used that before.

Jason Weber:
5:58

But it was clearly information that was pursuant to things they'd been thinking about and questioning in their own environment. So that was probably the most impressive part to see minds actively thinking like here's some information, what could we do with this? We've got this problem. This is the questions we have in our environment, because one of the things I do I presented about to MLS.

Jason Weber:
6:22

I said I think in many ways there are people that get bluffed by the technology side of our industry. Hey, we've got this equipment, this is the equipment we have. Therefore, that's all you can measure, and people sort of stop at that. But I would say and not just in the EPL clubs, I saw it in the MLS as well I saw people like those, what I call. They're the ones throwing wood on the fire. How can we make this better? How can we take this spark of information and grow it out? So I was really impressed with some of the individuals I met and, I would suspect, some of the conversations that are going on in those environments, which is really I think, it's encouraging, mate.

Jason Weber:
7:10

I mean I've been directly out of the environment of a single team for some time now. I will say that, having worked extensively in the US in the football industry, the American football industry, I get disheartened by the massive gulf that exists between performance and medical, which I do think is one of the big challenges of our environment. But in some of the spaces I saw particularly, I'll say, world football. So in the UK and in the US, some great thinkers I came across an interesting here's an aside. So SpeedSig's been going for really commercially for just over a year and a bit, but I've been working on this for five years. So you're learning, you're meeting a lot of people on video calls all the time. So post-COVID, the advent, the advent or the acceptance of us being able to use video calls is really interesting. So one of the best parts of this trip was I met people who I've known for five years but I've never met them in person, I've only known them on video calls.

Jason Weber:
8:15

So to be able to go face-to-face. Here's one for you, and he'll laugh at it. Do you know how tall Rob Pacey is? Yeah, oh, my Lord.

Darren Burgess:
8:24

Did Rob say that when they first met him?

Jason Weber:
8:27

I walked, I had no idea. I walked into the lobby of the hotel in Florida and I saw his red head straight away and he knew who I was immediately and he just come straight up to me. I just said, man, I had no idea. So, yeah, but that was interesting. I mean, even I had great opportunity to spend a good bit of time with martin boucher, uh, which we had a wonderful conversation. I mean, uh, as you have we've all experienced, by the time you get to this age, you've experienced the highs and lows of, you know, achieving certain things and then, okay, okay, the job no longer exists, you're out for whatever manner of reasons. But to share that with Martin and talk through what he, the methods he's taken to move things forward, and obviously we talk a lot in our line of work at what's next, yeah.

Jason Weber:
9:18

You and I talk about this all the time. Right, what's next? What's next? And I know, looking at the guys who are maybe, let's just say, a generation or two behind us, that are now some of the younger ones running high-performance roles in the AFL, I know they're thinking what's next, Because there's only so long we can go and everybody's wondering yeah, where do I go from here? I'm at the top job. How long does it last? Do I get to go to another facility or another team? You know another guy, you'd know Darcy Norman.

Darren Burgess:
9:55

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
9:55

So, Darcy, you know, great success with the German soccer team a bunch of years back. Has been at the head of US soccer for a long time. He's moving on. I won't say what he's doing because I'm not sure how public that is, but again, great guy to meet in person and spend some time with and thinking. So he comes from the physical therapy, physical therapist background.

Darren Burgess:
10:24

He does yeah.

Jason Weber:
10:25

But again, I love the way he thinks, the way he questions about a lot of stuff that's really not, I would be blunt and say, not necessarily the domain of a physical therapist, but this is a guy that's really trained himself up to be what I would consider, you know, elite department manager, whatever you want to call it high-performance manager, director of performance, all that stuff but extraordinary to speak to and spend some time with, and not, you know, obviously not just speed, sick stuff, I mean across the gamut of everything we're doing. You know, travelling.

Darren Burgess:
11:00

You've got to think. Guys like Galky, imagine how many scenarios they've been exposed to in their time. Like, just imagine I'm not talking, we can maybe get to. The other thing that I want to chat about is more formal education. But imagine how many different scenarios. And even if you were not particularly trying to learn, just imagine what you would learn through osmosis of being in all of those performance meetings and all of the. You know so.

Jason Weber:
11:32

But across the environments, mate. So as a national director of US soccer, he was the same as you with Australian soccer. Like you've got, all your players are at other clubs. So the ability to work across mate, different time zones, different countries, different cultures, different languages like just extraordinary, you know. And again, if I again I've got notes, I wrote notes on meetings. I must say I've not finished the MLS stuff yet but you talk about we'll get to the formal education in a moment.

Jason Weber:
12:06

But I met a young guy, felix Prossel, who has a PhD out of University of Pitt. I met him originally when he was working with their football team but we had a good chat back then and a broader discussion about sports science and you know, coding and data and all that. Anyway, he's now with the Colorado Rapids and he's running the you know sports performance data there and doing some really cool stuff. I went to his presentation and he was kind enough to mention me in that as someone who kind of put him along. But it's not formal education, mate. He's taught himself all of that stuff and I was.

Jason Weber:
12:48

You know, I can rag on sports science a bit because I think some are quite lazy. He is not. He is one of those guys who is pushing the barriers of what can we all? Right, we've got this level of data. What can we do with it? What other information can we? All right, we've got this level of data. What can we do with it? What other information can we extract from that? And once we've got that information, how can we bring that up? So, data, information, knowledge, wisdom, that's a computer science construct or data science construct, and I just saw him as a guy going right, we're going to extract everything out of this data we can, which I thought was very impressive, very impressive.

Darren Burgess:
13:26

Yeah, nice, I can imagine you know that's. The best form of CPD is spending time with people like that. Oh, 100% More experience, whatever it might be, the conversations that you have in those situations, especially someone like yourself going in there, as you know, the experience that you've had to go into an environment like that it makes me think of. So the head coach at the Crows, matthew Nix, just came back from spending a week at a leadership course in Harvard. You know, came back with some, you know, some really good things and some good learnings. The thing that he was most excited about was spending some time at the Boston Celtics with our mate, with Colesie. He got out of the gym in time. Yeah, he, you know. He just said Colesie was superb, as we know Colesie is and yeah, just the access that he got, but not only that. Colesie took him through the decisions that they made, from Colesie in the leadership position, as well as the coach and the general manager that led to them, you know, getting a title and people just think, well, they've got the best team. But it's not, I mean, it's not just the best team. You're going to create the best environment which Phil and Jase and his team have Jase Talao, I guess that's the conundrum is like.

Darren Burgess:
14:54

I'm going through some formal leadership education now through a Master of Sports directorship and there's been some really good aspects through through Global Institute of Sport and, yeah, and University of East London and and there's been some really good aspects of that, but there's been some bits that are not as as good and not for designed for people like me, I guess, which they're not all designed for, but I think it's. You know, people often ask me should I be doing an MBA or should I be doing yeah, yeah, this course, or what about some of the Harvard courses? And first go and spend as much time talking to other practitioners, be they in big clubs, small clubs, different clubs and then, once you think you've got a grasp of it, don't go and look at facilities, go and you know. Then there's some education. That's good, but I think the conversations at the Coalface are going to be more meaningful.

Jason Weber:
16:52

Mate, I had a. I didn't have a lot of time. Les Spellman and I hung out for a while on a Friday night and we probably had one too many margaritas. But we started talking, we got, we had a you know about a 45 50 minute cab ride back to where we're staying and we were into. We were talking about um sacral torsion in running and compression of sa si giant. He's talking about how steve mcmillan's work on that and treating that and teaching him.

Jason Weber:
17:19

And I said I said to uh, to man, look, you know what? I'm not having this discussion many places in the world. I'm privileged to have worked with a guy named Dr Jeffrey Boyle who is extraordinary at muscle energy technique and the movement of the sacrum relative to the pelvis and all that stuff. But I said, like even that conversation, to be able to have that, and go in my head, hey, these guys are thinking in that space. I've seen that great, that that's like. It emboldens me to say, yeah, well, what we we learned, that what I might have learned with Jeffrey is right because we've seen it elsewhere. So and I think, mate, you did pose now you mentioned it last episode you talked about well, do we do formal education or do we do just CPD? We go out and meet people, Mate. I reckon it's probably got an element of if you imagine you're climbing a hill right or a mountain or whatever, you're going to have some handholds, some footholds, a bit of both mixture.

Jason Weber:
18:20

I think there's a place for all. I don't think you can say one is right, one is wrong, but I would counsel everybody to the ability to network so that you can get, because if you go on site, what you want to do is you want to have time spent with people just to see what's happening, but to have time to have some more in detail and non-pressured discussions, which I think I was very fortunate to do in America. I think the ability for me to sit and have breakfast for two hours with Martin, to hang with Darcy and those sort of guys, you know, even Dave Teeny we had a bit more time to chat Get Harrison Draper I mean all those guys, my lads from Charlotte, you know, Adam Parr, the great coach, Gorka, Pete Gorka like great conversations that we were able to have. Yeah, so I think if you get a CPD opportunity with an environment, it's good to set some benchmarks.

Jason Weber:
19:26

So, practically from my perspective, as someone who certainly when I was at Fremantle I had a lot of people come in. Actually that's unreasonable. Not a lot, I had a few, but when I had them come in I would have an agenda. I said I want you to see this and this and this and this. I want you in this meeting. There's this meeting you can't go to just because it's too heavy, whatever. But then there are other sides, so you've got to give. So I always said you know, you've got to owe me. You come into my environment and the number one thing I said was you've just got to review. I want you to review to my key staff and I what you liked, what you didn't like, what you've seen different, because we have to learn as well. But I think that always is a great learning opportunity for the person visiting and for you, because you want to get something out of that visit.

Darren Burgess:
20:18

It was again showing my age. 2006 was my first visit to Tony Strudwick at man United. First of many, yeah, yeah, he said to me at the time. Yeah, mate, you can see this, this and this, but I want you to present to me and my staff about how we can use GPS. Yeah, there you go, I'm presenting at GPS. So Alex Ferguson comes in for a brief period of time and then leaves again. They're saying, yeah, we'll show you, man, you, but at that point Aussies were at the forefront of GPS.

Darren Burgess:
20:54

So, yeah, come and present. So brilliant, that's exactly how it should be. And whenever in that situation whenever I'm in that, certainly at Arsenal when people would come through, you would find out, okay, what's your expertise? Okay, your expertise is, you know running mechanics. I want you to present to the group on running mechanics If you want to have a look through our facilities and you know. So, find out what their expertise is and find out what you can use from them.

Jason Weber:
21:24

And maybe like maybe that's something like young coaches always say it's hard to network, and you know. So find out what their expertise is and find out what you can use from them and maybe, like, maybe that's something like young coaches always say it's hard to network. Well, I think if the opportunity presents, you should be front foot, hey this is what we're doing in our environment.

Jason Weber:
21:38

I'd be more than happy to present to you. And, yeah, like, front load it. Front load it so that when you go into these places you feel like you're contributing something to them. The other aspect I would say and you kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier is don't get like, yeah, it's great to go and see all the big ones and everyone aspires to that, but sometimes it's not possible.

Jason Weber:
22:00

I learned something years and years ago when I first started. You know, training anybody out of university. I was once told by a coach train anyone you can, because you will learn about the human body and how it responds from every single person you ever train and it will get better and better Again. My point to that is, I think, even if you can get into like I tell you, I've been impressed like Bolton Wanderers, who are a Tier 3 team in the UK, but, mate, I'm very impressed with their staff. Like they've got some again, in my opinion, people that would throw wood on the fire. They can think quick.

Jason Weber:
22:41

Jack Inman, which we've talked about. I've got a couple other guys. They're just proactive guys who are looking for an opportunity to be better, and I don't think because they're not at man United yet, or man City or whatever, that they're not that good. It's just sometimes that opportunity doesn't present or whatever, but I think there's some cracking minds. So I would always counsel people not to be too stuck up about things but in the same breath, work with it.

Jason Weber:
23:11

One thing I have learned from SpeedSig absolutely categorically and this is probably more of an entrepreneur thing, but it is relevant in that you treat everybody exactly the same and it comes around. So I've met with coaches who aren't at the top university and not the top this, but they're like, yeah, we can see it with the value we'll get on speed seat. Or I've had ones where they go, well, we can't yet, but then that guy goes from that bottom team to a top team and then all of a sudden you're there. So I think that's not so much the speed sig story, but I think the critical message is respect everybody and really try to see what people have got to teach you and you've got to teach them. You've got to bring something to the table for sure.

Darren Burgess:
23:59

um, certainly it is the the time of giving, and we've given plenty of shout outs today. It's probably a record of the number of people that we've mentioned today. Let's wrap it up Thanks for a solid year.

Jason Weber:
24:15

This is a big year. Big year. Thank you, eddie, thank you.

Darren Burgess:
24:19

Yeah, hopefully people have enjoyed it. I've enjoyed chatting to you and we'll go around again.

Jason Weber:
24:23

Yeah, well, we'll be back. We yeah, probably about 10 days on. Well, we'll be back. We'll be back a little bit in January, We'll have a bit of a spell. But yeah, it's been a pleasure. We've clearly got more than 13 listeners now I've had so many people in America claim to be in the top 13. So that joke's long gone.

Darren Burgess:
24:40

It's done. That's the New Year's resolution for you is to not mention that.

Jason Weber:
24:43

Yeah, yeah I didn't mention it, that was just an update. But to everyone who does listen and talks about us and shares, thank you and we look forward to next year.

Darren Burgess:
24:54

See you.

Jason Weber:
24:54

Virgil, you have a great week. Hope Santa looks after you. See you, sir.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 46 - MERRY XMAS-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 45-----
Jason Weber:
0:16

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Webber. Here with you again, Darren. We're split by enormous distances.

Darren Burgess:
0:27

We are. Normally it's just one side of the country to the other, but now it's one side of the planet to the other. You're in Fort Lauderdale, fort.

Jason Weber:
0:35

Lauderdale, florida. We're here for the PSPA Professional Soccer Performance Association, which is the main conditioning body of the MLS in the Major League Soccer in the US. I'm here to present tomorrow. We've just landed.

Darren Burgess:
0:59

I'm in a time warp Dave Tenney and Garrison Draper. Two outstanding practitioners.

Jason Weber:
1:05

Garrison's the, I believe, the president of the PSPA.

Darren Burgess:
1:10

Yes, yep.

Jason Weber:
1:11

So he's leading the charge there. Adam Parr is from the. He's the head of performance, from physical performance, from Charlotte. He's, I think, the secretary, the guy kind of running it on the ground. So, yeah, I'm sure it'll be very interesting tomorrow.

Jason Weber:
1:29

Considering I've just come from a blazing 10 days in the UK racing around, I will say I had the very good pleasure to get on site and spend significant time with some of the biggest teams in the English Premier League, which was fantastic. It was fantastic, it was awesome. I won't deny that. But what I would say, very, very interesting, looking at the staff, some of the levels of staff which you would be familiar with. So one of the meetings I was at was scheduled to go for an hour and it went for three hours, which was actually quite common, but we had all first-team performance staff, all academy, all women and all medical. Great discussion, great discussion and it was interesting to see as the conversation, as the meeting, like my presentation, finished. Have you got any questions? Blah, blah, blah. Then people stayed back and it's really interesting to see get perspectives on where people are at and you get some really hands-on medical guys who I had the privilege of meeting.

Jason Weber:
2:52

Certainly you mentioned it. I'll call him out Chris Morgan. Awesome at Liverpool, I thought, and this is not. I do have a go at physios periodically, but I thought no, chris was awesome. Like his understanding of running mechanics was first class was first class. Um, so when you look at how that would integrate into a performance we talked about performance medical model I thought he was awesome.

Darren Burgess:
3:27

Yeah, he's a good man, Chris. I've had a fair bit to do with him, as you know, and worked with him at both Liverpool and Arsenal, and yeah, he's doing some really good things. He sees it nice and practically keeps things simple. And yeah, he's as good as there is, I think, in the UK from a physio point of view and an unbelievably good dry sense of humour.

Jason Weber:
3:53

Yeah, he was pretty straight. I will say I think somehow you'd probably be more attuned to this. But we've got bigger staff now in Australia. But as these places get bigger and bigger, what I saw in one facility, one team I won't call a team out but there seemed to be a disconnect in philosophical approach between the academy structure and then the first team structure, and it's not the first time I've seen it. I kind of wonder what's your take on that mate? What's the influence all the way down the chain, like hey, this is our central philosophy for whatever xyz, or do you think the academy's run off on their own a little bit?

Darren Burgess:
4:37

yeah, yeah, in theory. So the sporting director, in theory, um likes to keep things uniform at a club, but you can imagine a new manager comes into the first team environment and they say, no, I want to play my way and I want to play this way. And if you take, say, liverpool's example and I don't know this, but let's just speculate that new manager comes in after Jurgen Klopp and maybe the academy was aligned with the way Jurgen Klopp wanted to play football. And then new manager comes in and says no, I'm going to do it this way. The academy probably shouldn't and probably doesn't change their whole philosophy based on a new manager at the top, because the average lifespan of a manager in the first team is under 18 months.

Jason Weber:
5:27

Is that true? 18 months Under 18 months, there's a voluntary job choice for it.

Darren Burgess:
5:33

Yeah, so the academy probably shouldn't change the way they do things. So, yeah, I think it's hard to get a continuity throughout the entire system, particularly when, in the first team, they might bring in their own people and so they have a very different philosophy. So, yeah, it's probably prudent for the academy to almost run itself using sound principles and all that sort of stuff, and not necessarily be influenced too much by what's happening in the first term.

Jason Weber:
6:08

So I had this conversation. I was invited to a pub. Well, my English lawyer took me out. We went out to Richmond and watched Chelsea and Spurs play at a pub on Sunday afternoon, lovely afternoon. But we were just talking in general and we were talking about academy structures and setups and he's a very big Chelsea fan and so he was telling me all about the structures and, being King's Council, which is the highest level of legal in the UK, he had his fingers in all sorts of pies, so he's telling me about how this works. And I sort of said look, one of the things I do see in academies and this is not only in the UK but I've seen everywhere is we often put our youngest coaches with our youngest players. And if you read the old Russian axiom is the best coaches with the youngest players. So you should put your oldest coaches down there to get a consistent system, a consistent feed through. What are your thoughts on that mate? You've done a lot of hiring. What do you see?

Darren Burgess:
7:17

Yeah, I'm actually hiring someone at the moment who's for Western United, who I do a little bit of work for, and I spoke to him yesterday for the academy system and he's adamant. He wants to, you know, stay in that system and really determined to work with kids and youth. And you know guys like Nathan Parnham and those guys have made careers out of staying within the youth system. It's traditionally seen as a stepping stone into the first team.

Darren Burgess:
7:49

So, yeah, you can see why a lot of people go down that path. However, if you can get a specialist, a youth specialist, they're worth their weight in gold, because it really is a bespoke way to train and you just can't. It's like saying, oh no, you just try and apply men's principles to women training. That's a disaster.

Darren Burgess:
8:11

No no of course, completely different athlete and with individual requirements. So yeah, I agree with you With the best will in the world, you hire people who are youth specialists. It's very hard to determine whether someone's a youth specialist because they'll say, yeah, I want to stay in the academy, because I want to ultimately work in the first team. But I think the plan is definitely look at people's track records. If they've been successful with youth, then they'd be certainly the favourites to hire.

Jason Weber:
8:44

Getting somebody who has experience into academies, I think, is a win, because not only have they not got their eye on the next step up how do I get out of here but they're often focused on that speciality. As you suggested, I spent over the last couple of years while I've been getting speedy up and going. I spent probably three years running a private school in Perth. I think it made me again a better coach, spending time with younger athletes and working that development thread through. But highly rewarding, highly rewarding.

Jason Weber:
9:29

Yeah, it's definitely a, like you say, a niche skill set, but, um, it really does force you to uh, um, to coach more hands-on and to coach more thoroughly and what we, what I, what I did with the school and what I've subsequently since I left and we got someone else in to take over me is have older guys in there. So not having 24-year-olds coaching 15-year-olds because there is something about young men just having an older figure to work with than having other kids. Because one of the other comments I would say that I've seen over recent times is some of the younger conditioning coaches just reinventing the wheel. Sometimes I feel like we're stuck in a rut. We're not so much not progressing, but I seem to see things coming back around into trend and it's like hang on, we've been through all this. We've been through this 10 years ago. How do we not, have we not, moved on from this?

Jason Weber:
10:45

You know whether it's travel, whether it's the number of training, you know what do you do on. You know T plus two, game plus two, game plus three. Take, for instance, the AFL Do we train one day a week? Do we train two days a week, which was certainly a thing last year?

Darren Burgess:
11:03

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting one. Let's have a quick pause on that. I presented yesterday morning at 3.30am my time, jason, so I was doing your hours to the Finnish Football Association around planning for pre-season. They have quite a unique pre-season in football speak in that they have 13, 14 hours, 13, 14 weeks even, which is unusual for football. We have lots of breaks in there for cup games and for, you know, for Christmas and things like that. So it's a bit of a unique strategy. And we talked a lot about tactical periodisation and where that might fit into a pre-season and MAS versus anaerobic threshold training and then the Norwegian method which is in vogue at the moment with triathletes and marathon runners. It's this tactical periodization model which is gaining, or has gained, a lot of traction. A lot of their managers go five days on the bounce and in Australia we talk about training two days. So it's interesting that the broad philosophy of tactical periodisation methods and the most common one is to do four days leading into a game. How do you reckon they'd go in the AFL?

Jason Weber:
12:38

Wouldn't work. Question is how long they'd do it. I mean my short tenure in A-League, we did similar things. We trained multiple days back-to-back and for the most part it's doable if there's a balance in the task being set. We had a period where we did this one drill repeatedly, which was short passing, but in my opinion the load was so high on calves we ended up popping three calves doing it. I said to the coach can we just, can we just not do as much of that drill? We can still do a good portion of it, but you're doing it every single day, mate. That's not. That's got nothing to do with any form of periodisation. That's just ramming home the one thing you think you like.

Darren Burgess:
14:27

Yeah, it's a, it's so common in soccer, global football, we'll call it that. I just don't know that a transfer and the players in AFL it would take such an adjustment, even though I think they could physically do it. It would take such an adjustment in philosophy from players and coaches. At the moment most teams in the AFL are doing, I don't know, probably 13, 14k sessions, somewhere in around the 10 to 14K sessions. So loading is fine. It's just the spreading out of that load over the week rather than on individual days which soccer players have been doing for years and coping yeah, and it's the same, you know.

Darren Burgess:
15:20

I know there's contact in AFL but traditionally before Christmas there's not a lot of contact in AFL Yet. Pre-season in soccer we would regularly do 45, 50 Ks in the first few weeks of pre-season soccer. We would regularly do 45, 50ks in the first few weeks of pre-season, including friendly games, and that would be training every day and sometimes doubles. I just don't know that it would fly in the AFL. It would be too much of a radical change.

Jason Weber:
15:51

I think my experience of going to 50K in the AFL probably wasn't ideal With younger players and probably surface we ended up with some bone issues. But what do you think if the AFL? Let's say again, let's just posit the question If we did that, do you think there's a value? So let's say you're not at the Crows, you're at whatever, you're at your own AFL club. We've got a little bit more flexibility. Would you choose to go five days a week and spread it around, and if so, what would be the benefit you think above what we're currently doing?

Darren Burgess:
16:31

Yeah, I probably wouldn't. I don't think there is a massive benefit in doing it that way. Yeah, even in global football, I'm not sure that five days on the bounce is better. I'd rather load up on some of those days and allow some adaptation time and recovery time. That would be my way of doing it. What about yourself?

Jason Weber:
16:56

A bit out of our spectrum, but one of the things I've heard from coaches in different sports is we've got to touch the football, we've got to touch the football right. So, five days a week, if I'm touching the football every day and we acknowledge that global football is a higher skill sport than AFL, would you concur? I would Yep. So is that part of it? Does that give us more touches on the ball? Is it something we could benefit from? That's the only question. I think physically we'd struggle, because I don't think if you spread the load in an AFL week across the week, I think you would struggle to get some of the duration you require to run. We need to run this time of year, you need to be running big sessions.

Darren Burgess:
17:51

Yeah, I think so.

Jason Weber:
17:52

Because we're going to do 15K in a game.

Darren Burgess:
17:58

I think the thing about AFL and this is probably more tradition than logic, which is pretty common I have found that if we take basketball and I haven't had a heap to do with basketball other than some consulting or if we take, um, uh, soccer, certainly they don't get bored with practicing the basic skills, whereas in afl, um coaches, players, by and large, tend to go on, you know, just doing handball, basic handball drills, um, basic ground ball drills. No, no, players will get bored. We need to do something else. Players will get bored when it no, just keep doing the basics. Like, how often do you think I don't know, and I'm making this up steph curry gets bored of shooting frees? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't.

Darren Burgess:
18:45

Now I understand there is a load in practicing the basic skill of afl, which is kicking, and so there's a load going through the hips and I get that, yep, but the more we expose it, the more we can adapt to it. And there's no load in handballing. And you've got, you know, we can name some players who are not outstanding kicks but are incredible handball players who've won best and fairest and brown lows, and you know, based on their ability to execute that skill under pressure. So it does frustrate me when you're working with coaches and players and I just get bored of doing those basic drills, whereas in soccer it certainly isn't the case, and you can come up with a million ways to practice your passing and practice your first touch, which is just vital.

Jason Weber:
19:32

Yeah, and I mean that's decision-making in sport in general. I mean, I think AFL could probably and I've often thought like given that I was involved very heavily in the process for an AFL team recently, I had gone through the process in my head of saying, well, what would we do? What would I be recommending? We're coming into a season, We've got X, Y, Z players. What would we be doing?

Jason Weber:
20:01

I think there's a really strong argument for rotating the types of week you run in a tactical periodization type macro, so that you might have, like, where your physical load's not super high, we overload those skill type things. So we might train every day because we don't have super high load, but we're going to touch that football all the time. Again, it was just a concept that you'd have to work out with coaches if they fit into that, but I think that there's ample ways to cut it a little bit differently. I think there's things we could learn from global football. No question, I mean that's the thing that's impressed me the most.

Jason Weber:
20:41

So, spending the last 10 days in the UK speaking to a lot of people, a lot of Speedsie clients, a lot of new people, but just the three games, Like we played Saturday. We're coming out Wednesday and we're going Saturday again and the preparation, like what's gone in before that to have them ready. Like most teams, you say well, who's cycling through? And they go. Not all this is cycling, we're just going, we're just sending the same guys again because we need to win.

Jason Weber:
21:09

Yeah, yeah, it's tough, tough and as you know, it's a tough, tough market.

Darren Burgess:
21:16

Yeah, it's a different way of looking at things than what we've traditionally looked at it down here and it takes a different mindset. And there's a lot of people that go over there and think, oh no, I'll do it better and I'll change their mindset. But when you get in there and see it's just relentless. And part of the stuff that we're doing with Beef Pro is to try and protect the players a little bit.

Jason Weber:
21:38

I don't see how you're going to though.

Darren Burgess:
21:41

That's a tough one when you've got competing bodies. I just saw, literally minutes before this, we were recording this podcast, which started at 8.30am Adelaide time, to give people some perspective on when that is. And FIFA have just announced, have confirmed the Saudi Arabia World Cup in whenever that is. And so you've got these global competing bodies of FIFA and UEFA and 2034 World Cup.

Darren Burgess:
22:12

It is in Saudi Arabia, which will have to be in wintertime because of the temperature, and so that'll just smash the calendar even more, and new FIFA Club World Cup, and I could talk about it all day, but it's business, mate, like at the end of the day, to be blunt, it's business.

Darren Burgess:
22:30

Yeah, but the players ultimately and this will, like I said, it could take another half an hour Ultimately, if the players are injured, and we saw in the World Cup in Qatar that players who sustained tiny little injuries missed in the World Cup in Qatar, that players who sustained tiny little injuries missed the entire World Cup. There's not that lead-in period like there is in a European Summer World Cup. So you're not going to see the best players in Saudi Arabia because they will be injured and they'll also be massively fatigued, so you're not going to see the best players um being our best and then what we did see after the World Cup is more injuries and a lot of declining in the players, because there was just this mental letdown after the World Cup.

Darren Burgess:
23:18

So they go back to their clubs and they go. Oh well, you know, you know I'm not. It's not as important as playing for my country in the World Cup. So, yeah, any way you cut it, it means a lesser product for the fans. So if they want business, they want fans to keep turning up and buying money. They need to make sure the integrity of the product is high.

Jason Weber:
23:39

Well, just as we pull up stumps, as we reach our time, I will make one comment, absolutely ubiquitously, about the car parks at EPL clubs. Holy moly, mate, I have never there are cars there. I've never, I mean, I've heard of a Bentley, I've seen, but there are cars there that you look like, mate. To be frank, they all look like Batmobiles to me. They are all trucked up, dark, they look like they could hover, like they could fly, like unbelievable, mate. I've seen cars. I think they outdo the cars in the NFL car parks by quite a margin.

Darren Burgess:
24:18

Well, it's a little different to the AFL car park, which is traditionally full of utes For those overseas. Have a look up what a ute is, because they probably wouldn't know.

Jason Weber:
24:28

Well, yeah, farm car, but very, very impressive car parks, mate, Very impressive. And I will say that the security to get into some of these places is unbelievable. Short of passport and fingerprinting, which I had to do today to get into the US, there's some pretty cool security getting in, I mean.

Darren Burgess:
24:54

Well, you've got to think about it in terms of the value of the assets in the building. Oh, they're unbelievable. Yeah, Imagine what you would have if you had a I don't know. You've just been at Liverpool's car park. So let's say, if you had a Aussie probably $1 billion house, you'd probably want some security there.

Jason Weber:
25:17

Oh, mate, it's impressive. But you look at the scope of the fields and the infrastructure and, like I said, the staff, the academy, the women's, the men's, it's all happening. They are big, big, big businesses. And I think you're maybe just to finish off like if you think you're going to come from Oz and get up there and change the world. I know there's plenty of guys up there doing it, doing their best, but they are big, big machines. There's no question about it. Very impressive.

Darren Burgess:
25:50

I want to put on the agenda the value of overseas visits for people in the industry. You know they always say I want to go and do a tour of America or do a tour and catch up with different people rather than spending time on the phone with people. Let's have a chat about that for CPD.

Jason Weber:
26:10

Will do, mate. We'll probably, with any good fortune, we'll do the next one when I'm in Sydney back next week, which will be awesome. I look forward to being back on Aussie time. But to all our listeners however innumerate they are hopefully growing we wish you the best and we'll speak next week.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 45-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 44-----
Jason Weber:
0:16

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. We're back. No more special treatment, no more special shows. We're back to just grassroots, talking about performance with my good friend Darren Burgess. How are you, mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:30

Going all right. We're into our second week.

Jason Weber:
0:34

I'm late.

Darren Burgess:
0:35

Yeah, what is it here? It's 6.25 am.

Jason Weber:
0:39

It's 8 pm here in London.

Darren Burgess:
0:41

Yeah, nice mate. Yeah, it's pre-season time in AFL, so it's all going fairly heavy loads that the boys are going through, but no, all going OK. I've got four new staff members integrating, really well, but I think we're going to have to dispense with the 15 to 20 listeners joke because I was at a winery on the weekend the lovely Chalk Hill Winery here in Adelaide.

Jason Weber:
1:10

It's one of their new sponsors.

Darren Burgess:
1:12

Yeah, a gentleman by the name of Tom and his wife. I hope I get her name right. I think it was Bec. She came up absolutely lovely people. Bec said she did sports science and she's now in a far more important position as an emergency medical doctor. And yeah, she said love the podcast. It's great. You've got way more than 20 listeners, so stop with the 20 gags. So that's it, we're done. We're done.

Jason Weber:
1:41

You owe me a little out if you say that again.

Darren Burgess:
1:42

Okay, all right, I'll be interested laugh if you say that again.

Jason Weber:
1:45

Okay, all right, I'll be interested to know how many we have.

Darren Burgess:
1:49

We're getting.

Jason Weber:
1:50

We're around about, we'll tell listeners. So we're around about. Average weekly is about 600 downloads a week. So I'm not sure what that means, but that's what it is. So we've got more than 20 listeners. That's fantastic. It's good news. I must say. One of my wife's best friend is from Sydney and she's got some sons who are up-and-coming athletes in all sorts of disciplines, but she listens to it as well. She's one of the head emergency nurses over over one of the big hospitals. So yeah, we apparently we appeal to quite a broad cross-section of the community.

Darren Burgess:
2:34

We do. And I must give a shout out to Jack. You might, you might be catching up with Jack from Bolton. Well, jack, Inman from Bolton. Oh, jack Inman, yeah, inman. Yeah, I'm doing a Masters in Sports Directorship, as you know, and we're doing an assignment at the moment and, yeah, jack helped me out enormously with it, so, yeah, I spoke to Jack. Well, jack.

Jason Weber:
3:01

I messaged Jack today. So it's just while we're on that point I might just make note of when I came up to England in the UK, rather in August, september this year, I put out a post on LinkedIn. I said hey, you know, I'm up here, I'm bringing up SpeedSig, I'm just keen to meet people and talk, to meet people and talk, and Jack was one of the guys who. There's actually a guy named Matt Donnelly who was there, one of their therapists at Bolton, but these were guys who just got on the blower and connected, had a conversation and it's gone from strength to strength.

Jason Weber:
3:38

I met another guy, mitchell White, who's first team conditioning and returned to play up at Rangers in Glasgow. Same thing Guy who just took an opportunity and I haven't spoke to Mitchell today and he won't mind me saying this, but we were talking about how SpeedSig can be a bit confronting. It's a new technology, all that. Speed SIG can be a bit confronting, it's a new technology, all that. And he literally I'll be blunt had the balls to take a step and to learn.

Jason Weber:
4:10

And I just think kudos to those sort of guys, to Jack Inman and Mitchell White, to those guys who are just willing to get on the phone and have a call. I've actually had a few calls from people who are head of conditioning teams in women's teams and the same thing kudos to people who are just prepared to have a go. I've been very, very impressed with those people and I think, for what I do with Speed Seeker around the world, same in America, the people that are genuine innovators. They're at the front of the, they're just willing to have a look, willing to learn, willing to put themselves out there and not have too much bravado. I think you know, as I said, absolute kudos to those sort of people. I think they're fantastic.

Darren Burgess:
4:54

Are they a particular profession? Are they, you know, more, fitness and physios?

Jason Weber:
5:04

Mostly strength and performance-orientated sports science. Look, you do get physios along the way. There's Gareth O'Neill, shout-out up to Ulster Rugby, I think is one of those guys. Gareth's a physio. He was at Waratahs for some time. He's now back at Ulster. He's another one of those cats who's just willing to have a look, willing to try, and I think, given what we want to talk about today, which is the performance medical model conundrum, so to speak, is Gareth's one of those guys who I think is fantastic at all. Let's just not blow the lines anymore. We're just practitioners doing different roles in the same continuum. Um, yeah, so I really I rate that, but the topic for today is performance models versus medical models. Now, where do you stand, my friend?

Darren Burgess:
5:58

get us out of the blocks oh well, we have discussed this briefly, but, but I don't have a preference because it comes down to the people.

Darren Burgess:
6:10

However, there's always a but.

Darren Burgess:
6:13

There, I guess my issue with when you know, in some of the models where doctors are running the show because they might be the more senior person, I think that it makes sense in a lot of cases to have a doctor or a medical person, if not in charge then really high up in the organisation, because there's diagnosis and there's communicating that information to agents and those sorts of things.

Darren Burgess:
6:43

When you know, I think I imagine an agent would have a more comfortable conversation with the doctor about somebody's torn achilles than they might have performed person. So I can, I can understand that, um, but when it, when it comes to as long as that person has a performance person around them close up, so that are close to them, so that when it comes to the performance of the team which is the most important thing I would hope and the performance of those players, they can lean on the performance person. So obviously I'm sitting on the front fence here big time. Um, I obviously have a bias because I'm a, in that traditional sense, a performance person, but I wouldn't want to label some of the really good um physios and doctors that I've worked with as non-performance people. But uh, yeah, I think you you do get into trouble when you medicalise your program too much, in that it is all about injuries and the efficient treating of injuries rather than the performance of the team, and there are people from all spectrum that can do that.

Jason Weber:
7:59

I agree. Listen, man, I think you're absolutely right. I said before conundrum, I think performance versus medical is one of the big problems that we face as an industry, and I think in a collaborative environment I caught up the other day with Tom Lovell and his team at Penrith Panthers Awesome, yeah, nice, awesome. I think they're all together. We were discussing injuries. Everybody was in Awesome. That seems to be great. I've seen plenty of environments and I will throw it out there a little bit. The US tends to be a bit more this way, where you have a very specifically medical doing this, this and that's it, and then when we hand them over, performance can happen and they're two silos that don't really talk to one another. I've seen that go diabolically wrong and as much as this year, an ACL that was handed over that just was not prepared. The medical group gave this player over and this player will probably be a top 15 draft pick this next year in the NFL.

Jason Weber:
9:11

But, they handed him over to the performance staff and there was three weeks to camp and they said he's good to go. The performance staff did have speed sig and they were running him and they basically rang me up and said hey man, can we review this athlete? Staff did have speed sig and they were running him and they basically rang me up and said hey man, can we, can we review, uh, this athlete. And I looked at the, I looked the signal and straight away you could see this kid couldn't produce vertical force at all, like and it was a patella, tendon graft, acl. And I said to them listen, you've got to go back and check like, have they gone through all the processes of that we would expect for an ACL? Have they done their hop test, their isometrics, their all those things? And they found that they hadn't so. But they had the authority to say you know, performance team aren't coming near this until we say it's okay and clearly that's a that's a one of the worst bad end of the spectrum type story.

Jason Weber:
10:07

But I did have opportunity this year to be involved in some pretty heavy reviews of AFL towards the end of the season this year, so I got my fingers right into the pies of what was going on.

Jason Weber:
10:22

There are a number of programs that people are defining as medically orientated, as in we don't train as much as we maybe should because we're getting too many injuries. We're going to just slow down everything. And then there are the teams that are clearly conditioning at what we would call an acceptable amount or a normal amount, maybe even some a little bit over, with a view to achieving certain things. Now, when you get to that point and I've been there where, yeah, you've got a run of injuries absolutely stopping everything is rarely the answer, and particularly when there's certainly one or two teams one in particular I can think of I'm not going to mention, but they have probably been categorized over a number of years as being down that medical model and the team just haven't trained, and that's as simple as we can put it. They've now regressed so far that even with new staff in trying to push the loads up, it's not going as well as they would hope.

Darren Burgess:
11:27

Yeah, I mean, with all the research around about preparing the body for training, for games through training, it's amazing that you know you almost get that safety of oh, we didn't have an injury in training today, so we're okay.

Jason Weber:
11:45

We're okay, but God forbid we get to the game.

Darren Burgess:
11:49

Yeah, it seems. I don't know. It's an interesting model and I guess it does provide some sort of safety if you go down that path of we've had a lot of injuries. Therefore the training must be wrong.

Jason Weber:
12:03

Yeah, but I would posit the idea, darren, that you'd mentioned before doctors Like there's no question. I've worked with some great doctors and they're absolutely irreplaceable a good doctor in your team but, in the same breath, a doctor that is obviously very medically versed but has no idea about the construct of preparing athletes to do what they have to do in elite-level sport is going to be a hindrance To that extent.

Jason Weber:
12:31

I will quote another quick story. Again, won't name the team, but the player was dealing with a forced flexion hamstring injury, so a proximal tendon from a contact incident. But this team was instructed by a radiologist to slow their rehab down as there were no signs. We couldn't see improvement in the MRI and I was involved in a review with that and we had some great again gratuitous plug. But we had great speed-seek data to be able to say we can see what's happening in the medical practice in the gym and then we can see what's happening on the field. So we ended up making some modifications to his training.

Jason Weber:
13:15

But he trained through and has done very, very well and gone out now N of 1. But if the kid did, if the team were going to take the radiologist's review, he actually said stop the kid training, stop him for a couple of weeks. I was like man, that is the most insane recommendation from a radiologist Again doctor who's clearly very skilled and again, one of my best mates is a radiologist and a savant at it. But how can that model, how can you accept that sort of recommendation?

Darren Burgess:
13:54

You take the information on board. Yeah, I think that's where the management over the staff running the club had that obligation to make sure that, um, everyone's appropriately um qualified to do that jobs and you know, to positions. And they've said yeah, yeah, we, you know, we want to speak to you about it. And no, no, we're going down a medical model and that's absolutely fine. I just don't think it should be necessarily labelled as that. I think your point of people is is right. Yeah, you've got the right people, it's it's not.

Jason Weber:
14:47

It's not the badge you wear, but it's the experience I know like. Again, if I mention uh gareth o'neill, I think he's a great running physio. He understands it gets it 100 um um guy. I used to work with Greg Mullings for many, many years, I think had he stayed in sport, he did more. He's gone more into his business now, but had he stayed in sport, he was a guy that was capable of overseeing, you know, a broader department.

Jason Weber:
15:16

But I think what I'm trying to comment on, that influence that you often get. You know you get the doc that's been there for many years and the physio and some younger conditioning staff in there, but the whole we're just going to stop and let him heal.

Darren Burgess:
15:35

Right, yes, mother.

Jason Weber:
15:36

Nature needs to do a thing.

Darren Burgess:
15:38

It's your healing line we're going to let the tissue heal. I walked into, I'll just say, a club and one of the players had multiple injuries on their ankle. And there was another player that was presenting with clear and obvious, literally within the month of starting at the club, clear and obvious signs of um sort of pain inhibition rather than anything, um, anything structural. And so I got, uh, my good friend and and, uh, one of the smartest people I've ever met in laurama mosley, involved and he came over to where I was and he operates by not by any sort of magic or anything like that he sits down and talks to people about the sources of their pain and where that might be. Anyway, so I got these two players to speak to Lorimer and, over the course of about five or six sessions, and he just has a coffee with him, that's it. I said to Laws, how's it going with, you know, player A who had missed a year with various ankle injuries? And he said well, I've had a look at his information and spoken to him and what I don't understand is that this player seems to have done over 100,000 metres of training in the last year, of which 14,000 is high-speed metres, and he hasn't done any training. There's not an unstable ankle in the world that wouldn't be able to tolerate that. So why hasn't he done any training?

Darren Burgess:
17:21

And and I saw, look, I've been there a month, I'm not sure I'll, I'll speak to the people involved and sure enough it was because, no, um, we're just playing it safe. And any presentation of any sort of discomfort was marked as no, can't train, can't train. We need a week or so, we need two weeks, we need three weeks for this person, you know, for this tissue healing to occur. So, yeah, it's just like we're going down by commenting on medical factors when we're not trained medical people, just as if it was a trained medical person talking about performance factors when they're not trained in that area. So I don't want to um, necessarily start a war, jason, um, it was just a really good example. And and um, a really simple question from a clearly an expert in the area, just saying well, how can this person not have trained when their ankle has tolerated a hundred thousand meters of running?

Jason Weber:
18:17

my benefit. Mate Lorimer is by profession a what so?

Darren Burgess:
19:24

he's trained as a physio, but he's a pain. Pain specialist Pain specialist is what he would call it. He's done all of Australia plus. He got the equivalent in America but refused to accept it because Trump was president at the time. He does a lot of work with Vietnam veterans and chronic pain. He takes on normally about six or seven athletes at a time. He does a lot of work with Vietnam veterans and crying pain. He takes on normally about six or seven athletes at a time, yeah, and does this sort of stuff with them.

Jason Weber:
19:51

But by your example, I think what you're showing is the leadership to be able to break the cycle. So clearly. The staff where you were describing were looping right. They're in a loop that you couldn't escape. They're just going backwards and forwards on the same information. Now, the key to problem solving is when you can identify a loop like that, where we're stuck and it's the same thing happening again. We've got to look for different information.

Darren Burgess:
20:21

We've got to be looking for something different.

Jason Weber:
20:23

And to introduce someone like Lorimer, who has a different perspective. Fresh eyes is good leadership.

Darren Burgess:
20:30

Well, I think also the thing that we have to be careful of. Perhaps and fortunately I was at a club with some resources that were able to invest into someone like Lorimer, and also it was a favour from him and I was worried about people coming the perception that, okay, this guy is not a doctor, he can't be telling us what to do, and that's certainly. I've never overruled a doctor in my life. But bring them in somebody who's well-educated and is of similar qualifications, academically, at least academically at least, who's written over I don't know, I think it's 1,500, 1,600 journals on pain and pain response. So then use that person to educate them, because me standing up and saying no, this player can train, he's done 100,000, they'll be like, no, no, I don't understand. You haven't been here the last five years, you know this is what this player is like.

Jason Weber:
21:35

Yeah, 100%, and I don't think again. I think I bring up these subjects like medical versus performance not because I think I want to create angst with medical bony stretch, but I think the discussion has to be had to see where you sit Now. I'll talk about very briefly a physio I work with for a long time named Dr Jeffrey Boyle. When I met him he did not like me at all Not one bit.

Jason Weber:
21:59

You know how cuddly and friendly I am, but he was you know I'm the big dude coming in this and that at Fremantle. But what happened was he'd been kept in a box for so long that his thinking was so limited to just the practice and the small aspect of rehab that he handled. But as he grew over a number of years with us he became operationally just the grazer, like we could work together seamlessly. He would talk about load and the need to get on the field, which he didn't do back when I originally met him. So I mean, in some regards, it's for sure we talk about people wanting to become high-performance managers and all that. But I think you've got to identify where people can grow and I do think I strongly believe that the need to have information that allows the medical and the performance communities to understand one another is critical.

Jason Weber:
23:09

Where we get overlap is good, right. Where we get people being isolationist or we've got this super duper metric from GPS or whatever we use and so you can't have it in medical, or the medical guys are doing, or we're doing, a particular isometric dynamometry and you know you won't understand it. Like, like, really it's about continuum, it's about and so the more we can generate that and get people having those conversations and working together collaboratively to have performance. Guys understand more. Medical be able to walk in a room and look at an MRI and understand what you're looking at, not be a nonce and have to ask what leg is that? Equally, medicals being able to understand the basics, the fundamentals of what we're trying to achieve, so you can work together. Anyway, that's my rant. That's my rant, man. Lucky I didn't have coffee at this later. Al.

Darren Burgess:
24:04

Yeah, exactly no, it's a solid one. I think it's a good point, I think we're on the same page and hopefully, hopefully, the um the listeners will understand that it's. It's about, uh, maximizing performance, um, yeah, as you know, in getting the best result, and also, um, you know, staff management as well, I think, which is, um, which is underlooked, and, uh, something that we've we've spoken about a little bit in the past in terms of how you go into that, how you, sorry, get qualified in managing staff, which is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and maybe a discussion how you get qualified.

Darren Burgess:
24:39

Yeah, a discussion. You know how does a high-performance manager get qualified? I'm going to say real quickly, I don't know that you get or a director of performance, or a vice president of player welfare, or whatever the term is.

Jason Weber:
24:52

Yeah, I don't know about quality. I mean, your years in the game are going to. There's no piece of paper or anything like that. But we have talked before about I think if you're in the job now, your responsibility is to help train up your staff. So they're exposing them to meetings, bringing them into conversations where you might say, hey, listen, man, you're just going to sit there and listen, but I'm going to ask you questions afterwards and let's just learn the way things work, because there is going to be times to compromise, there's going to be times to put your foot down. There's going to be time. I mean, I used to always say I will listen to everybody's point of view, but if everybody in the room argues and it's 50-50, I will make a decision and we're going to go with my decision. That's what my job is, but we're going to work it out as a group. So understand the dynamics. To handle that is going to come through being exposed to it and at least formulating an opinion as to how you might handle that.

Jason Weber:
26:00

Might be wrong, but you'll only test that in the fire of battle, won't you?

Darren Burgess:
26:07

Yeah, I think. Yeah, we're on 33 minutes, so it's a rabbit hole.

Jason Weber:
26:12

We won't go down, yeah, but what. I do believe is we're in our sweet spot.

Darren Burgess:
26:17

Yeah, it needs to be trained, just like every other skill. It needs to be appropriately trained. And yeah, I'm not sure that just because someone's been in the military or just because somebody's been worked at Manchester City or I should say, liverpool at the moment, or somebody's worked at the New England Patriots, then therefore they are good leadership because they've worked in a successful organisation, or Kansas City Chiefs, or whoever it might be so anyway, discussion for another day.

Jason Weber:
26:51

You will Emotional intelligence under fire it for another day, you will Emotional intelligence under fire. How about that one? Nice, I've got some stories around that I've been hanging out with some interesting people the last couple of weeks. We can share that later. Anyway, to our viewers however many there are out there great to have you along for the ride. We will catch you again next week when, hopefully, darren and I can overlap time at some point. But thank you all very much and, darren, great to see you. We'll speak again real soon, thank you.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 44-----

-----BEGIN UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE PART 3-----
Jason Weber:
0:01

this episode of two coaches and a coffee was recorded live at the exercise and sports science australia human performance management think tank on november 22, 2024. All right, so there's little, little little skills yeah. Yeah absolutely.

Jason Weber:
0:25

Mate, can I? I'm going to bend you in the opposite direction. I, like you mentioned before about personality profiles, I think part of leadership when we're talking about the high performance environment or the high pressure high pressure environment. Excuse, my phone tingling. One of my one of the players I worked with for years got drafted last night, so he's just sending me messages. Lovely, you got your disc profiles and everybody's in the room and all that. I'm going to assume that, sorry, I said disc profiles. That's what I used over time in a couple of different environments. Did the head coaches do those tasks as well, virgil, in your environments?

Darren Burgess:
1:05

They did, yep.

Jason Weber:
1:06

They did. So how do you handle managing up? Because leading in a high-performance environment, so we don't lead from the like, we're like middle management. Right, hpms are middle management because you've always got the sporting director, the head coach, the whatever in your environment above you and you've got your staff underneath, so you're in the middle. How do you lead up when you know this guy whatever, like you said, is red? I know one coach I worked with who was on a disc profile. We did one where there's your standard disc and then there's your high stress disc and this person went from red to dark red to like whatever comes after dark red before it went black, like that's. He just escalated in that space. So, yeah, it's, it's a good question.

Duncan Armstrong:
1:55

How?

Jason Weber:
1:56

are you handling, how you, how are you using that information?

Darren Burgess:
2:00

um, while I'm answering this, jason, have a look on chat, because James Clydon's got a really good question which I'd love to get into.

Jason Weber:
2:07

All right, you get into that, you go.

Darren Burgess:
2:10

So with managing up is a really difficult one. I'll give you my practical solution. And that's not for everybody, right? So understand that. But I've been called names by coaches in the heat of battle which are not fit for a, you know, not fit for a mallee dog, to use a really Australian saying, as I'm sure a lot of people on this call have been in the middle of a game because I'm in charge of rotations and I make a mistake, it goes wrong and you know, a six foot eight player is standing next to a five foot nine player and it costs the team a goal. How did that happen? And straight away everybody points at Berger and you get yelled at and called all his names.

Darren Burgess:
3:01

That is somebody displaying that red personality. You know it. You know the coaches that way inclined. You've got a couple of options. In the heat of the battle you just put your hand up and say, yep, that's fine, my fault, I accept that, no problem. And you, you know that during the week or even half an hour after the game, the coach is going to be fine with it.

Darren Burgess:
3:21

But if you're seeing scenarios with which the inappropriate sort of leadership communication skills are happening, you can either sit idly by and not say anything, or if you think you can have an input in that situation and that situation falls within your area of we'll call it of control, then I think you're sort of duty bound to do it. And I know to have an input, and I know that I can rest my head at night a lot more comfortably if I've voiced my opinion, even if it's not heard, it's yelled at, it's completely ignored. But if I can say to, in this case my senior coach, matthew Nix, I might say to him Nixie, have you considered this? Or why don't you use some of the techniques that we've spoken about to calm down? Or however that conversation plays out, I feel like I'm duty bound to say it, and I have done that for the last 25 years of my career. Now that's landed me in some hot water, for sure, but I would rather do that than sit in the background and say, no, I value my job too much. I value my, and you know I want to protect my job and I want to protect everything by not saying anything. So how do I manage it? I have an input probably more so than is welcome from the other side, but at the moment it's a good balance, and it's a good balance with my last couple of coaches. That's worked out okay. So that's how I would approach it Understanding, though, before I finish and take a breath, understanding, though, before I finish and take a breath.

Darren Burgess:
5:09

Um, one of my big lessons to instruct everybody out there is before you do that, what is in your area of control? Is this something out of your area of control? Then don't stress about it, don't worry about it. One thing that grates me more than most in this industry is when you have performance staff physios, doctors, sports science, whatever they might be constantly complaining about. Oh yeah, but the coach does this and the club does this and the commercial director does that and no, no, no, that's not in your control. Let's just make sure our area is good, and then we'll worry about things that are in our control. Let's just make sure our area is good, and then we'll worry about things that are in our control. It's wasted energy. It's the Buddhism Don't get shot by the arrow twice. Why waste your energy worrying about things that you can't control? I'll stop now.

Jason Weber:
5:57

That's alcoholics Anonymous also have an interesting saying about that. Control what you can control, mate. The one I was going to bring up very quickly before we go back to James' question is understanding the DISC profile or your personality profiles. Like you mentioned a couple of processes where you know you're in public spaces with coaches. What about when you're one-on-one like, and I think that's an important so I found, like I've worked with two of the greatest hotheads of all time in eddie jones and um ross line, like they can fire up with the best of them.

Jason Weber:
6:32

Um, now, confrontation is not for everybody and and by the same token, I think you've got to be able to manage confrontation. Now I'll use a different term Again I'm going to reference Jen Overbeck but negotiation, and in my business now I've actually gone out and learned a lot more about negotiating. But what you want to understand about if you understand the personality profile, if you can see someone starting to elevate and go, if you've got a fired up coach, people talk about what's the hill you want to die on. Maybe there's a right time and a night to bring up certain points, like I would definitely. I used to always use it as a radar, like if I walked into certainly with Ross, if I walked into his office to present something that we needed to discuss, but you could see he just wasn't there, I'd excuse myself and walk out.

Darren Burgess:
7:34

For sure. Yeah, that's the leader's eye. I think you have to start the understanding of who you're working with for sure.

Jason Weber:
7:41

But you've got to play that game. So, as much as I said before, you've got a leader's eye and you're looking at your staff. I think the same when you're managing up is making sure, like there are going to be sometimes mission-critical things you've got to say but in our environment, pete, it's not a life and death thing. We're not saving people in ER or anything like that. So you and death thing. We're not saving people in er or anything like that, like you know, so you can take the time to walk out, but make sure, yeah, you're um, you've got an opportunity to be aware.

Jason Weber:
8:09

I would say one of the things I've learned in negotiation is the ability to um define behavior very quickly. So how is someone behaving and if they're behaving in a way it's aggressive or it's you know something down that path, you need to manage your expectations of that conversation and I think that's a really important thing for people to consider on the journey up in HBM is you're going to have to learn to confront different people. There's going to be hard conversations and you have to. You do have to get the hang of doing that, without question.

Darren Burgess:
8:50

Yeah, so it's um ego comes into it as well and this is this is a bit answering james's question as well um, ego comes into it as well. If you're in a conversation with I don't know senior coach or or, or it can be an assistant coach, it could be the kid man and, yeah, you're having a difficult conversation and you want to win the argument more so than you want to be right. You know you've got to have that self-awareness within you to say what is the end goal here? Is the end goal here that this player must come off the field at this point in time, or this player must not take part in training? And the extra 10 minutes that the coach wants him or her in training? Is that really going to? Like you said, this is at the hill you want to die on. Is that really going to move them a needle and make this person get injured or increase their risk of injury? No, it's not something you know, it's just your ego wanting to be better.

Darren Burgess:
9:47

So in the younger days I would have, you know, I probably would have fought that fight because my ego wouldn't let me lose. Um, but you know, in the last 15 years or so it's just changed dramatically and okay, what's going on in this conversation as you're having it. Is it just my ego, because we are running out of time and I am on a bit of a tight schedule. Let's get to James. What does leadership look like? I love this question, james, when you are in the dark and you don't know where to point your lamp.

Jason Weber:
10:20

I'm going to give you a few minutes, jason, because then we need to get to nick poolos's questions, which is really important I'll uh, I'll certainly say that part of being a leader and having good background information, knowledge of your environment, is being able to um, deduce, use deductive logic to try and figure out an inductive logic where you need to, to figure out the path forward. And one of the ways, one of the things I learned early off Eddie Jones, the way he ran meetings, which was quite interesting, was that he would you never. You never in a big meeting. You never answer questions. You always ask them right.

Jason Weber:
10:59

So when there's a problem problem, we're going around and you're getting out of your staff, you're drawing information. So you're gonna, you're gonna get feedback from your group. If you don't know the way forward genuinely and we do have that like certainly when you come across more complicated medical that's probably the biggest one in in sport is you're going to come across complicated medical situations You're going to need to draw on other people. There's no question around that. And I think one of the things James probably is within a reasonable degree of strategy about it is admitting, when you don't know, like not being the bearer of all knowledge all the time.

Darren Burgess:
11:41

Yes, I will go to experts. So if we're in a meeting and we have a decision which I actually don't know the answer to, I'll happily say I don't, and then I'll call some mentors, call some, you know, listen, I've got this scenario. What do you think? I'll use a lot of self-education in that. So if it's an area that I don't know a lot about, I'll try and self-educate which is not, you know, self-educating about the risks of a COVID vaccination, where you can dive down the, you know, the dark web education.

Darren Burgess:
12:23

I'm talking about peer-reviewed journals and things like that. So there are plenty of times when I don't know and plenty of times that I've had to learn on the run how to handle situations. So, yeah, it's a good question. We're not always going to have the right lamp to shine in the right area, but I think if you admit that and if you're prepared to work with the human, whether it's a staff member or it's a player to of a crowd, I think your ability to work with them and realise it's a process and not here's the light, here you go off, you go. Finish off with Nick.

Jason Weber:
13:12

Poulos' stuff. Well, mate. So Nick's given us a cracking question, big question. So, first of all, is how do you handle a strategy around a team member that's trying to undermine you? Nick and I have talked about that a lot this past couple of year and a half. It's incredibly challenging. What I would say is, unfortunately, keep your friends close, your enemies closer. Right, you've got to understand what they're trying to figure out, what their motivation is all right, and is that motivation?

Jason Weber:
13:48

I had one staff member, uh, years ago, who was being a bit duplicitous, um, but it was out of fear. It was out of fear. The person thought he was going to lose his job because I turned up in the environment. In fact, once I got him calmed down and said you're not going to lose your job, right, we're working through learning what skills you have, what skills I have, and that calmed him down.

Jason Weber:
14:12

Now, that's not always going to work, but I think trying to figure out people's motivations for the way they're acting, which again comes back to that lead desire, trying to understand why someone's acting the way they do it comes back to that lead desire. Trying to understand why someone's acting the way they do, which, again, it works with the personality profiles. Why is someone firing up? Well, they're firing up because that's their nature.

Jason Weber:
14:34

Under stress, some people go've got to always maintain that confidence, unless there is some huge conflict. If there were a conflict or someone was being put in danger or there was someone being treated inappropriately because of that information, I would be honest and say to that person listen, I have to take that information elsewhere. But quite often in the course of your career you do find out things about people, but I think it's a personal thing. You've got to maintain some confidentiality as long as it's not conflicting with their role. That would be my kind of perspective and I think are we getting the hook anytime soon, dunk, or we keep going as long as two minutes. I think he said Okay, I've got one more.

Darren Burgess:
15:55

Keep going, go man. I was just going to quickly comment on Nick's the undermining. Certainly the confidential information you need to keep confidential and there will be one or two other people, certainly the confidential information you need to keep confidential and there will be one or two other people. So Nick suggests your general manager and people in culture might know it so discussing with them with the appropriate strategies, with these staff undermining you. Unfortunately, it's just a common thing.

Darren Burgess:
16:16

People, you know, some people are inherently selfish. What can you control out of this situation? You, you control your own integrity. You can put the club's best interest at heart at all times. So as long as you do that, I think you'll be okay. I agree with you, jason. You need to get to know that person and what their motivation is. And if in situations in the past where I know that's happened and they're not going to listen to me, I've brought in experts in the area, for example, if it's a physio or doctor, I brought in medical experts to say this might be my view, but you're probably not going to do it because you're trying to undermine me or whatever, but this is the international expert in this area or this is the author of the paper that let's talk. Let's use the author of the paper rather than myself to to try and diffuse any biases that anybody in the room might have. So there's a few strategies there.

Jason Weber:
17:09

You go quick on yeah, I just think I wanted to finish off my last point on pretty much what you just said. You mentioned personal integrity. I think as a leader, you've got to know yourself. I talk about this all the time in the the um, uh, you know, in our podcast about know thyself, know thy enemy. You've got to know yourself first.

Jason Weber:
17:28

Keep your personal integrity in all situations. If you think you're getting dragged somewhere you don't want to go, you're allowed to say stop in the same breath what I will say and we sort of with the gender diversity and diversity thing. I reckon you've got to call stuff out. Be strong enough and have courage in your convictions to say what's not acceptable. I remember back in the early 2000s being in an environment where a player did something in front of a female staff member that was subtle but inappropriate, I must admit. I jumped immediately to call it out and I probably threatened the player a little bit. But that's old school. But I think you've got to call it out and I think you've got to make sure you've got courage of your conviction and you know who you are so that in all circumstances you know you're sticking with your personal integrity 100%.

Duncan Armstrong:
18:29

I think that's a great way to leave it there. Gentlemen, it's been very, very valuable and useful Thank you very much for that To spend time, two coaches and a coffee. And, jase, you've definitely earned another coffee mate at four o'clock in the morning over there mate, so enjoy your second brew.

Duncan Armstrong:
18:44

There's a decision to be made here soon two of the things that really caught my attention was the leader's eye. I think that's great leagues and, as the chat said, I think that's going to probably stick. But you've got the coach's eye and you've definitely got the leader's eye in HBM. And then the other quote that I loved again from you, jase, because you're a quotable quoter HBM is middle management, you know, and having that confidence to manage both up and down where it's appropriate. So I thought those two great takeaways. Thanks for responding to all of our questions too, mate, and you know from everybody here, all the 27 people listening to the call and in the room. Thanks very much for your time and it's been great to be part of Two Coaches and a Coffee podcast. Good luck, boys.

-----END UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE PART 3-----

-----BEGIN UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE PART 2-----
Jason Weber:
0:01

This episode of Two Coaches and a Coffee has been recorded live at the Exercise and Sports Science Australia Human Performance Management Think Tank on November 22, 2024.

Darren Burgess:
0:20

People are all built differently and they have certain strengths and weaknesses. For people who are watching this, by the way, I've got players walking past my window constantly. So if I'm looking up and smiling and waving and I've had that many text messages calling me rude for not looking up from players in the last 10 minutes but anyway is, like you said, bring the environment to that person. So I have spoken about this scenario probably not on the podcast, though If you know your staff really well and there's a couple of ways you can do that, that can evolve over time.

Darren Burgess:
1:00

It can be that you do the personality profiles, which have some strengths and obviously some weaknesses depending on which one you use. But, um, certainly, at at my last three clubs, we've done the personality profile of the staff so that everybody in the room knows what sort of triggers, what sort of personality everybody else in the room is. So if we use the Insights profile which we did at one club and we knew that, jason, you're a yellow which, for those who know the Insights profile, is always bright and bubbly a real people person gets energy and gives energy by being around people, which I'm using that sarcastically which I'm using that sarcastically.

Darren Burgess:
1:47

I'm using that sarcastically, but let's say you're a yellow.

Jason Weber:
1:50

I appreciate that mate.

Darren Burgess:
1:51

I appreciate that and I'm a red who's a bit more of a director and a bit grumpier and a bit, you know, sees things in only his or her way and nobody else's, and doesn't necessarily get energy by people. People tend to annoy him or her if they're not being productive. So in a recovery setting, if the Crows lose to Port Adelaide, if we use my current example, even though I may be the recovery expert, I'm going to say you know what I'm going to be no good in this scenario, jason. You're going to say you know what I'm going to be no good in this scenario, jason, you're going to take recovery today. Even though that might not be your one word, I'm going to put you in front of the players today because you're always energetic and positive and give energy and get energy from being around people.

Darren Burgess:
2:38

There is no point me being around them because I might say I can't believe you dropped that mark or, you know, I might be thinking that. And so getting establishing the diversity within your group and putting those people in the appropriate positions, where their natural tendencies are allowed to, are allowed to shine, I think is a really appropriate way to manage your staff, and that may be diversity in any aspect, and I'm using a pretty narrow range. I understand that by just personality profiles not as diverse as what you're talking about, but the genders is irrelevant. What their personality is is is what I'm interested in and what they might um how they might complement the environment oh, mate, you've nailed it.

Jason Weber:
3:33

You've nailed it from the like. You did right, it's not really when it comes down to the practical side. They've got it. People bring skill and that's what you're hiring and the personality that comes with that skill not necessarily the package that it's in, but in the same breath, like utilising personality profiles, I think is a good let's call it a longer-term strategy, like it takes more. Those things take time to do and to learn. I want to throw something a little bit different. Right, we always talk about having a coach's eye, right? Everyone. Like you know, I'm with SpeedSig. I see it all the time. People go oh no, I don't need to analyse biomechanics, I'm a super coach, I can see it. I've got a coach's eye, I have a rider, whatever, but yes, we need to develop a leader's eye.

Jason Weber:
4:27

You ever heard of that. Do you know what a leader's eye is? No, I just made it up, so I'm so what a leader's eye is. So what I was thinking about when I was writing, I wrote a color cheated mate, I I've got a lot I've got to tell you. I wrote some notes. So I'm sorry, but but when I was thinking about this person that worked with me who was clearly not going to fit in not naturally anyway, they're not going to.

Jason Weber:
4:50

You know, see, some people walk into a football environment and they're just, they've been there. Whether they have or not they they're suited to it I reckon you've got to look, you've got to be able to see when people are not fitting in. So I'm going to throw a couple of points out where I think, as a leader, you need to be able to read the room quickly, right? Because if you let's say, let's go back to your I think you said it was Liverpool but where you walk in and you just hire all these new staff and it goes from zero to 101, go Now, that's probably worst case scenario. But you're in a space where you've got people. You don't necessarily know them that well. You might have new staff come in.

Jason Weber:
5:28

I think a leader's eye, things like you've got to be able to watch, right, you've got to be able to watch people who struggle in what I would call escalating interpersonal settings. So particularly where you see someone that can speak to you, okay, and they can speak to one or two people, but when it becomes a meeting let's say it's a small meeting they're not going to say anything. Bigger meeting mate, they're going under the chair, they're not going to say a thing. Same thing in front of players. They can talk to one or two players, but then they get in front of a bigger group. Right, you've got to. You've got to be able to, um, you've got to be able to see that and read that.

Jason Weber:
6:04

In my opinion, because that's our job, once you wear that and I hate the idea but you've got a leader's badge on, I'm the boss, you're responsible for understanding how your people are developed. So I think people who the other one would be and you'd know this one one people who can struggle to contribute when you know they can. So you know, you've got someone on your staff who is, you know, intelligent, they know what they're talking about. They've got some great ideas, creative, whatever it is, but they struggle to contribute or to convey that message again in different settings.

Jason Weber:
6:42

I think you've got to work with that and it's our job to have a leader's eye to pick that up, because it's one thing, like you know, your point was great, like let's give people the opportunity to lead. It's maybe not their strong suit and some people will handle that, some don't. I worked with a guy, one of my PhD students, who's an excellent, excellent sports analyst and a very good running coach too, but he struggled, struggled when it came to any sort of group. Now I had to work with him gently to ease him through in the situation to be able to present, and that was so he could actually present his PhD down the chain. So I think that concept of like I do, like the like we used to use the disk profiles. I think that's a great bigger strategy.

Darren Burgess:
7:35

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
7:36

But yeah, I'd encourage people like leaders and people who want to be leaders to start learning how to read people like actually take the time to observe, because and I learned this off Dan Pfaff, who's a great, magnificent sprint coach but behaviour is a great tool. You can read people when they change behaviour, when they're a really gregarious person and they're suddenly quiet or the reverse they're not usually a talker then suddenly they're jumping out of their skin or they get flushed around the neck because they're now pumped up. Now I'm just going to quickly. I'm not real good at this reading chat thing, but I've just read Duncan. You've got to remember, mate, when Duncan Armstrong speaks, I'm going to listen, mate. You know, mate, I started my career as a swimming coach in my master's degree. I was all over Duncan Armstrong as an athlete, so I got all gushy last year when I met him. So I'm going to read his question.

Darren Burgess:
8:37

Can I just say if Duncan's listening, jason, you've been called a cyborg and you would just sink. I think swimming would be the worst sport for you. You have got the opposite of a a swimmer's swimmer's uh profile, I would have thought.

Jason Weber:
8:58

But anyway, I've seen duncan's questions I thought you were going a different space. I thought you're going to say you're a cyborg, but but you're actually a lovely sweet guy.

Darren Burgess:
9:09

I thought that was what you were going to say. No, no, no. You basically look like a cyborg, so you would sink anyway. The question is I'll read it out and you can answer it, because I've got a couple of examples what do you do with people on your staff who have the intelligence but are not group leaders or are not situated to address groups or teams?

Jason Weber:
9:31

Mate, that's absolutely. That's almost like a standard operating procedure. You need to understand Some people are not going to be group orientated, and I think it comes down to number one understand what they want to be. For instance, of the three guys I mentioned earlier who I've worked over 10 years with, like they all wanted, they all aspired to be HPMs. So you had to put them into situations, you had to help them come up. But there are going to be people that don't want to be that. So I think you've got to, like you said before, and I think this is again. I'll reference Jen Overbeck because, as I said, she intimidated me massively.

Jason Weber:
10:17

Even though I'm a cyborg, is getting things, figuring it out in advance. So, if you're going to start asking people to do things as in front teams or front groups is, make sure, like you said, they're ready for it and they're prepared for it. That's the biggest thing. But you've got to help people. I think a leader's job is to help people succeed, so you've got to figure out what that means. Yes, yes, duncan, I think that's a leader's eye. Yes, yes.

Darren Burgess:
10:45

Duncan. I think that's a leader's eye as an example and that leader's eye is going to go. It's going to take off, as Todd mentioned on the chat as part of that, if you have in a practical scenario and please, anybody who wants to ask a question far away, if you have somebody who wants to be a high-performance manager or director or whatever term you want to use, which requires some ability to get up in front of people and discuss and instruct.

Jason Weber:
11:19

Let's be frank it needs a huge ability.

Darren Burgess:
11:22

It certainly does, and they don't have that ability yet. And your leaders, they admit, look, I haven't have that ability yet. And your leaders I. Or they admit, look, I haven't got that yet, but I really want to be, or really want to sit in your chair one day. Then one of the mistakes I think that people make is they just say, well, you need to work on that, okay, off you go, whereas what I will do is I'll give them homework and say, okay, okay, by this time, in a month's time, you need to have done Simon Sinek's public speaking course or you need to have enrolled in his $350 from the club for PD. It's not going to be a more conventional course on strength and conditioning or sports science. I'm going to send you to Brett Bartholomew's communication improv course or whatever it might be, to learn that skill, and that is genuine homework Away. You go, come back to me with five courses that you've seen online. You've got a week to do it.

Darren Burgess:
12:25

So when I have staff reviews, every single staff member goes away with some sort of objective task that they need to complete in a week, a month, whatever it might be. They have been in the gym all their life and have little concept of coding or data analytics or decision making trees. When you get that information, it is the exact same concept. In order for you to lead a department and a team, you need to have some understanding of this. Your gym understanding is brilliant. Now you need to improve this side of things. Now you need to improve this side of things. So, therefore, off you go. Give me five courses on Excel mastery, into programming, into Python, into Rshiny, whatever it might be. So, using your Jason trademark, lead as I understand the weaknesses or the areas of growth or the opportunities in your staff and give them some objective work-ons for that mate, absolutely I can't stand the term homework, but I love your work.

Jason Weber:
13:43

Um, I think you did right. I think you you made another point the the objective. Giving people objectives to work with is is excellent, but I will let's quickly, I'm not not divert away from that, but I think you make such a great point that you're giving people to work on. But I think, as a lady yourself going in right, you need to make sure we talk about building credibility. You've got to have a skill. So I hate when people get the leadership badge but they don't lead.

Jason Weber:
14:14

For my, I used to. On a presentation, I used to talk about leadership. I had this black, know black space and there's this little person with lamp. That, to me, is leadership. When the room's dark, I've got a light. I'm shining. This is the way we're going. I'll show you the direction forward.

Jason Weber:
14:33

So I think, in terms of being a leader, what I would make sure that you have as well in your kit bag is you've got a skill set right. So take the sport environment. Let's take AFL. I was there for such a long time that, yeah, you can be a leader of the department, but you've got expertise in strength and conditioning, or you might be the physiotherapist and you've got high-level skill there, you can still contribute to the team and help bring it forward, not just wear the badge, like I've seen. I know a couple of people and again I'm not going to call them out who have been in leadership roles. But once you're in the leadership role, it's hands off. I don't do it. I actually I stand here and point fingers and direct traffic and do something like that. Now you don't have't have to have hands-on all the time, but I think my personal opinion is that you need to have a skill set that you can still bring to the team so you can show them the way forward.

Darren Burgess:
15:36

Yeah, there's no doubt, as you elevate in your career in this field, you tend to get dragged away from that a lot. So the meetings that I'm now having with board members, with coaches, with CEOs, with owners in previous roles takes me away from the coalface with the players, and I think that's a mistake that you make. Like you said it, also takes away from the staff.

Darren Burgess:
16:18

So you need to make sure that you still have that one wood and you're employing it. Duncan mentioned we're talking about self-determining growth trajectory. Certainly, self-determining theory is a really important one in our world, allowing people to have agency over their own development. I think that's really, really important, so I agree with that. So I agree with that, dr Cates, tanya Cates, curiosity to understand what they don't know, that they may need Really, really really tough one, tanya, because I reckon in the last five years I've had conversations with staff who are really ambitious and really want to sit in the high performance manager or elevate their career the way they see an elevation, but they need work-ons, in my opinion and my experience, in certain areas of their game, not necessarily technically and so having that conversation is really a hard thing to do, but it's as you said, jason, it's necessary to shine the light on that because I absolutely take and you can take the next question, but I absolutely take the staff development part of the job that I'm currently in as important as any other.

Darren Burgess:
17:38

So there are difficult conversations, tanya, to have with staff, just like it is with players in my current job, where you might say you know your running's okay, but you need to work on your strength and that can be a difficult conversation if someone doesn't agree with you. So, certainly, having those conversations and shining a light on those areas that need a little bit of growth, you know, it's really important to be able to have that uncomfortable conversation.

Jason Weber:
18:08

I got a cyborg one for you. Duncan's asked how do you protect your time to develop your staff and players? I got this weird idea that, like I'm not a big fan of multitasking, I tend to prefer to do one thing and stick with it. Not that that's always an opportunity for us, but I certainly think of upright better. But remember the original Terminator movie, arnold Schwarzenegger. He's cycled up, he comes through the portal and he's going into the biker bar and he's completely naked. But he walks in and you get the point of view from Cyborg and you can see him. You can see on his computer eye. He's ticking through all the things that need to be done. So I find that is something that you need to kind of.

Jason Weber:
19:00

I always try to think about when I'm working is that there's things that you constantly have to be attending to. So yes, I'm attending to my players, yes, I'm attending to whatever we're doing at that time, but I'm also attending to how my players and my staff in particular are developing around that. So you're keeping an eye on all the time and you've got to keep it. It's almost like to be a very computer. It's like your RAM, your random access memory. It's there and it's ticking over all the time. But rather than, like Darren made the point of obviously having meetings and developing educational plans, I also like the idea of constantly adding little bits to them when you can like, giving them confidence around what they're doing at that time, giving them pump up right, making sure they've got confidence.

Jason Weber:
19:56

Lift your voice. Lift your voice more. I've said to people in warm-up take a deep breath and then tell people what you need. Project your voice. They're little skills that help people and they're not the skills you'll learn at university. They're not skills you'll learn anywhere other than in the trenches If you want to get somebody's attention. One of the things AFL coaches do brilliantly with their communication is they escalate and de-escalate their their comms. Mark harvey was one of the greatest I've ever seen. A classic all right, can it can escalate and then can de-escalate, but it gets people's attention. We'll see you next time.

-----END UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE PART 2-----

-----BEGIN UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE PART 1-----
Jason Weber:
0:01

This episode of Two Coaches and a Coffee will be recorded live at the Exercise and Sports Science Australia Human Performance Management Think Tank on November 22, 2024. So welcome, gentlemen. Thank you very much, Darren and Jason. This is going to be a live version of Two Coaches and a Coffee.

Darren Burgess:
0:27

So with that great introduction, I'll leave the two of you to follow my hand here and do the next session. So welcome, gentlemen.

Jason Weber:
0:39

Thanks, duncan, g'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. This is our very first crack at speaking to more than 15 people. Welcome, darren, how are you going?

Darren Burgess:
0:50

Good thanks, jase. How are you mate?

Jason Weber:
0:53

Very good mate. Very good given it is 3.28 where I am.

Jason Weber:
0:59

So it's bright and early. Yeah, 3.28 am, yeah, so my coffee is well and truly loaded. I think I'm going to be somewhat bent out of shape for the next couple of days, but for the 13 or 14 people that do listen to our podcast, darren did make a comment a couple of weeks ago about the fact that sometimes you just got to suck it up and do what you got to do. So that's the end of my complaining. You've just got to suck it up and do what you've got to do, so that's the end of my complaining. So today, mate, we have got quite a unique thing in that we actually have some topics that we need to talk about, and it's got to be a bit better than our normal show.

Jason Weber:
1:37

There's a bit more pressure on you.

Darren Burgess:
1:38

We've got a bit longer and yeah, so I'm happy to let you lead. There's a couple of things that have happened here overnight in Australia which listeners might be interested in, which is the AFL draft and how that played out. So I'm happy to talk about that in a little bit. But I'll let you lead and we'll go with the set questions.

Jason Weber:
1:59

Well, not so much set questions, but the theme is the innovative leadership for athletic performance, and I'm going to tell you that Jen Overbeck, who just spoke before us, really intimidated me. I think for us to come in and talk about leadership now, we're going to want to come up with some good stories, mate. So, given those great introductions that Duncan gave us, we'd better come up with something good. So one of the things that I thought I'd like to start with before we go off, because we've got a couple of I'll just throw the headings out there's the things that we're going to work towards are team dynamics and gender and diversity and support and leadership leading in high-pressure environments, and innovation and leadership. Now, before we crack onto that, I thought one of the most obvious things and one of the things I reckon we sometimes overlook is the basics, like getting yourself squared away before you get started.

Jason Weber:
2:58

I think Jen talked a little bit about that. I'm probably going to cut off my notes here, but I thought the conversation about investing in your influence and credibility before you need it just outstanding idea, and quite often this happened to me when I first met Stu McMillan, but someone who actually verbalises what you're thinking right. Stu did that for me and I think Jen just did that when I listened to her. But I think we talk about and you and I have talked about before, sticking to systems, and it's one thing to stick to a system, but I think for young S&C coaches. Now I know I've certainly had a quick look through the list of people on this call and there's some old bulls, you know I call out a couple. I think I can see Dr Nick Poolaw sitting there. There's a guy, todd Teakle, from up in Geraldine, who's certainly a very wise old chap.

Darren Burgess:
3:55

There's a couple of other old heads I think Loris Bertolacci's there a bit of a legend of the industry as well here in Australia.

Jason Weber:
4:01

He is a genuine old bull. A genuine old bull. Who else is there anyway? A couple of people hiding themselves, so we won't go too far so just just in front.

Darren Burgess:
4:12

How just to crow wow, yeah, okay, um, he's been around for a while and doing some great things, uh, in both afl and soccer. How, how was the um? How is that credibility established? J? How is that? If you walk into a new environment? How do you establish that early on?

Jason Weber:
4:30

Good question. I think that goes. One of the things I've thought about and we've tried to do this before get people to take something away. I think one of the core elements that we try to do with Two Coaches and a Coffee is hypotheticals. So developing credibility and developing a skill in leadership before you actually get to that position, I reckon is hypotheticals.

Jason Weber:
4:54

I always encourage my staff to try and walk a mile in other people's shoes. So if you want to be the leader, you need to try and work on how would I deal with a particular situation, even if it's not your responsibility at that moment. How would I deal with it and then walk through it with the guy who had to deal with it? Now I've been in a position where I worked for a long time. Um, you know, if you the the nuts and bolts of the difference between our resumes, is I, I was a, I'm a long haul guy and you move between environments between our resumes is I'm a long-haul guy and you move between environments? No, that's not a bad thing, it's just what it is mate.

Jason Weber:
5:33

I'm stuck in one spot. But in doing that, one of the things I always thought with some of the great guys I work with, like Michael Dobbin, dan Zaknitch, jackson, dennis, guys who are leading their own environments now was I'd take them to meetings just to let them sit and listen and then we'd talk about afterwards what would you have done. I think that's super important. So I guess, as me, being a leader is me helping others grow, but I think, from the guy or the girl as it can very easily be female when they're coming through. I think, trying on practising how you might approach a problem, but a real problem, Like man, you face them all the time, right, yeah?

Darren Burgess:
6:19

Yeah, it's a really interesting one, because often people who are now leading similar to you, I've had the great lot of leaders were were, um, you know, was just that you're better at coaching and you've been around longer, so you get offered the leadership position and that might be true, but you don't get any training in it, so that on the spot training and you know it's a bit bit of a um, a cliche at the moment to go and do harvard courses or mbas and things like that and they all offer you, um, some really good scenarios, but they're not necessarily bespoke to what we do. So I think the way that you're doing it is really good by giving them practical scenarios. And what would you have done without, necessarily, the pressure of having to do that? I guess that's the challenge, then, for universities is to somehow implement that into their systems and into their teaching and there's some really good practical university courses but still to have that scenario-based education. And what would you do in this situation? I'll give you an example.

Darren Burgess:
7:46

When I first moved from the Socceroos to Liverpool, the coach at the time was an unbelievably successful coach, rafa Benitez. He hired me, but I never got to meet him. He got sacked before I got there, and when I turned up there there was 22 players. There was three staff in the whole club, including the academy, because Rafa Benitez had taken all of the staff with him to his next job. And I got there on a Friday after the World Cup in South Africa. We'd just beaten Serbia but got knocked out. Unfortunately, got there on a Friday and we started training on the Monday, and so we had to employ all these staff over the weekend. Then my first session. I remember it's possibly the most nervous I've ever been, jason my first session at Liverpool, because it was just me and I had to demonstrate a couple of drills. Oh, you would have been awesome. You're well suited for that because it was just me and I had to demonstrate a couple of drills. Now, oh you would have been awesome.

Jason Weber:
8:46

You're well suited for that.

Darren Burgess:
8:48

Mate, I was and I can't. And people listening to this especially some of the experienced guys and girls on this call, but people who are academics listening to this would go. This is the biggest load of crap ever. But to demonstrate the drill, which was simply a soccer passing drill where I had to sprint out, take a first touch and lay it off to somebody else so it was a combination of a conditioning and a soccer drill I'd never been so nervous and I would tell you right now that that ability fortunately, I nailed the drill. It was probably the greatest first touch I've ever had in my life, including my extraordinarily amateur playing career.

Darren Burgess:
9:30

That set it up. Because then the people from Brazil, from Yugoslavia, from Czech Republic, from all these different places said, okay, well, this guy knows a bit about soccer because he can play a little bit. So when I took Tim Parham from Port Adelaide to Arsenal, I said, mate, the biggest thing you can do over the next four months is work on your first touch, because you're going to be demonstrating drills. Now it's like you if I went into a gym and was attempting to demonstrate um drills, I used to think in my younger days now you don't need to demonstrate. Just get a good player to do it. But your ability to do that, I think, establishes that credibility, rightly or wrongly, whether we agree with it or not.

Darren Burgess:
10:11

It establishes that credibility.

Jason Weber:
10:13

So I think that's also a big thing that you don't get from textbooks or from university's mate, you hit on a big point because, clearly, in the strength and conditioning space and I'm not the smallest lad on the face of the earth, so I've always been in that context where, yeah, I can lift and do whatever. I certainly can't. Now I can tell you that I had a shocker in the gym last night, but that's not for this point in the gym last night, but that's not for this point. But what it does bring to the front is this idea, the concept of teen dynamics, gender diversity, because and I bring that up now because what if demonstration is critical?

Jason Weber:
10:57

If we consider that, now, I think your point's absolutely well made and fantastic. But what if you can't run or if you don't have that touch? Or, more specifically, if we had, we're in the gym and we have, um, we're working with someone who's not exactly capable of all of the tech, not all the techniques, but they're not going to lift at a, at a high level or the way they look. Do we deal with them differently? Should they be employed?

Darren Burgess:
11:27

Excellent question, and so here are the two options. Here are two options that I've used in the past.

Jason Weber:
11:36

Yeah, I've got a couple for you too.

Darren Burgess:
11:40

I'm not in any way. You know, in the days when I was more hands-on, I still wasn't very good in the gym not a big lifter in any particularly Olympic lifts, no ability to demonstrate those with any sort of confidence and you're a one-woman band working with a bunch of athletes and you need to demonstrate that, then you need to get good at prepare at online. So have a look at this person demonstrating it, because I'm not particularly comfortable doing it. Be honest with the athlete. Athlete can always detect I won't swear but can always detect bull crap.

Jason Weber:
12:24

So be honest with them, BS BS detector BS.

Darren Burgess:
12:29

We often don't respect athletes' ability of all ages to detect BS. So use an online resource that you trust. If it's in a team environment, go to one of the players and school them beforehand and say I'm going to get you to demonstrate this. Can you show me how you would do it? I'll correct you now. Here are the things that I want you to do during the demonstration that's happening in an hour's time. That's another method that I've used in the past is going to somebody and saying I'm going to use you to demonstrate and I'm going to cue you up accordingly, because, even though I couldn't demonstrate it, I could certainly cue it.

Jason Weber:
13:11

Cool Mate, I think, and one of the ones I'm going to bring up just by way of an example. I'm not going to name the person, but I worked many, many years ago with a female in strength and conditioning and she came to my environment, where I was working at that time, with a very, very high level of skill, very, very high level of skill and, in fact, as things often happen, um, she was so good and so intent at what she was doing that I actually had to get her to sort of calm down a little bit. She was taking some of the players I was working with at the time a little bit too far, but from a, I guess, this diversity idea, strength and conditioning is such a male-dominated space. I think men in our space and men being you and me and other dudes doing this, we've called out other guys on this meeting, but I think you've got to be starting to look further afield and I think there are women coming through that are exceptional in their area in strength and conditioning and are more than capable in the male environment. But I think you've got to set them up to succeed by making sure that things like you just said, you're not throwing them in demos that are inappropriate or ill-timed, making sure they're set up.

Jason Weber:
14:31

And I think that's one of the core things when I look at this whole subject matter of leadership in um, in our environment. Trying to set people up to succeed is a big thing, right. Making sure they know, not putting them on the spot. I mean, you and I do this gig every time we do the podcast. We throw hand grenades at each other all the time. That's just like that's part of the course when you've got sufficient grey hair.

Jason Weber:
14:56

But I think, in terms of the idea of what we're trying to do, if we can encourage participation, encourage females to take on those roles and demonstrate. But I would say the caveat is, like the girl that I worked with years ago who now I will tell you, is an extraordinarily successful person, like I say, I'm not going to call her out by name, but she had exceptional skill and I had a position I had in AFL where I actually thought I was going to hire a female, a very, very experienced athlete, but unfortunately she didn't quite come up to the skill level. So there are going to be decisions where you're going to have to make that, but making sure they're in a position where they've got the good skill and they've got the time to develop it and show it is absolutely critical, and I think that comes down to, I guess, the point in all this is us setting up the environment for it to happen.

Darren Burgess:
15:55

Yeah, I think that's really important. I think the environment and the preparation that goes in beforehand to establish that credibility, because you often hear about the media talking about coaches, as in head coaches, senior coaches they have to do it harder because they haven't been a player themselves. So you know, there's certain Arsene Wenger, for example, was just an average soccer player, so the talk was that he had to work a whole lot harder because he didn't have that initial credibility of having been an experienced, you know, world Cup winning soccer player. That's a pep guardiola didn't have to have.

Darren Burgess:
16:38

There is there are examples in australia of people that were pretty good in in rfl, pretty good players who've turned out to be unbelievable coaches alistair, clarkson, those sort of people who were, you know, pretty good but not absolutely elite like some others who maybe haven't done so well. The same goes in our field, and so you just have to do a lot more preparation in that, knowing that you're walking into an environment that is judgmental, that is rightly or wrongly assessing everything that you do as you are doing it in terms of your credibility. So, before you bring somebody into an environment, in terms of your credibility, so before you bring somebody into an environment. You absolutely need to educate them, but also prepare the environment for somebody a little bit different coming in for sure.

Jason Weber:
17:25

Mate, tell me this here's one for you. Have you on the gender diversity side, have you ever worked with anybody who was, you know, genuinely different, like I'm, the archetypal meat axe looking strength and conditioning coach, but in terms of anyone who's visibly different and I think this is a challenging question I'm not sure how I'm asking this quite correctly, but I think it's a really interesting. It's one it's confronting when you actually get the question in front of you and you're going like, oh, my god, I mean, I've got, I've got a great experience. I I worked with um and excuse me for asking a question and answering it, but gotta, let me roll, I've got something. But I had a. I had a ph PhD student join me, not my PhD student, but a friend of mine. Had this person come from overseas and were working with him and they asked if they could come and spend some time in our space and the person that came in was genuinely diverse, let's put it that way. I don't know if that's the most appropriate way.

Darren Burgess:
18:34

Neurodivergent.

Jason Weber:
18:39

No, no, no, not neurodivergent um person, a diverse individual. I would say um, probably by way of um. I mean looked female but maybe didn't identify as that and and identified probably a little bit differently. But the only way I could figure out how to deal with that and to deal with her was for me to bring the environment to her, not force her into our environment. And I say her, but I'm just, you've got to give me a little bit of leeway there, mate. I'm closer to 60 now than I am to 50, so I get bent sometimes with the he-she thing.

Jason Weber:
19:20

But the point would be that I tried to bring the environment to her and, like, try and understand her and not that we covered anything particularly about her status or anything, but to try and make her feel comfortable. And in the end what ended up happening was someone who didn't speak, would hardly say a word, and this person was also challenged because I think English wasn't their first language, but they were very good at it. But by spending time and I think that's probably my point there people can't just adapt to an environment. They're going to have to have some time to, as you probably, build some comfort in an environment. So I mean it's a challenging space. Have you been down that path?

Darren Burgess:
20:10

Yeah, one of the things that you might do in that situation, and perhaps not to the extremity that you've just described, but

-----END UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE PART 1-----

-----BEGIN THE THREE CONFLICTS OF MODERN SPORTS PERFORMANCE-----
Jason Weber:
0:15

Welcome to Coaches of a Coffee. Unfortunately, today we are one coach. I'm Dr Jason Weber. My off-sider, dr Darren Burgess, is not with me today, unfortunately. We're split by distance again. I'm on the road traveling at the moment for SpeedSeek starting to launch a few new products in the Northern Hemisphere, so we're on our way up to the UK and then back through to the US. But today, just a quick, short presentation.

Jason Weber:
0:47

I wanted to share some thoughts with, probably, the sporting community. We know that we've got somewhere approaching 20 listeners now, but I'm led to believe that many of those 20 listeners not many, but certainly some are general listening populations. So I apologise for those who might be entertained by Darren and I's banter. Periodically we might have something interesting to say along the way. This one's really dedicated or aimed at my professional brethren the strength and conditioning coaches, sports scientists and, to be fair, not to be fair, but to be honest medical staff. They are very much part of the system that we work in and that's also going to be part of what I'd like to talk about tonight.

Jason Weber:
1:32

So the topic in general is what I would call the three conflicts in sports performance. Now, having thought about this a lot recently, I've been trying to really think and dig down into where we're at and what we're trying to do and how can we move things forward. Because clearly, in my role now as a practitioner in private practice with SpeedSig, we're really trying to answer questions, answer questions and something I've pushed for a long, long time is driving sports science to be able to find solutions to problems that we have in industry, in our industry. Now, when you look at, I've been reading a book called the Lean Startup, which is obviously an entrepreneurial book, but it's about it's really more about management and management skills, and some of the things they discuss in there is really looking at a number of businesses that go to market with technology, with a good idea, but they're not specifically answering a question or answering a problem. Now that's what I think we end up with in sports science at times is we don't specifically address a question. We have technology thrown at us and people jump at the tech and then the possibility, but we're not specifically answering questions. So the three conflicts that I see currently in sports performance and it crosses everything from sports science to strength conditioning through medical the first is inference versus fact.

Jason Weber:
3:10

Now a lot of what we do in the monitoring of our athletes is inference based. Now, the number one vehicle that we use, gps, is not inference. You are measuring with a reasonable degree of accuracy what the athlete does. They run from point A to point B, how much distance did they do, what speeds, what reps, all that type of thing. That is not inference. That is measuring as best we can say a fact. But it is an inference when we do things like an eccentric hamstring and that's a clearing test for someone to go and run at speed. And I faced that recently. I had a professional soccer team send me some data and we examined, using SpeedSig and some other means, an athlete that had multiple hamstrings and that the core driver and the core API that this group used was the eccentric hamstring to say, look, we're going to get this score up and it's going to infer that he will be ready to run and he continued to strain his hamstring and ended up with five back-to-back. So the inference is that this metric that we have clears somebody to run. Now I'm not going to argue whether the eccentric hamstring has a place or not. That's for practitioners to decide. But the same same thing occurs when we look at isometric contractions hops, jumps. You know, bilateral dual force plates now are buzzed everywhere and we're able to we're supposedly able to detect fatigue. Well, again, we're inferring that the response that we're getting is actually driven by fatigue from a neural perspective.

Jason Weber:
5:01

Now, there's been lots of studies on that. I've been involved in some myself and there's obviously, yes, there is some inference we can take and there's some guidelines, particularly when we don't have anything else. And that's one of the problems we face is the inference versus fact. But my concern is that in our industry and this is what I would just throw out to people to think about, and Darren and I always do hypotheticals, so this is kind of the same thing I'm challenging people to think and it's exactly what I'm doing every day is to acknowledge what's inference and what's fact, and I think there is somewhat of a continuum from inference to fact. So I think if we're going to clear somebody to run, I think a multiple hop test is far better and far more meaningful than an isometric. But that's not to say that an isometric contraction isn't earlier in the progressions. So all of those things are relevant. But I think when we start trying to understand exactly what we're doing on the field and prevent injuries, keep our players on the field.

Jason Weber:
6:06

I think acknowledging what is inference and what is fact is critical. Now, clearly, there's an undercurrent theme to this and I'm not specifically developing this podcast to spruik speed, speed, speed, but it is unquestionably what I try to do. I try to move from inference which is, yes, we're doing hops and we're doing this and we're doing that when we start to run someone on the field, right, we can get more information about it If we can measure them while they're running. That's as close as we're going to get to the game. Speedsig doesn't work in a game or a training situation per se or a direct, you know, training simulation, but he works on straight line running. So, principles of first principle, rather that can they run, let's at least another piece of information that's along that continuum towards fact. But that's an incredibly important part of what we're doing. I would really think that the sports scientists in the community should be looking at that and should we really understand what is inference, what is fact?

Jason Weber:
7:08

The second of our three conflicts is accuracy versus practicality. Now, again, this is an area where, with burgeoning technologies getting thrust in front of us, what is the most accurate thing we can look at what is the most practical. Now, daniel Kellick from University of Western Australia, sophia Nymphos, along with their compatriots at Bath University, published only in the last couple of days a really, really good paper about the force vectors during running, and they did some really cool, uh, statistical parametric mapping. If you want to get in, you get your nerd on. Really, have a look at that. But great paper, great paper and uh, they were re, they were analyzing some of the daf, the data that steffi uh collier out of bath university and ryan aguirre had, um, previously done. That they did in a different way and that was awesome.

Jason Weber:
8:05

But in understanding all that and reading it, I probably come to the same conclusion. That I did is when I read JB Morin's work his technical application of force back in 2011. I loved it, I could see it, I understood it, it made sense. There was really, it was elegantly done, but what do we do with it? Because we can't measure in reality, in real world. So, while I could take daniel's perspective from his paper and I listened I loved what jb did back in the day, um, the question is a practitioner is what do we do?

Jason Weber:
8:41

What's the practicality of that information? And that's where we end up with particularly performance coaches start to build that into their logic and their philosophical functioning system. I think I did a podcast some months ago describing how to build your own philosophy and write it down and all the rest of it. You can go back and have a look if you are so inclined. But I think the idea that you build that into your philosophy is then how do you apply it? And that's where we end up in what I call water cooler conversations, because you start having conversations about well, hey, you know, according to Daniel Kallik's paper, we've got, as we go, faster. It's clearly got bigger braking forces and there's a bigger difference between braking and the mid-stance in vertical forces. How are we getting that up in the athlete? Is X equaling Y? Again, we're faced with that challenge of great information.

Jason Weber:
9:44

But then how do we measure it in the field? Now I can recall some years ago in the AFL I used to send all my ACL reconstructions up to UWA to do three-dimensional analysis of their knee in cutting in running and the data that came back was fantastic detail. But it generally took, you know, up to two weeks to get that data processed and reported on. But by that time the athletes already said okay, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go. And I remember I stood in the coach's office and the athletes standing there going I'm ready, I've done the test, I don't give an F, I'm going, and the coaches tend to support the players. So the practicality of that test really fell away, despite the fact that the information was magnificent. So, finding that balance between accuracy and practicality, we have to be able to get information that we can use day to day If we're going to go back and inform that.

Jason Weber:
10:45

The inference versus fact again, it's just what level of reliability do we have? What's the standard error on these tests that we can get on the field? Now, that probably applies to some of the rugby teams in Australia, probably rugby teams this week doing Bronco tests. It's a shuttle run test that people are doing. Now I really advocate the idea of training. Is testing? Testing is training? The number of times that we see the athletes on testing day and for anybody who gets to watch the video I just made, bunny rabbit ears anyone on testing day they don't go quite so as well as they might have expected or hoped. We see it in the AFL quite regularly where we run a 2K time trial. Now, a 2K time trial is a race, it's not a test, it's not paced. You just go out and crank and so you could run the first k in world record pace and come around in a jog and finish in three minutes and be terrible. So the idea of standardizing everything as much as possible I know the same with a lot of people doing there's a lot of emphasis back on sub-maximum testing at the moment You're seeing that there's quite a few research papers about people doing different variances of it in leagues across the world, and, again, that's a great concept.

Jason Weber:
12:07

I think there's some real validity in that. But being reliable is the biggest thing, and making sure that when you're looking at data, you're comparing apples to apples, so to speak, and you've got real confidence that your baseline data that you're comparing to, compared to today's test, is a valid comparison. So then, the last of our three conflicts that we're going to discuss tonight is one that is probably relatively obvious to many, and I've seen this commented on in different places. It's the performance model versus the medical model. I think that is an ongoing conflict that exists across the globe. I see it with my position now, with what I do with SpeedSeed, with my position now, with what I do with SpeedSeed. I'm very privileged to be invited into many environments and to look and see what's going on and have discussions, and people are quite candid. There are some environments that are horrific.

Jason Weber:
13:04

Medical and performance staff are literally leagues apart so far apart. It's not funny. In fact, I saw one case this year where an athlete was recovering from an acl reconstruction. The athlete had no exposure to the performance team in the early phases. It had all gone through medical and the medical team handed him over to performance and said off you go, you'll be ready for you know whatever. They had a camp coming up in a couple of weeks and the performance staff just went out, weren't silly, went through some run throughs and just again we're in a position where they're looking at this going.

Jason Weber:
13:41

This is just not right and, as it turned out, it was a speed sig client. We were able to measure exactly what was going on and part of the speed sig logic is that if we can measure on the field, we should be able to backtrack and connect it to the other tests that we might have done. So in the ACL you're going to do your isometric tests of all variants, vertical and horizontal. You're going to have your hop metrics. You're going to be able to go through those KPIs and say did this person tick off and there were some failings there? Now that was just a bad system. This person tick off and there were some failings there? Now that was just a bad system. That's not bad people.

Jason Weber:
14:18

But even in the AFL this year we know, I know of conflicts where probably not professionally driven per se, but where there's personal ambition driving things, and then that can happen from the performance on medical side. This is not me berating medical by any stretch, but we do see and again the AFL if I use that as an example this year. The AFL had some trends this year where there were teams training once a week and there were some teams training twice a week and there were different ebbs and flows in how people and the results teams got. There was one team in particular that tried to overload change of direction. So not by doing more work in and around the game, they're actually doing overload conditioning work in change direction and caused quite a lot of injuries. So that's where you've got a performance model that's just gone berserk.

Jason Weber:
15:13

But on the other side of the equation you get the medical model where the docs, physios, have got the ear of the coach and they're saying like just reduce, reduce, reduce, let's keep him healthy, let's just keep him healthy and get him on the park. Now that becomes that classic perspective where your chronic training load even though not the greatest fan of how that's used, but that's nonetheless it suits the purpose here your chronic training load just reduces and reduces and reduces your training exposure totally across all means are compromised. Now I'm not suggesting for a second that we should in any way brush medical off. Medical is an absolutely critical component of what we do with our athletes and getting them onto the field in every sport and they work equally in balance with performance staff. But I think there's a. Sometimes there's a.

Jason Weber:
16:13

I'm often caught being zealots. Most professionals become zealots at some point and a zealot, by my definition, is around about that, probably mid-30s, maybe early 30s, where you think you know it all. You've been around a little bit, you've sort of seen it, you've figured it all out. I was a zealot for a bit, for sure, and unfortunately that's where you do need to have strong leadership around you to say, hey, pull your head in a little bit. You don't know everything. Slow down, cowboy, and let's get back on the path Now. Slow down, cowboy, and let's get back on the path. Now we get that.

Jason Weber:
16:46

We see that quite regularly in performance. I see it a lot. I've seen it in medical, where you have doctors or physios who are saying get to a little bit of experience and they start to think they're running the whole shot and they've got the overview of everything. But I think they're finding that balance and so I would encourage people that are in both disciplines medical and performance to work as hard as they can at being empathetic towards the other side and making sure you've got a model in your environment that really works with both a medical and a performance arm.

Jason Weber:
17:22

I know there's lots of great. I've talked about some bad ones, but there are lots of great ones. You've talked about some bad ones, but there are lots of great ones. Recently I'll call them out University of South Florida a big university, I suppose, but not a frontline Division I team, but I've had the pleasure of meeting their head strength and conditioning coach, the head of medical services and their rehab and had. The three guys are extraordinarily tight. So a shout-out to those guys down there Terence, kell and Gio Great, great practitioners, but a great program where everybody's working together. Now we see that in America that's quite challenging. I've seen another couple of good ones this year, but I've seen some bad ones where they're just the never. The twain shall meet, we'll do our thing, and then you can do your thing, which I don't personally, I don't believe works. So I would really encourage practitioners from both sides to learn the other side of the equation, which is critically important, and it's critically important from a leadership perspective.

Jason Weber:
18:24

If I go back to what I sort of said earlier about the book that I'm reading, you know, lean Startups, which is very much a management book. It's about getting your management skills. Now on Friday this week, darren and I will be getting together to do an extended version, an hour-long version of Two Coaches and a Coffee, which is against our grain, but we're doing it for Exercise and Sports Science Australia, for their high-performance management think tank, and one of the subjects we'll get to there is innovative leadership, and I think this comes back to. I'm not going to sort of spoil any of the bullet points we've got for that, but I would think if you're starting to push into that leadership space. It's how do I bring these people together? And one of the big things for me in getting medical and performance together is certainly professional empathy and empathy, understanding where they're at, understanding how they think. How do docs and physios diagnose, what are they looking at? How do we bring them together? And, I think, the ability to generate an environment where you're cross-pollinating. That's where the leadership needs to be at its best and it's certainly something that, if you're around, we're going to talk about.

Jason Weber:
19:41

On Friday we're going to be live with ESSA, but we will publish that podcast in a few pieces, because it's not our thing to do 60 minutes. We know Phil Coles is up there in Boston doing his training thing. He's got his 20-minute routine, so I'm probably getting pretty close to the end of that. I've got a few other people I know ride their bikes to work on this podcast, so we won't make it too much longer. So hopefully, this has been a bit of a thinking spot, a little bit of a brainstorm, a little bit of a whiteboard for people to think of.

Jason Weber:
20:14

So, mind, mind, three conflicts. It's both performance that we need to be looking at, inference versus fact, accuracy versus practicality, and performance versus medical Dwell on it right. Part of becoming better at your job is really having the time to sit down and think about what the problems are, what the solutions are and what your opinions are. Where do you sit? Where do you think these things sit? Now? You might, you know, consider that these things aren't worth reviewing. So be it, but you still should spend time, and I also did a podcast on time a little while back back in June, july, I think, or July, august. You need to have time to think and understand. If you're on the treadmill all day, you often don't get time to think and really consider. So have a think after this one, dwell on it, and we thank you very much for hanging out and we look forward to speaking next time.

-----END THE THREE CONFLICTS OF MODERN SPORTS PERFORMANCE-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 39-----
Jason Weber:
0:10

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Webber here. It's been a big week, Burgess, Been on the road. You've been all about what's going on, mate.

Darren Burgess:
0:20

It has been a big week. Yes, I spent the weekend up in Queensland, the lovely Brisbane, which turned it on about 34 degrees.

Jason Weber:
0:28

Brisbane Vegas.

Darren Burgess:
0:30

Brisbane Vegas, which, for the ASCA annual international conference, which was great, gave a talk.

Jason Weber:
0:36

ASCA being Australian Strength and Conditioning Association, because we have found out we've got about three or four listeners in the US. That's what it sounds like. I got one the other day who claimed he was one of the first 10. Wowee, that was exciting. No good, yeah, there was a couple of US people there.

Darren Burgess:
0:56

Yeah, yeah, it was a good mix of domestic and international speakers. I had the graveyard shift of the last talk before the dinner, so I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but spoke about 25 years' experience. What I did enjoy was some of the up-and-coming research presentations. They allowed for sort of a two-hour period where people went back-to-back 15 minutes. There was 530 people there, so it was a pretty good turnout and, yeah, there were some really good talkers.

Jason Weber:
1:29

What was your best new research mate? What's on the books?

Darren Burgess:
1:33

What's coming. Look, I'm going to say the Apple Watch research that we're doing at the Crows with Sam.

Jason Weber:
1:40

Janetzky. Wow, that was pretty exciting. Gratuitous product placement again. Well, not product placement.

Darren Burgess:
1:47

He's worked hard. We found through some pretty good stats that there's relationships between sort of common sleep metrics recorded by the Apple Watch and coaches' votes, champion data ratings and some physical metrics. So it really was. We're still discovering, but he submitted publications to follow. But he did really well. We had Brooke Jenner speak about validating some of the physical testing done on AFLW some great submax tests done on AFLW, some great sub-max tests, sub-max testing research. I like Christian Bose's talk on how he sets up the cycling structure for Germany. I loved hearing David Watts, who we're both, you know, big fans of, go through his. Him and his coach went through the periodised plan in a fair bit of detail for one of their cyclists, which was that's a bit of a different sport for me, so enjoyed that. I'm missing out a whole bunch of people, but Lucky Wilmont did a really good talk on just some advice really for working in team sports and some of the things to look out for.

Darren Burgess:
3:16

Enjoyed listening to a couple of the old bulls, rob I was about to say Rob Snowden, but that's not it A couple of the old bulls talk about 40 years in strength and conditioning. So you know, guys like Julian Jones and just some of the lessons that they gave were awesome.

Jason Weber:
3:36

So yeah, it was good I enjoyed it.

Darren Burgess:
3:37

Enjoyed catching up with some people I haven't been in 10 years since I've been to the conference, so it was good.

Jason Weber:
3:42

While you were doing that on Saturday night, I spent Saturday evening with Johan Lati from Infinium.

Darren Burgess:
3:49

Oh nice.

Jason Weber:
3:51

Yeah, we had a good hit out about an hour and a half of the very best of hamstring and running by mechanics and he presented at Rob Pacey or Rob Pacey's Sports Myth Rehab Conference up in Manchester. So he's got some interesting thoughts. He's really going down the path of he's interested in what's happening at the pelvis and particularly anterior rotation, and I shared with him some data that I've just finished. Last week with one of my honours students from Curtin University Engineering We've had a look at quantifying lumbopelvic angle in stance phase in both braking and propulsion. So he was really interested in that. But I think Johan is one of those guys at the moment who is a smart cat?

Jason Weber:
4:44

but he's very practical. He's trying to figure out, well, how do we take all the work that's been done by the various people around the place. You know he's very tight in that research group with JV Morin, jordan Mendigucci, all that so very like an awesome group of practitioners. Johan just seems to be to me me to be one of those guys who, albeit a very strong scientist, I believe he's really working hard in the practical space to make it usable for himself and when you talk to the guy mate, he's genuine. He's a coach, 100% yeah, okay, like he's not. He doesn't speak like a researcher. He speaks with research intelligence. There's no question. Yes, but um, yeah. So I mean, he's got some good papers out there at the moment um producing more work, the, if anyone's interested, I think, the uh paper by romero 2022.

Jason Weber:
5:39

Um looking at um lumbar pelvic angles. Uh, j Johan was the second author on that, but I spent a lot of time on that paper in the last two weeks. They did some great clustering analysis for anyone who's nerdy in that space, but very, very good. And I think there's an interesting direction, because when I obviously talk about the speed-sick thing, I talk about this idea of water-cooler conversations. Now a water cooler conversation is when everyone stands around and goes.

Jason Weber:
6:08

I think it's this. I think it's that, when we've got no data whatsoever, um, so to be actually be in a place where we could quantify what's happening with that pelvis um, certainly, from speed, sick perspective, gratuitous product placement, I don't care, I'm allowed to. Um is, we know what's happening with hip lock now. You know with what's happening in the frontal plane, but, as johan's working, that that anterior rotation and there's going to be two things is the rotation, the pelvis itself, but there's also the angulation of the entire thorax, which is incredibly interesting because you've only got to look at again.

Jason Weber:
6:44

If I reference that Romero 2022 paper, they had some great little graphics in there just looking at what happens as you rotate forward, because you can't get the front side mechanic. You've actually got to kick your leg out to create step length and it puts your hamstring in a really vulnerable position. So I think it's something we've always known, but to actually quantify it and start getting it to a usable fashion, I think, is really, really cool. So keep an eye out for Johan. I think he's doing some very, very cool work.

Jason Weber:
7:17

So, what about a little bit of advertising, mate? So you've done ASCA this week. We've got Darren and I next week, november 22, are doing a one-hour episode of two coaches and several coffees for Exercise and Sports Science Australia. So ESSA, the high-performance workshop. So we're going to do a live version. So I'm still trying to figure out exactly how people can ask questions, but we're going to do it live Because we're so skilled and unscripted. We're just going to go without a net. We're going to fly into it for an hour.

Darren Burgess:
7:53

I think maybe people can send in questions now, for it can't they.

Jason Weber:
7:57

I asked a question yesterday. I think SR admin is still figuring that out. But yeah, whether it's live, I mean that would be a bit risky, wouldn't it? Letting someone just get on the line and say whatever they want, we could get anything.

Darren Burgess:
8:10

No, but if they have any questions now we can answer them live potentially. But anyway, let's hope that some people turn up to it.

Jason Weber:
8:17

Well, I reckon there's 15 listeners from two coffees and a coach that will come along. I think we're getting pretty close to 20 listeners. To be honest, darren, I think there's so many people claiming sort of 15 to 16 at the moment. I think there must be.

Darren Burgess:
8:33

Yeah, there was a bunch at ASCA that said well done. But it was interesting some of the conversations up there and I'm not necessarily in that environment anymore. I made the joke that I didn't run with on stage because you know I thought I might offend some people but you had your, your um exhibition halls. You know you vowed your play, your hawkins, your alpha fit, your, all those sort of people, and they were all giving out free shirts. I've never seen so many extra large bodies in medium shirts.

Darren Burgess:
9:03

It was just ridiculous they were just everywhere, but having a couple of conversations with people who were and this is close to both of our hearts at different stages looking at jobs but were debating about taking the leap from current job, moving families interstate. There was a gentleman there. I won't say his name in case he doesn't want it to be public, but he's upping his family and moving west to Perth to take up a role there. Yeah, and I was just full of admiration that he was.

Jason Weber:
9:38

What? The 10 people that are over here? Yeah?

Darren Burgess:
9:40

that he was doing that and I thought it might be useful for us to have a discussion because we've both done that at different times about the cost benefit. How did you do it? Did you? Was it purely a financial thing? Was it an experience thing? Did you write a list? Did you? How?

Jason Weber:
10:02

have you done it, I reckon, so early days you gotta get what you can get. So my first pro job I had to move to queensland from sydney, so I did that with partner or both? Yeah, had long-term girlfriend asked to marry me. Let's go, got on with that.

Jason Weber:
10:20

But then the big move I did from such a romantic go on yeah, I know I there is a story to that, but I won't go on that publicly but my big move from Sydney to Perth I saw that as a step. I mean, I thought I always got told very early on you're going to have to move to get the job you want. So I had the job I wanted for a couple of World Cups with the Wallabies. But the next job, the next economic stance in Australia, is AFL, because it's the next biggest gig. Exactly the same as if someone said we want you to come to the EPL, like you experienced. That's a bigger economy. You've got to go. But I will tell you, um, those things.

Jason Weber:
11:07

I brought two very young children to perth and now they're graduated university and all sorts of things. We've been here a long time but I recently had the opportunity to step back into the afl, was offered a position in victoria and I actually had thought you, I'm going to be able to do this, the family will stay here in Perth, I'll move over, We'll come back and forth, It'll all be good. But when push came to shove, mate, I did write a list. I very much went through and said what am I doing here? Is this valuable? Is this worth the effort. And the top of the list was family. There's no way I'm compromising, not the least of which. To be very honest, I've spent a lot of time and money on a business now that I'm just doubling down on. But yeah, so the list thing never before, but this year definitely and family was number one, top of the list.

Darren Burgess:
12:02

Yeah, okay, and so is it fair to say that, no matter what was in the pro column, the big capital letters family in the con column.

Jason Weber:
12:14

So the only thing that was me probably working on old budgets from AFL but had the pros been a financial situation that really advantaged my family. Say, for instance, you went and took a big job like you've done. You went and took big jobs north right Now. If I was in that position and those jobs were a financial benefit to my family, I would have maybe gone the heart of the yard, but they weren't really. They certainly in this case weren't. I'm not mate. The club that I was speaking to were fantastic, absolutely awesome. But compared to what I'm not mate, the club that I was speaking to were fantastic, absolutely awesome.

Jason Weber:
13:01

But compared to what I'm doing in other areas.

Darren Burgess:
13:04

It wasn't a big enough leap for me. So family were number one. It's not necessarily. I guess that's the thing that people either don't and perhaps ought to consider. Like there's been people who've said, oh, you've had more clubs than whatever to me, and that's true. I've moved around a fair bit and it hasn't always been for money or anything like that right, so certainly made this move purely for family reasons, going from the team who came first to the team who was not. Certainly not. So yeah, purely for family reasons. But we're in a bit of a different stage. If you're a 25-year-old trying to make your way and make a name, then you might make some different decisions.

Darren Burgess:
13:55

You might have something different in the pro and cons list Correctly?

Jason Weber:
13:57

But of course you will and different people are going to have different things. I think if you've got, it depends on how old your kids are. We worked really hard to stay in one place where we got kids through school and we were very man. I worked hard, team Fremantle. I was there for a long time and that was all good. But there are other considerations. Now you bring up an interesting point about moving around. Now I look at your career. Yeah, you've moved around more than I have, but you haven't moved around as much as some I know there are guys.

Jason Weber:
14:30

There are people out there who have gone one and two years at every job. Now I'm going to pose a question. I know there are guys, there are people out there who have gone one and two years at every job. Now I'm going to pose a question. So there's that guy, there's the guy who I know, there's guys out in the industry who have got a couple of championship rings that they did two years there, two years there, two years there and they kept moving. So did they just get to the right place at the right time, who knows? But I spoke to a guy recently who had an experience similar to me. He got offered a big job, big change in afl, but he decided to stay where he was because he said I've only got one year. If I leave, I've got to have one year on my resume and that doesn't look good yeah, now I got Now.

Jason Weber:
15:10

I got offered the Wallabies job back in 2000. And at that time I had one year on my resume at New South Wales Rugby. Sorry, it was 2001. I got offered that I had one year at Waratahs and I said no because I'd gone one year, 18 months at the Reds, one year at the Waratahs. Then what happens if that had gone bad? So yeah, I made the decision not to take the jump up, even though it was money and everything, because I needed to have some continuity for my resume Sure.

Jason Weber:
15:45

So I agree, I think there are people's lists are going to be very, very different at different times and, yeah, you're going to have to move the pieces around the chessboard.

Darren Burgess:
16:57

Yeah, I guess on the other side of that and I'm more posing the questions for you than answering them myself but I guess one of the frustrating things is when people say, a there's no jobs in our profession. But that's a bit, you know, short-sighted and narrow-minded. At the ASCA conference, for example, there were streams on high school, there were streams on tactical, there were streams on military, there were streams on youth development. You're not working in pro sports at the moment and you're doing just fine with the two areas that you're focusing on at the moment.

Darren Burgess:
17:35

So that's one thing that frustrates me, and the other is when people um sort of um don't take ownership of their career or aren't or are too afraid to take risks and say, leave their comfort zone you know, there's as much as I can understand you and your situation, um, maybe me and mine, with with kids that are 13 and 12, um, but with at some point in your career, like you said at the start, you have to, you know, you just have to go and you have to, but I think otherwise.

Darren Burgess:
18:13

Just accept the fact that it's yes um you, you're going to be in maybe not as glamorous, or you're not going to advance your career as well, or just accept the fact that that's you know. It's a good career and you can be stagnant, and no problem at all.

Jason Weber:
18:28

But I do think, mate, I think your idea like you and I have both taken risks, mate. I've moved several times, not overseas, but I've certainly gone interstate and I've taken small children on the road and all that stuff and you've moved plenty. So I think in that regard, like we've done our dues. So for me, I'm not being risk averse by not taking the job in AFL, I'm literally saying I'm not prepared to give up the time with my family, like little things. Like you're at home in the afternoon, my children come home from work, my wife comes home from work, I work at home, everyone has a coffee in the afternoon, you hang out. It's just the most the best part of life at the moment. So giving that up I'm not prepared to give. That I will tell you categorically. I have given overs to previous jobs, like I've given everything, and you know what I mean.

Jason Weber:
19:22

Like you give yourself to the exception of everything else and I think there's in some regards it's silly on my behalf, but it's also sometimes what clubs demand is that you go. Everyone says you've got to give more, give more, and I don't give that much anymore to others. I give now to my business, because 100% what happens in my business is my responsibility. The outcome is based on my input. Mate, you can work and you know this. You can go 120%. You're going overboard hours and hours and extra this and that, but if the coach doesn't get it, the players don't get it, the players don't care. All those things happen. The coach does something stupid, makes ridiculous decisions, got nothing to do with you. That effort of yours cannot be realised and may not even be realised to the point of hey, we recognise this guy's doing a great job. He might get a job elsewhere, because no one will know. So I think you've got to weigh up what are you prepared to give and get, because it's got to be a two-way street.

Jason Weber:
20:33

It is remuneration, but sometimes it's the job that you covet.

Darren Burgess:
20:38

Yeah, and if, in your example, if you had have and obviously I don't know all the details, but if you had have gone and accepted the most recent role or roles in the past that you've been offered, yeah, you have to go in there knowing, okay, I have accepted this. I know what I'm walking into and I'm going to accept the late nights, the weekends, the public holidays, the don't complain about it, no, just accept it.

Darren Burgess:
21:09

That's what you're walking into and embrace it and say, yep, I was speaking to somebody today who's been in the industry longer than both you and I and he said I still love the weekends, I love the game day. I just love it you know, and that's why some people do it.

Jason Weber:
21:26

Well, I had a conversation last night with the head of an international rugby federation who's my age I'm a little bit older than you and anyway he was saying the same as me. I'm just tired of going to the gym every day. Now I'm the same. I can't. You know what I can't do? Just put cones on the field. I can't, can't do it. I'm done, cooked. Had enough of that.

Darren Burgess:
21:53

My mates none of which will be listening to this take photos of cones wherever they see them and just send them to me, as if I put them out there, because that's what they think I do for a living and did for years on end.

Jason Weber:
22:06

Well, we did mate, oh yeah of course.

Jason Weber:
22:09

But in the same breath like I can't do that. But I'm in business for myself. Now your point is exactly. It's almost an entrepreneur's mindset in that I've signed on to something. Now I started work at quarter to six this morning. I started work. I didn't get up. I started at quarter to six. I finished at 11 last night. Right, so I accept that's what I have to do. But because it's in my mind, because it's fresh, it's a new challenge and it's different and there are other challenges. It's not the same stuff I did before. It's refreshing. I personally have got to the end of my team tether. I don't think I could do another full team gig, not in the way I used to.

Darren Burgess:
22:55

Yeah, but it has changed you wouldn't go into that same gig like I don't take warm-ups or do you know that sort of stuff anymore? Like you. Just, that's just what you you don't do. But it doesn't mean that you've got to be careful that you're not engaged with the playing group, because that's really really important um in in my role. But yeah, I think, I think my point of bringing it up is okay. What are the pros and cons of that situation? Um, you're right, different people have different um will have different lists. But I think, yeah, I think, once you make that decision.

Darren Burgess:
23:29

So I'm on the chair of the fief pro high performance advisory network. We've got um unbelievable sporting directors and um high performance directors all over the world and predominantly in Europe, and so our last meeting started at 1am and finished at 4. So you just go. Okay, that's what it is. This morning I was on the advisory board of a tech company that's based in London and you know the meeting's at 4am. That's just we're doing. Advisory board of a tech company that's based in London and you know the meeting's at 4 am. That's just what happens. So it's not. This is not to say how wonderful we are, so I apologise if people are taking it that way. It's more just to say this is what it's like. You know, we spoke about Phil Coles a couple of episodes ago. Imagine if he goes to the Boston Celtics. Yeah, I'm going to come over, but I don't really fancy traveling.

Darren Burgess:
24:17

He's at the stage now where he can be a bit more flexible but in the initial stages he did the hard yards and there's plenty of others doing the same.

Jason Weber:
24:28

I think, in all walks of life and I'm happy to speak to this from a business side you've got to bite it off more than you can chew and then chew like crazy. Because if you think and people talk about it and I did me thinking, hey, yeah, I've got this idea, I'm going to create a business Mate I was so ill-prepared, ill-prepared for what has come. Like I said, I'm the CEO, I'm the chief, everything officer, I do everything from marketing.

Jason Weber:
24:55

I'm doing research. At the moment I'm still writing code. Um, you know you're meeting with clients, you're fixing problems, this, that the other thing, mate, you've got to order more belts from pakistan. I've got to get them warehoused in the uk, in the. It's everything, but you commit to it 100 and I think you're dead right. That's the point. The bitching and moaning that you don't have this, you don't have that. I think you've got to get on with it. The job is mobile. The people in the. There's guys in the US. We even know the great Dave Carillon is not, you know, not currently living at home. He has to work away. He drives a couple of hours and I've got. I was meeting last night with one of my clients in the US and, mate, he's moved all over the place in the last couple of years.

Darren Burgess:
25:42

Well, dave has had more clubs than all of us put together. Let's be honest.

Jason Weber:
25:45

Yeah, yeah, but that's a journeyman mate. That's what the greats do they walk the paths right, exactly.

Darren Burgess:
25:51

He's had more experiences too. Um, I, I, uh will finish with um, one of the slides I put up at asker was, uh, at one of the previous clubs and you know I won't go into details, but uh kept the staff kept saying, when I got in, the coach won't let us do it, the coach won't let us do it, the coach won't let us do it, and just continually complained of what we couldn't do. So I gave them a list of about 28 things. I think I've got two of things that we can do in and around the coach. So, whether that's, you know, assistant coaches, player education, you know all that sort of stuff.

Darren Burgess:
26:26

So, and just ban that. So, um, you know, we've, we've had, uh, some restructuring at our club and we have had one, two people move um with families to come into the club. Yeah and and yeah, same with them. If I hear them say you know, I didn't expect to work weekends or something like that, you go, hang on, you, you know what you're signing up to, but I'm sure they'll be fine yeah look, mate, there's no question, we've got a mobile job.

Jason Weber:
26:55

I think what I tell you what's a factor maybe to look out for for young guys and more young guys and girls and same I'll just throw this out there. I've got a couple of guys that I've worked with, certainly in and around the AFL, who had good jobs for long tenures. I think a long tenure early can be misleading.

Darren Burgess:
27:16

Yeah, it can be dangerous.

Jason Weber:
27:18

I think you and I don't need people just to move for moving sake. But I've said to you know three of my really strong guys that worked for me for a long time you've got to get ready to go. Better to do it under your own steam and your decision than get to a point where people just go man, you're here for 10 years, they flip you. It does happen. So I think and I'd say this of something I didn't do well early and I was probably lucky in some regards with. But I do think the networking thing is important, and I don't I mean people keep talking about the side hustle. I've got to have a side hustle, you know. So be it, that's a thing.

Jason Weber:
28:01

But I think connecting with people, understanding who's around, doing something that allows you to communicate to other people, to show your work. There's a great book If anyone ever watches this video, one of my favourite books of all time I was putting it up on screen, darren can see it, but it's a book called Show your Work by a guy named Austin Kleon. He's written a couple of books, a very short book, lots of pictures in it. For me, so it was really easy to read.

Darren Burgess:
28:32

It's good for me, yeah.

Jason Weber:
28:33

But the whole idea is that you read the little tagline here 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered. Now that's part of the work is communicating. What you do Now is that. I mean, in this day and age of social media, do you just post a story about what you're doing? This is where we're at. I'm not trying to sell it, I'm not trying to, I'm just getting out there. I did hear someone go on a job interview in our industry a little while ago and someone got binned because they didn't have a social media profile, which I thought was horrific. I heard that and I thought that is absolutely horrific. But the other thing is you've got to play to the environment. If that's the way the world is working now, if people are looking online, I think you've got to share your work, like how who knows who knows what you're doing. If you're trying to get into AFL, what AFL guys know what work you're doing? It's a difficult thing. It's a difficult thing, but I think it's a value to try and do.

Jason Weber:
29:42

I know one of the young blokes who work with me, jackson Dennis, who's still at Fremantle. Great, great young coach, is going to be an awesome. Run his own program very, very soon, I hope. But I met Jackson when he was two or three years before I hired him. Met him, thought great coach, just not ready yet. When he was ready, bang, get him in there. But that was almost a network job. He did a great job, presented himself excellent. So I think that's something for young ones to take away. Is how can I make that connection? Do you just walk up to Darren Burgess at ASCA and say hey, you know I'm Jason, I need a job man, or love your work? I do something similar. I don't know. It's difficult, I'm not very good at it. I think there's ways you can do it for sure, for sure.

Jason Weber:
30:36

Well, you're one of the great networkers of all time, my friend.

Darren Burgess:
30:38

Well, I think I got lucky early on in that I got that job with the Socceroos, so you got to look around a lot and make some connections a lot in that time and connections there like Dave, caroline and those guys that I've been friends with since then. So that's what's going to help me.

Jason Weber:
30:53

It's an interesting one. Like I had the Wallabies job for a long time. But the Wallabies, well, the meeting I had last night was with a guy I met through that. There's no question. If people ask you what was the most effective job you had, there's no question in my mind. Having the Wallabies job has for a long time, two World Cups. It was unquestionably valuable, as you have had valuable, highly valuable jobs.

Darren Burgess:
31:22

Indeed sir, and still do, still do.

Jason Weber:
31:26

The mighty crow is rushing to the top of the table next year.

Darren Burgess:
31:31

On that optimistic note, we will call it a day. Avail ourselves of this You're travelling on Saturday, but we'll try and get one done in before the ESSA stuff so that we can advertise more.

Jason Weber:
31:47

And yeah, We'll see if we can get over 20 listeners. That's what we're aiming for Big 20 by the end of the year. So yeah, get out there and tell your friends about us. Anyway, buddy, good to see you you are a good remainder of the week and uh, yeah, everyone on who's listening to our somewhere between 15 and 17 listeners. It's always a pleasure and we look forward to uh training with you real soon.

Darren Burgess:
32:15

Try to do real shit, bye.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 39-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPIOSDE 38-----
Jason Weber:
0:15

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Darren Burgess, ason Webber, here. How are you, mate? You're all dressed up for Melbourne Cup.

Darren Burgess:
0:25

We are recording on Melbourne Cup Day For the Victorians listening, they'll be on holiday, but West Australia and South Aussies, I'm in the office.

Jason Weber:
0:32

Everybody else is working.

Darren Burgess:
0:33

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
0:34

I live in the office, my bed's in my office.

Darren Burgess:
0:39

Today, players come back in the next sort of week and a half. So we're just getting everything set. And, yeah, we're changing our logo, which will be announced in two days. Wow, I'm sure that was fun.

Jason Weber:
0:53

Listen, mate. I see you're back on the speaking circuit again. Back up to the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association. They've got their annual affair on the Gold Coast.

Darren Burgess:
1:06

In Brisbane and yeah.

Darren Burgess:
1:07

I'm the speaker before the dinner. So Saturday afternoon 4 o'clock time slot, they tell me it's the prime one, but I don't know that it is Jason. But anyway, no, I'm looking forward to it. They wanted me to talk about what have I learned in 20 years in the industry. I did correct them and say 25 years. Wow, in fact it's 27 years and I just penned the three takeaways from that.

Darren Burgess:
1:39

So, yeah, it's been interesting to go back and reflect and what examples to put in, what not to. And I'm trying to give people one thing that I can't stand that's creeping into our, you know, to conferences and even Instagram posts and things like that is when people talk about culture and they talk about, you know, be curious and all of those things which are really important, and culture is really important. Please don't get me wrong when you go to a conference, you want to have things to take away from that and you want in my opinion, you want to have tangibles, especially something like an ASCA conference where there's a lot of sort of younger, up-and-coming strength and conditioning coaches who are looking to us for guidance and advice and more about, okay, how to navigate your way in the industry, how to, what has changed. How do we handle athletes now compared to how we used to handle them? So I'm trying to give people more takeaway, take-home messages and objective examples that they can hopefully learn from and I can tell them how I made mistakes and hopefully go from there rather than more general yeah statements with no sort of, with no homework. I think it's really important that the people who attend go.

Darren Burgess:
3:11

Okay, this guy like him or don't like him. He's telling me that I should be more educated in holistic human programming. Okay, what does that mean? That means take um care to know what's going on inside your athlete's head. What are they doing? Where are they at? Uh, where's their contract at? Where's their, where's their life at? So that can help your programming. There you go, don't even know, you don't have to attend.

Jason Weber:
3:44

Well, you know, it's really interesting. You mentioned social media and I'm a reluctant social media user and not I just don't. It's a pain in the butt, I will say. I will say that, while I'm not a supporter of X, I think Twitter originally and still is to some extent a reasonable vehicle for people to get research out and there's some genuine people putting some good stuff out. But it also makes then the conference a harder thing, because the conference 20 years ago used to be.

Jason Weber:
4:24

You're turning up and seeing all these people that you don't hear from, so like and not that you're a prolific poster or anything, but people wouldn't have heard from you before and they get to the conference, go right out, but you get other people who are constantly barraging and then they then they're on the speaking circuit and you see that they go from conference to conference sort of saying the same thing. I'm not bagging any of that, it's just I think people have got to be aware that everyone's telling a story and that's fine, but I think, as you said, there's got to be value in it. What can I give you to take away? And that's the really hard part. That's the really hard part of all of this.

Darren Burgess:
5:06

Our industry searches for things for free be honest, exactly, and the attempt then my attempt, rightly or wrongly, and people might tell me whether I've been successful or not is what do I think they want to hear, rather than what do I need to get out and tell people how smart I am, and tell people how evolved I am, and tell people that I'm reading the Art of War by you know, or tell people that I'm reading how to Be a Successful CEO? All of those things, yeah, I've read, or I'm reading, and I'm trying to make myself a better sporting director or director of performance or whatever title you want to be. But in this instance, I'm not trying to show people that side. I'm trying to say right, when you're programming with part-time athletes, full-time athletes, because this is the majority of the audience what kind?

Darren Burgess:
6:08

of things do they want to hear rather than you know if I'm speaking to a bunch of CEOs or if I'm at a leadership conference or something like that. It's a different talk.

Jason Weber:
6:18

Yeah, yeah, I get you. I think you're absolutely right, mate. But I would also say like, yes, there's what do people want to hear, and then there's what do they need to hear.

Darren Burgess:
6:30

Yeah, good point Because.

Jason Weber:
6:31

I think one of the things I think we both do this relatively well is we share the story. We're happy to say, hey, I screwed this up. I mean, what's the absolute predicate of this podcast? I screwed this up. I'm trying to help other people not screw this up. I mean, what's the absolute predicate of this podcast? I screwed this up. I'm trying to help other people not screw it up.

Darren Burgess:
6:46

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Weber:
6:47

So I think sharing that story and showing the people where not to go, because one of the great persistent themes of our industry, along with wanting everything for free, is that we can reinvent the wheel with the best of them For sure. Right, you can have a 25-year year old come in and tell me the how unbelievable I've got this new thing we're doing kettlebell swings. I'm like right, kettlebell swings like they've only been around for god knows how long, since the greek you know the original greek olympics, who knows?

Jason Weber:
7:23

but. But so yeah, I think there's a good blend. But, man, I trust you'll deliver well. You're always a good speaker and you've got plenty to tell people.

Darren Burgess:
7:33

I think people by then are going to be pretty fatigued. So I'll be looking to sort of Saturday night they'll be ramping up.

Jason Weber:
7:40

There can be. Not that I've attended a lot of them, but I know there's a couple of.

Darren Burgess:
7:45

Dan Baker will be on his fourth in-hang.

Jason Weber:
7:49

I wasn't going to say his name, but Dr Dan Baker.

Darren Burgess:
7:51

No one of the best Strong man.

Jason Weber:
7:54

Very good man.

Darren Burgess:
7:55

Good man Dan will be leading the charge. Representative of ASCA and he'll be saying come on, wind it up, virgil, come on. Come on Bar. And he'll be saying come on, wind it up, virgil, come on.

Jason Weber:
8:04

Come on, bar's open, tad's running, let's go, let's go.

Darren Burgess:
8:07

Anyway, let's go Now. Jason, the and I guess, the growth of, so right now we're a week and a half, two weeks away from players returning to AFL teams that weren't good enough to make the finals and, you know, maybe three or four weeks for those who did play finals. So now I've got Alec Budfield in the building and we're trying to work through.

Jason Weber:
8:37

Brains.

Darren Burgess:
8:38

Yeah, how can we best guess at what the players have done so that when they come in day one there's not this massive spike or drop in loads? And some of them we know because some of them send me, you know, their Apple Watches or Whoop or whatever it is that they're wearing Apple Watch for us.

Jason Weber:
9:02

Gratuitous placement of products.

Darren Burgess:
9:05

Everybody knows Apple don't give anything for free. No, no, no, this is not making it.

Jason Weber:
9:10

That's why they're worth a fortune, mate. Anyway, continue. Yeah, so we've got young blokes coming back.

Darren Burgess:
9:15

Yeah, we've got people coming back and it is a really tricky thing to nail those first Now, particularly in the Premier League, when you've only got five weeks or four weeks. You've got a bit more of a graduated build, but it's pretty hard knowing what they've done, particularly those who have gone and sought some help. So I know this is big in the US and it'd be really hard for them because you're not allowed to speak to the athletes and a lot of times private consultants don't want to tell you what they do because it's their secret sauce and everything you know. I get that Yep, 100%. How have you handled that in the past and what advice have you got for me?

Jason Weber:
9:55

Mate, if we go with the theme of, we want to give people takeaways. So for anyone listening who, I think we're up to 15 listeners now. We've got the great Phil Coles on who's 14.

Darren Burgess:
10:06

I think we've got someone else.

Jason Weber:
10:08

He's dragged someone else in but for anyone who's actually in the industry. So I'm going to talk AFL specific because, well, well, actually I did this in pro rugby as well. But my, my idea is the first session, particularly I should caveat this if you've given them a program and so they have a number of things to do, complete right, and so in your program you've built them up to a point where, in theory, if they turned up, they would be ready to step into the next body of work prepared.

Jason Weber:
10:40

So my first session in, I do, the last session that they needed to do in their program sure so that they come in and so we would have everything under the sun, like you got gps, you got heart rates, you're all that hoo-ha to see how they react.

Jason Weber:
10:55

Now I have more than once picked up people who have just not survived, that they might push through the session but the next day they can't move and you know they've got calf soreness or they've got this, they've got that and it's like right. So I'm saying to the staff doing, let's say, in the classic and this got asked of me recently the classic AFL, let's do it on the first day. We'll run a 2K time trial. Well, that's okay and that's probably a method to get to it, but it's a maximal test. So you run the risk of people going off the scale and hurting themselves. So, yeah, I would run the last session that I would have expected them to complete and usually I would sort of structure that so that they'll have already done that session twice, let's say on the previous Friday, then the Friday before they come back. Then they do it on the.

Jason Weber:
11:50

Monday. So you go, you should be able to do this on your ear. So we're running, we're doing whatever we're doing, rep 150s and we've got a time that we expect. We've got a heart rate, we expect blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's also over the next couple of days we're evaluating how did you pull up? Are you ready to go? And in that way, I think you are. At least you're never going to what you and brains. Brains will probably figure a way out how to figure out what they did, right, but I'm not as smart as him, so hence my nickname, which is not brains.

Jason Weber:
12:30

I think you give yourself the best chance of saying, hey, yeah, the high probability is they've done the work and they come in and they're good to go. And that would be because, mate, I was just looking at some notes about a talk that I'm about to do soon. Part of it's the three main conflicts in sport performance, and I'll give you one, and one of them is inference versus fact. How much are we inferring versus how much do we know as fact?

Jason Weber:
13:01

And it's always a balance, because we don't know, and people I think people oftentimes are taking inference as fact when in fact that's not. We're making our best guess possible and in this case I think, if the evidence is they can do the session, they've done it well, you're a good chance to say yep, they've got a body of work underneath them.

Darren Burgess:
14:29

Yep, I think that makes sense. What about the footballs? Do you get those out from day one? Yeah, yeah, oh, absolutely, so you add that into that session.

Jason Weber:
14:38

Yeah, your program, our program, would have had X amount of kicking in it change of direction, the whole thing.

Jason Weber:
14:45

So, like if I was to be gory in the detail, I have a particular change of direction series that I would do that they would build up through that period. They would need to come in and complete that in X period and maybe I'll share that on some form of social media at some point. But it means they can come in and I know they've changed direction, they've done X amount of speed, Because I know personally in that first week, yeah, I want the footballs out, I want them kicking, I want to get. My concept is to get to football as soon as possible and then we intersperse it with running and we overload and blah, blah, blah. But footballers want to play football, man, they don't want to come and do a track and field season.

Jason Weber:
15:32

And I think if you add to that something we've discussed previously, maybe on this podcast or not, I don't remember something we've discussed previously, maybe on this podcast or not, I don't remember but if you look at the amount of skill involved in, let's say, AFL, it's huge. Like reading the game is incredible. So the sooner you can get to a position where you're experiencing that you're making a decision, no matter how simple it evolves the game and our job, albeit physical preparation. But if you you know HBM, you're overseeing everything. You want to facilitate as much football as possible so that they can develop the skills they need for the game. Sure, so yeah, anyway, that's the broad brush, mate.

Darren Burgess:
16:16

Okay, I've got two more for you Hand grenades Unprepared for. Let's go brush mate. Okay, I've got two more for you Hand grenades Unprepared for let's go. Because I can help with this. I don't know if you saw Saquon Barkley yesterday Did you see, yes, I did, yes, I did.

Jason Weber:
16:29

Okay, awesome, just explain it in case there are people who didn't see it. But it was everywhere.

Darren Burgess:
16:34

Running back. Philadelphia Eagles in my opinion, ridiculously signed away from the New York Giants. Just extraordinary Eagles were allowed to sign them. I like the Eagles, so that's good news. He evaded somebody and then approached a tackle and did a full 360. A hit and spin, like a hit and spin, but was then facing his own goal line. Looked behind and saw that a defender was attempting to tackle him by way of which using the whole body, which is not uncommon in NFL and you see players hurdle players when they know they're just going to come charging at them and use their whole body to tackle. And he hurdled, facing the other way.

Darren Burgess:
17:25

Yeah backwards, backwards, hurdled over the top of him and got tackled. So it was an unbelievable sense of agility and movement. So my question to you, jason, and he's, you know, probably one of the top three running backs, which means he's probably one of the top I don't know 10 field sport athletes in the world. Oh, in the world, from you know, an agility point of view, an explosive, yeah, yeah, yeah, the world From an agility point of view, explosive, yeah, let's park that. How do you take a draftee in AFL or a young kid in soccer to that point? Go, good question.

Jason Weber:
18:00

You've got four minutes. Okay, afl and soccer, you're not going to get him to that level. He has trained his entire life to avoid to carry the ball and avoid being hit. That's all he ever does. There's no repositioning, there's no defending, there's no nothing. All he does is train to carry the ball. Now, when you look at the moves he made, the hit and spin move he made should be in the dictionary under hit and spin. He actually stepped across the path of the individual, drew him across and then spun off. So the guy never even made contact with him. He was tackling air.

Darren Burgess:
18:34

It was unbelievable. Tell me how to do it. Tell me how to get my players to do it. They're coming back in the back of their feet Right.

Jason Weber:
18:39

So let's say, one of your young blokes I worked with only a week ago we started doing cornerback training. Ago we started doing cornerback training. Now it becomes, in my opinion, it becomes your opinion about how people change direction, how they move to defend and attack versus transition. Transition is when you just move from one spot to another and you can kind of shuffle sideways. So we worked on getting just hip mobility. Hip mobility, foot and foot coordination was the focus of just what we did. Now, what they do, what your man in your demonstration did, they are incredibly coordinated, number one. They have already practiced these patterns over and over and over again. So I disagree with you. He didn't look over his shoulder. He knew the players were coming. He jumped because he anticipated where that player was going to be. It was brilliant. But my point to all that is Am I getting there through?

Darren Burgess:
19:37

If we had Darren Roberts here he of previous school and various physio practices he would say put a whole bunch of shit on the ground and let the players weave their way through it and get used to the random nature of it. If we have-.

Jason Weber:
19:52

That would be part of it. That would be part of it, but you can't start. So again, the athlete I worked with of yours last week you can't start by putting random stuff on the ground. He doesn't know how to move.

Darren Burgess:
20:04

Okay, right, so let's say-'re going to. Am I putting some red, blue, yellow cones and then calling out the thing where he places?

Jason Weber:
20:10

No well, we didn't. So again you start to you're going deep, so we don't make any decisions. Let him learn the pattern. So what I showed him was I showed him the pattern and I said man, I just need you to practice it. It's the same with running fast right.

Jason Weber:
20:26

Too often we get coaches fucking chirping all the time. Sometimes you've got to let them practice. You have to educate practice and then evolve that and that becomes a skill acquisition question. So do you put random things on the ground and throw shit at them and all that? Yeah, down the track, when they know how to move, when they've got control of what they're doing. But when you're talking about an AFL kid who's 6'7 or something and really is still learning his body, get the basics down pat. But get the basics down pat in such a way that you can do them at low frequency and they can practice over and over and over and get movement patterns down such that they've got, as Kelvin Giles would say, they've got, a great big library of movement to draw on. That's the key, right. If you've got lots, you're the NFL guy man. He's just got so much experience to draw on, he's had so many.

Darren Burgess:
21:23

Brazilian soccer method would say just let them play, and they will be exposed to so many scenarios. So let them play football. Everything's a bit closer to the same. But they'll develop this movement library and their body will tell them that's an efficient way to do it, that's an inefficient way to do it. That works, that doesn't work. So that's a little bit counterintuitive to what you're saying.

Jason Weber:
21:50

No, no, no, I think it's a different model. Okay, that's what you would call. Oh, I'm trying to think of the word. It'll come to me in a moment. Alzheimer's has got me for the moment. But you're putting everybody in and saying, right, we're going to play futsal three times a week and get it two games. So we're going to play so much that, yes, we're just going to figure out the strong will survive, the weak will bail out. We're not talking about that. In Australian AFL. You don't have that option. You recruited that kid last year. You must make him work.

Darren Burgess:
22:24

Yeah, I agree.

Jason Weber:
22:29

So we can't blame. Now. I don't think the Brazilians have got it wrong, but they've got so many people playing the game that they can afford to just shove them all into a funnel and the best ones will pop out. But we can lose 100,000 of them because it doesn't matter. Australian sport doesn't have that, and I think if you look to the American model, it's the same thing. You have so many people playing that they have. You can get on social media and look at strength training in high school. You can look at the number of kids that are squatting extraordinary weight horribly like, in a disgraceful way. Yet at the same level there are other guys that are just coaching brilliantly. So it becomes that it's a nutritional model. That's the term I was looking for. Just smack them all into that system and away you go.

Darren Burgess:
23:19

So our best guess for Saquon Barkley and we know that it's 40% genetic, 60% environment, so he's got the. Let's assume that Mr and Mrs Barkley have given him the greatest genes that enables him to do that you reckon he has learned those patterns over and over again so that he knows when a player comes into his field of vision here. This is the move that's always worked for me. When a player comes into my field, this is and that has been taught, rather than him chucked into an environment or a bit of both.

Jason Weber:
23:52

I think it's a bit of both. But I'd say, if you take that another way, I've got a great book back here that looks at soccer players and how that one player can be running to the left and they know where their other players are and they don't look, they can just pass it because they've done. This is what this predictive mechanics they're going. I know where everybody's running, I know he'll run this line. Bang, put the ball there.

Jason Weber:
24:16

Saquon Barkley knew all those guys were coming. He'd seen him as he got spun. He goes. I'm the wrong way, but I know this guy's coming up and that was brilliant, mate, I reckon when he was probably 10, 12,. I reckon someone probably taught him a couple of things when he was 13, 14, 15. But now, mate, I would reckon he'd do some drilling, he'd do some static. You see again, you see on social media they'll zip around a couple of static things, but he has learned so much Again, kg Belvin, giles, movement library, he's got so much under his belt. So I think there's a very big difference between a kid Like, let's say again, the NBA and Brazilian soccer is not that dissimilar. What they do when they're kids, when they're 9, 10, probably younger, they just keep doing.

Jason Weber:
25:07

Now you know as well as I do our AFL nine, 10, probably younger they just keep doing Now, you know this as well as I do our AFL kids, mate. They're playing basketball, they're playing swimming, surfing, kite surfing, whatever, and they play footy. So they're not. They're all quite divergent things. So I think it's an interesting question, mate, and it's a great example, but I think kids have got to learn first.

Darren Burgess:
25:32

I appreciate that lesson and the last lesson you're going to teach.

Jason Weber:
25:35

It wasn't a lesson mate, it was just me sharing my stupidity.

Darren Burgess:
25:39

You've again got three or four minutes for this before we wrap up. Is there a place for Saquon Barkley and his friends and we all aspire to be or have athletes like that for the proliferation at the moment of movement coaches? So by that I don't mean people who are teaching people where to place their foot to evade opponents. I'm talking about mobility, holding poses, l-doa type poses with the addition of movement. So I'm going to teach you to forward roll correctly. I'm going to teach you know, move laterally, but slowly, uh, and and your whole body in sequence. Does that translate to field stuff?

Jason Weber:
26:26

I think there's a place for it. I'm I'm not. I'm certainly brought a perspective within an environment. I would prefer to deliver that type of thing from my staff, like within the team, rather than having a guru come in. But I will tell you, I used to run a thing called gorilla yoga and my gorilla yoga was quite simply deep flexibility components and mobility that were based on just moving. It's getting Now. I think there's a big place for it. I think mobility is underrated.

Jason Weber:
26:59

I think some of the stuff we do is inappropriate, Not inappropriate, inefficient. I think we get kids stretching I would use your man that I worked with a couple of weeks ago. You identify there's a limitation in their hip and you go, show me how you stretch and they lie back and pull their knee to their chest and you go not really getting there, Show them a harder position and encourage them to work through that position and all of a sudden we go, hmm, my knee doesn't hurt anymore and hmm, I can do a drill properly and all these things. So I think there is a place. I don't like you know, you give people in this day and age of specialists right. We get the movement specialist that comes in and does it. I think there's a small part for it. But not sell out the whole program to running around barefoot and lifting rocks and all that sort of stuff. That's probably not the go. But anyway, that's my two cents worth. What do you think?

Darren Burgess:
28:00

uh, yeah, I think mobility is really important and it probably is undervalued and and mobility might be a combination, might be defined, might be as a combination of flexibility and movement and or flexibility in movement, and I think range of motion in movement is, is important. So I think, if there's a limitation, yes, um, uh, like with you know some afl players who've only grown up in um, we must linear lift and we must linear run um.

Darren Burgess:
28:31

I think their hip and pelvic mobility is limited and that would need to work, and that can be manually or it can be position-based, and I think both of them work pretty well, and it depends on your resources. If you've got 45 athletes and you need to make them get from A to B quickly, and often it may well be the. What theory did you have? I called?

Jason Weber:
28:57

it guerrilla yoga.

Darren Burgess:
28:58

No, no, no, no, the slow ones die off. Oh, the attritional model. Attrition, so it may well be attrition. You're going to deliver a program which is best going to prepare these people for AFL. And you know what, if player A, b and C can't do it because of their lack of mobility, hey, this is the reason Go and fix it yourself, because we don't have time in this program to do that. 100%.

Jason Weber:
29:22

But you run a very strong program and you would have those views about certain elements of running.

Jason Weber:
29:27

But there's no question that, like I always talk about the Tour de France, I think whether I get this right or not it doesn't matter. But I remember reading somewhere that if they can't push 80 watts per kilogram on their blood, on the power generator on their bike, don't even talk to them. So it doesn't matter who gives a crap what your vo2 max is, who grabs, it doesn't matter. You've got to be able to punch 80 watts per kilogram. So it is that point of hey, this is where the program's at. We've got to bring able to punch 80 watts per kilogram. So it is that point of hey, this is where the program's at. We've got to bring it up to you. Which is again, mate, I have been criticized previously for saying, hey, you're setting standards too high. I'm like, fucking, what, like, what are we aiming for here? Are we? We all want to say we want to win the title, we want to win the afl premiership, but we're not going to win it down low.

Jason Weber:
30:16

We're going to have to bring those standards up.

Darren Burgess:
30:19

Don't ever apologise for that.

Jason Weber:
30:21

No, mate, never. I'd just lose my shit probably.

Darren Burgess:
30:26

Speaking of which, I need to get back to proper work, and we are at the end of our normal 30-minute. End of our 10-minute I think we've even extended that a little bit which is asking you questions unannounced, so unprepared.

Jason Weber:
30:43

Grenade planning. That's what this is about. We just do it, throw your body on it. Love your work man, love your work and let's get on it again real soon.

Darren Burgess:
30:54

No worries, see you soon, man. Love your work and let's get on it again real soon. No worries, you too, mate.

-----END SEASON 2, EPIOSDE 38-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 37-----
Jason Weber:
0:21

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches in a Coffee, doctors Darren Burgess and Jason Weber, here with you. How are you, burges?

Darren Burgess:
0:29

Doctors, that's very formal. Yeah, going, okay. Well, we got it.

Jason Weber:
0:32

You know what? You know what, mate? I figure we've got to throw it out there periodically. It always sounds weird when I say it, but you know, no, I think it's fair enough.

Darren Burgess:
0:40

I think you actually undersell yourself if you don't, because there's so much effort that goes into it. So you undersell yourself if you don't. So no, I'm all over it, Dr Weber. It's crazy.

Jason Weber:
0:57

We had a well, I had a conversation yesterday about PhDs and a lot of people doing them, and I do have a bent against some that are being done at the moment that are just rehash, rehash, rehash of things that have been done. Yes, they're just not original work. And I was speaking to a guy yesterday in the US about he's doing a PhD and I said one of the best things that I was told about my PhD by my main supervisor, professor Rob Newton, about my PhD by my main supervisor, professor Rob Newton, was your PhD should allow you to trade for 10 years on it. Now, what he meant by that is that the work should be sufficiently original that you should be able to get jobs off it like he did in academia. You become the guy that did that work and that's the body of work.

Jason Weber:
1:46

And in his case, he turned it into a business. A business, I mean, clearly I've done the same thing, um, but as, as things evolve, like you should be able to track to an extent, like you have, like you, you your phd in development has. We've often had conversations where you bring that work up which is, you know, absolutely, absolutely critical.

Darren Burgess:
2:07

Remind everybody that I got one Well.

Jason Weber:
2:12

I think yours is again unique and it serves an absolute purpose. When we get some of these ones that are regurgitating our training load and I'm still adamant we're not entirely looking at the right things, but that's another conversation well, I yeah.

Darren Burgess:
2:30

Anyway, speaking of doctors, all you said pretty, pretty. I said what I'm going to talk about? And you said doctors, radiologists. And then when we're so, when we're, we're in the green room preparing for 30 seconds.

Jason Weber:
2:44

All right. So I've had some interesting experiences over, let's say, the last month, and I might talk about them at more length later on and maybe in another context, who knows but been very interesting to the extent that one of the things that's bobbed up on my mind has been radiologists. Now, radiologists are unquestionably, in this day and age, incredibly important. They're a part of the machine, right, they're a part of the machine. They start the diagnosis process, right. So when we've got a question and interestingly, I must admit, this occurred, I really got this nailed with Frio under Ross Lyon. Ross was very big on diagnosis what's the diagnosis, Right? Yeah, 100%, let's get the radiologist get that picture. But the radiology is not the diagnosis, right, You've got a radiological view and you've got a clinical view. What's the clinical presentation like? Now? Oh, no consternation in the group already.

Darren Burgess:
3:47

Right, I'll give it to you no, go, keep going, keep going.

Jason Weber:
3:51

So the reason I bring that up is that recently I was given a. I was part of a review and that review had a situation where an athlete had a 3C hamstring, something that some of us are aware of on this podcast.

Darren Burgess:
4:11

Some of us One of us is very aware of it.

Jason Weber:
4:14

The other one's too old to move and get a hamstring injury, so no worries. But the staff said to me oh, we've just re-scanned it and the radiologist said we should slow down for a couple of weeks. I went ooh really. So the radiologist is making rehab recommendations. Yep, that's what's come down and that's what we're doing. So I just wanted to throw that into the meat grinder and, given you've already pulled faces at me, what do you think? No, it's just.

Darren Burgess:
4:46

I can imagine how the conversations went with you know Frio, with Ross at the time. Yeah, look, I think most people go with the adage of you treat the patient not the scan until they scan it, of you treat the patient not the scan until they scan it. So, and then a radiologist will say it's a you know grade one or whatever, and then you have to like you're almost negligent in your duty or in your responsibility as a doctor, medical practitioner, to not react to that and that's that's.

Darren Burgess:
5:31

Therein lies the problem, because functionally the athlete can be fine and do all your tests and they get through no problem, and they're same as pre-season values and all that sort of stuff yeah, but you've got to allow for tissue healing. And you're what tissue? It's epimysal, it's not actual muscle. But um, I can, I completely empathize and understand with uh doctors once the radiologist says it's a, there is some damage there, and and label it as such. So I don't know if that's a path you're going down, but oh, no, no, I'm not.

Jason Weber:
6:01

I guess I'm not a path. I'm looking. So what I would say without question is that, well, I said at the beginning, I said you have to have a radiological view and you have a clinical view to drive your diagnosis. What you can't do is what I think is inappropriate, is to be radiology-centric, which you just said Like when you treat the patient then you treat the scan, said like when you treat the patient then you treat the scan.

Jason Weber:
6:28

Because I've I've got some great stories recently of you know club doctors going berserk saying the scan says this, the scan says that we can't do it, but high performance manager, one in particular in afl, really just taking his time and say no, no, let's slow down. The clinical clinical signs are really good, let's just work. Okay, it's whatever it is, but we're just going to keep progressing. If it keeps ticking off the KPIs, we're going to go, but we're going to treat the patient and understand and acknowledge the scan, no problem. But I think I took I probably took umbrage a bit at us at a significant team in the UK saying to me oh, the radiologist has said we should slow down.

Jason Weber:
7:13

I'm like fuck really Like there were, and it's a complex situation. Clearly, without question, it's a speed scene involvement that I have. So I mean you're looking at at all. When you put all the data together, that probably was the right call, but it was the wrong reason. For mine it was the wrong rationale to have a team say, hey, the radiologist slowed down. There were other signals that, from a motor control perspective, I was recommending that certain things like yeah, you shouldn't go too much, don't emphasise speed at this point, like you still get him at seven, eight metres per second, just not full clip to 10. He was a fast cat, but the fact for a radiologist to and radiology is known to lag.

Darren Burgess:
8:00

Yeah, you'd agree, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what you're?

Jason Weber:
8:03

seeing on a scan may be residual, like your scan's behind what's actually happening clinically.

Darren Burgess:
8:11

So go on, mate. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. Right Because let's say it's I don't know, let's say it's Liverpool, or let's use Chelsea, and it's a because and it's a $40 million player, 40 million pound player.

Jason Weber:
8:29

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
8:35

And the radiologist says I don't think you should progress, and it's 40 million bucks, oh yeah, I can't, I can't. So you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, because any, any doctor that I've worked with worked with and I've got. You know, the doctor I'm working with at the moment is one of the best in the business in mark suzanna and he'll say, look, yep, the radiology is often a week to two weeks behind, particularly when it comes to stress issues and um. But you have to, um, you have to react to it, because once it's been scanned, you sort of can't ignore it. And so you know, and if you've got a radiologist saying something, you've sort of got to factor that in. And then you say, well, don't scan. And well, you have to scan to see what you're dealing with.

Jason Weber:
9:18

It's a vicious cycle, so I can completely understand it. Right, let's throw another grenade, all right, let's throw another grenade, all right, let's throw another grenade in the pack. In your experience and your preference, if you had your ideal setup whether you have that now or you had it in the past how many radiologists do you have?

Darren Burgess:
9:38

We use two.

Jason Weber:
9:40

Okay.

Darren Burgess:
9:41

Same practice, same practice.

Jason Weber:
9:43

yeah, okay, that's good, yeah yeah, my's good, yeah yeah. My preference in the past has been to use one.

Darren Burgess:
9:47

Yeah, I think in the ideal scenario you'd only use one, but just given timings and stuff and again I've completed Availability in CES, our doctor to make that. Ascertain which one to use in which scenario.

Jason Weber:
10:04

Ascertain which one to use in which scenario, because it is important to understand that radiology is interpretive, it's not absolute. It's not absolute Like there are certain things that gee, his leg's broken, right, okay, we get that, but you could have figured that out clinically and there are obviously big tears of hamstrings and whatever quads. But when it gets finicky, oh, we can see some tethering on the central tendon. Okay, fuck, you know, that's fine line stuff. You really want some reliability. Now I know and this is not a commentary on anybody, but I know in the States, because a lot of teams are sponsored by a medical provider, they don't get the same radiologist regularly, so they get different levels of interpretation and my experience has been that, without question, as yours would have, that you get the guys at the higher level of sport that have been around, that have seen things, that they're much just more experienced because at the end of the day, you're calling, you're interpreting a signal.

Darren Burgess:
11:11

Yeah, 100%. And I think what gets missed and that's not the right term but what the good practitioners do, and let's say, someone like a Phil Coles at Celtics. He would consider that radiology as part of the information.

Darren Burgess:
11:29

Then there's athlete pain, athlete function, objective palpation, all your clinical science, yeah for sure, All of that. So the radiology is just part of that complete picture. Then there is patient history, both from an injury point of view, patient age, importance to the team, importance to the season. All of those things should come in. If not, there is tethering. Athlete has no pain, but there's tethering. We must respect it. Therefore, athlete is out.

Jason Weber:
12:05

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think in the broader discussion of are we contributing something to the way people think about this? I think, as a high performance manager, that type of space, this is not discussed enough for young guys coming through right. Same thing is, I would. And I don't know where you sit on this. I wouldn't say I'm anywhere near an expert. And I don't know where you sit on this I wouldn't say I'm anywhere near an expert, but I'm pretty handy on an MRI, like I can work my way around it because you need to be part of the discussion. You cannot be in a position where you get a doctor not trying to bully you but exclude you from the conversation because you don't know what the fuck you're looking at. Yeah, I do know what fatty deposition looks like. I do know what atrophy looks like. I know what central tendon looks like on an MRI scan.

Darren Burgess:
12:54

So they're all the thing. Because I went into a club in a position that was above the doctors and the physios. They changed their language it was a while ago Changed their language to tissue healing. It will take. Because if they said it was a grade one epimysal strain, they would say, well, you know, the player needs to be out for 14 days to allow for tissue healing to occur.

Darren Burgess:
13:27

And nobody knows tissue healing and nobody knows, certainly if it's epimysal. The tissue healing is largely and I'm being a bit general here but largely irrelevant to the function of that muscle. The muscle can function just fine, understanding that that incident might have been a shot across the bow, whatever, but, um, in order to almost, because at the system of the club that I jumped on, the physios and the doctors would have them for a period and then almost hand them over, which is the wrong way to do it. Um, but that's, that was what I inherited. And so then they would say, no, no, tissue healing, they're still with us until the tissue healing is complete. Yeah, absolutely, it's wrong, the wrong language, because you say to an athlete, tissue healing, tissue healing, and they think, okay, there's something wrong, I've ripped a muscle, so you know it's a poor choice of language external to the medical and performance department.

Jason Weber:
15:24

Mate, I'm going to just divert for a quick second, because we moved forward in our podcasting career last week and we launched the fan mails and you may have mentioned. We got a message from the great Phil Coles. You just mentioned him then. So, coles, he's jumped on. He's now listening to number 14. So he's listening to us while he's doing his old man workouts. Now I understand the old man workout more than anybody.

Darren Burgess:
15:51

Very well, very adept at the old man workout.

Jason Weber:
15:54

Yeah, we're very thankful for Colesie for getting on board and we hope he's lifting his heart out and going well over there in Boston.

Darren Burgess:
16:03

He probably needs to work on his jump shot, because he's been there long enough now to get out of the gym and work on his jump shot. But it's okay.

Jason Weber:
16:11

He's comfortably out of the gym and work on his jump shot, but that's okay, he's one of the.

Darren Burgess:
16:14

he's comfortably one of the best in the business, coles yeah.

Jason Weber:
16:17

Well, it's interesting Skill acquisition, I know, by the end of 12 years. In AFL I was a very good rehab kick, but if he put me into open field and I had to kick on the run, it just was not happening. So, yeah, well, if Colsey can't quite get to the three-point line, you know we'll forgive him that, but he should be handy from the free-for-all line, I would hope.

Darren Burgess:
16:37

Exactly Now. I went to a conference yesterday AFL-PA the National Soccer in Australia, pa, so the Australian Players Association and there was some fascinating stuff. Honestly there really was. It was a bit. It was all about player safety and a couple of things that I want your quick thoughts on. One is well a dietician, alicia at Compete, and she spoke about I might get the figures wrong, but it was one in three female athletes and one in male athletes. One in four male athletes has some form of eating or food or body image issue. Body image issue and typically, you know, in performance scenarios or performance centres, we've just done skin folds. Yep, fitness coach, level one, isac, if that.

Jason Weber:
17:47

Yeah, not me.

Darren Burgess:
17:48

And just presented horrendous data. Then we had a psychologist from Newcastle and I don't know his name, but he started off with his own story as a teenage guy growing up in Newcastle, newcastle, england, and spoke about how he couldn't fight and that was a massive issue for his dad because and his circle of friends because that's what you do in the north of England, you know, on a Friday and Saturday night and after multiple suicide attempts he went into working with athletes with addiction issues and he spoke about, you know, the signs and symptoms of addiction issues. And then I got up and spoke about. Then a lady got up and spoke about how to handle, you know, minority groups and LBGTQI.

Darren Burgess:
18:41

QI yeah, athletes. And then I got up to speak about player data issues. So my quick questions for you. One is our skin folds slash body composition. Are they gone now? Are we looking at them? Are they out?

Jason Weber:
18:59

So, again, without going into any detail, in my recent couple of weeks I was in a conversation heavily in the AFL about exactly this and I was actually told specifically you can't use skin folds anymore and you definitely can't use them on AFLW, which was a little bit of a slap in the face, but I had moved away from strictly using skin folds six or seven years ago because I started integrating skin folds with mass and looking at what I call a lean muscle index, trying to understand that and how we develop the athlete for that.

Jason Weber:
19:35

Now, I would suspect talking about body fat per se, yeah, I reckon we're looking at the end of it. When you said one in four males have body issues I'm not going to comment on females, I haven't worked directly with a female team so I can't accurately comment, although I would expect this to be higher but one in four males, I think in the latter stages of the 2000s in AFL, I think. Yeah, I know at least two coaches that had significant bulimia. They were elite players and became coaches and had that issue, and I know of a number of players that, on my watch, developed things because of the emphasis that was put on extremely low skin folds. So yeah, I think I would say he's probably accurate.

Darren Burgess:
20:26

Or she. That was a dietician talk. Yeah, she, yeah, I would probably say she's right. So right now we use Dexam. Yeah, and as of this season, only the dietician, plus or minus myself, can access that data, unless the player says yes coach or strength coach or physio or whatever. So sorry, sorry, dietician doctor and myself that's yeah, they are rules, um, or guidelines. Uh, suggested not, not mandated but, suggested by uh the ais, um, so that's, that's what we're going with and I, I think that's fair enough.

Darren Burgess:
21:12

I think we just have to be a bit careful and if it becomes a performance-related issue, then I think we can have that performance-related discussion with the athlete. But it needs to be done incredibly cautiously and with care and empathy with the dietician, the doctor and the performance director. But it's just interesting how far we've come from when you and I started. It's completely different. So if anybody, is out there working with players and taking skin files, just drop it. It's not that important, just drop it.

Darren Burgess:
21:51

It's important to have a good lifestyle and good eating habits, so please don't think I'm um um suggesting otherwise, uh. But it leads me to the other question about some of the misuse. Um, poor collection and poor analysis of data in our industry is just abhorrent, so Skinfolds is a perfect example of that and always has been Well right, mate, you bring up a great point.

Jason Weber:
22:24

I'll just finish on your Skinfold thing. I think, categorically the move for Skinfold, Dexa or anything else of that nature, that data towards the performance, medical side under your management, I think is ideal. I think it being in the hands of the coach is a nightmare. That's where I think the pressure comes, that's where I think the issues come with players, when it becomes almost a selection piece, which I have seen. I have seen that and there's no question, Are people more, are exposed or at risk of mental health issues.

Jason Weber:
23:05

On the basis of all this, now I don't know, Maybe I think the social media pressure is enormous and I think I mean I've got two kids who are now university and beyond and you've got younger ones, so we've both gone through that journey of figuring like, trying to understand social media and its role it plays in kids' lives. I think it's enormous. I think the pressure on the kids is absolutely phenomenal and I won't say not well addressed, but I think as an industry we're still learning. That would be my thing. I think people are trying, but I think we're still learning where it fits. So yeah, having some empathy and making the skinfold thing health-related more than performance. Probably to the most part. Yeah, I think so.

Darren Burgess:
23:57

Yeah, and the other issue, which is we're too late to go into it because Colesley's just about finished his workout.

Jason Weber:
24:03

So we need to wrap this up. He's just stretching down. He's just stretching down, he's just stretching down.

Darren Burgess:
24:09

We need to have a chat about the data and data rights issue because it's a big thing. I'm doing some AffairBuddy consulting work with ThiefPro and it's a big issue at the moment that we're not handling well as an industry.

Jason Weber:
24:23

Well, I've got a big history in that space, as you know so I can share that I might, even if I can figure out on the website for the podcast, I'll share a paper that I was involved in authoring which is all about that in Australia. Start that discussion, we can get there later. What I'd like to finish off on, mate, because we had another couple of bits of fan mail. Someone were just fanboying stuff, but one was a question we just do very fast because it references not directly your PhD, but it's on that path Drafting players in the AFL with non-contact ACL history. How much of a red flag is this? Are pre-draft medicals sufficient to mitigate risk? Woo, scott, you've got two minutes of your best.

Darren Burgess:
25:06

No pre-draft medicals sufficient to mitigate risk. Woo Scott, you've got two minutes of your best. No, pre-draft medicals are not at all sufficient. It's a risk, for sure, because we know that ACLs are, whether they're contact or otherwise. The risk factor remains always elevated after you have one. So, yes, it's a risk and with all of these I hate saying it depends, but with all of these, how good is the player? How big is your need for that player? Where are you drafting them? All our job is, jason is to take it to the list. Manager, draft manager, head of football football director, technical director, head coach, head of football football director, technical director, head coach. Whoever you are serving and say this person has an elevated risk to the other person that you might be drafting because of their previous history. If you're prepared to accept that risk, I'm prepared to work to reducing that risk once they come into our program.

Jason Weber:
26:05

The only problem with that is, mate. I saw and I saw this extensively for some unknown reason I got hit with quite often oh, they're not very good, we know there's a big risk, but you'll fix them. You'll be right, we'll get them in and you'll fix them. I'm like hang on, thank you for the confidence. But like, I'm not specifically saying ACL, but what I would say is that I know a particular player who was elite in the AFL, who got passed over by a number of clubs in his draft year because not of an ACL, but he had massive chondral damage and he got drafted and became an absolute rock star at the club he ended up and playing, I think in the order of 300 and some odd games.

Darren Burgess:
26:49

You're talking about Joel Selwood.

Jason Weber:
26:51

I am talking about Joel Selwood.

Darren Burgess:
26:52

I wasn't going to name him but there you go but. Joel, when I was at Port Adelaide, we drafted Travis Boat before him. Yeah, well, there's.

Jason Weber:
26:59

It's a bunch of good players. Yeah, it worked out just fine.

Darren Burgess:
27:02

Well, Friot passed on him.

Jason Weber:
27:08

I don't know who they took for him, but I don't think he was as good as Travis Boak.

Darren Burgess:
27:09

We had a choice essentially between the two, because they both came from the same area. Yeah, and that was why we went with.

Jason Weber:
27:15

Boak, for sure, but Boak has been awesome.

Darren Burgess:
27:19

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Weber:
27:20

But in that case I know Friot passed over selwood and joel became an absolute. I don't know if he's hall of fame yet, but he probably will be.

Darren Burgess:
27:28

He will be, yeah, yeah, yeah, like he become a monster, and geelong managed him beautifully so yeah, but it's risk mitigation, and probably for every joel selwood there might be five others who, correct, finish their career early with the same issue, because of whatever it is but I'll also take it back and say it is interpretive, because every ACL is not the same right.

Jason Weber:
27:49

So what damage comes along with it? Yeah, what signals do the docs see early on, like in the screening? So again you're coming down to interpretation. There's no black and white. But yeah, we appreciate the question very much and as Coles is now stop sweating, he's starting to cool down.

Darren Burgess:
28:08

He's in the sauna by now. He's gone to the sauna, yeah, yeah.

Jason Weber:
28:11

Yeah, yeah, worship that.

Darren Burgess:
28:14

Well, it's been a pleasure. There's a bit going on in the NBA and the Premier League which we'll chat about next week. We might even get a bonus podcast in at some point.

Jason Weber:
28:23

Well, we might. Nfl's got a bunch of injuries going on, although we haven't seen the Achilles thing rear its head again. But yep, we'll get another sneaky one in soon. It's been a pleasure, mate. That's all, mate. Good to chat, mate. We'll speak again soon, See you.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 37-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2 EPISODE 36-----
Jason Weber:
0:17

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches in a Coffee. I am very excited today to say that we're back to two coaches Darren's back. How are you going, mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:27

Loose definition of a coach. Yeah, going all right. Got back from the UK Sunday night very late, so it's now Tuesday lunchtime. I'm in work already, which is not ideal, but yeah, just trying to wait.

Jason Weber:
0:44

Back to the grindstone. But I guess the reason you're back there is in part, a bit of the theme we're going to talk today about is kind of people moving around and the volatility of where we exist, the sporting environment best, yeah, sporting environment, given, um, the state of the.

Darren Burgess:
1:10

So last two weeks I've had a magnificent time in the uk, of which a week of it was hiking in the lakes districts with my lovely partner and we were, um, there were a lot of, you know, long runs and a lot of commutes on when we're in london, uh, and a lot of walking through london. So a lot of podcast listening and caught up a lot with some people over there that I worked with some old coaches, which was great, and my Spanish got refreshed and caught up with our mate friend of the podcast, dave Carrolyn We've got to mention him again, dave Carrolyn.

Darren Burgess:
1:40

We've gone on a couple of podcasts without mentioning him, and one of the podcasts I listened to was talking to an athlete who'd become an entrepreneur and made millions and he was a mountain bike rider at number one. I'd not heard of him before, but anyway he talked about the 2% that the public sees of athletic life or professional sport life, and they don't see the 98% of the grind that athletes go through, especially at the top level that he was clearly at. And then this morning I had a long conversation with a very good friend of mine and probably one of the best high performance directors I've come across in Dave Tenney Absolute pioneer is not too big a word to say of the industry and he got let go by his club, austin FC, for the last 24 hours and I'll keep an eye on this as my role in FIFPRO. I've got to keep an eye on injury rates and things like that. So Major League Soccer injury rates Austin FC. That so major league soccer injury rates Austin FC in the top two or three for the last three years that he's been there in the top for high speed running.

Darren Burgess:
2:51

So by any objective metric which we can be judged by and we've spoken about what we can be judged by his, his tenure. There was a success and he set up the academy startup club. So it just speaks to the volatility and, and you know, maybe people in this podcast uh might want to work in professional sport. I might want to work up through the ranks and and the 98 just like the podcast that I listen to of the mountain bike rider uh, the two% where you hear somebody speak at a conference about some of the wonderful things they're doing in a club, or you see somebody on a sideline, you know and go, oh, it'd be great to be. You know, dave Tenney, on the sideline of Austin.

Jason Weber:
3:37

FC. Is that wrong?

Darren Burgess:
3:38

Yeah, whoever else. They don't see the 98% of the grind, which includes the volatility of a guy who's at the% of the grind, which includes the volatility of a guy who's at the top of his game. One of the best, and it's not the first person.

Jason Weber:
3:51

No.

Darren Burgess:
3:52

Certainly won't be the last. So how do you reconcile that yourself, I guess, jase with being part of the industry? Do you just go in there knowing no?

Jason Weber:
4:07

I think it's.

Darren Burgess:
4:08

Teachers and accountants. They'll never, ever get sacked, unless they do something extraordinary.

Jason Weber:
4:13

Abhorrent. Yeah, yeah, I think. Look man, I think you go into sport being very altruistic, like I want to do a great job, I want to work for the players, I want to do this thing, blah, blah, blah. It's all about other people and that's what we. We're a service industry, right, we help others, that's what we do. So there is that to it.

Jason Weber:
4:39

So you get a bit blinded. I would say I was blinded. I was talking yesterday to someone and I would say I was blinded. I was talking yesterday to someone and I said, like I only ever really coveted one job, I coveted my. I always wanted to work for the Wildeys. I wanted to do that. So I got that job, did that, I would say.

Jason Weber:
5:00

Once I got into AFL, I grew to love where I was and wanted to keep fighting, and I was one of those ones who had a contract expired during COVID and I've never had anything but the highest level of job reviews and it's gone. It's just gone. It's just switched off. There's nothing, there's no warning. Now, it's not an unusual story across our industry. In the US probably not, unlike Australia, where geographically it's really difficult people get switched off and they might have to move family from one side of the country to the other.

Jason Weber:
5:34

I know our great mate, dave Carroll, and he's moved around a lot in the UK but he does a lot of driving back home, so he would keep the family where they are. He would move off, work for a few days, come back. That's not always that easy, but there's no question. No question that there are people that get dismissed in this industry for no apparent reason. Now, dave, you've just used him as example. I'm not going to name this other guy, but I know a guy recently who had his contract extended and then had it rescinded at the last minute by an organisation, which was abhorrent, because this person was working on a visa and their whole existence was challenged, and again for no professional reason, and he had no recourse. He investigated ways to deal with it from maybe I guess you call it a legal perspective, but we lurk in a very volatile, very volatile environment and I think I would like to say that people younger than me are aware of where that's at, because it is.

Darren Burgess:
6:44

It can be fickle, it can be really fickle yeah, I think, maybe maybe it was brett bartholomew, or I recall him saying you need to have a side hustle or a backup plan, or maybe it was him who sort of publicized it first and you certainly need to do that.

Darren Burgess:
7:01

But I think, think more importantly and I'm in that phase at the moment because I'm hiring people left, right and centre, because a lot of people have left the crows to going on to bigger and better jobs, which is hopefully a testament to the program but you want to make them aware of the high pressure, high stakes nature of the environment and that it can end at any time, particularly in European soccer or global football, where the changes in coaches happen just all the time, you know, left, right, centre. So I think you have to pay into it by being aware of it, and we all know the importance of you know psych safety and making your employees feel valued and all that sort of stuff. But there is a harsh reality to it and unless you go into it knowing that that's the case, um, you're, you're bound to not handle it well right, I'm going to throw one at you, mate.

Jason Weber:
8:13

Now, this has never been my go, but there are many people I know that are bound to a coach. So you'll see the S&C, the performance guy, go with the coach. So wherever the coach goes, they go. Now, that's never been my thing and from the best of my knowledge it's not been your thing, but it's a commonplace. You see it in the world game football a lot. What's your take on that? What's your take on a pro who really is bound to a coach, to skills like the head coach? It's a strategy.

Darren Burgess:
8:59

It's nothing that I'm going to criticise because it's a pretty safe option. And you pay into that knowing that at some point that coach is going to criticize because it's a pretty safe option. Yeah, and you pay into that knowing that at some point that coach is going to move if he gets sacked or, in the best case scenario, get into a better club and a you know, and a, a better career and all that sort of stuff. So, um, I've got no objection to it whatsoever. Would that be my way of doing things? No, it's not. That doesn't make it right or wrong.

Jason Weber:
9:34

No, no, I don't think so either, but it is. It is something I've thought of. Like I've worked two very long-term jobs and had coaches come in and out and you kind of go well, where do we sit with this? Now? It's all well and good when the coach gets dismissed, but the club go hey, we want to keep you and you stay on. That's great, and I won't. I'll probably argue. The other side of the coin for a moment is there are points where, if you're good enough, you stay. But what I would say is the notion that there's loyalty in sport is absolutely untrue. I think there are elements of it here and there, but for the most part, loyalty is not a thing. And what I would say again is that a lot of clubs I'm going to say specifically AFL clubs prey on the idea that you want to work here and they want the culture around go above and beyond and all these things. I'm like how much harder can people work? Like we're already doing 70-hour weeks, like what else are we prepare to give?

Darren Burgess:
11:46

yes, it's again, you've got to pay into that and you you've got to not excuse it.

Darren Burgess:
11:52

It's that's the nature of our industry and there is a massive push and that probably 10 years ago it started maybe a bit less than that of oh, let's make sure that you don't burn out and let's make sure that you've got great work life balance and let's make sure all of that and, to an extent, right, and let's use the AFL, because people over in England had conversations with a couple of really good people at Arsenal that I employed when I was there and worked with and doing superb work over there in Tom with and doing superb work over there in Tom Allen and Sam Wilson, and they could not believe the work-life balance that happens in the AFL in terms of contact hours with the players compared to the Premier League.

Darren Burgess:
12:36

So there are some good things about it, but there is a simple fact that you know weekend work and late night, early morning text messages from players, and that's just a fact of it and you need to understand that before you come into the industry and not complain about it when you're in there, because it is what you signed up for. Yeah, no question. My point about the volatility is. It is what you signed up for, so don't necessarily complain about it, just be really aware of it. You will know this more than me that the Buddhism saying about meditating on death, that's what you should do. You should be aware of the fact that at some point it's going to come to an end.

Jason Weber:
13:25

Which brings you to that point of your side hustle, which has become now it's become a big thing. It's become a big thing and the one that is, I guess, most prevalent is the one with guys starting to teach. I've got two years' experience. Now I'm going to teach rehab, which kind of bugs me a little bit because, well, it bugs me a lot because I think there's some people teaching things that are really not their skill set, but nonetheless, again, you can't bag people for trying, but what? I think you kind of wonder whether it's possible. Like you talk about work-life balance and the athlete contact hours. That's driven by the athletes. That's not driven by our side of the equation at all. But you know who do it well, and I'm not sure every one of them do it well.

Jason Weber:
14:17

But the physiotherapists can do it very well, the ones who've got a practice established on the outside that they can keep churning over and that then maybe, if things blow up, they can step back into. Now they do that very well. Doctors do it very well, because doctors aren't full time. They always have practice on the outside. I'd love to see people in our industry being able to create something on the outside in that nature, not sure exactly how you do it. I think the the proliferation of facilities, um, that are aimed at more high performance. There's lots of them now and I and they're not all necessarily high performance, but they're. They're certainly bringing a higher standard of conditioning to general population, which I think is awesome. Um, facilities are, equipment's expensive, so it's all hard, but seeing people have their own practice outside of sports somehow very difficult.

Darren Burgess:
15:15

I think it's important to at least be aware of it. The facility stuff yep, that's something that I've gone into, obviously, with Peak. The side hustle that you've developed in SpeedSig has become like a really prominent part of your life and your suite of services that you offer. So I think it's something you should be aware of. My question to you, jason, is why are we doing this then, when we're getting $0 for it? Good question, good question, well. I think, I'm saying that facetiously by the way.

Jason Weber:
15:58

Yeah, I know, I know, but I would say and here's a genuine one We'll hit this real quick. I would like to circle back to just not talk about SpeedSync per se, but just the background of that. But why are we doing this? We're doing this because we used to catch up and do this anyway and we started saying, well, why don't we just record it and see what happens? I and we started saying, well, why don't we just record it and see what happens? I think there are people I'm really happy to pay it forward to, young practitioners, and I think there are people that helped me along the way. So I'm kind of I'm more than happy with that. What I would say to our? I think we've got 13 listeners now, I understand, which is really cool, but I've now enabled on our little the web on the description of the podcast. You can send a message. So if you're keen to understand something more about the industry or you want to ask questions, don't bag us. You know, I know Taylor tells us that haters are going to hate.

Darren Burgess:
16:54

I don't need to deal with that shit. I don't understand. Treat me like I'm a tech. You know. I'm know as anybody around. But on the podcast app or on the website. No no.

Jason Weber:
17:06

So, on the podcast description, which should be, most people are using either Apple or Spotify there should be an option there to click it and you can put a comment in and then you can put that comment to us and then, if there's things that you want us to talk about, things you don't want to talk about, don't do hater stuff because we're going to block you or do something with that. But we're trying to help people out and I think you know, darren and I are exploring ideas around this and what else we can do with it. And I think later in the year we're going to there's some stuff going on in Australia. Certainly, darren, in the year, there's some stuff going on in Australia. Certainly, darren and I are presenting with the Exercise and Sports Science Australia. We're going to do a live podcast and actually speak to some people. So we'll see how that goes.

Jason Weber:
17:52

But in terms of just going back, petal, you made the point about speed sig. What I would say to people is that, yes, promote the idea of side hustles now, whether they're another business, whether they're you becoming an academic, which lots of people are doing. You know, I do the PhD. Where can I end up? Doesn't matter what you do. It's all going to take longer than you think. That would be my one recommendation. So you, you have this idea that, hey, I'm going to launch this business and I've got this service. Whatever it is, I've come up with this thing. I do it cooler than everybody else. Whatever it is, it always takes longer to get things up and going than you think. And the very hardest part of all of it without question and this is from a tech guy who wrote algorithms and does all that technical sort of nerdy stuff the hardest part by far is marketing Getting it out to people, getting it communicating it like even with SpeedSync it's got some technical challenges, some technicalities to it. So me communicating it is a whole process. So whatever you're doing um, you know it's a challenge. Now what I would say that is so I did uh, I'm trying to think of what year was last year.

Jason Weber:
19:14

Early last year I did a entrepreneur course at curtain university, which is called Accelerate was just a half-year thing. It was one day a week for half a year. Awesome, absolutely unbelievable. But even that only really scratched the surface. But I know there are people out there doing MBAs to get a different slant on things. People are doing corporate directorship programs, things like that. So I know a couple of guys, one that stepped out last year of AFL and seems to be doing really well in a very big industry. Having done that path, I know a guy who stepped out of again high performance and is now in deep with Amazon just a whole different still in sport, but has taken his skill across to a technology industry.

Jason Weber:
20:06

So I think, yeah, don't lose sight of what you're trying to do. If you want to work in sport, you want to be like Darren and work at Arsenal and big clubs, go for it like, get after it. But yeah, I would do the Google thing and spend 10% of your week, maybe 5%, thinking building outside of the exact environment we're in, because it does pay dividends. So the point I just want to make with SpeedSig SpeedSig, to this point, is now pretty much onto its 11th year. We've been commercial for just over 18 months, but it's been 11 years I've been working on the project, right. So it takes a long time. If you think you're just going to click your fingers and start business, I once got told that it takes 18 months to get a business up and going. I would tell you it takes longer than that, right? So I'm not wanting to dissuade anybody from it, far from it. I'm actually super supportive of it, but you're going to have to grow a pair and keep digging, because it takes a while.

Darren Burgess:
21:12

It does. I'm conscious of time, so let me just end it on this. It's a great industry, right, it is a great industry and that's why, honestly, when you said let's pay it forward when we discussed this, that's the only reason why you and I are doing this. If, in a year's time, we need to commercialise it in order to pay rent, then yeah, we might look to that, but at the moment, I'm really passionate about the industry and I'm happy to to spend, you know, 40 minutes a week talking to you and and and putting it out to whoever might.

Darren Burgess:
21:46

Um, you know, listen the 13 people yeah, exactly, um, but uh, again, you know I'm a bit of a avid podcast listener different ones and I remember um, hearing something and I'll probably get this wrong, so I'm not even going to quote the podcast but one of the successful CEOs saying I spend Thursday morning from 8am to 2pm on myself and that's however I choose that to be, and that might be however I choose that to be, and that might be meditation, that might be researching new and better ways for me to achieve my goals, it might be looking at ways to innovate, but that is completely blocked out from my normal day-to-day work.

Darren Burgess:
22:36

And the podcaster said yeah, but don't people you hear of CEOs starting meetings at 7am and going to 7pm and you know how have you managed to both be successful and square off that time? And he said that's why I've been successful, because I've been able to square off that time to continue to work on me in some way, shape or form. So I think that's important while you're in a job, to be aware of exactly what you have said, that it does take time, so you need to devote some time to it.

Jason Weber:
23:08

Yeah, don't underestimate. Like you can find your thing. Like I'm going to tell you this is the nerdiest thing. So I enjoy coding, like I learned to code, and actually it's not like it's fun, but it's a great diversion in my thinking. If I want to do something fun, I'm surfing or I'm wing foiling or I'm doing all that sort of stuff which is wild and out there. But having interests that stimulate you intellectually in a different area will help your core practice, which I have no doubt in that and I think weird ass things like coding. I enjoy playing chess, we play musical instruments, all of that stuff I think helps. So you just got to find your thing.

Jason Weber:
23:51

And if I hark back to Darren, my, while Darren was away, I squeezed in those becoming, you know, becoming a high performance manager. One of the first ones I talked about in Episode 1 was know thyself, and I think Darren's point is exactly that Know yourself. What do you have to do to be the best you can be? Now, that might be meditate, that might be, you know, go and do a spin class, I don't know what it is, but you've definitely got to know yourself in that regard.

Darren Burgess:
24:23

All right.

Jason Weber:
24:24

Go back to more recruitment. Okay Well, I'm off to coding again. I've got some statistical analysis to do. We're going to get stats boards on SpeedSig real soon. It's about to happen, so we're getting very exciting stuff. Might make my hair grow back. Righto man, you look after yourself and all. To our 13 listeners we love you all. Drop us a message, tell us what you're thinking and see if we can't add something to that. See you, guys. You.

-----END SEASON 2 EPISODE 36-----

-----BEGIN BECOMING A HIGH PERFORMANCE MANAGER PART 3.-----
Jason Weber:
0:12

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. You've got Dr Jason Weber here on Flying Solo again, probably for the last time in a little while. We've got Darren Burgess heading back from the UK next week. But, as kind of promised in a way, I'm going to finish off my little series on becoming a high-performance manager with my Art 3. Now part one and part two. They're already up. Got some great feedback from people on that.

Jason Weber:
0:42

So a bit of today is probably referencing some of the points that people have made, what they want to know, what they want to hear and, to be honest, today is a little bit of really delving into background work. I probably did 15, 20 years ago looking at how I could figure out these new positions, particularly as high-performance management became a bigger part, where we become interdisciplinary managers. So you're not just coming from a medical, physiotherapy or a strength and conditioning background, sports, science, whatever. You've got to now run an entire department and coordinate it up the chain, which is kind of the fun part really. So we're going to talk through a couple of things today, most of them about how we get set up, how we make sense of things, but we're going to finish off with a couple of big take-home points I'd like to share, and hopefully they're quite practical for all the listeners. So we won't dawdle too long. We want to try and keep it to the 30 minutes.

Jason Weber:
1:53

So today I'm going to reference again the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, which I referenced in the previous episode when we were talking about, you know, getting the right people on the bus. We talked about the bus and the band. Everyone kind of liked that one. But getting the right people on the bus and are they competent? And this book I read many, many years ago and in fact it's in front of me now and it's quite got quite the worn. Look to it Lots of faded color pens and writing.

Jason Weber:
2:28

I'm a big believer in. I do like books. I do own a Kindle and I chew through that. But I do like books and I do like writing in them. There's an old saying from a great song by Matt Corby I bought the book but didn't turn the page, which is absolutely the most ridiculous thing ever. There is so much knowledge, but when I write in them and I put my notes in there, I really feel like I've engaged with that information. Anyway, so that's just a bit of part about me, but that's going to be a big part of our referencing.

Jason Weber:
2:59

But the starting point for this conversation with myself and you guys is really about something I was asked only in the last couple of weeks that if I was to run a particular environment, given all the challenges that it contains, I was asked what are the big rocks, what would you do? As it contains? I was asked what are the big rocks, what would you do? How would you launch your campaign onto this program? What are the big rocks you'd move? And I thought about that and I thought, well, really I don't have enough information for that. Now, what I said and this reference is good to great, they talk about confronting the brutal facts. So my conversation with the person that asked me that was before I go moving any rocks, before I go changing anything, before I go try to influence where an environment's at, I need to understand the facts, which in Jim Collins talks about confront the brutal facts.

Jason Weber:
4:06

One of the things I talked about and I would talk about with staff and whatever, is sorting cause and effect, so understanding what are the drivers. So, yes, you can get measurements, so you might get an injury count. We have this many injuries this year. Okay, now, the injuries aren't the cause, the injuries are the effect. So what's the cause? What's underneath that? What's driving? That? Sounds fairly obvious, but it is critical that we really evaluate hard, and I think in many of the other podcasts that I've done with Darren, I periodically get on my high horse about sports science and the way we think. But I think our ability to create really solid analysis and my view with that is particularly in a forensic environment, for instance, where you're being asked to review an entire environment say, what rocks would you move Right?

Jason Weber:
5:04

The example I use is a TV remote, right? So for anyone that's watching a video of this, I hold up a TV remote which I'm doing now in front of the screen. I'm holding it up just any TV remote buttons facing towards the camera, but it's in front of me. So from that perspective, if it was you looking at it, you could see all the buttons on the tv remote, but from where I'm standing it's black. I can see some writing on the back and the battery cover, but it's black. So we're both looking at the same device but we're seeing it from different perspectives. Now you can make that more complicated by if we turned it to the side and we looked at it side on, I can now see that it's got a different shape. I can still see the back. I can see there's something on the front, but I'm not sure what Equally you guys, your managed position, could equally see. There's a different shape. It's not it's got a curved edge, but it's still got buttons on it.

Jason Weber:
6:02

And the point of all that is one of the key bits of analysis with particular regard to high-performance management is understanding information from other aspects because, again, you can't be myopic and let's use me as an example From a strength and conditioning, the performance perspective, the physical, it can't just be all about that. We have to understand yes, there's a medical perspective, but what are they looking at? I need to change my perspective and we'll talk about this a little bit later on, about what I colloquially call speaking coach. But it's also about understanding the language of the people you're working with. I find and I would say it's a rule in my mind it's not necessarily a rule for everybody, but a rule for me would be I cannot be expected to lead somebody that I don't understand what their job is.

Jason Weber:
6:57

So, as a guy who grew up in strength and conditioning, educated in that space. I've done a lot of work with physios over the years and because I came into the role you know in the late 90s, there were times where I traveled with international rugby teams and like where there was just myself and one physio so we would. I learned how to treat and I learned how to do a lot of soft tissue and how to manage fascial issues and how to work with the physio in that regard. So my point being that I learnt their language so I can speak with them. I'm not speaking at them saying, hey, you know this has got to happen, we need this, that Pointing fingers. Worse still, you know I can speak with them.

Jason Weber:
7:39

Similarly, from a sports science perspective, if I've got people on staff and I want a machine learning model run, I understand the difference between a support vector machine and a short long-term memory system or any of the other ones, whatever gradient boosts, all the rest of it, so I can understand that stuff. Equally, I can understand the performance side. Am I a specialist in all of it? No, but in order to understand what people do, you need to be able to understand their language. We'll come back to that a little bit more in a moment in terms of speaking coach, but really the analysis piece is, if we go back to the TV remote, we want to understand the perspectives of other disciplines so that when we're doing a review we're really getting deep across all avenues, because it comes to the next part, and the next part is really about understanding that facts are super important.

Jason Weber:
8:38

Now, famous US statistician once said God can have an opinion. Everybody else must bring data, and I love that. I think that's absolutely true and I think it's critical that when we get to things that are data, we need to understand what is the probability that they're analyzing what we think they are, which is often an issue in sport. We'll get to that again in a sec, but facts are better than dreams. Now, that is definitely a feature of Jim Collins' book, that you've got to focus on the facts, and he talks about confronting the brutal truth.

Jason Weber:
9:18

Now, once you've been able to make measurement, you've been able to understand where an environment's at. There's a reality to how much we know, and it's a difficult one. For instance, gps is the great example at the moment. We think that GPS describes the entire environment, because we understand how far someone ran and how far they sprinted. That explains everything? Well, it doesn't. I mean, that's clearly again the gratuitous promotion. That's why I invented SpeedSig to answer the questions about how somebody runs.

Jason Weber:
9:55

There's two different states. You can drive a car with perfect, brand new tires, you can drive at 100 kilometers, but if one of those tires blows up and you put the spare on and the spare is like two millimeters difference diameter, right, you're going to drive that same 100 kilometers, you can do it the same speed, but now your car's rattling around a little bit and your steering is going to be impacted and all that. So the point being, you have to have a rational response or understanding of how much of the system you can describe. Is it enough to do an eccentric hamstring? And that explains everything? I was across an issue recently where I saw that I had feedback to me that a physiotherapist and I'm not ragging on physios here but this particular individual pushed a hamstring injury so hard that he just drove Nordboard through the roof, but the kid continued to keep straining. Now there's no rationale for excessive hamstring strain.

Jason Weber:
10:53

So the point being being able to, number one, analyze your environment hard for cause and effect, analyzing it from multiple perspectives. So you're covering off, because when you get to the point of saying these are the facts you want to make it clear to everybody in the environment, all right. So when you start sharing that, you're going to share that information. So if you're at an executive level, when you're recruiting for a job, whatever, you're going to share the information based on the facts, based on the information you have, and you'll explain like you would in a scientific paper. These are the limitations. I did that recently in a project I had to do where I looked at a group's demographics, their age of their list, their injuries, and I was able to say, look, these are the observations I can make, but that's all the information I have. I don't have everything, but this is where I'm at. And using some machine learning technology, we're able to say look, there's a 70% we can explain 70% of that outcome variable, which is typically like a rank order in a competition what team ranks in what position. We could explain 70% of the variability of that.

Jason Weber:
12:08

Now, I've spoken before, I think, probably on one of the other podcasts. The great general, us General Colin Powell, once wrote that with 70% of the information, he's probably ready to make a decision and go forward. If you wait for too much more, the opportunity probably passes to make change. If you go too early, you don't have enough information. But anyway, that's a slight aside.

Jason Weber:
12:32

So making sure you have the facts as much as you can, as rigorously as you can collect them. You need to make them clear. So you're going to need to make them clear to the leadership, but you're also going to take that when you establish a high performance department, you're going to take those facts and those facts are going to be what you present to your team. This is where we're at. These are the brutal facts. We don't have enough players on the field. We have a string of ACL injuries. We are not strong enough. Whatever conclusion you've drawn, they're going to be the foundation for what I was initially asked what rocks, what big rocks, would you move? That's going to start building out those objectives, because you can't change everything, and certainly not in a short period of time. Being a high performance manager is very much about playing chess, not checkers. It's not a quick fix. Some things are going to take up to years Now.

Jason Weber:
13:38

I was in a position in the last full-time role I had for 12 years where there were issues between performance and medical staff and I made the assessment that the staff that we had in place were the right staff, but it was just being done wrong. So I kept the people on the bus, but I changed what they're doing on the bus and I changed the way we operated and I moved people around the seats, if you'd like to use that analogy. I got them doing things a little bit differently and we'll come to when I wrap up my five key points on really managing environment. I'm going to speak to that absolutely specifically, but we've got the facts we're going to make it clear. We need to make sure that those facts are being conveyed in a language that makes sense to people.

Jason Weber:
14:31

Communication from a management perspective, in my opinion, is the responsible of the person putting words out of their mouth. Everybody's got a responsibility to listen, but there's only so much of that we can control. If we've got attention for a short period of time, we want to make a big bang with the bucks. Right, we want to hit that hard, which means we need to be clear. We need to use language that is inclusive. Right, we need to engage Probably you would say the lowest common denominator in the group you're speaking to. You need to be able to bring them in to the conversation, you need to engage them, you need to get them on side. That's part of building a team. But now we've got those facts, we've got them. We've got the brutal facts of where we are in that environment. So we know that environment.

Jason Weber:
15:19

The next comes what Jim Collins calls his hedgehog concept. Now, this is a bit abstract, but it works. So, if you bear with me, now I'm just going to quote very quickly. The hedgehog concept is based on a famous essay, the Hedgehog and the Fox, by Isaiah Berlin. Now, he divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient Greek parable. Now I'm going to cut to the chase a little bit here and say that the fox is trying to get the hedgehog, and the fox is smart and he understands the complexity of the world and he moves and he changes and he's fast, sleek, beautiful fleet of foot, he's crafty, he looks like a sure winner. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. And yes, I am actually quoting this, I'm not, I'm reading this out, but it's cool.

Jason Weber:
16:22

The fox is always after the hedgehog and he's coming up with different plans and he's devising a myriad of complex strategies, sneak attacks, and the hedgehog, when he's confronted by the fox, goes here we are, here we go again. Will he ever learn? And the hedgehog rolls up into a perfect little ball. And the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes pointing out in all directions. The fox, bounding towards his prey, calls off the attack, retreating back. So each day it's the same battle.

Jason Weber:
16:59

But the idea of the story is here that foxes can be scattered, diffused on many levels, where the hedgehog, on the other hand, simplifies a complex world into a single organising idea, a basic principle. So the idea is to be a hedgehog. How can we make our environment into a hedgehog, into simplifying, because you can't necessarily get all the rocks at once, which goes back to the first question. I get asked what rocks are you going to move? At the beginning? I don't know. I'm going to figure out. Where are the things I can move? What can I move quickly? What's a slower burn? Do we have to get rid of people? That's a hard fact In the last 48 hours. Have to get rid of people? That's a hard fact In the last 48 hours. Sorry, 24 hours of this podcast me recording this I've heard three people I know getting displaced from their jobs and they're great practitioners, but they've been moved on.

Jason Weber:
17:56

I don't know why, but in your role, do you need to move someone on? Do you need to get the right people on the bus? First thing, now we understand our environment. We've got cause and effect. We've got facts. We're going to build it together. So how do we build a simplistic model going forward? And this accounts for not just your environments but how you can work with people sometimes. So the hedgehog concept is predicated on three things, like a Venn diagram, a three-piece Venn diagram.

Jason Weber:
18:24

What are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at and what drives your economic engine? So clearly, that's a business thing. But I always look at what are you deeply passionate about? Well, clearly we're going to sport. We're going to be passionate about that game, the environment we're in. But you're going to find that people have different passions. There are guys that are just fantastic in the gym. That's what they want to do. You've got guys who want to be running coaches. Some guys are more data oriented I mean guys and girls either. Or you've got physiotherapists who are really, really focused on um stage one, acute care so damaged athlete like I can really get that inflammation down quickly. I'm focused on that Great. You've got other physiotherapists who are very, very good at rehab and they're actually really good up into the running phase. I've got physio buddies now one or two that are in the ACL space and really doing some great stuff. Buddies now one or two that are in the ACL space are really doing some great stuff.

Jason Weber:
19:35

So how passionate people are can help you build out your concept, your headshot concept. Keep it simple. Keep people where they're pumped about working. That's not always going to be the case. You're going to have to move some people, but you're going to then have to sell it, and one of the big ways to sell people moving roles is the education piece. I speak maybe not so much in this environment at this point, but my environment's always. I work on the idea of a hospital education system right. So hospitals work really well at educating from within. So they've got they build their nurses, their doctors up. They've got education tools. We teach. Teaching hospitals is what they call in America, but you can get people to change roles or move where you need them based on. We're going to educate you. We're going to teach you. So if I've got to get a strength and conditioning guy to do a bit more rehab, might be getting him to work with the medical guys to pull up his skills in that area. So understanding what people are deeply passionate about will help drive what they do. People will do what they're passionate about more regularly.

Jason Weber:
20:44

Second part how can we be the best in the world? So what can we be the best in the world at? In business, clearly, let's just focus on being the best in the world at not just be competent, not just be okay. What can we be the best at? So, if we've got to change an environment, what can we be the best at Now? That may address your problems specifically in that, if your facts are, we need to get more people on the field. We lost too many people last year, right. How are we going to be the best in the world at that and be focused at it, if we don't have the skills, if we can't be the best at that, what can we be the best at? Can we be the strongest team, the fastest team? What can we be the best at? Can we be the strongest team, the fastest team and in the background, if you know, the big rock is. We need to keep people on the ground, but we don't have the staff for it. Then it's about can we educate them up or do we need to change them? We talked about the bus and the band. Yeah, it's good to have good people on, but you've got to have competence.

Jason Weber:
21:43

I have worked with in the rehab space in particular. I can think of one guy in particular I worked with many years ago now, well over 10. He was a great guy. I enjoyed hanging out with him, went surfing with him a few times, had coffees, beers, whatever. But he was largely incompetent in rehab and I didn't have the time or space to teach him. I needed it done and back in the days there we had a very small team and he wasn't competent, so he had to go. How can I be the best in the world? I need to get people on on the field and keep them there, and we'd had a number of injuries in rehab, so that was just a no-go. So, getting your team together, what can we be the best at? And it's not a bad question to ask your group, which will come back when I talk about my five keys in a moment.

Jason Weber:
23:38

The last part of the hedgehog concept what drives your economic engine? We're not worried about economic engine per se, but if we go back to our cause and effect and our understanding of the environment, our analysis, what is going to change your system immediately? An environment I looked at recently was simple. They had one of the highest number of players off the field, the highest number of players used in AFL for a year. Simple as that. Now we know from our analysis that that accounts for a very high proportion of where teams finish at the end of the year. So we've got to fix that If that's going to be the driver we need to get.

Jason Weber:
24:23

After that, keep it simple. So then, when you're communicating, when we're discussing, even on a day-to-day level, you can be speaking to a coach and you see something's not quite going the way you want it. You can say, hey, bob, what's our engine? What do we need to do? Oh, boss, we need to keep people on the field. Okay, is what you're doing right now, helping us keep players on the field? Now, I don't know what Bob was doing at the time, but it keeps people focused.

Jason Weber:
24:53

This is the idea of the hedgehog concept, but it keeps people focused. This is the idea of the hedgehog concept make a complex environment as simple as you can come, bring it down so it's very, very understandable, particularly when there's change involved. So when you're walking in cold, keep it simple as you go on further and further. Yeah, we can build more detail underneath, but try and keep people's focus simple and you keep everybody in front. So you keep that hedgehog concept which might be goal setting, if you want to call it that but you keep it front of mind and you might even start your meetings with it. You might even open with that to say, hey, guys, this is where we're at. We're driven by the need to, let's say, make our team stronger. So is that happening every week? Are we achieving that? Where are we at this week? You may even assign a staff member to it to say, hey, every meeting we come to, you're going to open up with telling us where we're at, and it's one of our crucial elements.

Jason Weber:
25:54

So we've got three parts there. Get your analysis right, figure out exactly what the space is, cause and effect. Look at it hard, look at it from multiple perspectives. We've got to get those facts. We're going to make sure the facts are better than dreams. Don't BS anyone. Those facts go up the chain too, to the coach, by the way, and that's probably another whole podcast or lecture or whatever I could do, and maybe we'll get to that.

Jason Weber:
26:23

And then the hedgehog concept is those three parts. Think about passion best. What's the driver? The three things that we can bring our environment together, because your environment is going to have to unite on that. And one of the key parts to getting an environment together is getting everybody on the same page with what's required. When people think, hey, you know, I'm the strength and conditioning department, this doesn't apply to me. Yeah, it does. We're all in the same boat. We're all paddling the same boat here.

Jason Weber:
26:57

There's nothing that an S&C coach can do unless he's got the bodies coming back through physio, often through treatment and even performance treatment. If you listen to Stu McMillan and their performance therapy courses, which are awesome, they've got fantastic perspective, which I really love, which is a lot about treating an athlete for performance, not just treating injuries. Yeah, we've got to treat injuries at times, but treating an athlete for performance, not just treating injuries. Yeah, we've got to treat injuries at times, but athletes being treated for performance again, not the whole subject, but it's about getting people on the same page with that Righto. So let's, before I blow up my half an hour, because we covered a lot of ground here.

Jason Weber:
27:36

Now I've got five keys which I am pinching out of Jim Collins' book again, but these keys are central to me. I've used these for years and years and years. Now we're going to expand them to six. I've already kind of introduced this first one we're going to do that first which is my speech coach, which is really not speak coach, but it's Neuro Linguistic Programming 101. Which is really not speak coach, but it's neuro linguistic programming 101.

Jason Weber:
27:59

Use the language that the people are using, right the environment is using. If they already have a particular term for something, use it. Help communicate in a way that people understand. When you're talking to medical, try and use medical terminologies. If you're medically background and you talk to S&C staff, maybe don't go heavy on the medical side of it. Try and engage people, bring them in. When you're a leader in a HPM department, you're not trying to show off, you're not trying to pull people apart, you're not trying to demean people and you're certainly not trying to overlord them with the badge of you being the boss. Now there's a whole world of things on leadership styles. I'm not really going to go down that path. We can at another point. Potentially, maybe I'll get some feedback from viewers that they, like 12 people might come back to me. But here's my other five things. Once you know, yes, we're going to learn to use the language of the person we're speaking to. We're going to engage with them in their environment. We're going to go to them. We're not going to try and pull them to us per se.

Jason Weber:
29:05

Right Now, five takeaways, or six. Number one learn to speak coach. Acknowledge that it's not always coach. You may need to speak strength coach. You may need to speak coach. Acknowledge that it's not always coach. You may need to speak strength coach. You may need to speak physiotherapist, athletic therapist, whatever. All right, you need to know those people in order to engage with them. All right. Now that's number one. Let's get the other five out.

Jason Weber:
29:29

Lead with questions, not answers. I learned this many years ago from a very let's call him strong international rugby coach, but he was extraordinary. He taught me what I call meeting discipline, which is maybe another thing to add later on to the agenda. But you lead with questions, not answers. I'm not here to point the finger at people. I'm not here to, in the classic term, crow peck them. We want to engage. So sometimes, even though you know a direction you might need to go, it may not be about saying, hey, bang, this, is it? Hitting people over the head with a hammer. Bring them on the journey, ask questions.

Jason Weber:
30:13

As a leader, number one is have some humility. You don't have all the answers that getting feedback from others in the environment may really help strengthen the position you have within your own head, but by leading with questions, you engage people and you bring them in, and it's absolutely critical to have your people on the same page and have them engaged. All right, which leads into two Engage in dialogue, debate, not coercion, all right. So, yes, we do want to, as much as I said then, yes, sometimes you will lead people where they need to go. At the end of the day, as a leader, often you have more information than everybody else and maybe you have a lot more experience, so you do need to.

Jason Weber:
30:58

But I do believe that getting people to speak openly and bring debate is critical, which does come to your meeting structure. You've got to have time dedicated within a week or a training micro or mesocycle where people get opportunity to speak their mind. You've got to create, as they say these days, a safe environment, because people will fear my opinion. These guys don't want to listen. You've got to build that environment so that they can discuss freely. And again, now, kind of more and more than this comes to me, I think, the idea, the idea of discussing meeting disciplines probably another one for later. But, yes, you've got to have structures and it's time and everybody's rushed Everybody. And I spoke about it on one of my podcasts. If you look through our podcast list, a couple of months ago, I talked about time. If you look through our podcast list, a couple of months ago, I talked about time. We have no time, we rush.

Jason Weber:
31:57

One of the most important things about a HBM is, I think, making time to build relationships, to build trust, to build confidence, so that people will speak, so people will share their expertise, and you would be surprised what people can bring when they actually engage. And that comes back to the. What are we really passionate about? I'm passionate about getting this environment working. I want you to come with me, right? You've got to give people the opportunity. Right, this one's a nasty one, right.

Jason Weber:
32:32

Conduct autopsies without blame? Now, this is very it's business, but it's very, very military. I've had the pleasure of working for the last couple of years in some very, very high level tier one special forces or with some special forces operators not in their units and I've met guys that have, in every sense of the word, every sense, been at the tip of the spear in operations, and one of the things you learn off them is how they look at examining a task, what they call after action reviews, aar. Everything in military is an acronym, but an AAR is critical. What did we do? What did we do? Right, even when they're training, they'd be doing X, y, z, room entries and things.

Jason Weber:
33:22

Okay, what happened? Where were you? What were you looking at? Okay, that's not right. Let's go Do it again. Do it again, but it's doing the review with a view to being as good as you possibly can. We go back to the hedgehog concept. What can we be the best in the world at? So we want to be the best of the world in keeping our people in the park. So we lost some guys this week. Why did we lose them? What happened? It's not assigning blame, but it's understanding.

Jason Weber:
33:57

Now again, you go back to my thing about teaching hospitals right. Hospitals literally will review when there's a death. They will go through what happened and one of the biggest learning events I understand for doctors is understanding what happened. How can I learn from that event? Maybe it had nothing to do with me, but I've got to learn from it. Absolutely critical, I can't speak highly enough of that one. But again, this comes back to your meeting structure and probably back to the beginning, where we've got the information, we start to draw people in. If we've got people engaged and we're understanding what we're trying to do, then it's okay to say, right, this went south, why did it go south? And one of the really interesting things that I come across more and more and this is a speed sync thing is people saying, hey, we did everything we could, we didn't have enough information, and that in itself is a fantastic observation. We need more information. How are we going to find out more about this problem? We have All right. That's again another whole subject. But that autopsy is absolutely critical.

Jason Weber:
35:10

I have seen that done extraordinarily poorly when it's a finger pointing exercise and no one digs that and it just creates animosity, anger and not good in the environment, because, remember they used to talk about in the Industrial Revolution. You know the heartbeat of the workforce. You had the person, the people, the people laboring, you know, in these appalling conditions was what drove it. So you need to keep your finger on your pulse. So that whole idea of keeping the finger on your pulse of your stuff is absolutely critical. So we're getting on pretty close for time here, but we'll continue.

Jason Weber:
35:49

Build a red flag mechanism. Now. For me, that's not about yes, we all have the alert systems on people, who've got dashboards and they've got colors and they've got this and that and the other thing, and most of them, I think, make me feel more nauseous than anything else. But a red flag system for me in management is about understand what I just said. Like the fingers on the pulse, how do I know where my staff are at? Now, again, this whole conversation has been I'll talk about something later but again, when I monitor my athletes, I have two systems. I have a human system and a data system and I won't go into that now. But that same system, same concept, works with your staff Less data. There's not much data on your staff. But understanding humans is critical. Dan Pfaff, great coach, awesome coach. Never met the man but I love his work. I love what he writes about. He talks about.

Jason Weber:
36:50

The best movement screen is watching athletes warm up Makes sense. You're going to see how they're building. You're going to see if they've warmed up quickly. Have they progressed? Are they going? My same thing I always would look at my staff. Where are they at? How are they behaving? How are they speaking? Is it changing?

Jason Weber:
37:10

I know, you know, bobby, over there is a really gregarious guy. That's his up and about, that's his normal. Joey's a bit quieter. Then I come in the next day and Joey, who's quiet normally, is angry and aggressive. Clearly that's a no-brainer. But other things you get the guy who drinks one cup of coffee a day and all of a sudden you see him banging two or three down and you know there's a fatigue issue, understanding simple things like where's their family at. You know, when you have staff members that have babies critical, critical to understand you can't deny that stuff. Same with athletes. You've got to figure that because they have a life, they're not just machines. So that red flag mechanism for me is not a database thing, it's understanding your people and understanding what sets them off.

Jason Weber:
38:06

We talked about in, I think, two episodes back about understanding how people how do you handle stress? What do you do when you're stressed? How people how do you handle stress? What do you do when you're stressed? What do the staff do when they're stressed? How do they react? How can you cut it off at the pass?

Jason Weber:
38:22

One of the things we certainly see in AFL and while I've no experience directly in EPL, I know this happens as well when you've got a jammed schedule In AFL, it would be let's say, we've got a six-day break and we got a bunch of like moderate, just like low-level ankles and things from one game. So the physios end up working a lot like big hours just trying to get there, going in and out of the buckets of ice and hot and mobbing joints and they're just, they're gassed. They're humans. You have to understand how that works with them, right? How is that handled? So that red flag is really about understanding the baseline behaviors of your staff and how they work and I would always counsel understand who people talk to, because sometimes you're not the best person. You may not be With athletes. When I'm monitoring athletes yeah, I'm not always the best person to speak to, not by far. You don't always mesh with everybody, but you've got to find the person that is good for that person. So build a red flag mechanism absolutely critical and one of the key take. I'm sorry I'm throwing my pens around my desk right, so I think I I stall because we've covered so many subjects, but I think I am comfortably toward the end. I think I had five points there total with speaking coach.

Jason Weber:
39:56

So as we wrap up this one, this episode, let's just quickly think about what I've talked about In the first two episodes. We talked about know thyself, know thy enemy, know yourself, then know the rest of the people you're going to work with. Three is a bit more about putting it together. This one's been about what are the rocks? We've got to understand cause and effect, do our analysis of the environment. Make sure we're doing it from multiple perspectives. We get the facts. Facts are better than dreaded. We've got to confront the brutal facts. We've got to make it clear, use the language people understand and share it and make that the cornerstone of us going forward. But you're going to build that into a system where it is as simplified as possible, which is the hedgehog concept what can we do with passion? What can we be the best at? What drives our performance? How do those three things interact? And then we took our little five take-homes, which were a lot about how we handle people.

Jason Weber:
41:00

So, in summary here before Darren gets back, I hope the last three episodes have been valuable. If they have been valuable and you love it and you want to hear more, dm me on LinkedIn, easiest place to get a hold of us. Dm me on LinkedIn Easiest place to get a hold of us. I hope this helps people get in their heads a methodology to move forward, because this space is challenging for people. It's a relatively new position across sport and it's becoming more and more accepted, and it's one that people are going to have to get better and better at. So farewell, travel well, and I guess the next time you hear from me will probably be with my little mate. Thanks a lot for your time.

-----END BECOMING A HIGH PERFORMANCE MANAGER PART 3.-----

-----BEGIN BECOMING A HIGH PERFORMANCE MANAGER PART 2.-----
Jason Weber:
0:13

Okay, g'day and welcome to Two Coaches and Coffee. I'm Jason Webber and again I'm here by myself. My apologies for Darren's absence. He's away on leave, a well-earned break after a hard season in the AFL. But last session out we had a crack at my steps towards establishing a high performance unit Now got some good reviews, got some good feedback, so we're going to keep down that path today and what we're going to quickly have a look at was a quick review of last time out.

Jason Weber:
0:47

So last time out we talked about step one, which is getting to know, get yourself right. Get you right, sun Tzu, the art of war, know thyself, know thy enemy. Last week, last session out, was really about know thyself and I think at this point and with today's sort of subject matter, which is know thy enemy, this is not always necessarily applicable simply to you having a job and saying, okay, let's go, hpm, way we go. It might be about you interviewing for a job, because this is always the first part of it. You can't make changes and you can't do some of these things until you get a job. And part of having a job or getting a job like obviously, when you're a young guy, maybe you're just jumping at whatever young guy or girl, but there are some times when I think you need to decide is this the right gig for me? And so that's what we're going to talk a little bit about today, which is really that step two. So in step one, we had a good look at know thyself, and the reason I'm going to go over some of this is because we're going to use it again this week. But we looked at the strengths and weaknesses of yourself. We looked at how do you respond to stress and then we looked at values. They were the four things. Now, obviously, in strengths and weaknesses, we went into some of the technical nuances of where you sit, and that's good. I think there's also going to be strengths and weaknesses, personality management-wise, anything else that you might come up with, how you respond to stress, and personal values. So we're going to utilize them today. Again, I'm a big believer in only putting out as many cones on the field as you need to. If there's markings already on the field, why bother putting out cones? Let's try and use what we've got. So we're going to use those principles again as we jump into today.

Jason Weber:
2:37

So the session today or the podcast, the episode, the podcast. The episode of one coach and his lonely short black is really step two in this process of establishing a high-performance unit, which is know thy enemy. Now that sounds really tough and I don't think it's anything to do with the enemy, but it's know those external to what you are. Know those who are making movements. They're making moves of their own. You need to understand them in order to get the best out of the environment, the outcome that you want, which, when you're quoting from a general, is winning. And you know, I don't mind saying it we're all trying to make our individual wins and that's what this is about a little bit. How do we make the situation work the the best for us? So yeah, it's a little bit unfair. We're not really saying the enemy, but it's about know the people, so know the people around you.

Jason Weber:
3:32

So, no matter which way you cut it hbms, um, no matter what industry, which genre, not industry which genre of our industry you're coming from, whether it's physiotherapy, sports science, um, strength and conditioning, arm performance, arm rehab, specialist doesn't matter. You're all going to end up in what I would terms of middle management, because you're never going to run the team right. You're never the head coach. You're always going to have him over the top. You're always going to have a senior manager, a general manager of the department, over the top. You're always going to have CEOs, all that sort of thing. So you're never going to be the guy at the top, which is fine. That is what it is. It's our choice in life to be in this industry. But you're going to have people underneath and people that might be in a bigger department reporting to you and, in the case of a genuine HPM, you're going to have performance rehab medical all reporting to you and, in the case of a genuine HPM, you're going to have performance rehab medical all reporting into you in order for you to facilitate the functions up. So you're going to be stuck in this 360 degree loop where you're going to have reporting lines up, reporting lines coming in from below. You might even have some lateral stuff, and I'm not going to go into the nuances or structure of department because there are certain structures where there are laterals Not going to go into that.

Jason Weber:
4:51

That's not what I want to talk about, but today's really. Let's get the two things I really want to hone in on the bus and the band. All right, that's my shorthand my notes, for what do we need to do or understand about the people around us to make things work? And this is the way I look at it. So there's the bus and the band. The bus is an abbreviation of a saying called get the right people on the bus, which, when you look historically, I've got no idea where that comes from, but I think I probably read it the first time in a book called Good to Great by a guy called Jim Collins. Now, this book is a fantastic book. It's a very good strategy book for people in the sports industry looking to learn about leadership. It's a really good book because it's very formmatic. It has some very good research in it.

Jason Weber:
5:42

But basically, what Jim Collins did was went through the US and went through, I think, like top 500 companies in the US and he had a bunch of students working for him, doing questionnaires, examining different bits and pieces, but they tried to identify the key elements that discriminated businesses that accelerated against the stock market, so they grew faster than the market as compared to companies who match the market. So let's say, average performers versus elite. What were the elite things? What were the common behaviors in them? And in that, one of the things he talks about.

Jason Weber:
6:18

He talks about lots of great things that maybe I'll talk about in another episode how I've applied those, but one of the key things he talks about is get the right people on the bus. He frames it first who, then what. He does go on to talk about. He quotes getting the right people on the bus, but the idea is that don't think about the position per se, think about the right people. Now, those right people. There's many components to that and I think it's fair to go down the path of understanding what that person is. Now I'm going to give you another framework to judge that on. The first is get the right people on the bus. So the idea is don't worry about how you're going to do things, don't worry. In the book, jim Collins talks idea is don't worry about how you're going to do things, don't worry. In the book Jim Collins talks about don't worry about strategy, don't worry about anything else, focus on getting the right people. Because if you end up with, there is the model around getting the right people which is focusing, and I quote focus on what Before vision, before strategy, before organization, structure, before tactics, first who, then what, as a rigorous discipline consistently applied. So that's a big part. Now I think it's easy to say that, like, let's get a bunch of cool people on the bus, but the reality is we live in a technical world so we're going to have to have a technical element to that. So that's where the band comes in.

Jason Weber:
7:50

Now I'm a music fan. I don't know who else is, but some of my music's old. One of my favorite bands of all time is Led Zeppelin. Now, led Zeppelin was led by a rather mercurial cat named Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page was lead guitarist and leader of Led Zeppelin. He fundamentally put it all together. He put the right people on the bus, so to speak. But excuse my phone, that shouldn't be on. But that's business, right, just turn that off. That's gone. Gone.

Jason Weber:
9:27

Now the band, jimmy page, was interviewed. Um, at some point. I think I know where what the interview was, but I'm not going to quote it because I might be wrong. But in his interview he was asked about what was the best thing about led zeppelin. What was the best thing about Led Zeppelin, what was the thing he enjoyed the most? And he said the competence of four people. He was guitar, john Paul Jones on bass and keyboards and all that sort of thing. John Bonham on drums, and I'm going to forget the lead singer's name. That's ridiculous Robert Plant. There you go, there you go. The old time has nearly got me. For anyone seeing the video, you can see the grey beard and the bald head. So here's what it is.

Jason Weber:
10:16

So he talked about the competence. He said because everyone was so competent at their skills, the creativity was unbelievable. If we wanted to go well I don't think left to right, he said. If we wanted to go well, I don't think left to right, he said if we wanted to zig or zag, everyone could go that direction. We could move because of their competence, because their skill was so high. Now, I love that. I love that idea, that idea that if we've got competent people, your creativity increases because we've got the ability to figure out problems, solve things.

Jason Weber:
10:48

I think that's a big, big conversation point around. Sorry, I just had to pause my dog's attacking my door in my office. It's a really big point around people in their roles, okay, okay. So short pause there. I'm just going to jump back in because I had to. My dog's looking for a play and I just had to get her away from the door she was banging at it. So this is all real, as with Darren, all the time. This stuff is real. Life is happening around us as we speak. So we're talking about the competency of Led Zeppelin.

Jason Weber:
11:25

Now I think that is an equal comment on our industry, that it's not good enough to wear a badge. I have a degree. I have a degree in sports science, I have a degree in physiotherapy. It's really about your skill and the acquisition of that skill that you brought along over time. It comes down to, not unlike music, a lot of who you work with. So you live and learn, but having competent people is critical. So while, yes, I agree with Jim Collins, get the who right before you put them in the seats, at some level there's got to be competence. And so that's my concept. The bus and the band. Yes, I'm thinking is this the right person? Can I work with this person? Am I going to be able to live with them every day? Now you've got to think for a lot of people. We're having kids and we've got families and all those things, the wonderful things happening. We spend a lot of our life at work and I will tell you from someone who's an old cat, who's been around.

Jason Weber:
12:24

You do not want to be going to work daily with pumpkin heads who are going to make your life a misery. Now, I'm sorry to say it, but there are some pumpkin heads in the world. I'm sure some people think I'm one of those and that's fine. Choose not to work with me, right. But ideally, if I'm a pumpkin head, I want to get the other type of pumpkins around me that are similar, all right. So it is incredibly important that you find, as best you can, people who are of a like mind philosophically, possibly even as personalities. Dog's at the door again, I'm just going to keep going because she's bashing the door. My door may not survive.

Jason Weber:
13:05

Yes, we've got to have the right people, but at the same breath, we've got to have competency. So what I would say with that, if I have the highest level skilled person available, I have someone with slightly less skill but a much better person, a much better fit for the environment we're trying to create. I'm probably going to take the slightly lower person, lower skilled person. I think I saw a presentation the other day, a special force or somebody saying hey, I hung out with SEAL Team 6 and we were looking at they presented an X and a Y axis and on the Y axis they had performance. On the X axis they had a personality trait. It would have been something along the lines of trustworthiness. I'm pretty sure it was trust. So do we want ideally we want the guy who's high trust and high performance, the top right-hand quarter, no problem. Do we want just the guy who's like quadrant one, he's just high performance but low trust? Absolutely not. We don't want him. And in fact the interview went on to say and you probably find it on social media somewhere the guy went on to say that a lot of the SEAL Team 6 supposedly are more inclined to take the guy of super high trustworthiness but lower performance because we can teach him. Now I'd probably say I'd advocate for that because I think we can help people develop their skill. We can help develop it fast. But if they're the wrong person we're really got hurt.

Jason Weber:
14:38

Now I can speak to experiences this year of talking to friends of mine who are in HPM roles that are dealing with some bad humans, people who are white anting. Now, for anybody in the US or UK doesn't get my Australian vernacular, but white-anting is that guy who's going behind your back, he's going and complaining about you and he's not right. Gee, I'm sick of what Jase is saying and just chipping away at the outsides, not man enough? Or yeah, man enough, I'm old enough to say those things. Yeah, you're not mad enough to have the balls to say to your face hey, I got a problem and deal with it. Let's let's do it face to face. So there are those cats. So would I take someone of a little bit lesser um skill set, yep 100, if they can be part of my world and we can educate and bring them up absolutely.

Jason Weber:
15:29

And if I was to say I use a couple of examples I was in a job many years ago where we didn't have a great staff, we didn't have any staff, it was just me, me, one physio, one doc, and we slowly started to work that out and one of the guys I brought in with me at one time, early on it was his first job at a high level had an exceptional amount of skill in a particular area, all right, and in that area I thought he was exceptional and so I manipulated the environment to ensure he had enough time to execute that task, that part of the program. I maybe took other levels, like I took higher levels of work because I knew I could handle all that. Because, like, I took higher levels of work because I knew I could handle all that, because I would get the best out of him. Now that's me saying, yeah, he was the right person and he had the right skill, he was more than competent in that task, but I had to manipulate the environment to maximize it. So I think that's crucially important Understanding again this comes back. I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were, so I knew I could take the bulk of that other work and that would allow the environment to flourish. And and it did. Quite frankly. Quite frankly, it did. I did find out later that person probably had some personality faults that caused some problems later on with social activities. But hey, you've got to live and learn on those ones. I will use aside another example Again when I was in a high-performance role, when I did have quite a good staff, I actually got somebody into my program in a rehabilitation role.

Jason Weber:
17:09

Now this is one of the big learnings from learning to interview. Now I took it on advice from a coach and from some people that I knew that this guy was good, he knew what he was doing. He'd worked with the coach before and I thought this is fait accompli, this is good. Had a quick chat to the guy. He seemed personable, so he seemed like the right guy, he seemed like a good fit. But it became very evident very fast when he got on the ground that philosophically he was way removed from where I was and, as time would tell, he was shown to be quite incompetent because he created some more repeat injuries on players and the like. So that's where I can say like, yeah, I think he was the right person, he was a good guy and all that, a lovely guy. But no competence. No competency. Yeah, couldn't play guitar, couldn't play drums, couldn't play anything Useless. So go and bash some pots and pans together, my friend, and do it away from me, because you're ruining my sound. That was really it and and that's what it came down to he. He ended up leaving pretty sharply um, and then trying to come back when he realized how sort of poor he'd been at the time. But although that was a problem, now I learned about interviewing from that and that's another subject for later on how we do that. But I didn't replace him and this is probably the key. This is probably the key.

Jason Weber:
18:39

At the time I had one other S&C coach with me who was more my senior S&C coach, but he was a jet. He was an absolute jet. He'd done a lot of work in rehab. In fact he'd taken the rehab prior to us bringing. The idea was to move him up the chain and bring someone else into rehab Not that I think rehab's a lowly job at all. I think rehab's critical.

Jason Weber:
19:05

But then when we lost, when the other rehab guy left, what I chose to do was not hire. Now, if I quote Jim Collins and I'm not saying that I did this because it was in the book, but one of his, so he comes up with he's got three practical disciplines for being rigorous in people decisions. Number one when in doubt, don't hire, all right. Number two when you know you need to make people change, act. So we kind of did in that context. And three, put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. Well, number one I wasn't in doubt but I wasn't going to waste time because I knew that that the guy I had with me was more than capable, absolutely elite in what he was doing, and he stepped into that rehab piece and was able to cover off again and I think we actually split the rehab piece now. I remember it. But between the two of us we also managed the broader group, so we were able to. Again. It's another variant that manipulate the situation, but I knew I could trust my man, who was with me implicitly and if he listens to this he'll know who it is not going to go with names right at the moment, but awesome character and professional. So we were able to get on with it and did really well. Now, that wasn't a problem he was solving because we had an opportunity. We got some players back and had a very successful year that year. So it it was critically important.

Jason Weber:
20:37

But I think it comes back to if I look at the bus and the band. Yes, get the right people on the bus is a great concept and it's very important. I do trust it, but I think it needs to run along the side of the band. You've got to be competent at a minimum. But I think if I look at music and I look at Jimmy Page saying someone's competent, I would say they're pretty bloody good. Like John Bonham is recognized as one of the greatest drummers of all time, john Paul Jones, absolute freak at numerous instruments, numerous instruments and Robert Plant, an absolutely iconic singer and harmonica player, and the like. So, yeah, maybe competence is not even the right word, but elite. So the balance between the two absolutely, absolutely critical, I think. In terms of it's. You know, we talk, I talk about the gym constantly.

Jason Weber:
21:37

Don't worry about structure. I think you still need to know what your model is, what you're working towards, how you're trying to position your people, um, because that does these days. You know, teams are, groups are looking for that from the outset. How, how do you run your people? How do you organize things? Um, and there's probably a lot more I can share on that. You know, when we start talking about things like meeting structures and how things facilitate again, I'll make a note of that for later we might not even get Darren back, we might not invite him back, we might just continue doing this. Who knows If my dog keeps banging at the door, you never know, it might not even get that done. But I think you've got to have your ideal model Now. But I think you've got to have your ideal model Now. We're not going to talk about models today, but again that structure of how do you see it working? I don't think that's something that you want to be waiting until the last minute I think that's another implication from Jim Collins in his text is get everybody there and then you can figure out what you're going to do. I think there's a level to that. I think I definitely agree.

Jason Weber:
22:39

I would look to who's got strengths. I know a good mate of mine Well, actually a lie, I'm not a good mate but Birjo will tell you quite comfortably. He's talked widely on this podcast about his hiring process recently. Now a lot of what he did was looking for people with good skills and then he put them into different places. I think that's fantastic and I think there's certainly an aspect of that.

Jason Weber:
23:04

There was a couple of years ago I was trying to recruit a female biomechanist who was an awesome biomechanist but just a little bit inexperienced at the actual S&C delivery, and I tried to get her on. So I was trying to figure out how could I get her onto my team and then I'd move people around to accommodate, but it just didn't work out. But she's moved on to Major League Baseball. I'm absolutely killing it, but nonetheless, the opportunity was there to try and get her. Over time I've tried to get. I've got a guy who is currently leading performance in one of the NFL teams. His career actually started in dietetics and he's a US guy. He married a West Australian girl. I tried to get him into AFL as a dietitian and strength coach. I thought that was going to be a great pairing. Didn't quite work out. I also had another guy who's currently running a big national program in Australia and again I was trying to get him into AFL as a strength and dietetics guy. Doesn't always work, but I must say I'm open to the idea.

Jason Weber:
24:06

If I'm going to get great people, certainly people you've known for a couple of years, who you just know. They've got your back and you've got theirs and they bring competency and if they bring competency in a number of disciplines, awesome opportunity, absolutely awesome opportunity to create something new. Now I will reflect back because I probably went a little bit overboard last time for time, but I would reflect back to. I want to do two quick things before we go. I want to now. We've talked at 360 degrees. I've just talked about bringing people probably into your report, the people who are reporting up towards you. But you've got to report up as well. So I think there's an element.

Jason Weber:
24:47

If we take the perspective that, okay, you're getting into a position, I reckon you've got to interview the boss, now this becomes very, very tactical. How do you interview people above you? Well, a lot of it. You want to be evaluating the coach, you want to be evaluating management, all of that stuff. You're going to ask questions that are leading questions. You're going to look at reactions. You're going to watch people react.

Jason Weber:
25:21

So when you bring something up, when you bring up one of the ones that's quite common that I see, if I bring up skill acquisition concepts right, straightforward skill acquisition let's talk about something as simple as the progression of skill education, practice execution. How do we do that? And just bringing up examples, and when you see blank looks coming back at you and questions like oh, how would you do that, you kind of got to wonder okay, there's a, there's a potential there, that that's an area of maybe not strength, all right, so that's all right. There's nothing wrong with that. It's about you.

Jason Weber:
25:54

Again, let's go back to what this is about Know thy enemy. And it's not the bad guys, but it's knowing the people around you. So where are the strengths and weaknesses? And when I look at something like that, I would make sure I've got to check myself, because what I don't want to do and probably I've been accused of in the past is going in too hard with people above you. Now let's be honest. Let's be honest, right.

Jason Weber:
26:21

I've got an undergraduate degree. I've got two advanced degrees in science. I've been studying sport and exercise science, biomechanics, physiology all of that for the better part of the last nearly 40 years ballpark, something like that no, not quite that much 35. But when you look at coaches in sport, they may have played the game for a long time, but they haven't been coaching for very long. Maybe you're lucky you get one who's been coaching for 10 years, but they're going to know things that are great, unbelievable, about the game and knowledge through their experience, but not having done anything structured. So in many ways, you know you've got to be really careful with that. I've got to be careful with that and I think we should be careful and we educate up all those sort of things.

Jason Weber:
27:09

But I think it is suffice to say that you want to be asking questions that figure things out when strengths and weaknesses lie. They're the things that we asked of ourselves. That's what we asked in our last episode strengths and weaknesses, where do we sit? If you can figure that out, you can start to understand where people are at, where they're coming from, how they're going to react to you, because you're going to be on that reporting up chain.

Jason Weber:
27:39

I think stress is a big one. Understanding how people are stressed, how they respond to stress you can use in your reactions when people get under the pump. If you understand it, maybe you don't fight against it so much. You can walk with it. Okay, very yin and yang. Work with the flow of things rather than try and fight it.

Jason Weber:
28:01

The other one is values. Right, we talked about values in the last episode. What are the things you will not accept? What are the standards you will demand? Where is the wiggle room? We talked about? David Morris's quote about saying if you walk past it, you're accepting it. So what are the things? Can we figure that out? Where do we need to be? Sometimes those questions are quite easy because they're direct. You know what does this environment stand for? What are we about? What do you aim to be? You know, some teams have got cultures laid out. They've invested a lot of time. You don't understand what they are.

Jason Weber:
28:41

I will say in many regards that in my opinion and it's just an opinion that many of the corporate orientated vision statements or value statements that teams come up with are generally quite grossly inadequate when it comes to practice, particularly when you're looking at team sports, where you need discipline, you need people working together, you need, you know, in every team sport, number one thing we need is people working for one another. So where does that get mentioned? Not always. So those undercurrent cultural elements are going to be part of the team. They may not necessarily be part of the cultural value statement of the entire environment you find yourself in, but I think it's very fair to work. Those questions Work. Those questions strengths, weaknesses, how things happen under stress and where do the values right?

Jason Weber:
29:39

We also talked last week about technical philosophies. I think they're another, another level, I think in terms of approaching the up sense of talking to coaches and so forth, understanding what they know. Um, yeah, you can ask simple questions. I think on the technical side we already sort of talked about tonight and I'll just finish on this point really is. Let's just finish on the bus and the band. I really want to nail that home.

Jason Weber:
30:09

I do think categorically that you need the right people because you don't want to waste your life with arsehats. That's an absolute Can't do it. I mean, I've probably done it over the past. If I've been an arsehat to people, I apologize, but same thing, they probably shouldn't have got rid of me. But you'd like to try and think you do the right thing as often as possible and you try to be good and work with people. I've talked before about my environment. I tend to describe it as a learning hospital. I try to get people learning laterally and vertically. So you're learning laterally means between disciplines. So say, physio to S&C, s&c to physio Up would be well, clearly, your junior ranks to your more seniors, so forth and so on. But you've got to have the right people and you've got to have competency. So we're gonna pull stumps on that one.

Jason Weber:
31:06

We're at about the 30 minute mark, which is enough from me for one night or one episode. I hope you guys have enjoyed it, I think. Having talked to myself for the last half an hour, I think there's a bunch of other things I can keep going on, so we'll try to flesh it out a little bit more. I definitely think there is. I'm going to do one more episode in this construct. I definitely think it'd be worthwhile. For those that haven't looked at it, I think going back to session two, episode eight definitely was awesome. About technical philosophy I really encourage people to look at that about getting your own backyard squared away. Last week's episode was good in this regard. So if you dig it, talk to your friends, share it. We love it. We'd like to get 20 people following us. We think we've got about 12 or 15 at the moment. Always a laugh. It's been a pleasure. You never know who'll turn up next week. Maybe we'll have darren back, um, but I hope you enjoyed and I hope your journey is going well you.

-----END BECOMING A HIGH PERFORMANCE MANAGER PART 2.-----

-----BEGIN BECOMING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE MANAGER PART 1-----
Jason Weber:
0:10

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. In this episode we're back to one coach, darren's, after a very solid AFL season with the Adelaide Crows, is on leave and he's in Europe, so we're going it alone this week. Now what I planned was actually to share some responses to a lot of questions I've been asked recently. So what we're going to term the next couple of episodes is literally how to set up a high performance department. Now I'm looking at this from the perspective of young guys coaches female, male that are moving up from a specialist role, from strength and conditioning, from rehab, from physiotherapy, moving up to run the high-performance department. Now it's an incredibly daunting task first time out and it is really a genuine thing. Now, not every environment runs a HPM. Some are split, some have. Quite often we see in America we'll see the medical department and performance department quite separate. What I'm going to be referring to is what happens if you take the job over the top. That oversees everybody. It can be applied to specialist departments, without question, that are running a number of professionals within their group. But given that I've been asked this question so often recently, I figured you know what it's with Darren, not here. It's time for me to get on the soapbox and you know I can really just get in and share my thoughts with you and I'm sure when we, when he gets back, we can share Darren's or get his points of view. But what I would say is that, particularly I know a lot of people at the moment who are currently doing this role themselves or making this transition professionally. So they're the kind of people that have been asking.

Jason Weber:
1:59

But I've been asked from many other perspectives as well. One recently I got asked in a general conversation was if I was going into a job, what are the really big rocks that I'd move All right, so without much information? That was the question and that really got me started on this thread, because I do feel quite strongly about how you would approach it. And, principally, I answered in the way I'm about to share with you, which is you have to start in a certain order. You can't just say, hey, this is what I'm going to go and do. I think moving into an environment where you take an agenda, specifically particularly if you've been at somewhere that was very successful and you're moving elsewhere I've seen this fail dismally, where I take those exact same things I was doing and I'm going to take them across this new environment. They're not that they were bad things bad, maybe technical. They're probably quite good, but I've seen them fail because it's a different environment, right, it's a different setup.

Jason Weber:
3:04

So what I'm going to share with you now is some ideas about how we would, how I would, process this. Now you can take it or leave it, but I guess the idea is to share a concept of someone who's done it, someone who's thought about it a lot, someone who's reviewed his own performances in that space and reflected on how we might do it a different way. Now we'll probably look at my notes at the moment are probably going into about four general steps. So we're going to cover step one in this episode because we're going to stick with pretty much the half an hour thing as best I can. Who knows, I might get onto a flow and go right overboard, but I don't think so. So step one, all right. So step one of possibly four. I'm going to call it get your head right, right. So that's about you Take a step back. You've got the job. Take a step back, take a breath. This is about understanding you, and the reality probably is that in an interview process or going into the process. It's probably far better to be in a position where you do understand what you are so you can communicate it clearly. But nonetheless, we're at this point. You've got the job. I think the first step is to step back and ensure you review what you are Now.

Jason Weber:
4:28

I don't mind a quote and I certainly like looking to history and understanding what other people have done, other leaders. A quote that I always like, which is quite common you hear it around business and sport by Sun Tzu, the Chinese military strategist general. He wrote in the Art of War, if you know yourself and you know your enemy, you need not worry about the result of 100 battles. Now I've probably changed that a little bit, particularly where I started with know yourself. I think in the actual quote he starts with know thy enemy, know thyself. But the point of that is that you need to know yourself and you need to know the enemy in terms of an engagement. Now, in this case, the enemy won't actually be someone we're going to fight. The enemy will be the environment we're moving into, but we're going to start with know yourself. So I think, as I've spoken about in many, many other forums, about technical training philosophy and we'll get to that in a moment.

Jason Weber:
5:31

I think, in terms of knowing yourself, I think committing to writing things down to understand yourself is a worthwhile practice. I wouldn't have said that when I was younger, but I was naive and stupid. I'm probably less naive and moderately less stupid at present, but I think writing down and committing this is where I am, this is where I stand and this is where we're starting. I think the more you do it, the less you need to necessarily write. But I would say of being someone who has tried various website side hustles over the years my old site, oldbullfitnesscom, which will probably be going down very soon, but I used to blog on that quite a bit and the point with that was probably not dissimilar from this rather utilitarian, I do think, given the assistance I've received over the years, I think it's my responsibility to share that forward with other young coaches coming through and that's part of what this is. So the idea of committing to writing, and particularly when you commit to writing in public, that's another big thing. So I don't necessarily think these first parts we write down and share, but we might write some others. So I think there are some simple, simple questions you need to ask of yourself. Get to step two, when we're starting to know the lay of the land and the enemy, we're also going to use the same question. So, really simple.

Jason Weber:
7:12

You could call it a SWOT analysis. But what are your strengths? What are you good at? You should understand the things you're really good at.

Jason Weber:
7:22

One thing I would say of a leader and I believe this very, very honestly is that a leader should have a job. All right. So I don't. I'm not a fan of managers who have learnt to be managers and haven't actually done the job in any way, shape or form. Now, that's not to say we know in recent weeks in Australia the AFL title was won by a coach that never played. That's not the same thing. You can be in a position where you've learned to coach over many, many years which he did, coach Fagan and was able to become a great coach and win. That's a different thing.

Jason Weber:
8:02

But I think, in terms of our profession, you have to have done something in the job. You have to have been a practitioner. My opinion you have to have been a strength and conditioning coach, a rehab physio, or a strength and conditioning physio, a physiotherapist in your own right. You have to have been a sports scientist deep, and I don't just mean Excel spreadsheets, I mean really working in it and understanding it, manipulating it something we'll get to again later and I've pontificated on before but you need to have had a job right and I think you need to have a specialty right.

Jason Weber:
8:36

You will always see that in a hospital and I quite often reference learning hospitals in the way I structure, certainly my department that doctors that lead large departments and lead hospitals, let's say, where they're going to have multiple departments, they're not going to be a specialist in every one of those, but they're going to be a doctor and they're going to have specific skills in our area. I think you need to have that All right. So you really need to understand where your strengths lie. So your strengths are going to lie in your root profession, be they physio, be they S&C, whatever. But I do think and this is an honest thing that in that profession you should contribute in that area on a regular basis. So I'm not one for standing back and saying, well, I'm the leader of the department, I don't have to physically get on the tools. I still think you need to be in on the tools a bit, not a lot, but enough to contribute and enough to still keep your skills in. Because you still need to be a contributor, both at a work volume level, like how much work needs to be done during the day and we always need bodies, particularly in big sports but you need to keep your skills going and stay on top of things, not just theoretically but skill-wise.

Jason Weber:
9:51

So there are instances, and as an example I would say my last handful of years in the AFL I didn't go in the gym as much as I used to. I used to be very, very hands-on. That's where I come from. Strength and conditioning. Be very, very hands-on, that's where I come from. Strength and conditioning that I would go in. But in my last handful of years I made up little other avenues. So I would have my senior strength and conditioning coach running the program, running everything. But I might take. In my last two years I took the three worst in the gym, not necessarily the ones who were the least strong in the gym, not necessarily the ones who are the least strong, but the worst at attending the gym, participating, completing necessary work, et cetera. So I took that as a special task and I think that's a really appropriate place. I think it helps your staff to see you in the gym and see you supporting and not just flicking things off. So that's one thing.

Jason Weber:
10:44

Where's your strengths lay and how do you apply those strengths to your department? Weaknesses, right. The next obvious one what aren't I so good at? Some people are going to be better at recognising these things. Some people will not necessarily be great at it. I think there are a couple of areas. So if we start with kind of where we finished, so if my strengths are in strength and conditioning and late stage rehab, return to run then my weaknesses are going to be the converse. They're going to be in the physiotherapy, medical sector, maybe early stage rehab, maybe psychology, maybe nutrition, all of those spaces. So how do you come across those areas?

Jason Weber:
11:27

And most importantly and we'll get to this a little bit later on is that you have to develop a concept and a philosophy around those areas, because you can't just be going in blind In order to lead people. You need to. I always think about leadership as people being in a dark space and you're the one who turns on the lamp and says righto, this is the way forward. Here we go and being able to unite people and lead them, based on the fact that you can actually contribute, is a big deal. Now I'm not going into leadership styles and all that. That's not relevant. That's probably a hard way to say it. It's not the front of my mind, the front of my thinking. To understand your style. There probably is some relevance to that. I certainly know my style and how I lead, but that's maybe if people are interested. Maybe that's one for another time and we'll see how long Darren's away for really. But weaknesses so obviously you've got technical weaknesses.

Jason Weber:
12:29

There are other areas that you're going to need to learn and you're going to need to be good at to be honest, because it's very hard to lead people who genuinely think you don't know anything about what you're talking about. So it's really important to be across that and really the best way is to, I think, in the early parts of your career. So for people who are listening to this and not necessarily leading a department, if you're an S&C, you should be hanging out with the physios and learning, learning what they do. You don't have to do their jobs, you have to learn to a level of empathy with them. You're a physiotherapist. You should be learning what the S&C guys do. You should be learning what the S&C guys do, not just hanging out in the treatment room, but understand what are they doing.

Jason Weber:
13:08

So when we're getting tight you know ITB, lateral hamstring, glute, med, et cetera why are we getting it? Well, we're getting it because of these reasons. Does that link to the GPS? Can we understand that loop? Same thing with treatment, strength and conditioning. Coaches need to understand that if we can do trigger point releases, very, very quick treatment, we can actually get better performance when we get athletes into the gym and on the field. So those trigger point releases are really, really important and understand how they work and where they might be applied, and understand the conditions upon which you might say, hey, we need to go and get this treated very, very quickly in order for us to move forward. And I've done that many, many times and again. The application of, or the linking of, physiotherapy and strength conditioning could be another subject for later on. We'll move on.

Jason Weber:
13:58

I think the other part of weaknesses to really understand is when you go to work. You're going to have to work with coaches and football coaches and some of their very strong personalities. You need to understand things like confrontation, hard conversations. How are you with those things In confrontation? How do you handle it? Do you lose your cap and blow up? Do you shrink into your shell and don't say a word? Neither of those responses are probably ideal, but being able to understand how you deal with that, how can I make the adjustment? How do I keep my cool and not lose my shit, as it were? Equally, how do I take a deep breath for lack of a better term, again man up, which is not appropriate in these days, but it does make a point right. How do I muscle up and get in there and say what I need to say, say the thing that coaches need to hear, because they're not always right nor are we, for that matter but sometimes we've got to get that point across. So, understanding those weaknesses, you're interpersonal.

Jason Weber:
15:01

Now, I think that's a bit different to your leadership styles, but how do we handle different people? So what are you going to do if you inherit a staff member and you can't get rid of them and you genuinely don't get on with them? How are you going to handle it? How are you going to handle it? How are you going to handle it if you're a physiotherapist and you're leading the department, but you've got a belligerent strength and conditioning coach, you need to understand strategies and tactics that you can utilize to get that person on site and bring them along. Now, if you've got no idea how to deal with different personalities like that, that becomes another whole conversation where we start to look at strategies for dealing with those people.

Jason Weber:
16:42

Now there are lots of education tools out there and books written by people far more intelligent than me, but I think they're things that are really worth investigating because it won't come down being a successful HBM won't come down to whether you're technically good at your job. You need to be technically a good manager and you need to work with people. You need to understand how people work and there are certainly instances in the last handful of months where I've heard you know there's the HPM running Team XYZ and I get comments like this guy's got. Their emotional intelligence is very low. They don't work with people well, they micromanage, they don't let people get on with their jobs. They're crushing in the way they deal with things. Now I also heard that same story about a person who was extremely good technically, so the club that he was with loved him technically but didn't rate other elements of his leadership. So that's a shame, but that's something we can work on, something you can understand by understanding your weaknesses up front.

Jason Weber:
17:50

Now the next one I'm going to say, which is somewhat related to weaknesses, but a little bit independent, and I'd like you to think of it independent, and that is how do you respond under stress? There's an old saying again, it's based on man, but it's not really. It's not what happens to a person that matters, it's what they do when it matters. All right, just think about that for a second. It's not what happens to a person that matters, it's what they do when it happens. So what's your action when it's stressful? What do you do? How do you respond? Now, again, there are lots of questionnaire-based tests you can do. I've done a few over the years and some of them I think are relatively helpful. Done a few over the years and some of them I think are relatively helpful. And I mean those things always cost a bomb because they're commercial machines, those type of tools, but they're worthwhile to investigate yourself If you come across the opportunity. I must say over the years I've taken many different questionnaires. When they get offered, I do them.

Jason Weber:
18:51

You know you'd be as honest as you can and you get some learning out of it. You'll figure some things out. Not everything's right and nothing is strictly binary right or wrong in anything we do these days. You're going to have some things you agree with, some things you don't, some things you can learn. But I think how you handle stress is important because, as Darren and I have talked about in the podcast before, you know what happens when you lose those first four rounds. Right, you go to your first EPL team and you bomb the first four and you're the brand new HBM.

Jason Weber:
19:25

What are you going to do? Are you going to curl up in a ball? Are you going to start to get really angry at people? Are you going to curl up in a ball? Are you going to start to get really angry at people? Are you going to control yourself? Where does it sit? Are you going to make changes? Are you going to stick with what you know?

Jason Weber:
19:41

Hard to say all those things, but I think you need to start writing it down. How am I going to react? What have I done in the past when I've been in a stressful situation? Have I been in a stressful situation? How do I handle it and I would tack on to that, and not as an afterthought, but really something personal. You should look at it's a bigger job. How are you going to handle it at home?

Jason Weber:
20:08

Most people going into HPM roles are probably a little bit older and they're probably in established relationships and they're probably at times have kids and dogs and fish and rabbits and all that sort of stuff and mortgages. It's a big deal and I won't tell you that I've done it perfectly over the years. Um, I think there's been. I've been clipped a couple of times by my wife and pulled into line and and that's that's fair. You marry a good, strong woman and they do that.

Jason Weber:
20:30

But, understanding how you handle things, how do you handle stress? You know, I had a discussion today with a good friend and we were drinking coffee. My friend's dealing with a rather in sport, in our genre of work, dealing with a really, really particularly hard situation, and I just said to him one of the key bits is mate, don't take it home. Your wife does not deserve it. Don't bring it home to her. Leave it wherever you need to leave it, just don't bring it home. You know, be there for whatever she's dealing with, but don't bring the shit from work home, because what he's dealing with is absolute shit and there's nothing he can do about it. But and it's also not of his making but that's the situation and, having been in those things before, it's it's until you confront it. It's. It's a hard deal, but to younger people younger guys and girls coming through, really have a look at that. How do you handle stress? Don't bring it home. Number one Really really critical.

Jason Weber:
21:35

Now, values. This is another one to look at yourself and I think this is worthwhile having a real good think about. What are your values Now? Guaranteed, at some point in your career you've been in a development session with a club, with a team where they get the external facilitator in and they come in and they draw charts and they speak in funny languages using things like paradigms and all that sort of stuff and pedagogies, words like that Not great fun, but they will start to say what are your values? There's, what are the club values? How do you do that? I mean, you know you can go through those processes, but I think it's really important for you.

Jason Weber:
22:20

Now I will tell you as an entrepreneur, I've obviously I spruced the SpeedSig thing. That's my business. I've established values for my business and I won't work with people. I won't have people working with me in SpeedSig who do not align to my values and I will not work with teams who do not align to my values and I've drawn that line in the sand because I choose to work with those people. I've worked with some DUD individuals dud individuals over my years and I cannot. I do not want to waste my breath and my time on those people. We spend most of our time at work with people, not our family. So you want to be spending that time efficiently, not with people you don't like. So my company, speedsync's company values are honesty and creativity.

Jason Weber:
23:14

Um, my company, speed sinks company values are honesty and creativity. Now I could probably expand them out a little bit. Um, I'm not going to on this podcast right now, but for um, efficacy, I really stuck with two. Honesty tells you a lot about a person, all right, and you can bring that. You can have root causes off to integrity and all that sort of thing, but honesty really is core to me. And creativity you cannot be a creative person unless you're in a good, happy place and you bring competency. You cannot be creative if you don't have skill. You have to be a competent professional to be able to create and see what the next step is. Create something out of nothing. You know I don't talk about it often, but I look at SpeedSync. I've brought something new to the market. It's something that still confuses a lot of people and I'm really sorry about that, but it is critical and I probably need to share some more case studies in that space. But the idea is, being creative like leadership is about being able to shine that light in the dark space and move in, expand our understanding. So what do you value?

Jason Weber:
24:27

Now, on that one, I'm going to reference you to an incident that occurred in Australia. We had in our military, one of our military, our military academy. We had some pretty horrible what would you call them, sex rings and things going on, all sorts. Anyway, we had our chief of the army came out and made a fantastic speech. His name's a lieutenant lieutenant general, david morrison. Now I don't know whether he made this up, I've heard this in several other areas, but one of the core takeaways from his speech he said the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If that does not suit you, then get out. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

Jason Weber:
25:16

Now I've heard that, alternatively, by a great AFL coach say to me I'm not going to walk past that, whatever that thing, and do my shoes up. I'm not just going to do my shoes up on that one. He's saying exactly the same thing that I'm not going to stand here and duck my eyes and put my foot at my look, pretend I'm doing my shoes up to let that thing go by, the same as saying I'm not going to walk past that thing. That's not right. So I think, in establishing your standards and your values Sorry, what standards will you demand? Where's the wiggle room? Are you going to be rock solid? Are there things you get? Another great saying that I've again heard recently, or used recently myself, is is this the hill you want to die on? How hard are you going to fight? What are you prepared to give? Now, there are things you're going to give. How hard are you going to fight? What are you prepared to give? Now, there are things that you're going to give, things that you're not going to give.

Jason Weber:
26:17

But I will say that, having worked in environments where discipline was an issue, I stuck to my guns hard, real hard Probably took two or three years to change over. And this past week I was on a call with one of my teams in the US and we weren't talking about speed sig. I got asked a lot about culture and changing culture, delivering them, and we talked a lot about that sense of entitlement from some athletes, particularly in big money programs in the US. They get a lot done for them, they get offered or given a lot, so they have a huge sense of entitlement and, I think, understanding. What are you going to do about that? What are the things you can set? What are the things you can establish to make that work? What are the things you can establish to make that work? And I think, if um, I'll draw one other quote from from david morris. Uh, david morrison's speech. He said every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our army and the environment in which we work. Now, obviously you don't have to be your army, but everyone is responsible for their culture and reputation. That means that everybody's a part of it. But I also think not. I think it also means absolutely rock solid that you need to live the standards you're talking about. You need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk Nobody likes a talker. So I think, being able to understand those things, your values Now I'm getting pretty close to my half hour but I want to wrap up, and none of this is an exhaustive list either, but I think it's a good starting point to challenge yourselves before you go into this role.

Jason Weber:
28:08

Now, the last part I'm going to go with is technical philosophy. Now, I've talked a lot about this over the years. I think if you duck back, I want you to have a look. If you look at Two Coaches and a Coffee, season 2, episode 8. So, earlier this year, I had a good old talk about that. So I think, yeah, season 2, episode 8, crafting a Dynamic Training Philosophy for High-Performance Sport that. So I think, um, uh, yeah, season two, episode eight, crafting a dynamic training philosophy for high performance sport. Okay, 27 minutes and four seconds right on the buzzer.

Jason Weber:
28:40

So talked a lot about how you develop your own philosophy and I think that is critical and I think when it comes back to that I said it before about, uh, you know that, that idea of having values and standards and competency right, you need to be competent at your job, and so that understanding of your philosophy. Now I'm just going to read something I pulled off my old bull website, which I wrote years ago. Bull website, which I wrote years ago. I would have written this somewhere around 2012, maybe even earlier, 10 or 11. But this is my basic philosophy back then and I don't think it's changed much and it's really as succinct as I could put it. So here we go Think before you act.

Jason Weber:
29:31

Movement over muscle, skill before workload, quality over quantity, mobility balanced with stability, stability before strength, strength before speed, system capacity before system power, process over randomness, objective over subjective, process over randomness, objective over subjective, attitude over apathy, humility over ego, team before self, integrity above all. So there you go. A little bit poetic, but it means something. It still means something to me today, just as I read that. I don't know that there's anything particular that I would rush out and change there. I still believe all those things and they've stood the test of time. Now, I think the old adage of I see far because I stand on the shoulders of giants is true. I've probably learned a lot of that stuff from people over my journey and I encourage you to take those and figure them out for yourself, steal them, change them.

Jason Weber:
30:41

I think I've spoken before about that author, austin Kleon, and his book Steal Like an Artist. That's what we do. We take ideas from other people. We morph them. There are very few really, really creative, new, absolutely original ideas in the world. They're all derivatives of something else, 100%. You look at music. Music is an incredible derivative and you can always trace back the people that they really listen to, the artists listen to.

Jason Weber:
31:13

So I think developing a technical training, a philosophy for yourself, is super, super important. I think it comes, and that's just that was my strength and conditioning one I think you should have if you're a physio, you should have that. You should be able to communicate it really easily. I think on the other fronts, from a technical perspective, I think you should have a really strong philosophy on how you see sport. Now I have one which I'm going to share, which I don't I've developed over time. I don't even remember when it came to me, but the idea is that we want to be able to move between sports. So I've worked in rugby and AFL two mains and I've worked in soccer. Well, I've worked coach them directly. I have worked extensively in American football as well, but I've worked coach directly rugby, afl, soccer or football. But all three of those things conform to the same constructs and that gives me a philosophy I can bring forward to simplify things like monitoring systems.

Jason Weber:
32:22

And what are we going to measure? There's three parts of every game and this is my philosophical approach. There's the strength contest. That is, when we're directly competing for the ball, which might only be a couple of seconds it might be longer in some sports, but we are on the ball. Now a strength example would be ball being crossed into the top of the box and you've got your center back in soccer competing in the air. I've got to jump, I've got to body strong to head that ball. That's a strength contest. I think the contested ball on the ground in the AFL, the ruck in an AFL contested Line out in rugby union scrum in rugby union, in American football, clearly there are contests, direct contests, all over the place, not just on the ball, but in American football you have the man-on-man contest at the scrimmage line. So that's one.

Jason Weber:
33:19

The second part is the speed contest. Now, a speed contest is either going to be because you have the ball and you're trying to get it somewhere very fast, or you don't have the ball and you're really close and you're trying to get the dude with the ball right. So you're defending. There's an offense and a defensive side to it. So that includes and I say speed contest, but that includes everything explosive, that's change direction, rotational acceleration, running angles, running curves, all of that stuff. It means I'm near the ball and I'm doing something hard at either offense or defense, one of the two.

Jason Weber:
33:52

Now the third part is transition. Most games have a transition component. Afl has big transition. You've got to move from one part of the field to the next. So you're moving from one strength contest, speed contest to the next. Where's the next one? Occurring Now in rugby and rugby league, same thing.

Jason Weber:
34:12

I watched the rugby NRL grand final on the weekend between Melbourne Storm and Penrith Panthers. If you get a chance, if you don't know rugby league, that is one of the finest examples of the game that I think we've seen. Penrith Panthers won their fourth championship in a row, which is the equal of anybody, I believe, but in the modern era just unbelievable. So but their transition, their ability to be in a strength contest and then transition because they transitioned forward and backward in defence, was amazing. These guys were exhausted. But they're the three parts of the game. So I know that I can communicate that in rugby league, in soccer, in AFL, you can community. That works in, obviously, american football, but in American football there's really little transition. However, I have spoken, a couple of my teams play really up-tempo game styles so they're going to be doing high level reps per game and getting a lot of repetition. They do have to jog between reps and that's an important part because if you're transitioning, you are moving, your body is transitioning, you're running, you've got a condition for that. But that's the sort of contextual philosophies that you need to develop to make your communication to people, particularly coaching staff, just that much easier. Right, so we're nearly there.

Jason Weber:
35:40

Last little bit is I want you to I think you need to in a big way. We talked about with weaknesses before. Obviously, if you're not a physiotherapist, you're an S&C person. You're going to need to understand. I think one of the most critical things you can do as a HBM is learn to speak physio and learn to speak doctor and learn to speak psychologist. I'm going to talk about when we get to coaches later on in another step. I always say we've got to learn to speak coach. In another step. I always say we've got to learn to speak. Coach. It's not their job to learn big words from sports science or strength conditioning and it's not our job to dumb things down. It's our job to make things consumable and in the same breath, I think, in order to communicate with people.

Jason Weber:
36:27

Again it comes back to that competency. We have to understand what is the skill set of a physiotherapist, what do they do? And they're all different. They're not all the same by a long shot. Equally, they're same of S&C coaches. Some are far more adept at some things than others, but in the staff you have, what do they do? What are they really good at? How can I complement them? How can I help them? How can I develop learning strategies?

Jason Weber:
36:50

I mean, everything we're doing in industry these days has to have an ongoing education component and quite often the leadership are required to facilitate that, not only facilitate it. In many cases drive the thing. So understanding where those people are at is absolutely crucial. But getting on that language, that's not just understanding weakness, that is. You need these skills Because in order to lead, you need to understand what these people do and understand them critically.

Jason Weber:
37:22

So to wrap up, we're going to become a high performance manager. We're going to lead a department, be it a specialist department or a whole operation. The first step is we're going to know ourselves Really critical. We're going to take a deep breath. We're going to look at strengths, weaknesses, how do we handle stress, and our values. We want to ensure we've got a great technical philosophy that includes not just physiology but it's going to include how we look at the game and how we look at the sport and how we can communicate that. And then we're going to develop an empathetic body of knowledge with the professionals around us so that we can communicate to them.

Jason Weber:
38:02

It's not their job to necessarily come to us. We've got to help them. I think that's where a good HBM can really dominate their environment and lead really well. So I hope this was a benefit. I hope there's people out there I mean, I know there's people out there going up in their careers, so I hope it was a benefit. Next couple of episodes I'm going to build on this. We've got at least another three steps to go, so I'll kind of make them short and sweet and try and get them fit in before a big old Darren comes back and stops me doing it. But yeah, if you've got any feedback, drop it on LinkedIn, but you guys have a great night.

-----END BECOMING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE MANAGER PART 1-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2 EPISODE 32-----
Jason Weber:
0:17

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Darren Burgess, Jason Webber, here. How are you mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:24

I'm all right. This is what three in eight days or something, mate unbelievable.

Jason Weber:
0:29

Can you believe that when we asked the 12 listeners we have Last time to get a 13th, they actually did? We broke all sorts of records last week. I think we had 15 people on the podcast Unbelievable.

Darren Burgess:
0:40

Well, I'm heading off next week to To Europe for A couple of weeks, so catching up with our mate, dave Carrolyn, who's had more mentions on this podcast than you have, dave Carrolyn. Well, we should do.

Jason Weber:
0:57

Dave messaged me yesterday. We're going to catch up and Dave's a lovely man to sit down and have a cold Guinness with. You can get a good Guinness even in Derby in England.

Darren Burgess:
1:09

We'll see how we go. Now, speaking of England, I saw a everybody I'm sure everybody on this podcast knows of Paul Scholes. If you don't, that's absolute blasphemy, because he's one of the greatest midfielders to play soccer For Manchester United. He came out and said that Manchester United team were not fit, so they were playing Tottenham. They lost 3-0 at home, had a man sent off yeah, I can't remember what minute, it was, 50 minutes in 50 minutes in. So they played the last four minutes, but the damage had already been done by then. And if you see the goals, I only saw the goals, I didn't see the game.

Darren Burgess:
1:49

So, um, but rather than comment on whether they are or are not fit, because there's some, there's some, you know, guys like ed lang and and they're brought in sam eric, both outstanding in their field, performance director, and Ed Lang has had a performance, he's been there for a while and Warren Gregson, who's looking after their sort of research and innovation. So some really good people there. But the pressure that that puts on the club and everybody making decisions forget the manager for a minute but the pressure that that puts on the performance staff, because the perception then is if Paul Sculls says it, it must be true. And therefore, whose head of performance are? It's Ed Lang, or whose performance, or who's you know and what we know, and I guess you know.

Darren Burgess:
2:43

Part of the reason why you and I are doing this podcast is to talk about situations like this and how we might handle those situations, because we know the environment. If a manager says I want this person to train, they generally train. If a doctor says I want this person to not train, then they generally don't train. Person to not train, then they generally don't train. So it's pretty hard to fathom what these guys are. Well, it's easy to fathom what they're going through, but it's hard for the general punter who reads that article, because then they'll watch a highlight of a Tottenham winger running down the wing and crossing the ball in the third minute, which caused a goal, and think he's right, scoles, he's right. It's a tough environment to be in right now.

Jason Weber:
3:26

Mate, it's horrible. I'll tell you that when I was in the UK in August, I caught up with Ed and his team up there at man U and, to be honest, the stuff they shared with me because clearly we were discussing speed, sig and running mechanics and all that, what they described to me I thought this is an elite program and I would be, I'll be honest and say I review every, independently review every group I meet with and they were as sharp as anybody. So to then read that you're going, oh my goodness, there's something going on. But the real tough one is if you were sitting on their side of it and you were able to sit down and go.

Jason Weber:
4:06

Well, what are the problems we face here? Like you said, we're suggesting they train, let's just say, five kilometers for a session, but the coach is pushing them to six, seven, every single session and it's just loading up on them and we've all I mean I lived through that where coaches just go. No, we're doing it because I understand. I understand what this team needs and, mate, I'm not sure they do you know it can go one or two ways.

Darren Burgess:
4:40

Well, it can go a few ways, but in that scenario then people then go into their shells and say we have to protect the players. Um, therefore, um, don't train them as hard. Or um, this superstar player doesn't want to train on a on a wednesday morning because he or she is annoyed with the coach, and and so then you protect them and you you don't train them. And then that makes things worse because you don't allow them to establish any kind of chronic load or any kind of training resilience. And then you expect, having protected them all week, for them to go out on the weekend and play. You know, a fast-running team like Tottenham.

Darren Burgess:
5:29

Yeah, it's a tough environment to be in, and those scenarios in my experience, because I've been in a bunch of them we had three manager changes in Liverpool and two in Arsenal, so the pressure on those managers were just unbelievable. You've just got to stick to your philosophy and your department's philosophy. So if you run a and I'm not saying one's better than the other, but if you run a sort of hard training, push them out to training at all costs, then you've just got to stick to that. That's the process that you're going by. If you run a training where it's a player dictated because you trust the players and you trust their experience, then that's what you run with and those two can work just fine, given certain scenarios.

Jason Weber:
6:25

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
6:27

You can't say we're running a hard training program, except if the superstar player says oh, I've got a bit of a sore back and you don't want to upset him, so that you don't actually push them out there to do something.

Jason Weber:
6:41

But the problem with that mate is like I get you, but the the problem with that mate is like I get you. I understand, let's say, we, we have those two, um, two philosophies. You just you just provided. But the concern, my, my observation, has then been you get a new coach, and this happens even with, let's say, assistant coaches who need to prove their value. Right, we have to be doing stuff. So a new coach comes on and says well, we got a new system to learn, we got new this, we got new that.

Jason Weber:
7:11

Like I said, we now get program creep where we'd be budgeted to work Again. Let's just use a general number 5K in these main sessions. But they become six and six every week, and so every week we're blowing out by a couple of percent. I've got plenty of data to show and this is not, this precedes all of the chronic stuff is your probability, your odds, risk ratio of injuries increasing in the shadow of that, like, if you're going for a month, six weeks of that shit where you're just overloading by modest amounts, you know like 10%, 15% every single week that you get to that fourth and fifth week and it's like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. All right, now that's where I disagree, where I think, in your view, you've got to stick to your guns. It means if you've got to have a fight with the coach and you've got to bring it to their attention that you are over man, I respect what you're doing.

Jason Weber:
8:11

Personally, my thing I do love hard running, hard training programs, but you've got to stop at a certain point. You can't just go to the nth degree. So my recommendation would be, as per yours is stick to your guns. If you've got to go and have a fucking blue every day with a coach fucking glove up, get in there and get amongst it, because they can't like it goes back to that money ball thing where you know Brad Pitt says to the recruiter you know, you come and you look at these kids and you say you know, but you don't, you don't know. And when a coach who's not educated in anything to do with physiology they've got a lot of experience, quite often half of their experience as a player in many cases and they say I know how far I can push, but you don't.

Darren Burgess:
9:02

You guess it. The caveat that I'll have on that is if it's the same manager, that's one thing, but if a different manager comes in and when I say manager I mean coach, yeah, yeah, the team's been going crap and the coach comes in and says I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. Ultimately, the team's been going crap anyway, with the greatest monitoring and relationship and I'm not 100%.

Darren Burgess:
9:33

I know what you're saying. You have to let the coach do their thing and the problem that the practitioners have. So let's say man United and let's say 10 Hard get sacked, which I'm not suggesting that that's the case, but just for the argument.

Jason Weber:
9:48

That's a possibility.

Darren Burgess:
9:54

Yeah, then the next coach comes in and if you are the performance director and you're relying on the, so my role in that scenario let's say I'm performance director of man United my role is to get the information from um, from the staff, and you've hopefully educated the staff well and everybody's on on the same alignment and and the same page and we're a hard working team. You then go to the new manager and say you need to work them harder or you need to work them less. It puts you in a really delicate situation because that new manager is probably used to their own before. They might be Spanish or Argentinian or whatever, and used to their own way of working. It's a tough environment and it's a real catch-22.

Darren Burgess:
10:35

And in my experience anyway, having lived through that, and in my experience anyway, having lived through that, coming from Australia, you can do it because A you feel it's the best thing for the club. B your risk of upsetting the manager. The amount of times I went into Unai Emery at Arsenal and said you know, I think you should do this, you should do that, and you could go in with no fear. A because of the type of person that he was, because he said no, I want you to come in like that, but B I knew if I got sacked from Arsenal there'd be other opportunities, so it wasn't. Whereas if it's your local club and your dream job and your kids are in the local school and all that sort of stuff which which mind more, by the way um, yeah, it's a tough scenario, so I could understand people towing the line a little bit oh, mate, but I think you've definitely pointed out a unique circumstance the switching of coaches.

Jason Weber:
12:34

I'll go to the other one where the coach has been for a number of years really good at balancing out load and, yeah, we go over sometimes but then we drop back and we balance it all out. Nothing's ever to the exact number, but we've got a good balance and we're working really well over a number of a good period of time a couple of years. But then we start to change strategy and we're going to do more at a certain point of the year, particularly, let's say, going into a finals period, right, and that hasn't been discussed, it hasn't been brought up. It's just because there's now pressure on that person, I need to do more. And it's like, righto mate, we've done a bit more this week and last week. It's all okay, but I reckon next week we probably just need to not taper, just drop him back a little bit. Keep the intensity up. We have to keep training. For the most part, my experience has been volume is what kills people.

Darren Burgess:
13:35

Yeah, I agree.

Jason Weber:
13:35

Training intensity is really the problem, it's the volume. How?

Darren Burgess:
13:42

much are we doing, and?

Jason Weber:
13:43

particularly when you get a team, that a sport where you can train at game speed, and we focus on those type of else. We overload game speed, then everything has to be at game speed. And then all of a sudden you've got this crazy session that runs out of it. Does your budget for volume in like in 25 minutes?

Darren Burgess:
14:08

Yeah, ultimately to round off the discussion, because I thought the article, the Sculls article, was interesting and it's let us down this rabbit warren, but the worst type of Everything's a rabbit warren. Yeah, the worst type of practitioner for me and staff member that I guess I've had to deal with in the past is the one who doesn't have the courage of their conviction and doesn't stand up for what they believe in because they're afraid of losing their job. And whilst I can understand it, it's pretty hard to justify putting a player or your own interests ahead of the club that employs you. So that's the and there's plenty of people that we know that are. You know, getting jobs in the industry and having that space. But yeah, that's just something which I think is, whilst understandable to a point, it's frustrating when you're in that world.

Jason Weber:
15:12

Yeah, mate, absolutely. Listen. I think we talked about this. We talked about the AFL Grand Final last week a lot, and we knew that you'd won the bet. You'd called Callum Mills out, which I thought, mate, on the surface, once you look at it, I think the Swans made a great decision, and what I'm about to talk about is not. I don't want to make comment on the teams specifically, but the interesting side is exactly what we just talked about managing a player through. Now the AFL season is. You know, depending on whether you play finals or not, your preseason might be between 10 and 15 weeks, then you're in trials for a couple of weeks, then you play whatever it is 22 rounds, 24 rounds.

Jason Weber:
15:54

Yeah, 24 rounds 23 plus finals, plus four finals, three or four finals depending on how you went. So you're managing a lot of load, not as much as, let's say, soccer, with playing whatever you said last week, the 80 games, but the AFL game goes. You know, we talked about that too. 90-minute game player time.

Darren Burgess:
16:17

It goes for two hours and it's far more impactful on the total body than even the most physical Premier League game is yeah, yeah.

Jason Weber:
16:26

So let's look at the grand final on the weekend. So Brisbane Lions smashed Sydney. From my observations outside, I thought tactically it was brilliant, like it looked awesome. But that being said, one of my old athletes from Freya, lockie, neal, blew his planar fascia in the fourth quarter. Had been managing it for some time. Now I'm not, this is not, this is just that hypothetical. So they've been managing that through the final series and it's probably just a point of how fine a line all of this pivots on in that his plan of fashion blows.

Jason Weber:
17:07

He felt it pop in Q4. Game was done by quarter four. He stayed out there and muscled it out because he wanted to live it. Great stuff, mate, huge character. But if that blows in Q1, the guy had 30 possessions and was on the back end of the defensive structure many, many times in that first quarter. That changes the game. Now I'm not saying what Brisbane did was right or wrong, I don't really care, but what they did was ultimately succeed. But it just shows you how fine a line it is. If that had happened in Q1, the press would have been saying oh, stupid decision, crazy, they should never have done it. He was at risk. I'm like, yeah, but they clearly just did their very best, and I think you've said this in the past to me, mate, which I do agree. Sometimes you need a little bit of luck.

Darren Burgess:
18:02

Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to try to start with the Scholes comment. So the Scholes makes a comment and people say, okay, who's at Manchester United? Okay, it's Ed Lang, it's whoever it is. What would happen in the AFL, right, if the Swans had chosen to play Mills and he goes down in the first quarter? The camera then pans to the high-performance manager on the bench and they get named, shamed, photographed, videoed. You know, Rob Innes, who's outstanding at his job, would have been the talk of the next couple of days, as would potentially the doctor, maybe. So that pressure is then ramped up.

Jason Weber:
18:49

Well, let's look at that one, logan McDonald comes out. So Logan McDonald, big forward right the week before, against what adelaide was it he? He gets his ankle. Now I sent you a photo of that screen. Grab his ankle got his foot got caught under and externally rotated. His foot was 90 degrees in the wrong direction, externally rotated, like that's not only medial ligament.

Darren Burgess:
19:20

I'm saying that's probably syndesmosis well, yeah, I, yeah, I guess, regardless of the injury, like he came out and was clearly unable. Yeah, they played him, they subbed him out. But your point about Lockie Neal is they made an educated guess and you could say they fought on that, he was able to play through it. But you know, like you said, who knows what would happen if Brisbane Lions not arguably he's been their most consistent player over the last four or five years goes down in the first quarter? Who knows what happens?

Jason Weber:
19:55

Oh, I think it changes. I think it changes mate.

Darren Burgess:
20:00

But I guess my point on that is or a point on that is, if you're an aggressive-minded team and this is the way that you are doing it, and this gets set up, I guarantee you, if you have a philosophy in February and March where Lockie Neal complains a little bit of some foot soreness and you put him on ice straightaway and say, right, you're out for three weeks and then bring him back and any kind of soreness, put him on ice straightaway. When you ask him that grand final day, he won't be able to because you've got this level of pain I've experienced before and you've told me that I need to protect myself and now you're asking me to play through it. So that's why their philosophy and of course they had some luck, but their philosophy, as with the Swans, same thing, yeah, yeah, I'm not saying that anyone's different, but in this case they needed some luck and they got it, whereas potentially the Swans might not have got their luck with it.

Jason Weber:
20:58

Oh, 100%. But don't forget, we sat here last week and both of us described bringing or testing players in a grand final who were clearly injured the week before, and we took them through grand finals and while you got the gong, we didn't get the gong, but the player played out really well, like we. There was no.

Darren Burgess:
21:19

Yeah, no ramifications, no ramifications. Well, I mean he got.

Jason Weber:
21:22

He had a huge calf tear afterwards but he got through the game and it was a good decision. But I guess the point of all of this is how fine an edge this all runs on. And you mentioned monitoring and yeah, look, mate, I'm a data guy with the best of them. But there is a point you've got to acknowledge. We don't know, like we can say acute, chronic ratios and all this shit, and we do our very best and yes, we should keep doing our best to get closer and closer to understanding the truth, but it's like a fucking black hole man, like we don't understand black holes. We know they're there but we can't know what's in them. We can predict to some extent but we don't know. So I mean, I guess there's probably in that regard some humility for some younger in the sports science spectrum, people who've never lived life without GPS. You know there's a limit to how much we actually know and those decisions, I mean we've just noted a few. I'll be the other one.

Jason Weber:
22:26

Isaac Heaney was clearly managing a stress fracture of some description. Now, how a stress fracture bobs up at the back end of the season is another whole question. Like, generally speaking, it takes six weeks for a stress fraction to rear its head and become symptomatic. So what changed six weeks ago? I've got no idea. Did he roll his ankle? And now they tape his foot up? And I've seen this. We did this with speed sick a couple of years ago. Kid rolls an ankle I can measure on speed sick. His ground contacts change because they're taping physios taping his ankle up to keep him on the field, but it changes their mechanics. So yeah, I applaud. I mean, excuse me, I'm going to just shout out to Damien Austin, who's the head of performance for Lions. Brisbane Lions, I think an unsung sort of guy Did a great job. His team were really well prepared, two grand finals in two years, oh mate.

Jason Weber:
23:25

They looked awesome, yeah, and there was a lot of good. As you said, rob, I think, did a great job with the Swans. So all of this is just hypothetical, but I would say our industry pivots on a knife's edge and the perceptions, the perceptions can be horrible. As you example, there's some really good practitioners up there and God knows what is actually happening. We're never going to know. The story is Darren. We've got to stick to our guns, be humble.

Darren Burgess:
23:58

Have the philosophy and you live or die by it. Obviously, you make adjustments as you go and you, you, you do things and you tricks and but I think, yeah, for me most importantly is have the whole club, staff department, whatever you're managing, on the same, the same pathway, and you'll get a few wrong, but but if you believe in it and you work towards it, you'll get more right.

Jason Weber:
24:27

And that's probably it. Maybe that's one for us to talk about later is how we get everybody on one page.

Darren Burgess:
24:31

Yeah, that's a good one.

Jason Weber:
24:33

I think that HPM thing and ultimately that's what it is, you know you're guiding a group of people in one direction is how do we get them all going in that direction, which is no doubt challenges you faced, I've faced. Maybe that's for next time, mate, but that's a pretty good hit out.

Darren Burgess:
24:52

Let's do it.

Jason Weber:
24:54

So now we've got 15 listeners, we've got to try and get to 20. So shout out to your buddies, let's get 20 followers. You know, mate have a good day.

Darren Burgess:
25:05

Have a good day, good See you.

-----END SEASON 2 EPISODE 32-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 31-----
Jason Weber:
0:15

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Weber. Here we are killing it. We've done this, our second this week. We're playing catch up, darren and I and I will add, we're going for legitimacy this morning because both of us have coffees, which is a change.

Darren Burgess:
0:30

How are you, mate? I'm all right, mate. It's 8.45 on a beautiful sunny morning, a grand final eve for the AFL here in Australia and preliminary final in the Rugby League.

Jason Weber:
0:43

It's absolutely pouring here in the desert in Western Australia. Unusual, we don't usually get rain. We're not known for it, yeah there you go.

Darren Burgess:
0:54

I won the Callum Mills.

Jason Weber:
0:56

The call on Callum Mills. Absolutely, man, I think, yeah, man, you were spot on. One of the interesting things was and a thing I probably didn't know or didn't remember was that Callum was pulled out. And again, this is not about Callum Mills or the Swans per se, but his history is he had a similar injury and was played in a grand final in 2016 and didn't go very well, so it's not the yeah.

Jason Weber:
1:23

So it's not the first time. So I applaud the coaches and I think Swan's management came out early. They made a good call early, Nothing worse. The one I hate is when you try and drag a player all the way to the 10 minutes before the game. The guy who's actually going to play doesn't get to prepare. Yeah, yeah, the kid thinks he's going to get dragged through. They told him on what it was Wednesday.

Darren Burgess:
1:50

Yeah, a couple of things on that one.

Darren Burgess:
1:52

I heard Phil Davis who, for people I've, seen a very well-experienced and outstanding player and a person retired now, but he's a centre-back in soccer parlay but a full-back in AFL. He came out and said and I think it was 2018, maybe that he was doing a fitness test in the warm-up on the day of the grand final and he was separate from the team and he just said he felt that was a big mistake. He said he felt it at the time and he was hoping like he said he had his time again that he would have said no, this is not right. He knew he wasn't right, but he got through the prelim with that injury. The other I got one for that. Well, the other thing about Mills Mills he got through training 100% and comes off. You tell him, you know, the media ask him. So, yeah, I got through 100%. The media ask the coach I got through 100%. So it would have been a tough decision.

Darren Burgess:
2:57

The final one on that before I let you off the leash only three years ago in the grand final, we had Stephen May who had a you know, grade two hammy, a six to eight week injury, and we turned him around in two weeks. But there was no at no stage in that process and this is not you know. This is just how we did it at the time. It was great because it was COVID, so we were very isolated into our own little hotel and you didn't know what was going on around you or anything like that. At no state was there any doubt that he was going to play and we just set out the plan. And if he hit all of those things, it wasn't even a decision to make At some point in those hurdles. If he hadn't made one of those, he was out. But he just kept ticking them off and just kept ticking them off.

Jason Weber:
3:49

Mate, can I start backwards and go forwards, which is always the way I'll go? Mate, I think your Stephen May management speaks to really well-managed, holistic approach, because when you go radiology and we go, oh, it's a grade two, it's six to eight weeks, so you're putting a definition on. You had a plan, you had steps and he could have failed at any point in that and you would have gone. Oh well, we try, we did our very best. That was it.

Darren Burgess:
4:19

But we did a great thing about that is um he. I don't want to see the scan results.

Jason Weber:
4:24

No, but again I think you've managed. Like the absoluteness of radiology sometimes is incorrect. I think the idea that we can grade, say, two, therefore it is six-week injury, is not always spot on. So, man, I applaud the management from your end, I think that's Outstanding team of doctors and physios.

Jason Weber:
4:50

Yeah, and again, before we get on to our other topic of fucking physios, I think you've got to look at that exact thing. I think your physio team, your medic, your docs, everything well, outstanding. So I think that's a great call and a great one for people to understand. The docs, everything was outstanding. So I think that's a great call and a great one for people to understand. But I will say grand final test, grand final 2013,. I did a fitness test in the warm-up with a player who had a torn calf and he ended up playing. But he tore his calf up so bad it became a 12-week injury after the game, but he got through and he was managed.

Jason Weber:
5:28

Yeah, but he was some tricky management from the medical team. Again, I applaud the medical team I worked with. They were awesome, they did a magnificent job, but it was a big cost. You could only have done it once. They pulled the trigger once and got it through Grand final what are you doing? But he was in the warm-up. I mean, I was, I pushed him, I flogged him in the warm-up because I was going to say like you're either going to survive this and we're going to go or I'm not having a half decision here. And he A the athlete, was super brave and gave it everything. I think the coaches made good decisions. They were like hawks and were watching it and I think the medical team were just outstanding. The physios, the docs were just outstanding. So I mean but I will say I have another final story Similar thing, defender.

Jason Weber:
6:27

So similar to the defender we just described Going into finals. So finals are now two weeks away. This was two years ago. Player has what's classified as a grade two plus injury on scan.

Jason Weber:
6:43

The management team medical strength, you strength, conditioning, performance, the whole thing did exactly what you did stepped him through his. This is what we're going to do, and every step of the way, if he fails one thing, he's out. One of the beauties was he got to on the field and again, gratuitous publication. But I don't care. They used SpeedSig in the back end and because they had pre-data, it was just one more step and that's what it should be. He went, got range of motion, got strength, got function, got on the field, got speed. But you're also doing the speed the way you used to do it. You haven't changed. Bang.

Jason Weber:
7:22

The kid ended up playing two finals at I think it was three weeks. They got him through in 21 days when he should have been. They were calling five to six and in that case the doctor had gone to the coach and said oh, we're all done. This kid can't play, he's out, he's out, he's out. And I'm like fuck man, what are you doing? Whereas, like you described, good management of the athlete's mind, the body, the team are together. Anyway, yeah, both good examples of great management. There I would say radiology is one piece of it. Don't get sucked into. You know the absoluteness of it all. Don't get sucked into the absoluteness of it all the time.

Darren Burgess:
9:10

Yeah, I guess the other thing a player is not a player is not a player. And I'm not talking about their mental makeup. They're all equal, just some are more equal than others If it was, I don't know I Christian Salem running off the halfback or a right winger in soccer. Yes, yeah and a back. So you know, we had fortunately played Western Bulldogs four times in that season and the most Masey had sprinted was 23 metres.

Darren Burgess:
9:43

So, you know, and he's a smart senior player and could self-manage, and you know, there's no doubt that he re-injured it at the time during the game. So you could say, you know, did you get away with it, didn't you? But he re-injured it, or he pulled up short in the second quarter when we were losing. We ended up winning comfortably, but, yeah, he managed himself really well and we threw as much data at it as we possibly could. But ultimately, as I said to you earlier this week, I think it was a smart decision by Swans not to play him in a different position, different player, different history.

Jason Weber:
10:20

Oh, I agree, I agree, but I think the holistic approach is fantastic, which I guess leads us into I know I intimated before the fucking physio thing that's. I'm just being, I'm just being uh supercilious with that like, um, physios are awesome, parts of our mechanism and I think in australia, I will say and I'm probably uk would be my limited experience there, but you'd know our, our level of capability with physios is far greater and I say this with caution than the us with, um, some athletic trainers I've seen they just don't have the same skill set and I think everyone would acknowledge that that they're not. They're educated very, very differently. I had a conversation the other day with an AT in the US who really didn't understand the anatomy of an injury that we were talking about and therefore then discussing in a collective way with the rest of the staff how you might treat that athlete. They didn't really understand, which I found to be remarkable.

Jason Weber:
11:28

So I think we're very lucky that the good physios there's good and bad of everything, right? Well, look Like Jerry Seinfeld says, you can't have the best doctor. Some doctors only pass by 1%. You're going to have the doctor that only just got through. So, anyway, what have you got for me on the fucking physios thing mate.

Darren Burgess:
11:49

Well, I'm not going to, you know, no, no of course no, no, no.

Darren Burgess:
11:53

I've just lost a very good physio, tim Parham, who I've been working with for many years, both in the AFL and in the Premier League, and he's moved to Port Adelaide, who's our arch rival. So it's, you know, a Liverpool physio going to Everton or you know an Arsenal physio going to Tottenham, or something like that. And they poached him, and fair play to them. They went about it the right way and did the job, and it's a slightly different role for him. He's more on the performance side. I'm not quite sure of the details, but it's a better role, better pay and good luck to him. So now I'm recruiting. Well, there you go, you just publicly put it out there.

Darren Burgess:
12:34

Yeah, rehab physio. So yeah, we're slightly restructuring the department At this stage. Anyway, we're slightly restructuring the department so we'll see where it lands, but the ad will go up shortly. So that's four positions that I've had to advertise this year. So externally people are probably thinking, wow, they're all abandoning Virgo, they've all gone on to bigger and better jobs.

Jason Weber:
12:55

But they've aren't, mate. I think we've talked about that before. We've talked about that before. I think if you've got people going upwards to other jobs, I think that's a massive, a massive kudos to your program and to your leadership. That, um, you know those guys are going on with it.

Jason Weber:
13:16

But I would say any staff at the last minute, given that you've had quite a few anyone telling you the last minute you're gonna say, oh, fucking snc coaches, what? Because it's just the hassle of it, like just finding, finding a new person, particularly a good one. Like I've got a guy for you. Man, I've got an athlete of mine in Italy at the moment we're managing a hamstring and he's working with the physios in Italy and he had so they don't scan the thing, they've done an ultrasound. They sent me the ultrasound and I'm like man, you can't they looked at contractile quality like under man, you can't, they looked at contractile quality Under ultrasound. You can see the muscle contracting and so that's fine and I said, well, that's good, at least we can see that when you see an ultrasound of muscle that's ruptured, it looks disgraceful but nonetheless you can't see. Was there any other damage that we need to be aware of my fascial or anything like that. So anyway they say, oh look, he's all fine on ultrasound.

Jason Weber:
14:17

I'm like, hang on, he's not because clinically I asked the kid to do certain tests and he failed anyway. So the physios are there, are pushing him through these ridiculous runs, like five-minute efforts, like continuous early in the rear, and I'm like what the fuck? Anyway he's re-injured, so he's still. He would only have been a 1B, like low-level stuff, but maybe 1A. But now he's gone, he's torn again, he's injured again at day nine. And I'm like what they're doing is not even related to any semblance of what we would call conventional management of a hamstring injury. There's no progressions in speed, there's no quantification of running capability. I just feel for the kid. The kid's fought this kid actually fought through cancer and he's got himself recruited into Italy. He plays on an Italian passport, australian guy but has an Italian passport through family. And I just feel for the kid mate. I feel for athletes who have pushed so hard and then they get and it's not just a physio thing. They could have been a dunce S&C coach, but they're just off the charts, it's interesting.

Darren Burgess:
15:36

There are obviously different ways to do things and clearly this is not a. It's not the ideal way. Yeah, but I've seen Spanish players who have done something to their soleus and calf and literally not do anything but manual therapy with a Spanish physio for 10 days and then say, tranquilo, I'll be right, I'll be right, I'll be okay. Then on the Friday, run around in a captain's run and play in a massive game on the Saturday and get through. And all the while I'm thinking, no, there's no progression here. He literally did not set foot on the training ground for 10 days. And then on the Friday coach says no, I'm picking him because he was an important player, Get through.

Jason Weber:
16:24

Rapido, rapido.

Darren Burgess:
16:27

Yeah, just you know, I'm like mate, we need to get you out there, we need to go Monday. Just you know, I'm like mate, we need to get you out there, we need to go.

Jason Weber:
16:32

Monday, wednesday, friday, and he's just like calm down. So, man out of interest, out of interest in that circumstance, given what you were doing at the time, did you see scans? Did you like, did you get MR he?

Darren Burgess:
16:43

said no, I'm not scanning it Right, but objective measures by the and and.

Darren Burgess:
16:49

The way australians and the uk physios and medical people operate is quite similar yes, very and so their assessment was yeah, it looks like a grade one, soleus, maybe grade two, you know. Yep, there's no way he can. He can train for the next sort of six to seven days, um, but because sp player, we had a Portuguese physio. They managed it, managed it conservatively and clearly did a good job, but he literally did not set foot on the field till the day before.

Jason Weber:
17:24

Yeah, wow.

Darren Burgess:
17:25

Came at Old Trafford and did some.

Darren Burgess:
17:28

And no issues after no, no issues. It was fine. And so you know, we say, oh well, it needs to be at 60% and 70% and 80% and 90%, which is obviously, you know, makes sense. But, by the same token, I spent a fair bit of time in Brazil in 2011-12 with Lucas Leiva, a Brazilian midfielder. Went over to his home club of Grêmio, spent a fair bit of time with them, watching them rehab. His ACL was playing six months to the day, doing things there within a month of injury. That I would never do with an ACL. This was 12 years ago and, yep, played no issue Six months to the day. He's playing, no dramas, and so completely different rehab process than what we would do. And fine, no problem.

Jason Weber:
18:20

When you say he was doing stuff ACL-wise that you wouldn't have done like. Just give me a quick example.

Darren Burgess:
18:26

So, using a lot of dynamic stability work, whether that was BOSU ball, tightrope walking, assessing every week from week one of the injury on an IKD every week, injured and non-injured and that was the whole way they went through the whole process. Was IKD from week one? No, that would have been sorry. Week three, Week three of injury, it would have been.

Jason Weber:
18:53

Darren, we're on a podcast man. Can you quickly let the putters know what IKD is, please?

Darren Burgess:
19:01

Isokinetic dynamometry, dynamometry, so yeah.

Jason Weber:
19:06

So were they training on the IKD as well as like so?

Darren Burgess:
19:10

not just doing one set they were training on it. Yep, yeah, yeah, it's interesting Literally and I'm just like what are you doing to my you know 40 million pound asset? But I just had to trust that not everybody does it like we do and honestly, we're doing a whole bunch of stuff that would be physios in Australia and England and probably elsewhere would be looking at and strength and conditioning coaches and be going no, this is not right.

Jason Weber:
19:39

Yeah, but I think you, mate, you're very lucky to have been exposed to that stuff. I mean, I would say the last ACI I did, which was just the back end of COVID, and I did it from start to finish by myself, so there was no weirdly no medical interventions at all. I did most of the treatment and stuff, which is probably frowned upon, but fuck that. But I did things in that process that I had not done before, mainly because again, gratuitous plug because I was measuring speed and how the kid was running. We actually slowed down at certain parts where I would have gone ahead, and that was my main thing.

Jason Weber:
20:24

I spent more time on achieving some baseline and I would say interestingly, given your comment about how much balance it in the biggest issue we faced, without question, was lateral hip control. The knee was fine. The knee did really well, but his, his glute med and his lateral pelvis control was was terrible, and it remains to this day to be challenged on that side. Um, and so I wonder, mate, mate, you know you look at cultures like South American, european, particularly ones that don't speak English. I'd love to see what they're doing and, more importantly, ask them why, where possible. Not that they listen to my stupid Australian accent, but like I, I mean this group.

Darren Burgess:
21:11

So this club had 40-odd players who were playing three games a week regularly. The dressing room looked like a, the training ground looked like a VFL, afl, you know, division III training ground For US.

Jason Weber:
21:28

That's sport in the park, Like if you're playing.

Darren Burgess:
21:32

And yet they were constantly winning the league and they were. The one thing that was really interesting was and this again, 12, 13 years ago, they were doing Creighton Kine's assessments on 72 hours post-game. Yeah, no, in fact, 48 hours post-game.

Jason Weber:
21:52

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
21:53

And I said to the player you mean 48 hours like post-game? He said I mean 48 hours on the dot and I said no, no, surely not Sure enough. We drove down to the training ground at 10 pm, 48 hours post a game. Wow, every player who played comes through, gets a CK and then drives off. So they were there for 30 seconds at 10 pm and I wouldn't have seen it with my own eyes. And the physiologist has taken the CK. So you know we might look at an interesting. I've got Barry Dross to do a pretty thorough review of CK and we sort of came up with the fact that it probably wasn't showing us what we needed it to show us. So we stopped taking it at Liverpool after that. But then suddenly there was probably people have sent me 10 different articles in different languages on CK that came up with a different result. So who knows?

Jason Weber:
22:55

Well, mate, I did CK. Yeah, I was doing CKs, you know, routinely back in those days as well, and I think the level of study required to figure out where it's applicable, like you get some signals that you think this is bang on and then other stuff that was so far off, so, yeah, it ended up again like we've spoken about before, it's no good if you're exploring it and you go, hey, we think this is the bomb, and you go to the coach and the coach is going what's this shit? Like you know, it's just difficult.

Darren Burgess:
23:40

Well, it points to the discussion and we're getting, I guess, close to the end of the time, but the discussion we've had a little while ago, and even the discussion we had earlier in this week in this outstanding two-day per two-.

Darren Burgess:
23:52

Two podcasts per week, bumper week of two coaches. If you are taking the information and you do your own internal validity, reliability and you find that it's useless, don't take it. And the best example and everybody there would be I reckon 90% of people who are of did a pretty thorough analysis of subjective data and found it was useless. So just stop taking it. And you know, everybody else who put in research out about it were like oh no, no, but it's so good. It's so good. Yeah, it's great with uni students who are forced to respond to pass a course. You know, I'm not sure it's great with $50 million athletes who could not care, who are going to get picked anyway.

Jason Weber:
24:49

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
24:49

So just do your own. You know internal validity and reliability, whether it's CK, ikd, subjective jump testing, all this stuff that we think is the Bible, yeah.

Jason Weber:
25:02

But the big mate, I couldn't more. I mean, I'm a I'm not a massive supporter of subjective. I've been there, done that and I think it's fallen over. But, um, the really hard thing is because I did a, a big study internally, uh, 2016, 17, looking at calf injuries, but you can't to get the number of positives. So, like we did this stuff he broke, he didn't break. It's so challenging. You need so much data. So it is, our environment is very, very tough to try and get genuine, like even validity-wise, like you can only validate against a guy who gets absolutely injured and then to say, hey, we didn't proceed to training because of this decision. You then need to be examining the decisions.

Darren Burgess:
26:01

So what decision?

Jason Weber:
26:02

did you make? And like it's like who's got time and space to do all those things? So when we yeah, exactly how did we stop an injury? Like my great decision to do X prevented a hamstring injury, well, how the hell do you know that unless and then? He got a better leg, yeah, but unless you're validating, unless you're recording the decision that was made and examining the decisions, you're not. You know it's insane, insane, insane.

Darren Burgess:
26:31

Because when I got to Liverpool, we had the resources to employ some pretty cool statisticians and we employed a company who were doing some market simulations and I've probably spoken about this before but because we didn't have enough injuries to actually, you know, Did you bootstrap your injuries, Darren. We used Monte Carlo simulations.

Jason Weber:
26:58

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
26:59

And we had a computer running for four days straight to use that bootstrap technique to just say, okay, based on these soft tissue injuries, let's try and recreate the same environment, but a thousand times more. And you know, did it work? Who knows? But that's what you have to do. You have to create fake injuries and fake data.

Jason Weber:
27:23

So, just quickly, when you create synthetic data like that, the idea of Monte Carlo simulations and bootlegging for the non-nerds is you're taking a sample of data and you're basically recreating more data that has a similar distribution and a similar let's just call it pattern to what you've already got.

Jason Weber:
27:45

So you're creating more samples such that you can create a bigger experiment. Now it's a widely used technique in statistics and, given that I've stepped off into the world of nerd Jedis, yeah, it's very, very effective. But I'm going to put back onto our environment and say that for Darren to have the resources great, he went and got those people, but I think your sports science staff probably need to be down the path of understanding that. So you know again, I'm going to hang it on sports science if you're doing just Excel and you're doing GPS data, you've got to be doing more than that. You've got to be able to. If you're going to be able to work for a bloke like Darren, you're going to need to know that stuff, and you might not necessarily need to be the guy that actually does it, but certainly understand it. There you go. That's my pitch for the day.

Darren Burgess:
28:40

Right, appreciate that's my pitch for the day. Right, appreciate it, mate, but at the moment we're very happy with brains in that space. Oh, but brains. So there you go.

Jason Weber:
28:47

There's a dude who would answer that question without challenge without a concern.

Darren Burgess:
28:54

We're more interested in physios at the moment, so you know how to contact me.

Jason Weber:
29:01

I went through an ACL mate. Can I come work for you? Yeah, no problem, we could sit and have coffee and discuss bits and pieces anyway.

Darren Burgess:
29:11

Look, mate, it's a good week.

Jason Weber:
29:18

We've knocked it out of the park two in a row, mate, I'll be honest and say, like we've got the 10 listeners we've got, I'm trying to break a record this month of people downloading, so we're looking for 11, 11 downloads this month. I've had some people.

Darren Burgess:
29:29

Spoken to some people recently who say you know good podcasts. So those people can you please tell them If we can get?

Jason Weber:
29:38

11 or 12 this month, it'd be awesome. Trying to break a record, it's just to make me feel good, right that we'd get a dopamine hit of hey, we're doing great, so we'll get 12 downloads. Anyway, it's been a pleasure, as always, mate. Let's see what happens in the grand final in AFL. What's your prediction, mate?

Darren Burgess:
30:01

I think Sydney have been the best team all year. I think Sydney have been the best team all year.

Jason Weber:
30:04

I think Sydney will get it. The only thing is if the Lions can find something emotional late, which is what they've done the last couple of games. But if they get guys light up like Cam Rainer and that light up Cam Rainer's like for people overseas he's sort of like a running back who plays in AFL. He's not the normal. He's a powerful, stocky but beautiful kick when he gets going, plays forward. So who knows? But I would agree Sydney have got so much firepower across the board.

Darren Burgess:
30:43

You're hard to back against them. We're on the same tip.

Jason Weber:
30:46

All right, mate. All right. Thank you, mate. We'll speak to you and everybody else. You have a cracking weekend. Remember, get those 12 downloads for us.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 31-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 30-----
Jason Weber:
0:20

Good day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Webber. Here with you Again, darren. We're a little bit late, but we're getting it done. We're finally. We're having another crack. How's things?

Darren Burgess:
0:32

Going alright, mate. It's a bit of a silly season in the AFL because it's the end of the season for most of them in two teams who've got the grand final, and so there's all kinds of player trades and you know meeting with different players and you know having conversations with players around why they should maybe pick the Adelaide Crows and you know things like that. But the people who are in charge of that are having way more than I am.

Jason Weber:
1:02

But yeah, been some interesting conversations this week, mate. The one I keep throwing out is the old Billy Bean. There's only one team that has a good year. They win the last game of the year. Everyone else at some point it sucks because you lost.

Darren Burgess:
1:18

And there were some tight games over the weekend.

Jason Weber:
1:20

man, You're sad because you didn't make the finals. You're sad because you didn't make the finals. You're sad because you went out in the first week, second week, whatever.

Darren Burgess:
1:33

Everyone sucks it until they win the GF. Yeah, the other interesting at the other end of the spectrum is the NFL, and some of the commentary around that at the moment is that the skill execution is really, really bad. And the commentators are sort of the ones that I'm listening to and I'm sort of saying, yeah, wait till sort of round five or six, because you know very few players play in the preseason so you know it takes them a while To edge up.

Darren Burgess:
2:01

I know we've beaten that horse before, but it's just interesting having watched a bit of NFL Red Zone, which is one of the greatest nine hours of television that God put on the earth. I'll just say what I tuned in. Anyway, you've got a couple.

Jason Weber:
2:18

Well, I guess, while we're on NFL of interest, on the weekend the Carolina Panthers, who are not slated to do very well this year, took the Las Vegas Raiders apart very, very methodically, did a great job, but out of interest. There just something that's become a trend in the AFL probably well, it's probably the last 10 years, but the old proximal hamstring tendon right. So we get the guy taking. Usually in AFL it's the guy who takes the kick, swings the kick leg through it, gets pushed from behind and then he lands on that kick leg so his leg's fully extended. He's at speed bang. Proximal tendon. I've seen a few proximal tendons go in heavy contact, heavy contact where the guy's flexed over. But this guy, adam Thielen, if you get a chance it's worth a look. Yeah, no, wide receiver Is he? Yeah, yeah, he's actually an interesting story. He's one of the lowest drafted players ever.

Jason Weber:
3:27

He was in my fantasy team like four years ago, so that's why I thought Maybe he got his speed work together and he got off the line, mate, and he's out Anyway he takes this.

Darren Burgess:
3:37

He did it on the weekend, did he?

Jason Weber:
3:39

Yeah, great reception. So great reception. I think it was maybe 30 yards out, might have been a bit longer. Anyway, he's charging at the end zone, straight down the middle. He's got two dudes on his hammer ball lobs over, he takes, you know, the ball over his shoulder and as he does it he's reaching and instead of maybe diving, which probably would have crushed anyway, he sticks his right leg out instinctively because the throw was bang on him and made the two guys hit him and that he grabbed straight for his string. You and I both know the guys at the Panthers. I haven't directly asked them yet, but it looked for all money like a proximal hamstring tendon. How can you prevent that? I don't think you can. It looked for all money like a proximal hamstring tendon and the only, how can you prevent that?

Jason Weber:
4:27

I don't think you can. I think that's probably why I brought it up. From the ones I've been involved with, I could probably think of one or two, that one in particular, who has done his tendon twice now in the AFL I think he's done both sides. For Martin, he's a flexibility issue. He is super, super tight, beyond the realms of reasonable range of motion, like it's not even okay, like he can barely touch his knees in flexion, like he's horrific. So you kind of got to wonder that really limits the degrees of freedom.

Jason Weber:
5:08

You have to play a dynamic game where you have to get into weird positions, and particularly AFL, where you have to play in the air and then often land weird which is the same as the wide receiver in question. He landed weird playing the ball in the air. So there's two parts to it. How can we chat? How can we condition for it? Um, I think very, very difficult. I think there is a case for um. There's some dynamic drilling you can do which is very hard to explain here, but it's kind of like a bozov jump if you want to look that one up on your uh, on google or something, but a bozov jump where you're pitched over the front, and I have done some Bozov jump where you're pitched over the front and I have done some work in that space where you're actually dynamically asking the hamstring at lower intensities during training or rehab to load up long.

Jason Weber:
5:57

But I think the reality is this is maybe the second part of this that I wanted to bring up was how does it get classified as an injury? Now I've stood in front of a board review that they've complained about a number of hamstring injuries and I've sat there and said we had two big tendon injuries that were collision-based. They weren't just running straight line and pop, they got hit in weird positions. One was pushed from behind a kick, one was taken front on and got flexed over. Yet that all gets caught up in your statistics which, as you would know, darren injury statistics in our choice of career can be significant. Yeah, I think the proximal hamstrings. For mine, for the most part it's an acute contact injury. I haven't seen a proximal tendon explode just by running. I'm not sure Someone else may have.

Darren Burgess:
7:00

Having done a proximal hamstring tendon in Recently, april. I've not kicked a ball since Jason. Yes, because it exploded, and when I say exploded I mean yeah.

Darren Burgess:
7:16

Yeah, exploded and anyway it was in a Pushed in the back whilst trying to reach what I thought was a really high ball, but in reality it was probably like waist height in my, in my old man's, soccer. Yeah, it was. It was an unusual position, but how does it get classified? In one hand, if I put my sporting director hat on and I'm overseeing the high performance department, I'm saying it is your job to prepare these guys for every position and girls for every position that they are going to be in in a game. Yep, it's your job to prepare that. And a soft tissue is a soft tissue is a soft tissue. So I can understand the general manager, sporting director, saying that and I will hold you all accountable for the injury that you did to our best um I love that that you did.

Jason Weber:
8:13

That's speaking from experience, right? So? You, you personally did it that is.

Darren Burgess:
8:18

That is one way to do it. Um, there are. There is no doubt that there are soft tissue injuries that are unpreventable. I think I've mentioned before when I first had my trips overseas, 2003,. I went to a conference in the UK and the guy speaking don't even know who he was, but he was a Fulham doctor at the time said put up a graph with a correlation between earthquakes and hamstring injuries, and it was a perfect correlation. I just thought that is brilliant. So I think you probably have to classify.

Jason Weber:
8:54

That's called for the nerds in the group that's called a spurious correlation. That's the technical term for that.

Darren Burgess:
9:02

They're not related. No causative relationship.

Darren Burgess:
9:05

We're going to get judged on those, but I agree with your caveat on them. So when you are getting judged, there'd be a big asterisk on them. Yeah, Because the reality is we're getting judged on them. So when you are getting judged, there'd be a big asterisk on them. Yeah, the reality is we're getting judged on them. The question I have for you, before you settle in on this hamstring one is on the weekend Arsenal played Manchester City. Yeah, Both teams reported to be you know, projected to be number one and two, in whatever order you'll take it at the end of the year. So a lot's on the line and Manchester City's arguably their second best player. But you know they've got so many of them. A guy called Rodri does his knee suspected ACL. The incident looks like an ACL. He's come out recently and said about the loads that they are under and the constant games and how he's fatigued. It's only around game five and he's already fatigued, maybe game six. He's already fatigued because of what they did over the.

Jason Weber:
10:13

I guess my question to you is Sorry, man go back Because of what they did over the.

Darren Burgess:
10:18

Oh, I'm sorry over the summer. Yeah yeah, champions League, yeah, yeah, the Euros, all of that stuff.

Jason Weber:
10:28

All of that stuff. Yeah, so the Euros are a big one.

Darren Burgess:
10:31

So they had no break, zero break. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. And I'm putting my Feef Pro consultant hat on here and some of his quotes have been amazing for the Feef Pro cause, because he's just come out and said they're treating us like animals and you wouldn't treat horses like this and all this sort of stuff Does his knee. Now that doesn't get included in fatigue-related injuries, but I suspect it does I think it should 100%.

Darren Burgess:
11:05

Now it's no one's fault, by the way. It's the fault of the people who are arranging the match calendar.

Jason Weber:
11:10

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
11:11

So, whoever they are, they're the ones that just keep putting games after games, after games after games. 100%. It's nothing to do with Manchester City's people and the way they manage them.

Jason Weber:
11:20

No, no, but let's go back to our normal. You know we're not judging people, but just use the hypothetical of the situation. The coach at some point has a and I think man City's coach at some point has said he pulled players out some weeks ago, I thought but they have the option, based on whatever data they have available, to say, hey, this guy needs a spell. Now the question would be are they doing testing at some point that provides an insight? Now, I'm not saying this happened, but it does happen.

Jason Weber:
11:58

Sports science guy or head of performance or director, whatever, gets some information, some solid information, to say this guy's gassed right. We've got a couple of bits of evidence that are saying, hmm, he's off. He's off by quite a margin. Goes to the coach and says, hey, this is where we're at. I recommend this course of action, maybe one game off. Coach says no, he's got to go. So that, then, is also a challenge, because, from a decision perspective, the director of sports done his thing, he's delivered the appropriate recommendation, but the coach doesn't take it right. So then you end up with an outcome that could have been averted but is not.

Darren Burgess:
12:49

So this is like our 30-minute podcast, where I could just get started on this because this is exactly what I do for FIFPro and talk about it and if anybody wants the FIFPro workload report. It is a thing of beauty and it's scary as all hell. We're going to have players this season from man City, chelsea plus some of the other big Spanish clubs who are playing around about 81 games in a season, which is madness.

Jason Weber:
13:21

And you'd say that pretty much mostly 100% game time.

Darren Burgess:
13:27

Well, this is the thing that we are just and we've put together a high-performance advisory network, and one of the things we discussed on our last meeting was match minutes is one indicator of load how many minutes you played. But let's paint the scenario of Rodri playing. They played in Europe midweek and I don't even know if this is true, so we're just speculating by the way, we're just making stuff up.

Darren Burgess:
13:55

Yeah. So he comes off the bench and plays 15 minutes and you as a sports scientist or a performance director, go great, we've managed his loads. Fantastic. Big pat on the back, we got through. Okay, coach is happy, we got Arsenal on the weekend Magnificent.

Darren Burgess:
14:12

He's still travelling from wherever they were in Europe on Wednesday night. He gets back on Thursday morning at 3am or he stays over there and flies back, gets back mid to late Thursday. So there's the effect of travel, there's the effect of poor sleep. 15 minutes of game time, the stress and the mental load of watching a Champions League game midweek All of those things are important. Travel wherever they travel to.

Darren Burgess:
14:40

Then he's got to then get himself up for the next game. So, even though match load like four minutes, yeah, that's a factor, of course it's physically more important but mentally demanding to sit on the bench, be watching the game, be thoroughly invested be when am I going to come on? When am I going to be needed? Coach annoying fitness coach says to warm up every 15, all of that stuff. So it all comes in. So then my question becomes if what you decided or what you suggested happened and the sports scientist says I'm just seeing something in Rodri. That is not quite right and goes to the sporting director, and she then goes to the coach and they have a discussion and say Rodri's too important, we're going to play him. Yes, the sports scientist has done their job, whoever that is. And then the sporting director she's done her job by taking it to, in this case, pep Cardiola.

Jason Weber:
15:38

Yep.

Darren Burgess:
15:38

Because we're making it up, yeah, yeah, I just want to say that, again, we're just dressing this up. Exactly. That's a really common scenario, by the way. That plays out, yes, in your experience.

Jason Weber:
15:49

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
15:50

My question then goes back to what the hell are we testing and can we rely on it? So, um, I agree, but for, um, hamstring, we are testing the strength of the hamstring and suggesting that that may or may not have a impact on them being injured, and I think we can all say that hamstring strength and flexibility is pretty well related to injury. So there, so there's some sense in that it's not categorically related. And I'm not drawing breath here, so you're not getting a word in yet, but I'm going to stop in a minute.

Jason Weber:
16:27

No, no, no.

Darren Burgess:
16:29

Reaction time, drop-jump testing. Motivation comes into it all. How the hell can we tell if Roger is fatigued? Are you taking a breath, All yours, Jason?

Jason Weber:
16:44

I'm not. I'm with you, man, I'm with you. I think what you're describing let's just put it in one bucket it's called monitoring correct. We're monitoring our athletes to try and understand are they ready to go? There are inordinate number of means by which to monitor people, some of which we have no idea. We have no idea whether they're right or wrong, and we have these loose associations, some of which are just observational.

Jason Weber:
17:17

I think that running X number of meters of high speed is the magic number. You know, there's some limited research. I think it's extraordinarily complicated, darren, but I think we have to keep trying. Yeah, in terms of the sports science hat, what I would say and this is not an answer, but it's a methodology, so we've sort of intimated that there's a couple of points, there's a couple of data points. I think there's going to be more than that. I think what you're looking for for a solid read on a player is being able to describe a single you know situation from multiple perspectives, right? So that means that if we're trying to describe fatigue, we probably want to have three or four things lining up that are supporting the observation that this kid's got too much. Now, it might be a measure of hamstring strength, it might also be. He comes in and his HRV which you've been doing on whatever ring or however you do it is off by a mozza. He comes in. Now I'm a big believer. I'm a big believer Two parts of monitoring.

Jason Weber:
18:31

There's data and there's human. You've got to be able to report the human. When you see behavioral changes in an athlete, for instance, they're normally quite gregarious when they come in. They're saying hello, they come in. They're normally quite gregarious when they come in. They're saying hello. They come in, they're really quiet and they're just not saying anything, or the opposite they tend to be normally quiet, then they're snappy and snarly. They go to get the physio and get strapped and the guy blows up at the physio. They're all important indicators.

Jason Weber:
19:02

So I think I'm not going to sit here and say I know all the tests that can be done. I don't by any stretch. But I think, whatever methodology you're choosing and I do think we have to continue to pursue this as sports scientists we have to keep going down the path, but you have to describe it from multiple angles. Now, look, I'm going to sit here and say I think there's elements of speed sig in this, and there is, but I created that for the exact same reason.

Jason Weber:
19:29

We can't sit on what we've got and say we have force plates and we have Nordbord, therefore we have everything. You know that is absolute malarkey. I would have used a stronger word, but I'm trying not to swear you. Take the force plate, for example. I did jumps and hops for many, many years and I think there's a great place for them. But the reality is players that do it three or four times a week get sick of it, and I've seen plenty of guys who can jump, go mate, I'm not interested and they jump and then all of a sudden you go. Well, all right, the data's down, but is it because he's fatigued or because he's just over it? It's the same thing for wellness ratings for subjective ratings.

Darren Burgess:
20:14

I love the way I look People out there are going. No, not my group. My group's an educated group and my group.

Jason Weber:
21:26

Give me 100%. No, your group too. Give me 100%. No, your group too. I've got mate. I can name two great Australian athletes who, on wellbeing, gave me a five every day for years on end. And it's like, what do you do with that? Like, how do you even there are players that that's going to work for players that won't. So I don't know that I'm helping anybody here by any stretch, as is typical, in two coaches and a coffee.

Darren Burgess:
21:55

We started on hamstring injury in Adam Thielen, the wide receiver. Slash tight end for the Carolina Panthers.

Jason Weber:
22:04

I hope he's not offended at that.

Darren Burgess:
22:06

We don't believe him In monitoring in the Premier League. But what I will say is this is where it's a real I'm a real advocate for not necessarily external people, but objective auditing of your processes. You don't have to bring somebody in to go. If you've got the money, then yes, please bring somebody in who's not in the mire that you might be by and getting confused and swamped with narratives. But if you don't have the money, somebody take a helicopter view. It might be a physio, it might be the dietician, it could be anybody and say, right, let's just do an audit of our processes to make sure that when we do make these decisions to hand that note to the sporting director and she goes off to the coach or whatever process you guys have, um, make sure it's a good process and they're well, not necessarily researched literature research, but you've done your due diligence on those figures, on that testing data and on those tests that you do.

Jason Weber:
23:17

Which means understanding what the effect size of that data is, what the standard error is, all that stuff. So if you don't know what that means, go and Google effect size, standard error of measurement. What I would say say let's do one more hypothetical darren, because this, this fits the bill right. So we've got a player in the afl grand final this week, sydney swans um callum mills, one of their captains. Great player, great athlete, blah blah blah Can't speak highly enough of him. I don't know the guy but plays awesome.

Jason Weber:
23:49

Now Callum was out with a shoulder injury earlier in the year. He missed 16 games. Now during that process he also got himself a calf injury. So then he's out for 16 games back-to-back. He comes back in at the end of the season when the Swans were hot, absolutely hot Comes in, he plays six games back to back. At the end of the sixth game, which was arguably one of their hardest of the season, he does a grade whatever 1B, 2a, hamstring in training that week, so conceivably, and I don't know all the nuances, but he's out training, not maximally, they're in the early part of the week and he pings a hamstring.

Jason Weber:
24:37

So now we're back to hypothetical. What would we be looking at how could we have prevented that? Now, I don't know what the Swans did and I'm certainly not commenting on what they do. They're a great institution. They do some fantastic stuff, but we're now hypothetical zone.

Jason Weber:
24:52

Kid's got. He's had a long period off from injury. He's already had one soft tissue. He comes back in plays six. So his loads are going through the roof week to week and arguably the hardest game of the year he plays in got some good minutes. Then he does a hamstring. That's one where I look at that, compared to where we started with the proximal hamstring, tendon stuff. I look at that one and go, yeah, we should be capable, we should be good enough to detect something there. That's my opinion. I think we've got to be good enough to get that one High value player, super high value player, extremely important time of the year. Now the Swans are deep, right. They got good players coming out of every part of their club. But what if it was a club who has just got in by the skin of their teeth and they need him? He's their number one guy. Now the grand final is going to be on day 18 of what you would argue is a 21-day hamstring. Do you go? Do you not go?

Darren Burgess:
26:00

Yeah, remember some of the commentary on that is they were bitten in the past by Sam Reid.

Jason Weber:
26:05

Yeah, Sam Reid.

Darren Burgess:
26:06

Was it 22? Yeah, they made a call on him and he just couldn't could barely move.

Jason Weber:
26:13

He came in. Yes, they played an injured guy, been out injured a long time, put him back in, but he'd also, Sam Reid, had a long string and that's another argument, another discussion a long string of multiple injuries that he couldn't get up it depends on the player Like I went board the listeners with the Stephen May story from the 21 grand final when we managed to get him up.

Darren Burgess:
26:36

But it depends on the player, his explosiveness, his mental aptitude for it, his level of doubt. Then you go through the objective testing regime and you know, generally speaking, if he can eccentrically pull what he normally can in terms of the numbers, if his running profile looks the same, if his speed exposure is adequate and if his max speed and max Excel data is good. Then you say, listen, coach, we think this player could play, but you sit down and have a conversation. So I'm sure whoever's involved in that discussion will have a pretty hard time.

Jason Weber:
27:29

You might make some moves to get him some less time, like try and start him off eventually and stuff, all of those things are doable.

Jason Weber:
27:36

But, more importantly, could we have prevented it? That's my question and I don't know it's sort of rhetorical and I don't know it's sort of rhetorical in what could we do as an industry if you want to call it that as an industry. How do we figure out that we've got to keep this guy on the field and every team comes to it at the sticky end of the year. Mls, major League Soccer, is coming up to that point in the.

Jason Weber:
28:05

US Baseball is at that point now. Major League Basecer is coming up to that point in the US Baseball's. At that point now, major League Baseball's coming right up to finals. I've just had one of the Major League teams I work with. They've just sent an old bull, like an older guy, back in Now. We did some speed sig stuff on him and we were like all of us looking at going. This is average. But the staff said look, he's been around for 400 years. He says he wants to go, he feels he can do it. You're not going to say no like to him in that situation, but could we prevent that hamstring? I'd like to say we should be able to.

Darren Burgess:
28:41

I'll answer it this way Using international soccer data. And we've got to finish on this because we're over the 30-minute threshold. But the game has got quicker, yep, a lot more sprinting in international soccer and I'm sure most other games are the same. The money in the game has gone through the roof the number of staff on average per club. So people like you and me and sports scientists and strength coaches and physios and doctors and biomechanists and all that sort of stuff.

Jason Weber:
29:17

Cultural specialists.

Darren Burgess:
29:18

Yes, cultural specialists has gone through the roof, and yet we're spending all this money in staff, and yet hamstring rates have slightly increased, even though we've spending all this money in stuff, and yet hamstring rates have slightly increased, even though we've got all this more research and everything. So there are just some that we just cannot prevent. And could we have prevented Mills, I don't know. Could we have prevented ones that the crows have had this year?

Jason Weber:
29:44

I don't know, mate, I'm going, gonna say I'm gonna get on my high horse because I think we we've got to figure something else out that's why I built that's why I built speed sig and I'm not.

Jason Weber:
29:54

This is, yeah, it's a gratuitous plug and all the rest of it I don't care, it's my podcast. But but let's take speed sig out, you've, we've, I think. I agree 100 with what you said. We're not the game's changing, but what are we doing to be better? Right? So we need to figure out, like, what's next? I get this question the other day from a dude in a very, very well-paid, high you know level gig. Hey, should I be using exponential waiting on my, uh, acute, chronic workloads? I'm like, fuck man, like you're in a big job, exponential waiting's been around for god knows how many decades. Like, like, why are you asking me this now? Like, where does that mean? As our industry, we're actually behind the eight ball.

Darren Burgess:
30:47

I think that's reasonable in part.

Jason Weber:
30:52

Some things aren't, mate, I agree. Some things aren't knowable at this point.

Darren Burgess:
31:00

We'll do a 2BC and update the loyal 17, 18 listeners on whether Callum Mills played on the weekend and how he was yeah, look my tip.

Jason Weber:
31:09

I think they'll play him and I think he'll do okay.

Darren Burgess:
31:12

I'm going the other way. I don't reckon they'll play him.

Jason Weber:
31:15

You reckon they don't.

Darren Burgess:
31:16

I reckon they don't. I reckon they've got enough talent and they were bitten by Sam.

Jason Weber:
31:20

Reid, they were bitten by. Yeah, okay.

Darren Burgess:
31:22

I reckon they don't.

Jason Weber:
31:23

Well, they got through 16 games without him. So you could be right there, but there are a multitude of things to discuss in this space, but I will say I will say I think somehow we've got to keep getting better.

Darren Burgess:
31:38

I agree.

Jason Weber:
31:39

We've got to get better. I'm not sure I've got ideas about where that is, but I think we need to continue to evolve and be better. And I will say close this out with one point which I think bears real relevance. Mate, you said something probably we go back in episode one or two about you going into a coach's office sticking a piece of paper on the wall and saying, when shit happens, we're going to look at these things. I think that's critically as important as anything. Getting the coach like if you come to coach under pressure and say, hey, here's this crazy metric we've got that, I think is telling us they're not going to listen. But if you've set that up and you've and I always think, mate, when you said that, I thought that was brilliant, but I think that's where your management skills come in.

Darren Burgess:
32:26

Anyway, that's for next time, exactly, right.

Jason Weber:
32:29

We'll reflect on that more. Mate, you've got maths homework to go and do. I've got an assault bike to go and assault and we'll catch you next week and given that it's already next week, we might have to do something.

Darren Burgess:
32:43

A bit sooner. Yeah, we might do something either late this week or yeah, it's been a pleasure, as always.

Jason Weber:
32:49

Mate, catch up you too, sir.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 30-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 29-----
Jason Weber:
0:14

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Webber, with you once again, two weeks in a row, darren, we got together, not bad.

Darren Burgess:
0:23

It must mean that the Crows have been knocked out of the AFL season, so we've got a little bit of time.

Jason Weber:
0:33

The AFL season's full for those overseas Full swing finals. They're in the second week of finals. Last week largely uneventful, other than one game.

Darren Burgess:
0:45

Yeah, it might be completely off topic and off script here. Jason was the script, the script that has like one line to it yeah, yeah, um, the interesting thing about afl compared to other leagues that I know about anywhere. I've worked in um. So we we haven't had a game in two and a half weeks, coming up to three weeks, and we've been in by and large every day reviewing the season for three weeks after the season finished.

Jason Weber:
1:17

Players have been in.

Darren Burgess:
1:19

Only injured players have been in. Just players are in for three days, yeah, or two and a half days, as per the players association agreement, and then, uh, but staff have been in basically every day. Um, to review, you know, defend defensive coach has put up a review of the defensive actions midfield forwards, stoppages, which is, you know, corner kicks, throw-ins or whatever set plays High performance team. We've had a review, we've had a cultural review yesterday, so it's pretty comprehensive. Yeah, so it's just interesting because I think I might have said before on this podcast in my last game at Liverpool it was at Sunderland away, it was the last game of the season and Blokes were turning up with their Gucci travel bags and you know all that sort of stuff.

Darren Burgess:
2:17

So they were off to Newcastle Airport afterwards and, yeah, so interesting, interesting process. I don't know which I prefer, because you can get paralysis by analysis. And, yeah, so interesting, interesting process. I don't know which I prefer, because you can get paralysis by analysis. But it is good to go through and have a look at what you did well, what you do differently and potential changes. Which brings us to our first official topic.

Jason Weber:
2:40

First official topic, which is the job interview process for young bucks.

Darren Burgess:
2:46

Yeah, we've. So the Adelaide Crows have advertised recently for three positions and, yeah, one is a strength coach, one is a head of sports science and another is a head of fitness and conditioning and we had four each, I think, each position. We averaged about 90-odd applicants for each and essentially, the CV culling process. A lot of organizations overseas are doing that through AI, which is interesting. You've just got to address the criteria. We had that option to do that, but we didn't go down that path.

Darren Burgess:
3:25

I just feel like it's a bit impersonal and it can't quite nail everything. And so I just get a massive, big spreadsheet sent from the people and culture, people with name, occupation, you know previous employees, previous AFL experience, salary expectations, you know A, b, c, a whole bunch of stuff. And yeah, from that cull down and go down that process and for each of the positions we interviewed five or six. And yeah, it was just an interesting process, I guess. And I thought today, you know, we'd spend the next five minutes or so talking about what people can do to enhance their process.

Darren Burgess:
4:06

And obviously both you and I have employed a bunch of people in our time and gone through this process ourselves, and I had the misfortune this week of informing sort of five people that were really close to the head of fitness and conditioning position and five people that I knew, or a few that I knew pretty closely, that they weren't successful. So that's not a lot of fun, but, yeah, it was a thorough process. We're obviously very happy with the successful candidate. Yeah, but the sports scientist is Alec Buckfield, who you know well, so we couldn't be more pumped about that.

Jason Weber:
4:47

Just for anybody who is in the sports science bracket, when your nickname is Brains, right, and that's on your resume and it's confirmed, that's your nickname. I didn't just make that up. You're going to do all right, but Brains. I've got on the soapbox about sports science quite regularly. He's the real deal, correct, he is the real deal.

Darren Burgess:
5:10

He's programmed in everything that you've spoken about in Python and R, but also in MATLAB and design. So he's going to bring a very different dynamic to the club and I'm looking forward to working with him. We appointed internally for the strength coach position a guy called Rob Jarrett, and that's pretty exciting. He's worked with our AFLW and worked with our men's team for a while, and the head of fitness and condition hasn't quite put pen to paper, so I won't announce that yet.

Jason Weber:
5:43

It's worth making a point just on alec, like because alec's been around a long time, but is it appropriate to talk about his previous employment, because that's an interesting one? Yeah, because for sports science guys. So he worked with the philadelphia 76ers for phillies baseball oh, phillies baseball.

Jason Weber:
6:02

What that's right. Sorry, I said basketball, philly's baseball, but he worked from South Australia, you know so, and it's really interesting dynamic to be able to work with an institution, an organisation like that from Australia. So I mean, I think that the opportunities for people who bring very specific skill sets and brains does have a very strong skill set, particularly in biomechanics very good. So it's a path for other sports scientists to think about.

Darren Burgess:
6:36

Yes, and Amber who left us. She left voluntarily to go and be with her partner, calvin, who we mentioned last week. And I also got a message from the head of performance at Everton saying that we had been a bit fearful of, and maybe put the fear into Calvin a bit when we spoke about the pressure that he might be under having just done his job.

Darren Burgess:
7:04

So I do apologise, apologize, there's no problem with that. Uh, jack nailer, who's an absolute star and one of the best in the business, correct? Yeah? Uh, we didn't mean to do that, we're just using that as an example. But yeah, alex ember, ember brings a phd in sports science and what she doesn't know about, you know, applying GPS, practically applying GPS, isn't worth knowing. Alec brings that other skill set, skill acquisition work that he's done for me in a couple of clubs in the past, and biomechanics with Cycling Australia, and so you know that sports scientist who has a lens on a whole range of different data points. So we're excited about Alec, we're excited about Rob.

Darren Burgess:
7:47

But I guess the things that I noted down that are worth talking about.

Darren Burgess:
7:52

Number one is this salary expectations thing.

Darren Burgess:
7:54

If the job and we'll just use a salary arbitrarily, jase, let's say the job is $100,000, right, any currency is 100 grand, right, any currency, and you see an opportunity to get 130 grand right and say $130,000 is my expectation and the people and culture person on the phone says it's $100,000, you, basically you're out of the race essentially, if you say my expectation is $130,000. And I don't know if these, by the way, if these conversations took place so I've got to be a little bit careful here. But what I know is the expectation is $100,000 and you say, no, but I want $130,000 or I want $140,000. I don't want to go backwards. That's absolutely fine and you're well within your rights to do that and I've said that on a couple of different occasions over the past 20 years and then just not going through with the application when I'm going for my own, you know, for positions of my own, because the salary expectation wasn't, you know, quite enough, and that's fine. But that is a really tight in the AFL in the soft cap space there is room.

Darren Burgess:
9:09

There's not, I will get the job and then negotiate up. That is a really hard and particularly with the head of fitness conditioning, there was a lot of really experienced people applying for the role and and they didn't get the job. Not because they weren't the most capable person for the job or, um, the best set of qualifications for that role, but essentially, um, we, we want the best person for that role, but essentially we want the best person for that salary bracket.

Jason Weber:
9:39

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
9:39

It wasn't 100 grand, so before no Everyone jumps on the tongue, but I think it's a great point, mate, what I would say. So I had a recent experience where I put my hand up for a national sporting position which I've had a lot of experience in and it was more about I felt I could really contribute. But when I went through the screening process, so the recruiter rings me up and says, yeah, how's the chat? And I would say the recruiter was overly familiar with me, which didn't spin my wheels from the outset, but he asked questions which were fine. But one of them was I live in Perth, Western Australia, and this organisation are based on the East Coast. And he said, oh, you're coming back to the East. And I said, no, not specifically. I live here, but I'm interested to discuss the role and all the rest of it.

Jason Weber:
10:39

But what ended up happening is I didn't even get an interview. Now I'm going to hope that I didn't get an interview because of where I said I lived and that I wasn't going to move initially. So my point in all this is let's just assume that's what happened, that they didn't bother. Okay, he could be good, but he doesn't want to move from WA. But I think to Darren's point. I think, with the way there's, because there's so many people going for jobs, there's two parts. One is what does your resume convey? And then two is get the job. Like I think there's that part. Like I feel like I didn't even get a chance to represent myself in that position because they bypassed me, because someone in an intermediate role said, well, he's not going to relocate, but we never discussed that.

Darren Burgess:
11:32

Yeah, yeah, that's a completely different story, isn't it? Yeah, but I think even with your thing about price.

Jason Weber:
11:39

I think you've got to get to the interview. You've got to get in. I know there are limitations for some people and, as we've talked about with older guys in the system trying to come back in or whatever, there may be expectations, but I sometimes still think and you've got to weigh this up for yourself is there a risk of you not even getting an interview because of the AI? What if the AI goes? Oh, he says 130 when the job's 100? Well, he's out.

Darren Burgess:
12:10

Yeah, that would happen. Yeah, that would happen. So it's a two-edged sword.

Jason Weber:
12:16

You've got to weigh it up. You've got to weigh up what you're conveying and how much you want it and whether that's part of a step forward for you.

Darren Burgess:
13:26

Well, and the other thing. The other point and we've gone on a bit about this, but just to finish for me is the old reference check. I rarely phone a reference check. I rarely phone a reference. So you know, with the people in the most recent interview process I'm sure HR people in culture sorry, at the club phone In fact I know they phone their references to get an official reference check. But I found, I reckon, eight people per final six interview that I knew had worked in the club at the time.

Darren Burgess:
14:03

So you've just got to be a bit aware that that's what's going to happen and, like I said, honestly, all six people for the head of fitness and conditioning could have done the job and I would have been really happy with and ultimately the decision that went down. But the reference checks all checked out and they're all good citizens, but it's yeah, the CV is one thing and most of the really good ones just put a one pager. Here's my experience. That's what it is. Don't go to too much trouble. The only issue that I would have if, or the only piece of advice that I would have is I know that some big overseas clubs just filter it through AI. So in the cover letter, you need to address the criteria or whatever it is.

Jason Weber:
14:51

Take your high school references off your CV. For young guys, I don't care where you went to high school, I don't care that you were a checkout chick at some point. We don't need all that detail. I think you should look closely at how you do your resume. Anyway, we're not here to do resume checks. The other one that bobbed up through the week that a question that specifically came from probably one of our 10 listeners was about mentoring, which I like the question. The question was really aimed at well, what do we do? How do?

Jason Weber:
15:26

As a young guy, I think you've got to evaluate when you get jobs. So there's two there's the job you get and who you're working with and who you can loan off. There's also the people that you surround yourself. So if you ever get interviewed by me, one of the questions I will ask you is tell me about your heritage, right? So where's your professional heritage? Who have you worked with? Who do you read and who's sort of read and study right? What coaches, not just academic plan what coaches have you learned off? So I would say I've learned extensively off Charlie Francis and Dan Fath. Neither of them I've met. I'm one degree removed from Dan Fath, but I've never met them, but their training philosophies and approaches are very central to what I now call my philosophy. So understanding that for you is critical.

Jason Weber:
16:21

But when you go to a job, ideally you want to position yourself with people who you're going to learn off. You want to learn off good people. Now I'll flip that on its head and say that I think it's also then the responsibility of the older guys to teach. I don't like situations where you get the old bull just keeping his cards to the chest and not. I don't share this. This is my secret sauce. Yeah, probably not. I'm more about, and I certainly. My last AFL gig, which was for a long time like 12 years, it was a long time was the idea to make it like a teaching hospital. We encourage people to come through and get people to learn roles so they can fill it out. But I think you've got to look at that when you're, yes, there's getting a job, but there's also getting a job with people you can learn off.

Darren Burgess:
17:15

Yeah, I think that's really important, as, like you said, as and not necessarily I want to live in this city or I want to, you know, be in this league or something like that, but it is who and what you can learn off. I take it pretty seriously in terms of developing staff and, yeah, that's a massive one. What about paid mentorships? Like if you're a young guy coming through, a young girl coming through the system, yeah, would you and yeah, you had the means, would you pay someone for a mentorship?

Jason Weber:
17:53

Well, here's the thing. So for a number of years probably 10 years ago now I used to run. I used to offer a mentorship in my old bull fitness which, funnily enough, we mentioned Jack Naylor. But when I went to meet Jack at Everton recently, he said I only took the meeting because I know you from old bull fitness, which, funnily enough, we mentioned Jack Naylor. But when I went to meet Jack at Everton recently, he said I only took the meeting because I know you from old bull fitness and I wanted to meet you and I'm like, oh well, whatever it takes, man, I'm in the door now. Now you have to talk about species.

Jason Weber:
18:21

I used to do some paid stuff but I delivered a course, so I would talk to the individual. So I had four modules that this is what we must do, and then theirs would break out into specifics after that. So there was a very big structure to it. So I was very hell bent on making sure I delivered high quality. So I think if you were going to pay for a mentorship, which I think is viable Now I've got a couple of my mentorees, a couple of guys who've done it.

Jason Weber:
18:50

One's running an NFL program at the moment. One's head of sports science in an NRL team, one's head of sports science in a super rugby team, and there's a couple others about. So, if you're going to do it, evaluate closely who you're doing it with. Like you've got to go through the ringer, you've got to know this person is the right person for you. I also then think you should get the opportunity to interview them. Like you've got to speak to them, at least go hey, this guy is not a complete wazzle. Like there's got to be some human connection.

Jason Weber:
19:26

If you're going to mentor someone, it's a personal relationship because you're trying to help this person's career along, and I personally take that very seriously. So if you're going to do a mentorship with someone, I would ask to speak to them. I would go through their career closely, understand exactly what they've done and interview them with questions. And I think, in my opinion, if I was got a young person asking me those questions, I'd be pumped because it shows their intent to learn and their intent to get value out of what they're doing. And I think, as someone who is in business for themselves, delivering value above and beyond just the rudimentary product that you're selling, is critical and it's all personal.

Darren Burgess:
20:22

I think you can't expect to learn everything through on-the-job experiences. I think you can shortcut by speaking to people who have been through it a bit.

Darren Burgess:
20:32

So yeah, I'm a big fan of it. I think I've only done really two People who are already in heads of performance roles where they've offered some money for the time and wanted it formalised on official and I've gone through and done that. But it's the thing where I'm, I don't know more likely to do it. I know, say, brett Bartholomew talks about this a lot, where people contact you on LinkedIn and say have you just got 20 minutes for a phone? Call 20 minutes for a phone call.

Jason Weber:
21:06

I don't like that Charging people 20 minutes for a phone call. 20 minutes for a phone call. I don't like that Charging people 20 minutes for a phone call.

Darren Burgess:
21:11

No, it's more like people expecting to get 30 minutes of your time. You know, next time I notice the Crows are playing in Melbourne, can I just have 30 minutes for a coffee?

Jason Weber:
21:22

I'll buy a coffee.

Darren Burgess:
21:23

Yeah, yeah, I would say I answer 90% of questions that come through email, like how did you get started or what advice would you give those sorts of things. But sitting down for, you know, an hour coffee with someone that you've never met before, that might be a bit much. So, yeah, have a think about who you choose as your mentor and be prepared to make it formal.

Jason Weber:
21:52

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I've just come up, blake. I had a cracking question to ask you, which I just need a second to gather myself. Can you sing a song or tell a joke or something? While I think of it?

Darren Burgess:
22:06

I cannot, but we are 29 minutes and 23 seconds.

Jason Weber:
22:08

We're 29 minutes. Well, I'm going to have to bring that question to bear on our next episode. Yes, well, it's always a pleasure, mate. I'm glad you've got sunny skies there. It's a beautiful spring day in Western Australia, lovely here and yeah hopefully only one more day of reviews, and then I'm done then you're done off to holidays and we won't see you again for however long I might be getting into the NFL two rounds of the NFL and talk about some of the injuries there.

Jason Weber:
22:38

But yeah, some good performances, some interesting, some interesting stuff early on, but we'll see if the Achilles trend continues from last year.

Darren Burgess:
22:47

Alright, mate, good stuff early on, but we'll see if the Achilles trend continues from last year.

Jason Weber:
22:50

All right, mate, good stuff, good mate, all right, good luck to everyone over the coming week and we will all speak soon. Cheers, cheers, cheers. Thank you, we'll be right back. We'll see you next time.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 29-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 28-----
Jason Weber:
0:10

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee, and this week we are two coaches. Welcome back, Darren mate, Good to have you back.

Darren Burgess:
0:18

Good to see you, mate. The ratings will plummet now that I'm on board after a couple of no, you know what I think it is.

Jason Weber:
0:24

I think people have been itching to hear from you and I publish something and they go oh, there's that bloke again. So they've been bitterly disappointed and the word on the street is Berger is back, so we're going to be off the Richter scale this week.

Darren Burgess:
0:41

Let's see how we go.

Jason Weber:
0:45

Well, mate, let me open the batting. I did have a message, one of the many thousands that we get every week, but I got a message through social media that one of my individual blurbs I talked about one of the contextual pieces of landmark that I used in AFL, which I think I probably got off you, which was the 80 metres per minute mean so your average speed. If you can hold an average speed of 80 metres per minute, you can retain general fitness.

Darren Burgess:
1:22

Oh yeah.

Jason Weber:
1:24

From a training session, oh yeah, from a training session. Yeah, yeah. So we're in a football session, be it, AFL, soccer doesn't matter, I think it's only pertinent there. I don't think you could probably say the same of American football, because that's a very, very different thing, but I think your league union I haven't used it in union specifically, but definitely AFL, definitely soccer, and it definitely works. But what's the history of that mate? Where did that come from? I thought it was a research paper somewhere, but I don't recall.

Darren Burgess:
1:57

Again, I'm not sure if it's a research paper or not, but I don't think there's anything necessarily physiological about it other than what tends to happen. You break down training sessions with and without breaks. So let's say, in football you stop for a drink, you move from one part of the pitch to the other. In AFL, because you're generally on one oval, you all come over to the side for a drink. You move from one part of the pitch to the other. In AFL, because you're generally on one oval, you all come over to the side for a drink and then you all go back on.

Darren Burgess:
2:30

And so, as you know as well as I do, if you're training session and you want it to be an aerobic capacity building session but you don't want to do much sort of straight line, pointless running, then those breaks can really take away subtract from the heart rate, you know cardiovascular benefit that you need from those sessions. So one way to look at that is looking at metres per minute and quite simply, if you're over that, 80, 85 metres per minute. Because if you have a look at a AFL game, when you take in rotations and time spent on the bench as well as even quarter time breaks, it ends up being around about that 80 metres per minute total and, believe it or not, it's the same in international football. So when you take into account the breaks, so in fact it's probably a little bit higher in football, because you're obviously not coming off on the ground it seems a bit more continuous, yeah, if you take into account half-time breaks.

Darren Burgess:
3:44

It probably comes just below that, but I'm account half-time breaks. It probably comes just below that, but I'm removing half-time breaks from both codes. So that's essentially where it comes from and it's a really good guide to making sure that if the aim is, if it's a coaching you know it's a coaching session and the coach really wants to ram home structure and tactics, then all bets are off.

Jason Weber:
4:08

Yeah, of course, mate. I think it's a very, very good general indicator and I must say that I used to use AFL for a long time. I would use that, set that speed versus our actual session speed, like our drill speed, yeah, and look at the difference between them and keep coaches, you know, keep them acclimatised to understand both, that some drills are going to need to be at game speed, some will need to not be, some will need to be at a higher level of contested effort. But in all of that that, you're still going to maintain that 80 with breaks and as soon as that stretches out, yeah, your 80 goes through the floor yeah, it's not a disaster.

Darren Burgess:
4:55

It just means that if you are aiming to maintain fitness and or even improve some aerobic capacity and all the physiological changes that go along the oxidative pathway with that, then you might have to top up with some running or you might have to have a word to coaches or whoever players or whoever it is. That's slowing that down a little bit.

Jason Weber:
5:17

But you make it oh sorry, john.

Darren Burgess:
5:18

No, I just don't want people to think, oh, you must have 18.

Jason Weber:
5:21

Yeah, yeah yeah, that's your aim, but you make a great point. You just sort of clutched, not clutched, you just sort of just mentioned it. It doesn't have to always be that, no, but it means that if you were doing, let's say, you're doing, a structure session and it's nice and slow and whatever, then the next session you come out and you go right, coaches, we're going to do it, it's a full, it's 100% football session, but we need it at this rate in order to get X, y, Z physiology changes you mentioned there. You need to be able to maintain this 80, yet they don't, and so that's okay. Then there's cause for intervention you need to discuss.

Jason Weber:
6:02

But you can end up in a spot where that happens for two or three weeks and all of a sudden you're two or three weeks behind the eight ball. And this is this idea of creeping changes one way or the other, like if you let it creep and you let it stay down. And I've had, I've done reviews previously and I think you and I've been on one many, many years ago, darren, where we saw rates of work go down and the explanation from the conditioning staff was that, oh, I thought it was really important that the coaches had time to do skill work. Man, if you let them just go down that path, they will never do anything that represents gain. You know you've got to keep some momentum in your development.

Darren Burgess:
6:47

There's no question. So I look at the and this is completely unscripted and we do have a few other things to talk about, but you can, in the AFL now you can have a look at running capacities of each team with some global metrics. You can't break it down too much, but with some global metrics and suffice to say I don't want to necessarily name teams because I've got some really good mates and they might, for some bizarre reason, take it personally, but there is no relationship whatsoever between the top four teams and the high-speed sprint running running capacity. Just, it couldn't be less of a relationship. So when I showed that to my coaches in a coach's review this week, their immediate reaction was okay.

Darren Burgess:
7:36

So it means that when you're hurrying us up in between drills and when you're um, you know, looking at the meters per minute figure and and those types of things, we should be able to take our time because the running doesn't matter, and so that's the simplistic view and to a point, there is some. There is some um. I get it. I get that that line of thinking, but I think there is probably a minimum capacity that you need to have To go over. That might help you if your coach's game style is that way inclined. So you know St Kilda game style. I think, from looking at it and hearing my coaches is everybody is sprinting back to defend and you were a bit exposed to Ross. Maybe it's changed, maybe it hasn't, I don't know.

Jason Weber:
8:26

Ross is a really hard-running coach, no question.

Darren Burgess:
8:28

Obviously outstanding at what he does, but their numbers reflect a team that has awesome high speed and sprint capacity. So then, you need to go over and above, but I think, by and large, the competition shows you, and it has shown you for years, that the running capacity needs to be at a minimum standard, but anything beyond that is probably not as necessary as what we in our industry perhaps think it is.

Jason Weber:
8:56

It was interesting, mate. I had a close look at some of the data that was available to me as an observer on the outside, because I know the data you have access to is from internal. But when you looked at, let's say, a really tight game qualifying weekend, not this past weekend, weekend before St Kilda, carlton, all right, I would concur 100%. There was no difference between run average speed, sprint, anything like nothing, and I did it quarter by quarter. Frio Port Adelaide, which was also Port Adelaide, got away from a bit.

Jason Weber:
9:45

Frio got away, port Adelaide, which was also Port Adelaide, got away from a bit of Frio got Port Adelaide got away from them. But again, very, very, very little difference. But on the previous earlier in that week there were a couple of dead rubber games were games where teams weren't in. Your old club, melbourne got Was it Melbourne-Collingwood that week before Yep? And Melbourne absolutely got spanked and the difference was massive.

Darren Burgess:
10:15

Absolutely massive. I think if there is a huge discrepancy, then clearly it's going to make a difference. But I guess, to summarise, you know, I think there's a minimum standard, like with strength and power, and ultimately it's those talented players. What we need to do is it's those talented players what. What we need to do is make sure those talented players have enough um capacity to execute their skills from the first to the fourth quarter and resilience to come and do it another between 24 to 32 times in the year yeah, and not necessarily beyond that.

Darren Burgess:
10:51

Let's not get too excited beyond that in the year.

Jason Weber:
10:52

Yeah and not necessarily beyond that.

Darren Burgess:
10:53

Let's not get too excited beyond that In the AFL anyway, In the AFL yeah.

Jason Weber:
10:56

What's the total number of games you would expect from, let's say, an EPL player that played international? What would they play a year game-wise?

Darren Burgess:
11:07

Oh, excellent question. I'm on a thief pro call straight after this. Oh, excellent question, I'm on a thief pro call straight after this. And so at the moment, we've got players playing 81 games a year, which is staggering, but on average it's around about 50 to 60. No, that's a lie.

Jason Weber:
12:32

On average at the top teams it's around about 50.

Darren Burgess:
12:36

And they're playing that to 90 minutes, versus the AFL going to 98 minutes.

Jason Weber:
12:38

Well, about the same With rotations. It's about the same, yeah for sure yeah. I agree. I agree, but 81 games is extraordinary, so let's look at that. We've got international break at the moment in the EPL, so talk us through that, mate. What's going on there for those, for the three people in the US who don't know what's going on?

Darren Burgess:
13:00

By the way, that is podcast craft. The way you just transitioned there from Did you like that, it was outstanding. You can tell that you've improved in the two weeks that I've left you online.

Jason Weber:
13:11

Well, I was left by myself. Once I submitted my, I had to write an application last week for the facility where I was, so 5,000 lines of code. So there you go strength and conditioning coaches who can't code 5,000 lines of code, which is not a lot if you're actually that's your profession, but for a knucklehead like me, a gorilla coder, that was a lot.

Darren Burgess:
13:37

So yeah, I thought, about some other stuff. You've ruined my transition so let's talk about the Premier League. At the top level of the Premier League, you've played one game a week up till now, right, which is really easy to program. Which is what, three it's about three weeks, four weeks something.

Jason Weber:
13:52

three games which is really easy to program. Which is what? Three it's about. Three weeks, four weeks, three games in Three, yeah.

Darren Burgess:
13:55

Really easy to program for. It's a nice and clean year. They're playing Saturday or Sunday, six seven-day break fantastic. Plenty of tactical work, plenty of fitness work. The problem is now at the bigger clubs, where all their players have gone off to play international not just the bigger clubs, the majority of Premier League clubs. And then you come back by and large for the European clubs and remember there's three European leagues now. There's a Conference, europa and Champions League, and so in the Italian league, for instance, nine teams are playing.

Darren Burgess:
14:32

Europe which is basically half the league. So you then are going into three games a week, so you haven't seen the players for two weeks. And then you're going into three games a week and most coaches will say they're about four games away from getting the sack. So you can imagine we'll get.

Jason Weber:
14:47

Great career choice shortly.

Darren Burgess:
14:50

So it's what the ideal world and this is where I think a lot of teams get it wrong is. They don't prepare the players for that. Three games a week. So I think I mentioned it on this podcast before.

Darren Burgess:
15:03

So the week before you play. You might, on the Wednesday, do a little bit more, on the Thursday, do a little bit more in order to condition those players. Problem is they're away for two weeks. So you really are at the mercy of the international clubs to condition those players, and most international clubs will send you their data now. So you'd want to be looking at their loads pretty carefully to see who can come in, because, as I think you have a 30% threshold of change from one week to the other, you're guaranteed to change that threshold 30% this week or go above that threshold, 30% this week.

Darren Burgess:
15:40

So you really have to make sure that you have a good relationship with the manager and you pick those players who are resilient to that. I hope I've explained that reasonably well.

Jason Weber:
15:50

It's definitely a challenging program and when you look at some of the like, the variety of people that listen to this, and because of our extensive reach into the US, you get the college and NFL guys up there who are going once a week.

Jason Weber:
16:08

But I had some extensive conversations the opposite way, in that not only do you have to plan for something three days a week, but what about planning for massive games? So I've got a team this week, university of South Florida big shout out to Coach Terence Kennel down there, but they're going to a massive game this week. So University of South Florida are a sort of mid-tier team. They're going up against Alabama this week and so they've changed their training to get all their big work done last week in the build-up to a lesser game where they had, you know, they won by 40 points, but just to back off a little bit this week. So they're fresh to go in Now. The opposite is true of your guys, as you're saying, the EPL. They need to be prepped to come in and handle three games a week, which is massive.

Darren Burgess:
16:58

Yeah and I don't know. Let's say I don't know who's playing when they come back, but let's say, for example, that it's Liverpool-Manchester City on the first Saturday back from international break. Those players come in on Thursday.

Darren Burgess:
17:15

Small game Some Friday, and then you've got to prep them for you know, for one day you figure out, okay who's loads of what Someone's flying in from South America. So it's more than just picking your best team. It might be picking your best team looking at the analytics who goes well away from home versus we looked at all of those things before games.

Darren Burgess:
17:37

Certainly at Arsenal. We knew which players were better away from home versus. We looked at all of those things before games. Certainly at Arsenal. We knew which players were better away from home, which players were better from home, which players were better off international breaks, which players weren't, who travelled the most, who travelled the least.

Jason Weber:
17:51

Here's a rookie question mate how many players are you carrying in an EPL squad?

Darren Burgess:
17:58

Normally around about 26, 27, of which three are keepers, so let's say 24. Between 20 and 24, most.

Jason Weber:
18:06

So you've got two teams plus a little bit.

Darren Burgess:
18:09

Essentially two teams.

Jason Weber:
18:11

Well, yeah, two teams.

Darren Burgess:
18:12

Two teams, but that can vary, but let's say for argument's sake, that's what it is.

Jason Weber:
18:17

But it really comes down to your depth how many guys can play like for like. How many times can we swap out that key striker for another striker and retain that quality?

Darren Burgess:
18:29

What competition are you in? So when I was at Arsenal, we were in the Europa League. They've obviously done really well the last couple of years and they're in Champions League, but in the Europa League you could afford to play some of the kids in those leagues in the early rounds, give them minutes. It was a really good launch pad for a lot of the young players that are now doing really well for either Arsenal or other clubs. They played a full season of Europa League. That might not be the case if you're in Champions League, of course, because every game is really important.

Jason Weber:
19:00

Right? Well, let's look at what's it like in his shoes. So you're an EPL, you've come off three weeks first and you've just gone into first international break and you're 0-3. So we've got our buddies down at Everton. Unfortunately, jack Naylor.

Darren Burgess:
19:18

Friends of the program we'd like to say yeah, yeah, friends of the program.

Jason Weber:
19:22

I spent some time with Jack over in Everton recently. Awesome man, very smart cat. So we're not commenting on that program. But the situation is Everton are 0-3. So you just said coaches are only four games away from getting fired, so there's got to be some pressure there. That's got to be a tough spot. Zero on three.

Darren Burgess:
19:43

Yeah, so Calvin, from previously Port Adelaide, has gone over to join Everton as well, and his first experience is losing three and in fact, I was speaking to him today, to be honest, and he said that they're up 2-0 against Bournemouth with three minutes to go in normal time and lost 3-2, which is the only time it's happened in Premier League history that three goals have been scored to win the game in the last eight minutes of normal plus stoppage time. So it's finished anyway.

Darren Burgess:
20:22

um, so what's it like at it at everton and liverpool and real sort of football towns like a lot of those northeast and northwestern clubs newcastle, sunderland you know it because you're driving into grounds, into both the match day as well as training, and there are fans lined up out the front to abuse you. You know about it. In the rest of the continent of Western Europe, the Spanish coaches that came into Arsenal when we lost a few games in a row or didn't win, you know, drew a few games in a row they would drive into training expecting to be abused. And Arsenal fans aren't typically like that and the training ground is away from the city. But that's what the pressure is like. You know it.

Darren Burgess:
21:17

Every time you turn on the TV they're talking about it, players feel it and so as a staff you really have to make sure that you're not letting on that. You know that everyone's under pressure. The corridor conversation is really important to keep that to a minimum, giving players outs for different things, because you know, for some players it just gets a bit too much and suddenly the back gets a bit sore or the knee gets a bit sore. So yeah, it can be pretty tough. Because it's people's livelihoods. You go into those situations knowing right yeah, of course it could end, but it's pressure unlike what we experience over here. The only thing that happens over there, differently to what happens here, is guys like you and me, and we don't feel the heat like we do over here if things go wrong, like the way the media reacted to, say, andrew Russell and the Carlton injuries this year was like he was single-handedly the scapegoat, vilified, yeah, which would never happen in the UK, even if it was the fault of the high-performance fitness performance director.

Darren Burgess:
22:35

In the UK and Europe most of the time you're anonymous, so you don't know that, but out here in the AFL you get named and shamed and, as we know, soft tissue injuries, injuries, poor performances are multifaceted, yeah.

Jason Weber:
22:58

It's interesting. You say you know, know, it's people's livelihoods and sometimes I get the feeling that we get left out of that a little bit, that it's our livelihoods too yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's our livelihoods mate, and I'll go you one step further.

Jason Weber:
23:18

I get that coaches have played sport for many years. They might have played sport for many years, they might have played sport for 15 years, and then they come to become coaches and they move on. But for most of us, you know certainly for you and I we've studied this from day dot outside of university, like we've trained to do nothing else but this. I didn't, you know, I didn't spend 20 years running around on a football field yeah so, like you know, sometimes I feel like it gets lost.

Jason Weber:
23:48

That discussion. It's our livelihood too and unfortunately, at times you get spoken to by some coaches like we don't give a fuck. It's like like, are you serious? Like this is everything. This is everything. When I said livelihoods, I meant our livelihoods. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, kelvin's gone over there.

Darren Burgess:
24:05

He's done a pre-season, left his job at Port Adelaide mid-season, done a pre-season, three games in. He's starting to look over his shoulder thinking I've just moved over.

Darren Burgess:
24:14

His partner is about to move over and yeah it's kind of left our Amber Rowe, a fantastic sport scientist, left our team to go over and be with Calvin, and yeah, who knows where that's going to end. I think they'll be fine, because it's generally the coach and the coach's person, but still you're, like I said, four games away from moving back to Australia trying to put your hand out for a job.

Jason Weber:
24:44

Yeah, and she's hard to come by.

Darren Burgess:
24:47

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jason Weber:
24:50

They're not plentiful. The big jobs are they. That's for sure? Anyway, mate, listen, I think we've about done our dash for the afternoon and you have an enormous amount to continue with this evening, which I'm sure you'll have fun with.

Darren Burgess:
25:04

It's something that I reckon we'll. Feef Pro just released their physical work report and I reckon I might send it to you and we'll have a chat about it for next week, because it's got some fascinating numbers Good.

Jason Weber:
25:17

Look forward to it, mate. Look forward to it. You enjoy the week and we will speak real soon. Look forward to it, mate.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 28-----

-----BEGIN SURGING TO VICTORY 2: A PRACTICAL VIEW-----
Jason Weber:
0:04

G'day and welcome to what I'm going to call this week. Two Coffees and One Coach. I'm Jason Webber and again I'm still on the road internationally and therefore I've lost my buddy, darren Burgess again. We're hoping that next week with me back in Australia and the AFL unfortunately finished for Darren next week that maybe, while he's on holidays in the Maldives, we might be able to catch him for a comment. But in lieu of that, of the approximately three or four listeners, we have a couple reached out through last week with respect to my last discussion on what we probably call a surge towards the end of a season and preparing your athletes and your team for surging and approaching a final series. So the question I got asked was a couple of specific things, but most importantly was looking for some more examples of things that maybe I'd experienced with respect to that. So I've got a couple of stories I will share, but what I wanted to start with was more the conversation around where do we start? Where do we start? Why would some teams get themselves in a position where they're excessively loaded going into a final series? Equally, why would a team get themselves in a position where they're genuinely underdone? So I think it falls to this.

Jason Weber:
1:39

There's some classic research that was done by a guy named Bannister years ago. I looked at. It was the fundamentals of the I guess the stress impulse, training impulse it's probably a better term training impulse method. So the balance of the fatigue generated by a single training intervention and the fitness generated from that, and so the different decay curves of those two things, of fitness versus fatigue, would allow you to predict where an athlete might be Now mathematically. Those things have gone through different evolutions and they've certainly improved, and we've delved into using them with heart rates and creating training impulses around that. And now we have distances and we're looking at exponential decays with respect to what we feel is that we call the training load. But one of my biomechanics gurus, professor Jack Yeltsin, would absolutely have my neck in a brace if I were to go out training loads. We're going to call it training interventions. So what training are we imparting on the athlete? Not so much load. It's not a mechanical load. There are mechanical loads, but we can't know them, we don't measure them. So what's this balance between freshness and fatigue? And I think that's the crux of what we're getting to. So have we done enough work to create a fitness effect that then will sustain us over a period from which we can allow it to resolve.

Jason Weber:
3:18

Now the resolution of training load or training interventions. Training expos, exposures is a really interesting thing. Now people will talk about tapering. Now I think there's a very vast difference between tapering an athlete and resolving training interventions, training exposures. I think that the tapering of an athlete when you've got um alic athlete, say like a triathlete or a swimmer or something, they're going through high level, high volumes, really high volumes, and they're going to bring them back down and train to peak for a single event. I think that's quite different to a team sport where you have ebbs and flows in both game exposures and then training exposures, and that the resolution of training interventions, I think, is relatively fast within a team environment. I think you can resolve training big weeks very, very quickly.

Jason Weber:
4:21

I've not seen many. Many years ago, when I started in this sports science journey and conditioning journey, I started in swimming and so I worked around with a squad that had some Olympic swimmers and I saw what genuine load looks like and how long it does take to resolve, whereas in football, even after a big pre-season I've seen I've been in some big pre-seasons in AFL you can see them like you only take a week of relatively lower training and guys seem to bounce back quite nicely, but you can retain that effect for some time. So I guess the question is starting to understand your athletes and what their rate of resolution is. Now there was a school of thought that I there was an author whose name is going to elude me for the moment but talked about understanding the effects. What was the fitness effect of a given session and what time did it take to resolve? Now I would certainly say that I think personally, for things like to sustain VO2 max, one of the things we work with in team sports is a general concept that I think came out of research in the EPL, which I may be corrected on by someone, probably Darren but looked at 80 metres per minute as an average. If you've got a mean of 80 metres per minute in your general football sessions, that is enough to sustain VO2. Now I've found that to be relatively true. I've also found that by manipulating the intensity of drills and getting your speed content, your higher work rates up, that within the context of team training you can quite comfortably retain really good levels of both aerobic and anaerobic fitness. Now the question then becomes which is challenging in a lot of sports is, as soon as you take the content, the contact component out, it changes the nature of what you've got to do in training. So yeah, there is a complexity to that, but understanding how quickly your athletes bounce back from certain types of training is key to understanding resolution and understanding that.

Jason Weber:
6:36

Well, okay, if we put in a couple of hard weeks of training, what do I need to have these guys resolve? Now? I worked with one of my speed city college football teams just this past week and we'd done some work just on the side on helping them organize some training planning and the like. And they've just gone through a similar thing, what they would call that resolution week, that recovery week down to 60% of their training load of the previous week, which is their maximum, which, if you check on the old resources, there's Vladimir Zatsiosky, the rule of 60. If you can get your recovery week to 60% of sort of drop of 40 from your peak load, that is meant to be ideal. Now he achieved, he got 62%. The team that I was speaking to and they his words are that they're bouncing back and they're ready to go and they're about to go into competition. So that's a. That was an excellent outcome.

Jason Weber:
7:36

But it's also relevant to understand and try and figure out what your team's like. An older team might take a little bit longer, a younger team might take a little bit less. If you've got a combination of the two, it may mean that you need to vary the nature of your athlete's training. Coming out of that recovery block, some may need to start earlier than others, but it's worthwhile having a look at because that resolution of training is super important. Now, is that recovery? Is that tapering? I tend to not like the term tapering at all.

Jason Weber:
8:09

I don't like coming down into games, because I think not only do you run the risk of having people think that, okay, we've got to maintain this fresh thing, we've got to be fresh, we've actually just got to balance our training load so that we keep our condition and then we can, at the right time, resolve training to have us appropriately prepared for a game. So there are going to be games that you hope to be, you know, the top of the table clash or that sort of thing. You hope to be, um, far more, I guess, fresh for as compared to and this is unfortunate, but you get to play teams that may be travelling or teams that may be at the bottom of the ladder. It may be pertinent that you do a little bit more work in those weeks. Now that brings into the conversation the tactical periodisation, and do we evolve our periodisation to match the load of the games that we expect to play? And obviously, with tactical periodization, it also brings in the evolution of skill that we're not going to train all skills all the time, but that we're going to have different emphasis in different weeks and bring them up Now.

Jason Weber:
9:18

That brings us then, I guess, to the point of risk aversion, of is there a point at which we have staff within our team that feel like we need to cut train? We need to not risk what we're doing. What we're doing is too risky and we're better off getting them on the field than risking anything. Now, there is a great old saying in sailing in order to finish first, first you must finish. There's no point being the fittest team in the world but not being able to get your players on the park. So I can get that sense. Yeah, we've got to get them on the park, but there's also no point getting them on the park if, in the last four rounds, they drop from third to tenth on a ladder which is what happened to an AFL team these past couple of weeks from third to 10th, with very close results. But what you see is and what you hear the comments that that team in particular, their skill execution under pressure in the last few minutes, week to week, was poor.

Jason Weber:
10:23

Now, was that just coincidence or was that a matter of preparation? Not for me to say, but I think it's part of considering that an environment that becomes excessively risk averse will not train those moments typically. So then there is a discussion that's going to have to take place between the conditioning coach, us and the coaching staff. We need to keep those things going. Skills is not necessarily our thing, but we need to create the environment. We need to create the space in which those skills can be developed. Skills, or you'd probably say more appropriately, interactions between players. They have skills established, but there might be those moments where there's a decision do I pass left, do I pass right, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not all going to be just physical. It's really critical that we create the environment in which players can execute.

Jason Weber:
11:23

Now, in American football they will religiously do two-minute drills because reading into the end of a game, if you can control the ball for a drive for two minutes and score at the end of it, you put your opposition at disadvantage and quite often games come to that. So the American football contingent are well versed in establishing that there's a tempo. There's a two-minute thing we're going to do Now. When we look at the AFL in the last bunch of weeks and Darren and I have talked about this it's been a very tight table so they've been competing super hard. This means some very high-level games. Now do you need to practice those last couple of minutes? Do you need to practice those clutch shots? You know, in some of these games that came down to just to kick a goal, guy had an open shot and couldn't nail it. That happens enough in football. You know the goal was open. We get to the they call it statistically the XG spot. We get to the they call us statistically the XG spot and have the shot and you can't take it. So do we need to practice that? But I think it's our responsibility as the conditioning staff to ensure that the environment is ripe for that and available Now.

Jason Weber:
12:39

In a highly risk-averse environment. You're not going to want to go to those spaces. You know I've been reflecting this week on some of those events. You know how would you get them there? There's no point people practicing their kicking when they're fresh, because that's not the conditions under which these guys, I guess, failed in the story I just relayed. They're going to be relatively cooked, so you don't want to cook people through the week but you might want to put them under a degree of lactic stress where you know, yes, their breathing rate's super high, pulse is up, they're going, they're under the pump and they've got to hit these goals. But to get those levels of physiological response in that environment you can't be risk averse, you've got to work. So it becomes a really, really interesting discussion on where this risk aversion is coming from. Is it coming from performance staff? Now, I've had a few people this week say to me it's the medical staff. That program there is run predominantly by medical people. Therefore they are risk averse. So if that's the case, I mean it may be that we need to speak up against them.

Jason Weber:
13:53

In my current deployment, so to speak, I'm working in and around tactical environment and I just read on the wall this afternoon at a facility I was at. In battle, you won't rise to the occasion. You will fall to the level of your training. There you go, and in the project I'm currently working on, that is what this project's about. It's about generating an appropriate stress response to have people execute in that environment.

Jason Weber:
14:26

And that's exactly what we're talking about in sport is not only can we physiologically execute, so are we fit enough, are we fast enough? Are we strong enough? All of those bits and pieces, but have the coaches had enough time to educate? Have the players had enough time to practice? Have the players had enough time to practice? And this is a really, really important thing is practice versus training? Right, there's, you know. Again, we go back to the swimming example. You're doing physiology training every day and you're practicing your skill. You know, team sports can be a little bit different in that you can practice the skill of your sport without necessarily being physiologically challenged. Equally, we could go out for a run and be physiologically challenged but not practice our sport. So finding that medium is really important and that's that kind of piece around risk aversion. So, if I move on a little bit from that and we might come back to that in a moment though. But when you look at risk aversion and you look at what we're trying to say about we're surging towards the end of the season, how do we do it?

Jason Weber:
15:38

We're looking to resolve our training. We know we need to keep some training volume up, and I don't just use the word then training volume. We need to be able to do a certain amount of it. I think I've conveyed by what I said earlier about maintaining average speeds in certainly my experience in AFL and then drill speeds that are appropriate. I'm very big on, yeah, understanding exactly what players are doing in training and, I think, measuring being the nerd I am, having built SpeedSig and all that sort of stuff I am absolutely for understanding, measuring the game in all of its components, including contact and the nature of the contest with the ball, which I think is the most unclear. Let me put that across the environment, because we have GPS. It's telling us how sprints and our axles decels.

Jason Weber:
16:33

One of the biggest areas of contention is what happens when we go into contact, and that is a really big area. It's an area that I've worked quite a bit in, but if I then drag that back to what I'm saying about practice and volume is that you need to be able to execute those things at the appropriate rate. And if you keep working towards oh we're just going to do a little bit, just a little bit and we'll just keep fresh, those things are going to decay, because we know there's a relationship between the amount of training done and then the resolution. And if you keep doing less and less and that training keeps resolving to nothing, you end up decaying. So when we talk about practice versus volume this is a key learning point for me was getting coaches to understand hey, we're coming into finals, we don't necessarily need to practice more. The guys have already learned what they're going to learn. We need to have the right execution volume and intensities to maintain our fitness and the right we expose them to some training practice, but not an extraordinary amount, which I guess can lead me down the path of my first story.

Jason Weber:
18:49

So my first story sort of pertains directly to that where excessive practice and a couple of other features unravelled the team I worked with. So in the AFL we were approaching finals, we'd done really well throughout the course of the year and we were very big on, as I said, training at very specific rates and understanding work rates and understand that there were easy days and easy components, but other things that we had to do at game speed and some things were over game speed. But when you get to the point where you've got players on an edge, so because of maybe game exposure, because of the type of time on ground output they're doing, you then start to get to practice and practice is retained at a high level and the coach goes no, no, we've got to do more, we've got to do more, we haven't done enough. Not happy with that, got to do more. And that's okay. Very, very short periods.

Jason Weber:
19:45

But when that becomes a chronic thing, it's not every, it's becomes every week and slowly you get these volume changes. Uh, and the team I'm referring to, we we got changes in the in the five to six weeks preceding finals and that is associated with a number of injuries which ultimately caused a team that was at the very top of the table to crash and crash in the final series because players were not available, which goes back to the old thing of in order to finish first, first you must finish. So she's a balancing act, there's no question. I'm not the one who would say, yeah, it's all training and no risk aversion. I think you've got to be smart, you've got to make sure you get your people on the field, but you want to get them on. As I mentioned earlier, you know you won't in battle, you won't rise to the occasion, you'll fall to the level of your training. You've got to train the way you're going to play, no question. And then it becomes the planning being able to resolve that training and get that through. And I will say from my perspective what has been.

Jason Weber:
20:53

My experience is that volume is the thing that tends to kill teams and cook them. Cook players, create overload, injuries. It's not the intensity, like we can go out and train fast and train at game rates. And again a minute's of generalisation. Obviously players have to be prepped for that and built at game rates. And again a minute of generalisation. Obviously you players have to be prepped for that and built up to it. But let's again, I'm saying that we trained. My experience is I tend to train at those speeds, so we hold them at those speeds. But when we blow that volume up, when there becomes too much practice and we do too much at that speed, that's a problem because then not only a year. Yes, we're getting higher speed volume, we're getting higher total volumes, and the one that I think people don't look at enough is we get very high volumes in the medium zones, in the five to six metres per second, probably four to six. So volume is always going to be the thing. I think, the ability to train at speed, at game speed, and execute practice at those speeds and practice correctly.

Jason Weber:
21:57

Someone said to me the other day about practice, about, you know, it's the amount of practice, the amount of repetitions you get. And I said no, it's not, it's about the amount of perfect practice you get. You've got to practice the it's the amount of practice, the amount of repetitions you get. And I said no, it's not, it's about the amount of perfect practice you get. You've got to practice the way it's intended. It's not just doing reps, it has to be reps, correct reps, which I suppose comes back to the point I'm making earlier about if we're training to be under pressure and to win those tricky moments. Do we need to engender, you know, drills that have people execute those tight decisions? Do we have to get them to practice those decisions and execution of skill under pressure? I think yes. I think the other story that I would bring, which is probably a more not quite a happy ending, but not far off With respect to planning, though, and having discipline, sticking to it, was the much maligned Eddie Jones back in 2003 World Cup with the Wallabies Rugby World Cup.

Jason Weber:
22:58

Now, at that stage, the Wallabies had had we didn't really have the personnel after the 99 World Cup a lot of retirees. Sorry, I've got to work the coffee there. It is, yeah, very much needed. So the Wallabies have not got the personnel In the middle of 2003, had some disastrous results. Anyway, we had a very specific plan. We had talked about trying to get trained to the appropriate level, but within the context that we had, we couldn't, so we made sure we had some Eddie listened and we got some running involved in it, so we kept our training really high. So we get to the Rugby World Cup, and we really planned out Now, this is pre-GPS For all those bunnies out there that had been born into the GPS world.

Jason Weber:
23:49

There was a world before GPS. We actually used heart rates, and we used a heart rate system that I bummed off the Adelaide Crows back in the day, but exceptional system. The idea was, though, that we knew we had to train at test match intensity Anyway. So we got all that done, but the World Cup was executed to a T. So I think there were, let's say there were three or four pool games you play and then three games quarterfinal, semifinal, final. Three or four pool games you play and then three games quarterfinal, semifinal, final. Now we had continued to train hard right through the pool games and we'd started to drop training back to help resolve that load, that exposure sorry Jackie in the quarterfinal, leading into which was Ireland at the time, and we just got through by the skin of our teeth. Now you've got to wonder, were we just not fresh enough? I don't know, but we got through.

Jason Weber:
24:57

Planning was good. Following week, in the semifinal against New Zealand, all Blacks were a great team, perfect execution. Eddie had a remarkable game plan, one of the best that I've in any sport seen to this point. His planning was extraordinary, but I will also say again, for a man who's been maligned for his training programs of recent years, his execution of the training volumes in that period. We stuck the task. And so that game against New Zealand, we were exceptional, we won. We were able to win the game, which was the Kiwis had beaten us by 50 points the previous June. This was in October, november, so we were up against it and we didn't have the personnel. But I think exceptional game plan I'll say exceptional preparation they were ready and they went Now looking at our RPE models back in the day everything was peaking just right.

Jason Weber:
25:59

The next week we played the final against England, which the Poms will all help us remember my English friends always help me remember that they beat us by a field goal in double overtime or something to that effect. Again, they were the best team at the time. We probably didn't deserve to be there from a personnel perspective, but from a team perspective we executed as a team. To this day I would still say that we resolved. We trained really hard, we resolved quickly. Did we nearly miss it by being a bit fatigued against ireland? Hard to say, but I think you're going to run that fine line. But our skills were executed to a t. Again, the kiwi game plan required specific skills to be executed by players. They were able to do it.

Jason Weber:
26:48

I think that's a great example of getting a great plan together, people sticking to it, so discipline. But it also painted a picture for me about what it means to get players right, stick to a plan. I've seen the previous story where there was a plan and the plan went off the rails quite markedly and created problems and ultimately led to a team that maybe should have gone further, not going further. So there is a balance. But I think, if I wrap this up, my theme so far for today has really been this idea of resolution of training exposure. So we put players in that training is going to help us get fitter and it's going to help us get better at our skills, given they're executed at the right, the appropriate intensity, but they also have a fatigue component that has to be resolved.

Jason Weber:
27:44

My contention would be in team sports we can resolve things pretty quickly, so I don't think there's a need for a month-long tapering phase. Like you might see, as I said, in a more cyclic athlete, we can resolve them relatively quickly. But I think the balance has got to be around retaining that perfect practice, and that perfect practice has to be at speed. Now. I think your risk aversion is going to come back to you way back in the early part of your season. This is where we want to go.

Jason Weber:
28:18

At some point you're going to need to say to players. This is what we're preparing for. But at some point you may end up saying to a coach hey look, our team's too young, we can't sustain that load or that particular speed we want to hit. I know when we had an older team we're able to do more. We can't do it with this team. But it's going to be about that appropriateness of the individuals for that expectation.

Jason Weber:
28:42

But I think you've got to have that expectation of what specific practice is specific practice for skill, but specific practice to retain the, the capacities that we need because, yeah, we can run around the block, we can do reps, we can do mas, we can do all that stuff, but ultimately, the practice of the game and being able to get to that exact, this is what we're going to do. And we can overload. That is ideal. I mean the notion that things like again. There was a story recently of a team that did all their football training, then did additional fitness, but it was all composed of change direction. So that change direction load was extraordinary. Change of direction exposure, sorry Jack. So this team ended up with a whole stack of injuries because they were trying to get more training exposure out of a somewhat specific task but just ended up cooking their athletes.

Jason Weber:
29:46

So again, balance, balance, but understanding your players and then working towards a position where you can resolve the training that you've put into them, not looking at just tapering I don't like that word resolve, resolution of resolution of your training exposure. Then, and at that point of resolution, your athletes will be 100% ready to go. So I hope there was a little bit more specificity in there for the two listeners that asked For the third guy that didn't ask well, dude, you need to get on the phone. There's only three of you Got to get on and ask a question. So, as I finish my second coffee for this podcast, hopefully we'll have Darren back next week and there'll be two of us and you won't have to listen to my banter all by myself. But you guys have a great end of the week and we look forward to speaking to you when I'm back on. Aussie time Cheers.

-----END SURGING TO VICTORY 2: A PRACTICAL VIEW-----

-----BEGIN SURGING TO VICTORY: LATE-SEASON TACTICS AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS-----
Jason Weber:
0:27

Good night and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee, and unfortunately, we're back to one coach and a coffee. I'm back on the road again and Darren's just finishing up AFL, so our time zones are not lining up. So our time zones are not lining up. So, that being said, what I'd like to share with you in this episode is a bit about my week. I've had a big week talking to a lot of people across a lot of different sports, and there's a couple of trends emerging and a couple of things that I think are probably somewhat disturbing and that people listening to this may find themselves in one camp or another. So I'm just going to go with sharing a couple of conversations and observations, really, that have come through this week. So let's start with the AFL. So the AFL this weekend. It's the last round of the AFL and the top eight will go through to the finals and start the finals over the next month. Now, the top eight are very, very tightly positioned this year on competition points on the ladder, so there's a lot happening. This last round, equally, there were, uh, very big dead rubbers, which you would might be calling tennis. When you play a game, that just does not mean anything. So neither team will succeed. They either won't both, both can't make the finals, or one team's already got their position locked in and and yeah, the game doesn't mean a whole lot. But in the same breath we saw one of our young teams, a team called the Hawthorne. The Hawks played exceptionally well, ran up a really high score, secured their finals berth, and they're a team that beginning of the year really were not slated to do anything, probably not going to make the finals but have in the last couple of months really really come home very, very hard and running exceptionally hard, which is part of the story. So they're doing a great job and they certainly ran out.

Jason Weber:
2:40

And when I was looking at some of the game data I saw today and it's not all absolute, but the nature of any data is it's fundamentally breadcrumbs All right, so you want to get as many different types of breadcrumbs as you can to try and figure out the trail and solve the problem, so to speak. So some of the data I was looking at today showed that Hawthorne's number of sprints for their team, so number of high speed executions and sprints would only occur when you're near the ball or pressuring for the ball. You don't sprint when you're out of the game and you're just maneuvering for position. So fundamentally, they've got a lot of people going and they were really high. Um, so such an absolute level. They were high, but they were also. Their differential was more than 19 to their opponent, which was was massive at that level. Um, you know you're almost guaranteeing that that level of physical dominance would suggest, yeah, you're going to win because other features of the game will go with it.

Jason Weber:
3:43

Understanding that normally in afl a winning team is around about 6% to 8% for sprint above and not always it can flip the other way. The best team might not sprint, but in general, that's just an observation I've made over time. I do some tracking around that data to keep an eye on the league and what's going on. So that's kind of one little story keep an eye on the league and what's going on. So that's kind of one little story.

Jason Weber:
4:11

But what I've already let probably loose a little bit there is you've got a team that started out slow beginning of the year and have come home really, really strong. Now what we've seen in the AFL this year is in the top eight because it's been so tight. We've seen a lot of big changes, like teams going from second and third out of the eight within three to four weeks because it's so tight. But what we've also seen this year right is a number of very good teams go on losing streaks of around about four or five games. So you've got teams that maybe started the year really fast and there's one team in particular that did that got five games on the trot from the beginning of the season and were looking like, you know, maybe they weren't going to lose, but of course then they went into it. They ended up going into quite a large slump and then come back again, and this is leading down a path. Equally, you've got other teams that went out really well. First half of the year they're looking like champions and then the end of the year there's been lots of injuries and results have really really gone against them.

Jason Weber:
5:20

So you can start to see the thread that I'm pulling here and that is that what's the programming like going on in season? I think it's safe to say that, coming out of the pre-season period for AFL, which is generally quite long relative to other sports, but it can be around about 15 weeks for the teams that don't make finals and a little bit shorter for those that do, but we probably had everybody up and going early in the year. But then there's been these big ebbs and flows and there's some stories going around about how teams were managed and I'll just flick now because I'm going to talk about AFL the whole time, but this connects to a couple of other threads. So we've now got I'm pretty sure it's in the last week I saw in the epl manchester city, pep guardiola has come out and said that man city, who are the current epl champions and one of the best teams, football teams in the world, um, he's saying they will be late, meaning they will be late within the season. They're going to start slow because they've got a lot of players that come out of Euros and all the rest of it, international players that he's given extended breaks to, and they're not into the season yet. And he's playing I don't know the name I apologize to those who are more football fanatics than I, but he's playing a 19-year-old player at the moment who apparently has been awesome I mean 19 in the EPL. That's just magnificent. So I mean you've got a coach of enormous pedigree there saying, hey, we're going to be late, we're going to ease our players in. We're going to come home strong. Now no one's made that call in the AFL, but that's clearly what appears to have happened with a couple of teams.

Jason Weber:
7:10

Now, if I take this a little bit further afield this theme, before I start to bring it together, I've had a number of conversations, not only this week but certainly over the last couple of months, not only this week but certainly over the last couple of months, through the NFL and US college football, a very, very highly rated college football teams, and there are teams that are looking like they're a bit short of work. They haven't done enough, they haven't had enough through spring ball. They've protected some players and there's people that have said to me we think we're going in underdone. Now we'll get to that in a moment. Some people in those spaces are particularly risk averse. But I also know that there are other teams in that American football, both NFL and college football, that have radically changed their planning in order to ensure that their spring camps and their camps leading into competition, which are notoriously very, very demanding times and very big jumps in load for players. I know teams that have taken steps to manage that and have really. I know one team in particular. It's already spoken to me this week that they actually had two contact ACLs in the camp, which is unfortunate and maybe unavoidable given the nature of the contact. They had one other two other probably, I think they had one ankle and maybe a hamstring, but pretty low level compared to some other teams and they're really happy they've come out with a body of work that their coaching team feel is more than they've done before, with less impact on the players or less damage. Let's put it that way.

Jason Weber:
9:00

The theme I'm trying to get to and what I've been thinking about is really this balance of risk aversion versus training for performance. Now, some will say that risk-averse programs are often driven by medical staff. I think it's probably a gross generalization, that's unfair but nonetheless that's out there versus training for performance. Now, we certainly know that some S&C coaches can get out of control with the best of them. So there's possibly a downside to going too far that way as well.

Jason Weber:
9:40

But if we bring it back to research and I know the work the chronic acute work ratios have copped a beating over times, but philosophically it does. You know, it's all Tim Gabbitt's work and I know Tim's a practitioner. He's not a straight academic. He came out of rugby league a very experienced man. The chronic acute work ratio subject has copped a beating over time and, I've got to admit, with some mathematical components here. It probably warranted a beating at times, but I still philosophically think it bears some good information that we need to understand. So do we understand where our chronic ratios need to be, where our level of exposure to training load needs to be for certain players or for a given group of sport rather than certain players?

Jason Weber:
10:42

And are we getting there Right? Because I feel like what we're seeing at the moment is some teams that are going in underdone and equally some teams then getting in season and trying to play it safe for a long period of time. Now again, if I flip back to the AFL example, there are teams that have crashed in the last quarter of the main season, going into finals, and they are playing for their lives this weekend and going down to the last three games tomorrow, sunday. There are teams that are playing for a spot in the finals, playing for their lives, which we all know, for some might be playing for their jobs, both players and staff. So what we've seen is some people sort of think well, are there times of the year where we can really back off and we'll just roll this in and we'll stay fresh and the term fresh meaning every game we're going in lightning, whereas I can guarantee that we've seen some teams this year lose and I've got to wonder and I do more wonder.

Jason Weber:
12:58

I do know for a fact from some teams, but I think there are some teams that say, okay, this is a relatively safe time of year. We're going to put in the extra work, we're going to do more work and we're going to bank some more work and we're going to be fit and strong. Now, if we go into games a little bit flat and they lose, maybe it's like Pep Guardiola saying we're going to be late. We acknowledge we're going to lose a couple here. Possibly we might not be at our best. We're going to try and limit. I know Coach Guardiola says he wants to limit the points lost, so he's going to limit his point differential and all that sort of thing. So I don't think anyone's ever going out to lose, but acknowledging that where we might have been more dominant, we may not be, because I can tell you now there's teams that have gone through that possibly safe time of year and they're flying now and I mean, at the end of the day, really no one cares who was on the front page of the paper in round 10, thinking they might be a chance when those teams are now in eighth and 10th position, fighting, fighting to get their position.

Jason Weber:
14:12

So here's my questions. Right, and unfortunately I'm not going to offer answers to everybody, but I think here's the question. My question is are we assessing the correct information? So at some point, either somebody saying, hey, we're just going to not train because we want to keep our people fresh and I want to look like I've got people on the field. To look like I've got people on the field, that's okay, but if they go on the field and they don't play any good, then we're going to get lampooned in our job anyway or maybe harpooned.

Jason Weber:
14:45

So are we looking at the right information? Is it enough just to look at volumes? Is there enough? I know in AFL I've seen people work, coaches work off total sessions that we need to have. Let's say, 30 sessions for the summer. We need 30 team sessions. Done that, if I get 30 team sessions, I know I'm confident we're going to go well. And in that 30 team sessions, then I need to know how many players of that the high percentage have completed more than 75%. That was an AFL coach that I worked with, so he had a very strong structure as to what preceded success.

Jason Weber:
15:27

So there are those type of metrics. There are metrics also like understanding that chronic work, like how much work have we got in the bank and how long have we held that volume of work? And is that volume of work consistent with what we did last year or this year, you know? And what have other teams done where possible? If you can know that? But I think that it extends to in-season. It's not enough and I don't rate this at all to jump on a force plate or to do any other neuromuscular type testing that suggests, yeah, we're fresh, we're fresh, all the while seeing your training capacity dropping off behind you and when you're getting done, when you're getting beaten by teams that are sprinting 19% more than your team, you've got to wonder. Now I acknowledge that in some of those games that we've seen this weekend in the AFL, like we said, dead rubber. But some of those teams are still succeeding, even if it's not 19%, they're still blitzing their team's opposition away. And we'll see in the coming weeks how that looks, but it does appear to me that there are teams that have certainly under-trained in the back end of the season because the AFL season's long, so it's 24 rounds. So 24 weeks, plus a bye week in the middle, a split round at the beginning. So that's 24 rounds. So 24 weeks plus a bye week in the middle, a split round at the beginning, so that's 26 weeks. So 26 weeks is plenty of time to detrain.

Jason Weber:
17:04

And I've got to say that I think we look at injury stats and sometimes I'm very, very adamant that some of the injury stats we look at are incorrect. I think when we're looking at injuries that are wholly unprepared things like proximal hamstring tendons like a player gets pushed and they go forward and land on their leg, it's almost like a collision injury and it tears the tendon. That can't be construed as a soft tissue injury. That is volume related. It may be, I don't know, but when you watch them on TV and they happen, same as an Achilles where someone. We talk about the Achilles in the NFL, and some of them have been where a player props on the ground and a 140 kilogram guy lands on top of him and crushes him and forces their leg into dorsiflexion. You know that's going to happen. So, in any case, that's the injury, that's a part of it. But I think we've got to be clear as a professional of how you would approach this as a professional, of how you would approach this and are you approaching it in a really data-driven manner.

Jason Weber:
18:21

I must say I go through the practice myself. I'm not currently in a team role at present, but I certainly go through the process. I spent a couple of hours today writing down like what would I look at If I went? Like what would I look at If I went back in? What would I look at? What would I be aiming for? And that's, if you know. Obviously, for me AFL is the most recent sport that I've done at a high level, but it's the same thing You'd be going if you went into discussions I've had in American football.

Jason Weber:
18:55

What do we know from last year? What have you seen before? What do we know works? What do we know doesn't work? But I think one of the things we've got to get to is the idea of understanding what's happening. It's not just about being fresh.

Jason Weber:
19:10

26 weeks is a long time and it's time enough for players to detrain and I think we see that with players who don't, let's say, use the american term have high reps. You get players who are benched. You know afl players come off the bench. Rugby league, rugby union, rugby union at the moment guys are playing just 50 minutes and rotating big guys out. What happens the next week when they have to play 80 minutes? Bridging that gap is really, really difficult. The American football is a key example. You might get guys only play a couple of reps per week in competition but they've got to train it through the week. But then we get to training and, principally, we want the number ones getting reps so they're practicing for the following week. So really think about being as creative as you can to get those players up.

Jason Weber:
20:01

But look at the body of your big squad. What information have you got that tells you you're doing enough to keep them where they are? Now there are teams that I've spoken to in recent times that you know we're doing the submaximum test. You know submax test, doing a I forget the exact specificity of it, but probably level four, five, six on a yo-yo or a beep test, and they're doing them for a couple of minutes and getting heart rates and seeing if the heart rate is relative to a constant velocity work. Is that indicator enough that physiologically they're doing okay? Heart rate variability heart rate variability can show you a lot of things.

Jason Weber:
20:42

Unfortunately, hrv can also be dominated by big influence. I know a captain of the team I worked with for a long time, great captain, who was very resilient and played for a long long time. But when I was doing HRV very frequently with that group his HRV was extraordinarily low all the time and discussing it with him he didn't feel any better or worse than previous years, but it was probably a weight of what he was doing as captain. He had business interests outside the league, new kids, all that. There's a lot of pressures. So then I think it comes back down to probably maybe summarizing with the point I made at the beginning about breadcrumbs Make sure when you're assessing any given problem or any given point of view, try to do it from two, three different points.

Jason Weber:
21:41

So take a different perspective, grab a different set of data on the same issue, so to speak. So if you're looking at, let's say, training volume, are they fit enough? Well, is there a training volume question? Is there a heart rate response question? All the types of things you can look at associated with that.

Jason Weber:
22:03

If you're looking at a hamstring injury, we want to be looking at multiple things. It's not just strength, it's not just range of motion. Clearly my bent is running mechanics. We want to see where that hamstring is. We know categorically again multiple discussions this week about how we see a hamstring injury coming back and the particularly the influence we see on um, on hip block, um, that people just not looking at and I get there's a technology component to that and I get there's a technology component to that and I guess there's a technology component to the whole conversation of this little podcast all by myself is understanding the tech and what questions is it answering? Not just accepting the data that's given to us, but making sure that what we're measuring is answering a question. I think one of the questions that may be to us, but making sure that what we're measuring is answering a question I think one of the questions that may be being missed at the moment is how do we keep our people fit enough in season? So I'm going to leave you with that thought.

Jason Weber:
23:08

Anybody who's interested in the AFL I strongly recommend looking at, if you can see, the last games on Sunday, the 25th of August, in Australia and then how it evolves over the next couple of weeks. In the finals, the teams that are all in the finals are all on the up. For mine there's one or two who might try and jump in at the last, but all those teams are on the up. All those teams have had bad sections through the year and they're going, some of them, hawthorne in particular. Not unlike Pep Guardiola, they came late and they're flying. So anyway, I hope this gives you something to think about. Enjoy. I hope to be back with Darren next week having another chat before he goes on. A little bit of leave, but enjoy and we'll catch you next time.

-----END SURGING TO VICTORY: LATE-SEASON TACTICS AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 25-----
Speaker 1:
0:11

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Darren, great to have you back. We're two in a row. We're breaking records here.

Speaker 2:
0:19

On a roll, mate On a roll. Good to see you and good to have the thousands of listeners out there. There are thousands. We're hearing more and more we think there might be 10, on a roll. Good to see you and good to have the thousands of listeners out there.

Speaker 1:
0:26

There are thousands. We're hearing more and more. We think there might be 10, to be honest, we're in double figures now, from what I'm hearing, we've got some.

Speaker 2:
0:37

You pretty much know how my week's gone. We had a win so that makes the week good. And we're going into showdown, which, for those not in Australia or not even in Adelaide, who don't really care it's the two-team town in a small AFL mad city and we're playing against Port, who are coming second and we're 15th.

Speaker 1:
0:58

It's the big rivalry game For everybody overseas. There's rivalry games in the EPL, there's rivalry games in NFL, college football. Everyone has rivalry games. So that's what this weekend is. But the AFL is fraught at the moment because it's so tight leading into finals. There are a number of teams not unlike Darren's in position which have a real possibility of upsetting the apple cart for some teams who are on the cusp. There are teams within our top eight at the moment who could very well lose this weekend and be out on their butts.

Speaker 2:
1:34

It's that tight for another Exciting for the league, not so exciting for teams that aren't involved.

Speaker 1:
1:41

Copy never is. What about you?

Speaker 2:
1:44

being the entrepreneur of life. What have you been up to?

Speaker 1:
1:49

well. I guess the the benefit of what my job at the moment affords me is the opportunity to speak to lots of people in lots of different um industries, at different levels and get into some pretty solid conversations that maybe, once you're in it, you don't have the opportunity or maybe the perspective. You know the forest through the trees type thing. So this week I had a great opportunity to spend some time with my mate Darren on the call here. But Damien Marsh, who's now the head of strength and conditioning for the Wallabies, in truth be told you know he is that role. He really deserved that role. 20 years ago when I left the Wallaby job he was the best qualified for it. But unfortunately that's the way it goes and because I'm out of it I can say that. But Damien's a great journeyman, done a lot of stuff in rugby, a real thinker. But anyway, we had time to discuss this week, got in, had a couple of coffees and too many coffees really and got into just discussing. Like, clearly the Wallabies have had their massive challenges over recent times. We've been through that, but obviously last well, obviously for people who are overseas. South Africa played the Wallabies last weekend and we got done by 30 odd points. But it was quite clear, uh, that they're just their physicality across the board contact, speed, um, repeatability, everything was just being was really put under that blowtorch, and so Damian and I talked about that.

Speaker 1:
3:27

But then in the rest of the week I've been doing some work in rugby league and obviously rugby league in Australia is a really dominant sport. And again, for those overseas, particularly in the US or other parts of Europe, that don't understand rugby league, rugby league's a relatively simple game. It's not fraught with a lot of rules, but it's high speed and it's played by very big, strong men, so there's a great balance of mass speed and then obviously everyone goes. It's just aerobic, we're aerobic animals. But what struck me with one conversation was that about repeat power, and I've been through this a lot. We used to talk about it a lot when I was in rugby. I'm not entirely sure it's getting through at the moment in rugby, because we seem to be good for one or two efforts, and that's the conversation. But the league guys can keep coming back.

Speaker 1:
4:29

Now one of my league compatriots was telling me he had some of his players go and train in a rugby program a pro rugby program in Australia because of logistics. So let's say this was a Sydney team. This guy went back home to melbourne and was in melbourne and given we've only got one team down there, it's not the melbourne storm, but he's gone and trained in rugby league, in rugby union, and then come back to his league team and literally the report was these guys don't train enough. I felt like I had to keep doing more. And when you layer that on top of a couple of other experiences, keep doing more. And when you layer that on top of a couple of other experiences. So in 2000 and the end of 2002 into 2003 in Australia I was with the Wallabies head of performance, all that stuff. But we brought in three big rugby league players Wendell Saylor, Lottie Takiri and Matt's I can't think of his name offhand.

Speaker 2:
5:27

Anyway, it'll come to me in a second.

Speaker 1:
5:29

It'll come to me in a second Cronulla Rugby League.

Speaker 2:
5:32

But they came in. Yeah, I know that I can see his face.

Speaker 1:
5:34

I said it three times yesterday. I still it's out of my head. It'll come to me. But these three guys were ballpark indestructible. They could train harder and faster than anybody. They literally didn't get injured At that time not everybody got injured, but they were great physical beasts. So I layered that and then I'm hearing what I'm hearing from Damien saying clearly our repeat efforts aren't enough and clearly Africa, south Africa, have made some big improvements in that area. And I remember these guys coming off the field periodically back in this was 20 years ago, saying we'd finished training with the Wallabies and they'd go well, we need to go and do more. And they'd go and do more conditioning because they just had that higher work capacity. Now you've got to say, given the torrid history that Rugby Australia have had over the last 10, 15 years, that there is a basis for this in their physical preparation. It just seems to be the case.

Speaker 2:
6:43

No, is it training intensity? Obviously, the ability to repeat efforts from a technical point of view is, you know, that's training, repeat anaerobic capacity, which requires aerobic capacity as well as anaerobic capacity as well as anaerobic capacity. So are they doing more aerobic work to fuel the anaerobic system or are they simply trying more intensely and therefore, as a by-product of that, that's what they're getting.

Speaker 1:
7:15

So logistically like. So, talking to Damien, he's saying that the trend is for a lot of players to number one, if you make the wallabies, you kind of it becomes a 12-month cycle. So if I started in the Wallabies, they go and play in the European summer. So they'll go up there October, november, they come back, they have December off and then pretty much January they're in a short run-up to start Super Rugby. So their general preparation period is very, very poor, so they just keep going.

Speaker 1:
7:49

The other conversation that was deep was the fact that a lot of the there's guys trying to be too cute and be too specific, so we're not doing any general work. That's one thing. But also then that a lot of the athletes at a younger level so particularly in rugby league, the guys who are playing 15s, 16s sorry, 15s, 17s, 19s, 20s in particular are getting really hard games every year like 15s, 16s, 17s, representative games at a high level, which is not happening in rugby. So then you get guys graduating out of schoolboy rugby, going to provincial level, and then they're not much better, whereas you've got kids going 17s, 19s, 20s in rugby league, playing 15s, 16s, 17s, real hard representative games every year and then graduating to rugby league. So the gist of it is I think there is some push towards not enough generalised work, too much maximum force.

Speaker 1:
8:58

That was the other discussion and I'm not pointing fingers at this, this is just discussion points. But how much maximum force do you need? You've got a guy who can squat 350 but can only do one running effort. When he's got to back up three, four, you know team puts together. I don't even know what the averages are these days, but four or five phases back to back. You've got a bit of work to do. You've got a bit of work to do.

Speaker 2:
9:27

So how do you solve the problem? We're problem solvers here, jason. How do you solve the problem when you're at Marshy's level? You know, I'm going to say I think you're dead right, mate.

Speaker 1:
9:38

So and again, marshy and I weren't talking from any. We're just as a couple of mates, no different to this. I said I wonder if we're missing the boat. Do we need to go back to our rugby league brethren and say look, what are you doing? What are you doing, what are the leading teams doing there? Because they've got big dudes, they've got guys running around at 115 kilos and they're getting gang tackled, one versus three and four guys at a time.

Speaker 1:
10:06

Rugby union that doesn't tend to happen and there are differences, I know. But one of the stats that came out yesterday the guy said I wrote it down was the ball in play data. Just let me flip my notes real quickly. Ball in play data in rugby union is something like 30, I'm going to go with 37 minutes, whereas rugby league is like 52. Now, I might be pulled up on that statistic, but I'm pretty sure. No, no, there it is. So this was Pathways game Ball in play in rugby 33 minutes, ball in play in rugby league 57 minutes. So they're doing a lot more Now.

Speaker 1:
10:48

They can substitute, rotate players in and out, but it's not that great, it's not like ice hockey. They're doing a lot more Now they can substitute, rotate players in and out, but it's not that great. It's not like ice hockey. They're doing a fair bit. But I would say there is no question that every rugby league player I've been exposed to are better aerobically and I don't think it's because they go out and run 10K time trials. I think they're doing moderate level repeat work over and over and over and over and over again. One of their favourites is the old Malcolm. You know, 25 metres on your tummy up go. And that brings in another thing postural fitness, the ability to. It's an important one.

Speaker 2:
11:28

There's a bit of debate going on in some soccer circles and you have your longevity podcast, jason, which I know you're a huge fan of with your likes of Peter Atiyah and who's dealing with a different population to what we are. But some of that has transferred into soccer, european Association Football, a European Association football, where they are reverting back to aerobic-type running, so let's call it Zone 2, zone 3 running in order to punish anaerobic spores and so your postural fitness. I'll extend that to if you're doing 1,000 metres of high-speed running, do you just get that going straight up and down? You know, as in 100 metre excuse my phone going off there in 100 metre repeats. But that has nothing to do with getting 1,000 metres of high-speed during a game where you're up and down and you change your direction and then you've got to go and then you're wrestling and then you're up and down. So it's an interesting debate.

Speaker 1:
12:39

Well, I definitely know, mate. I know for a fact, when you look at some of the European teams, a lot of their conditioning off, like off field, might not necessarily be heavy, heavy weights, but it would be heavy like repeat. So, whatever it might be, jumps with a trap bar and you go jump, jump, jump like complexes, jump, jump, jump this. That that have a short break. Go back again, because there's not only the repeat power thing is not only yes, there's yes, we've got the anaerobicis and the metabolic feeder, but you've got to have the contractile strength to generate the force repeatedly right. And so there is a conditioning effect to being able to operate at a high fraction of your maximum force generating capacity, exactly as there is in, as you would, for a max VO2. Because what we don't necessarily like, you look at all the classic.

Speaker 1:
13:40

I grew up in my industry reading all the Russian textbooks. I've got them all out in the back in my you know all the Russian textbooks, but they're all predicated on coaching athletes to be one repetition maximums. That's not what field sport athletes necessarily are. You know we could be our 1RMs and I used to see this all the time. You'd have a 1RM guy. Let's say, just take bench press. Like you might have a 1RM bench press that's only 140, 150, something like that, but you can multiple rep do high percentage of that at 110, 115, because you're not necessarily trained to do the ones. Now, nfl is a bit different, but NFL still do the classic 220-pound 100-kilo bench press for as many as you can do, and they've got guys repping those things out and their sport is repeat power.

Speaker 2:
15:41

Yeah, yeah, it's just an interesting. I always prefer to be domain-specific, but there's certainly plenty of people who've been successful in AFL, in soccer, who've gone energy system training, first build the engine and then get that engine to express on the field. So it's an interesting way of doing things.

Speaker 1:
16:08

I don't yeah.

Speaker 2:
16:11

I agree with you mate. I think you've got to go back to fundamentals.

Speaker 1:
16:15

You've got to go back to fundamentals, but it may not mean that you've got to do a 10K run. Now I had another call this morning with one of my US college football teams a very, very big team and they've just transitioned through a lot of stuff. A lot of players have changed, coaching staff have changed. They've just transitioned through a lot of stuff. A lot of players have changed, coaching staff have changed. They've just gone into camp and the guy that I work with there from a speed sync perspective is just saying, hey, like we just haven't done enough work. He said I've come from other programs and the amount of work we've done going into camp is just not enough. Now he's not saying not enough aerobic work, we just haven't done enough. Now he's not saying not enough aerobic work, we just haven't done enough. And that enough.

Speaker 1:
16:56

What he was describing was the whole of the program. We haven't done enough reps on the field. We haven't done enough speed work. We haven't done enough everything, enough tempo work. And this was a team too who are terrible tempo runners. So the old Charlie Francis I'm a big Derek Hansen fan and Charlie Francis all that. I started my gig with them this team that I'm describing, cannot do tempo, speed work, and that's where you build up that basic aerobic conditioning in a slightly twist towards a speed-orientated component. But they're terrible at it. Therefore they don't do it and now they're going into camp. They're in week two of camp, 15 days out from a game, and they're overloaded to the eyeballs because their staff haven't pushed them.

Speaker 2:
17:46

It's interesting I know we're running out of time here, but there's no doubt that doing some of that tempo work is great for building up, you know, tendons and tissue integrity, elasticity and stiffness and all of that stuff. But can you get that without doing it and going more into specific, specific drills? I'm not sure you can. I think there is a earning the right. It's just how long that earning the right goes for what it consists of, whether you can feed in that earning the right into your skills training I think it also depends on the eight like what athletes you've got.

Speaker 1:
18:30

If you've got conditioned athletes that have like. If we go back to the soccer examples we've talked about over and over again, where you get the south americans that play 10 games a week when they're kids, that's what they're used to. They've got that conditioning background, whether you like it or not, whether it was derived from sports science or just from you know what happens in favelas if you've got kids who are chronically under condition. Now, if I bring this back to where we started from one of the arguments why we're having injuries in scrummaging in rugby in Australia and I'm just reporting this, I'm not arguing one way or the other but that is that the kids don't scrummage enough when they're younger they're coming through the ranks. They don't scrummage enough per year so that when they do make the jump to super rugby it's a big jump. And when you change kids' positions which does happen in rugby, you get the kids that can't make it as a back rower, but they're big enough to become props. They haven't conditioned themselves enough.

Speaker 1:
19:31

So you've got an AFL guy and you know this like who's a strong midfielder. He goes away, he has his summer break, but he's still got himself fit. He comes back. Yeah, he probably needs a couple of weeks of that GPP type work and you can then say, yeah, he'll pick it up in training because we know where he's at. A kid can't do that. A kid, as you said, hasn't earned the right. And I think that again, if I go back to that college team, they've got a young list and so when you're talking about a young list coming in, they just haven't done enough of the work.

Speaker 2:
20:07

Yeah, yeah, okay, interesting, jason. Interesting, a bit more technical than our usual philosophical discussions, but given that the clock's ticking on 29 minutes, that's well and truly over our deadline of about 25.

Speaker 1:
20:22

I think, mate, I think I liked your thing, mate. We're trying to solve problems Like that's the point.

Speaker 2:
20:26

Exactly.

Speaker 1:
20:27

And I think, when you look, unfortunately, at Australian rugby, it's a problem that is going to be solved by multiple professionals, but our group would be one of them, is going to be solved by multiple professionals, but our group would be one of them, and I think it's a good. I think it's good for practitioners to get out of their own head and say, well, if I had, if I was presented with that problem, how would I solve it? Like, what decision would I make? Because ultimately, someday that's going to happen. You're going to change gigs and someone's going to say, right, yep, you know, everybody wants to. Going to happen You're going to change gigs and someone's going to say right, Yep you know everybody wants to be in charge.

Speaker 2:
21:00

Yep.

Speaker 1:
21:00

You know everyone wants to be a leader, but what decisions are you going to make when you're there?

Speaker 2:
21:05

Well, the other thing, which I'll finish with, because it might be a bit of a conversation next week. I'm talking to people who, because we've got two jobs on yeah, two jobs out for 10 at the moment yeah and um yeah, I'll spit it out in a minute and, uh, candidates are calling from all over the world, which is great. We've got some fantastic candidates and I'm sure we'll get some good people in there. But there's a lot of people who are talking about, um, uh, what sort of leadership will I have in there and how can I develop my leadership? And and I'm thinking no, that's great and people are ambitious and I love that. But I understand there's some X's and O's to get right first. Oh, I understand.

Speaker 2:
21:43

And there's probably an assumption that we've got those X's and O's right and you know we'll develop your staff and your leadership as well. But X's and O's will get you through the door and then you can work on your leadership then um x's and o's will get you through the door and then you can work on your leadership.

Speaker 1:
21:59

Then you know what in my tenure in the military work that I do outside of here, outside of speed, sick is, um. One of the things that's really important is nobody likes a leader who hasn't actually done shit. You've got to have experience. So when you start talking about we're going to go physiology and we're saying, well, there's start talking about we're going to go physiology and we're saying, well, there's aerobic base, we're actually getting the technical arguments that then says, well, we can lead the program. It's very hard to lead something if you don't know what you're doing in any capacity.

Speaker 1:
22:28

So I would always say and we can finish on this mate, if you're going to be a leader, have a job Like you've got to have a role, you've got to have a special. I mean, I know that's what you bring. You bring that experience from being a conditioning guy who worked in rehab, who did the job. You go up the chain.

Speaker 1:
22:46

But people who want to be leaders who don't actually know what they're doing is fraught with danger, with danger yeah and I know I could actually name one or two people whose names are out there in the public who I know are a fact, they are lemons, but they are very, very big One's on the tip of my tongue. Now I'm going to have to push stop record because I'm going to say his name and I could get in trouble. So I'm not going to be nasty, that's not my nature. But, darren, it's been a pleasure. I really wish you the best for the last couple of games. I hope there's something in there. I hope you upset somebody who have you got, I've got Port Adelaide.

Speaker 2:
23:29

Who are coming?

Speaker 1:
23:29

for second.

Speaker 2:
23:30

You could upset Port, followed by Sydney, who are coming first, so I can finish. Yeah, both away.

Speaker 1:
23:37

You're on the barbecue there, that's hot. There we go.

Speaker 2:
23:41

That's okay. It's a good challenge. Yeah, but we'll update the listeners who, I'm sure, are fascinated to see how we go Riveted.

Speaker 1:
23:51

You have a good weekend. All right, mate, we will speak again, you too. Ciao, ciao.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 25-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 24-----
Speaker 1:
0:13

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. We are two coaches today. Ojo, welcome back.

Speaker 2:
0:20

Welcome you back. You've been away and back in Australia now. Welcome you back. You've been away and back in.

Speaker 1:
0:26

Australia. Now I have. I took over the podcast for a little bit, mate. I thought we'd just keep things going and, given my last podcast, I had a friend of mine message me and say after that I think we might need to ensure you get some mental health recovery. You sounded a bit cooked. If anything, I thought it was an improvement, but anyway, An improvement on me or an improvement on us On the podcast. I think it was different, if nothing else. But yeah, I was pretty cooked.

Speaker 2:
1:01

Five lessons, or let's start with three and see how we go. Three big lessons that you learned as a coach rather than as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1:
1:09

firstly, Three as a coach. Well, I'll tell you what's interesting. What was one thing? Obviously, I had the opportunity to visit everything from the very biggest, very biggest EPL clubs down to uh, league one, so championship in league one, and I actually thought there were a lot of great practitioners, top to bottom. But one of the interesting thing was staffing levels, and I'll go, I'll go further, I'll go for, I'll say beyond, because I didn't just go to football clubs, I went to pro rugby clubs as well. Staffing was interesting. So I've had for a long time, I've had a view that what I did in AFL for a long time was the way I would like to continue, yeah okay.

Speaker 1:
1:57

So what did I learn? I probably got the opportunity to see a couple of other systems in place, systems that had a lot of people, what I would maybe say too many people which I think is a concern, because then you end up not so much siloed, but I think guys go off on tangents a little bit and when I could physically see some sessions where you would see particularly rehab going like there's two different philosophies happening here. So I learned that I think no matter the size of your staff, you need to make sure everyone still has a north star, and that's something I've talked a bit like. My last podcast was time right. As much as I've been super busy, you still do have a lot of time on planes and airports and stuff and I think a north star for a lot of things. So when you're doing whatever you're doing, making sure you've got a direction that you're heading in, and I think that piece around staffing is you've got to stay connected. I'm not saying I saw anyone that was disconnected, but it was more the fact that there were so many different numbers and so many different ways to do things and obviously there's budget to that.

Speaker 1:
3:09

Some of the League One teams in England don't have the same budget, yeah, but I still think they were really connected and they had really good people. They had some sharp people, man. Like there's some guys. One guy I met in League One I had this little test I was giving people I'd show some speed sig data and anyway, there's part where it dropped off and I said like this will be pretty, should be pretty obvious to most people and I would say to a man, everybody got it, but some just got it a lot faster than others, and the fastest I saw was a league one guy. He just went I don't know what that is and I was like super impressed. Um, so so that would be one long answer to that I still think. Then, the other thing is money is not necessarily everything.

Speaker 2:
3:54

Yeah.

Speaker 1:
3:54

Money doesn't solve every problem. I still think and there's some stuff that I've, some discussions I've had today that I still think making sure you've got really good context around what you're doing. I think there's people, there's things we learn at university, unquestionably, but there's a lot of stuff that we don't learn at university, that's just not taught, that you're going to need to learn by having worked with good people, and I think good people S&C, sports science, medical, the whole thing and so I think that I would say that my journey in that is not complete. I don't think it's ever complete. So there's two things, mate. What?

Speaker 2:
4:40

about so when and I know sometimes in the role that you had you can't necessarily get a complete feel for each club that you went into. But what about how the practitioners there handled the frustration of impact on program?

Speaker 1:
5:00

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. The question would have been time. I don't think I had enough time to see any of that. I think that as departments get bigger, you get that. Well, I've got to contribute my part.

Speaker 2:
5:17

Yep.

Speaker 1:
5:20

One of the bigger clubs. I went to one of the things I thought of the leadership that I met the guy that was running it I thought was very good at. He seemed to be able to keep everybody on the same page. So while I was presenting and I went, I'd presented to them before, so I was doing sort of a full workshop day with them, and there was always he kept not stopping me, but there were parts where he would say, look, this is where we, this is how it affects us and this is what your job, jimmy, is, and Billy, and where does it all fit together?

Speaker 1:
5:53

So I guess it came back to that connected piece. Making sure you understand that people like making sure people have their own autonomy in spaces Tough one, though, and I see that in football coaches a lot. You know where they all need their time, and so is it time we really need to be spending, or are we just doing another fucking 25 minutes of line out, training or stoppages or whatever, because you need to have done something, irrespective of what the team needs?

Speaker 2:
6:23

yeah, I think. I think that's an interesting one. I was travelling today as well, which is a story for another time, but I heard two podcasts in my travels and I won't say the names of them, but one was talking about having somebody outside of your club who is a consultant to your club, who's almost like an academic-based fact checker, and I've been. I'm sure I've spoken about Barry Drust and the influence that he had on what we did at Liverpool, right, and he was just amazing because we were taking creatine, kinase and a whole bunch of stuff. This is obviously 12 years ago, a lot longer than that, when I started there and he just said well, do you mind if I put this through an academic rigor process? And I just went by all means, and then so everything that we did, he put through this process and presented to us on where it should go and what benefit it could have, all with the express selfless aim of making the players better and, I guess, essentially making my job easier.

Speaker 1:
7:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2:
7:40

And so it was really.

Speaker 2:
7:41

it was a really unique situation and the PhD students we had go through that program and now all you know, high performance, yeah, performance operators on their own you met a couple of them, so it was really yeah, program and so um, your ability to have that person in that environment, because in the bigger clubs the head count is massive.

Speaker 2:
8:01

So your ability to allocate somebody in that environment, which is a bit like, you know, putting a round peg in a round hole. Phil Coles, who's just won the NBA with Boston Celtics I can't remember his title I was trying to think it's vice president of player performance or something or whatever it is but he's done an unbelievable job and he was as good as any with his team of physios at saying right, you are unbelievable at hands-on treatment, so that's what you're going to do. You have an academic background, so you know what the hands-on treatment isn't your thing. We are going to produce this process for rehabbing ankle hamstring evidence-based. We're all going to sit around and contribute, but you're going to pull it all together because you know the. You can imagine where I'm going. You're a Spanish video who is really good at these particular modalities and I reckon too often, like you said, some of the bigger programs just add headcount without thinking where that headcount is actually going to have impact.

Speaker 1:
9:03

Mate, and you bring up another point which this did rise in my travels a little bit. So the consultancy piece. And I hear people coming out of our industry saying I'm just going to go and be a consultant, I would counsel very, very strongly on what that looks like. So I got asked a few times to come and work with players and I said I don't work with players. And I said I don't work with players, mate. I said I work with you, I work with the club as a consultant. I come in to work with you, with the staff. I'm not there to work with players because that's the coach's roles. I'm undermining somebody.

Speaker 1:
9:39

Then, um, and I felt strongly that, because I've seen that before where coaches this was many years ago in particular a particular coach I saw working through a given sport which I won't mention but was at multiple places, and it was like I'm on a time here, I've got to move to the next thing, and it becomes sort of semi-divisive. But it also can be a pretty big grenade into the environment when you come in and start pointing your fingers and all care but no responsibility, then you bail. I get this very strong thing about saying like I will consult to the staff. I will support the staff. I'm there and the whole speed sick thing is about contributing a body of information to the staff. It's your job to deal with the players and bring it out because, yeah, the consultancy thing can be a bit wobbly if you put people in front of players and they're not necessarily delivering a consistent message.

Speaker 2:
10:40

Yeah, well, certainly you know, in the case of Liverpool, barry Drost didn't deal with the players.

Speaker 1:
10:45

Yeah, correct. No, that sounded perfect. Yeah, that sounded perfect. Yeah, correct, no, that sounded perfect. That sounded perfect. Yeah, and it's something you don't consider.

Speaker 2:
10:53

Well, one thing that's happened while you've been away is you might have seen that and this is completely we haven't spoken about this we're on a strict timeline for this particular Welcome Back podcast, but we've advertised two positions and I'm about to advertise another one. Yep, all right, right, so we've had a strength and conditioning coach, or strength coach, a head of fitness and conditioning. Yep, and a head of sports science will go out tomorrow by the time this podcast is up. Um, and they're all you know, the. The strength coach is a, I guess, assistant to our head of athletic development in, josh Emanuel, but the others are lead roles and senior roles, because people have left the job and gone on to bigger and better roles.

Speaker 1:
11:37

I know I met some of them while I was away.

Speaker 2:
11:39

Yeah, I'm absolutely wrapped for them.

Speaker 1:
11:42

What? That they met me or they got jobs? Yeah, that they got jobs, that's a bit of both.

Speaker 2:
11:45

What that they met me or I got jobs yeah, that they got jobs, but we've taken the philosophy of I'm going to get the best people with the minimum standard skill sets, and by that I mean if I'm applying, putting out a job tomorrow which I am, for a head of sports science, then clearly and you've spoken about this as loudly as anyone they need to have data analytics programming.

Speaker 1:
12:09

Some scientific skills.

Speaker 2:
12:10

Scientific skills, ability to be curious, ability to have research stuff. So there's some skills there. But in the other two positions which is lead fitness, head of fitness and conditioning I've deliberately left that vague because I want those two other roles to almost assist each other. So let's say that person A comes in and they've got some incredible acceleration mechanics, coaching ability yeah, but it's not quite in the job description. Then I'd be an idiot to not use that person in that space. So we're trying to be a little bit more flexible so that this headcount doesn't grow exponentially and people are I am the head acceleration person and only I can do that. No, no, we're trying to be as flexible as possible and put these people where they are best suited to.

Speaker 1:
13:04

But you see that in the States a lot, mate. So you get the guy who is the assistant strength and conditioning coach, then I'm the director of strength and conditioning, then I'm the assistant athletic director of strength and conditioning, and you get all these layers and layers and layers of what I'm not sure. I'm absolutely unclear as to what, particularly the universities. There is layer on top of layer on top of layer and it is a bunch of people who look like Elmer Fudd, pointing in two directions, going, hey, it went that way. You know they don't. The actual responsibility gets diversified.

Speaker 1:
13:44

Yeah, and then when they get somebody in. I'm working with one us college particularly where where the guy who's in there is like just frustrated because he's the only one saying, yes, this is the path, we'll go, I've got this guy. Everyone else is like hands up, you know, whatever, which is phenomenally ridiculous.

Speaker 1:
14:02

when you see um, I'll speak generally about an acl reconstruction I'm saying, go back at the moment. It's like have you people not read anything in the research recently? Like there is so much stuff out there about the fundamentals that if you just did the fundamentals you'd get close, let alone actually knowing about how people run and decelerate. But these guys got nothing. And it's in programs that are worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Yep, yep, whatever, we'll just send them back. Recovery is a timescale, according to some people time scale according to some people.

Speaker 2:
14:49

Yeah, it's, it's um. Yeah, it's very much a frustrating um part of our um, of our workplace and and our industry that people think more is better and and perhaps some of those um some people, some are so risk averse they do nothing.

Speaker 1:
15:02

I know you're on a schedule, mate, but let's, while you've you've said very nicely talked about what I've been up to, but you've branched out, mate. You're into a bit of facility ownership that you got your eyeballs into um I have seen some shots of it on social media looks awesome.

Speaker 2:
15:21

No, we've um uh.

Speaker 2:
15:23

So I'm just a very small uh investor in a performance facility called peak performance um, which is paq paq, which is run by looking for a really good, uh, strength coach named sean baker, and he's got a great team there and his wife, jamie, have done an an awesome job and, um, the really quick summary because I really am on a bit of a time schedule is I've had the opportunity to invest in a whole bunch of different like like a lot of us who've been around a while, and whether that's you know F45 or you know some of these franchise places, and I was tempted a few times, but I didn't find anything that was that I was really passionate about and that had people that were genuinely interested in developing semi-professional and sub-elite teams and athletes and people who are really serious about what they do, as well as developing a pathway for coaches.

Speaker 2:
16:22

But ultimately, mate, if I'm completely honest, there's a large part of it that is um, okay, I'm not going to be in this industry forever and yep to um have backup plans, and this is one of those, and we've spoken about those, and so I've got a few of those, and so this, this is one of them and, um, if you're going to have a backup plan, be passionate about the backup plan that you have, and that's what this is so in a couple of weeks I'll probably be a bit of a social media.

Speaker 1:
16:51

We'll talk about it more on the podcast. Mate, you've got to pump it up, but I will say what I do like about what you're doing and I know you've got your fingers in a few pies and all the rest of it but it's not so much different or original, but you're taking a path that's specific to what you want to do. What I can't cop at the moment is the number of people like as much as we're doing a podcast, we get on chat, right, but people who are doing the oh, we're going to interview other snc coaches and this is going to be my new business, like you know. There's so many people doing that. It's like be creative. At least you and I are sitting here together talking our own bullshit, and if people are into it, that's great. I really hope that some are. They like I get feedback that we're doing okay, but I think we're getting paid a fortune for it too.

Speaker 1:
17:45

We are getting paid a month so much, so much.

Speaker 2:
17:49

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1:
17:50

We've got sponsors coming out of our ears. But I would encourage people to be original and think like you sports scientists think, go and and solve problems. Don't just reinvent the wheel over and, over and again. And what you've done in adelaide, from what I can see, yeah, she looks original yeah, it's a look.

Speaker 2:
18:14

It's an impressive facility. Um, they're running off of basically a single size basketball court at the moment and now it's going to be I don't know there's. There's probably two and a half basketball courts.

Speaker 1:
18:22

Yeah, at least it'll be good.

Speaker 2:
18:25

I'm only playing a small role, but it might start off small and end up somewhere if the crows keep going crap.

Speaker 1:
18:29

So you just never know well, that's all right, mate, I might come and apply for one of your jobs. You never know. Come down there, we can do the podcast live together we'll.

Speaker 2:
18:39

we'll make up for it next week by doing uh, we'll have a chat about some of the Olympic stuff and, yeah, there's a few other things going on which are definitely worthy of chat. The NFL starts their pre-season games this weekend.

Speaker 1:
18:52

Yep, my college football's on the ramp. They're all in camp which has got another. There's a bunch of stories behind some of that. Some of the stuff I'm hearing is like if I had any hair it would be standing on end or falling out one or the other.

Speaker 2:
19:04

The social media influences that we are. Jason. It's excellent content.

Speaker 1:
19:09

Well, yeah, I'm not very good at the social media. I forced myself while I was away to do a couple of things, but everyone kept saying why don't you take photos of where you are? I'm like I'm speaking to people, I'm meeting them for the first time, I'm trying to talk to them about a brand new piece of tech in an area of sport that no one's thought of. I don't want to be standing there saying, hey, do you mind if I take photos of everything, like it's just fucking drives me mad. So I took a photo of me and dave carroll and having a guinness yeah, that's me.

Speaker 2:
19:43

That's basically the only photo I've got from you guys you and Dave, who we almost went on a podcast without mentioning. It's extraordinary.

Speaker 1:
19:49

Well, we can't, like I said to Dave, like he's paying me a commission now, so I've got to mention him every time.

Speaker 2:
19:54

Exactly.

Speaker 1:
19:55

Anyway, mate it's a pleasure. Let's catch up again as soon as viable before I disappear into the Netherlands again. All right mate, speak to you later.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 24-----

-----BEGIN TIME-----
Speaker 1:
0:10

hey, welcome to one coach in a coffee round. Number two, um. So I'm still on the road in the uk and darren's still flat out doing afl back in um Australia. So at the moment we're struggling to catch up. So for this week you're going to have to tolerate me by myself musing along while Darren's fighting the good fight in the AFL and hopefully, with any good fortune, next week we'll be back on when I'm back on Oz time and we can get together.

Speaker 1:
0:46

So in the interim I've been thinking about time, the time you don't have, the time you can't waste the time. It takes time to go, time to think all of those things. But what I'm saying and to be clear and transparent, I've been in the UK for nearly two weeks, fundamentally launching SpeedSig in the UK. So we've had a great experience up here. We've met plenty of teams, got lots of meetings coming up, great opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. But along that way I get to meet a lot of people and inevitably you're evaluating, and that's part of how I learned to do my job is you're always evaluating, evaluating. What does that person know? What does he know that I can learn from? What can they learn from me? Maybe You're trying to figure it out, because you are always trying to learn, but you also see people that aren't pushing as far ahead as they might otherwise. Or what I see these days very strongly is a lot of younger staff members, be it S&C, sports, science, particularly kind of content with what we've got, that where we are is right, we're fine, we've got everything, it's all good.

Speaker 1:
2:18

Now I'm not entirely sure people's perception of themselves would be the same, would be that, but that's an old bull saying things. But I definitely think, and most people, as you'll ascribe to, will say yeah, we need new skills. We always need to be learning more. So if you identify that thing, one of the things that worries me about time is people don't put enough time into learning new skills and to getting better at something. And unfortunately this isn't the matrix. You can't plug a bolt into the back of your head and download jujitsu in one go, or any other skill for that matter. So when we're looking at the skills that we need to be better at what we do, we need time to do them. Now I'm going to tell you this that having a bachelor's degree or having a master's degree in strength and conditioning isn't a passport to. I know what's going on. You're going to need to study more, and you're going to need to study not just academia, but you're going to need to study more. And you're going to need to study not just academia, but you're going to have to study coaches.

Speaker 1:
3:29

And I had a discussion today with a couple young bucks who are in the sports science performance world. They had no idea who charlie francis is. Now hopefully people know who charlie francis is. But charlie Charlie Francis is one of the great sprint coaches of all time. Ben Johnson's coached 1998, and, despite all the drug convictions that went with that, it's widely acknowledged that Charlie is one of the great coaches of all time and a therapist. So he incorporated not just performance from a speed, power, strength perspective, but function. So how does a joint work? How does the limbs of the lower body coordinate with the upper body to produce force and projection? All the rest of it, anyway, I was talking about, I was showing the graphic that Derek Hansen put out on LinkedIn a few weeks ago with the red and the yellow man and showing the low ground contact versus longer ground contact and hip height, and Derek very generously shared that with me. But that work that Charlie originally developed and Derek's now taking forward.

Speaker 1:
4:40

I think is magnificent, very much a part of what I do, but in having a discussion today with a couple of young bucks, I had no idea who that is. Who's Charlie Francis and, with all due respect, who is Derek Hanson? I said, well, it's not diabolical that you don't know, but you should go and look at these guys. These are premium guys in our space when you're in running sports. They're the guys right and there's always going to be others and you should know. Like I would always in a job interview, I would quiz people as to what their coaching pedigree Like. Not only what have you read academically, but what coaches do you read, who do you look to, who do you listen to, who do you learn from those type of things?

Speaker 1:
5:26

So, understanding that those things take time. It might take time to get to those people that you know. You might need to take time to download multiple things off the internet and collect them, collate them and get through them. Some guys don't write books, some do podcasts. Some do write, some just put stuff on the internet that you would need to bring together. But it all takes time and I think it's critical that we're not just evaluating what's immediately in front of us in our job, but where we want to go and who has that information and the information that might help us or might expand our thinking.

Speaker 1:
6:11

So that takes time. I think it's time that is well worth the investment. And the same thing comes when you go to the new tech space. Right, and this is when we're in the era of the quickening. Everything's going fast, there's more more tech, we're at ai now. Everything's got ai in it right now. As, as a guy who's closer to 60 than he is to 50 and move forward with and I'm quite adept at machine learning, I know coding, blah, blah, blah, but those things I've need to move with to progress myself, I think the young bucks people coming through now, if you're looking for where's my next evolution, it's not going to necessarily be an academic one. It might be, but I think you've got to embrace where you're at Now.

Speaker 1:
7:08

I spent today at Statsports in Newry in just south of Belfast, as the guest of Andrew Morrissey and CEO Alan Clark. Magnificent, great day, great tech day, going in deep into detail about what they're doing. But I look at that and say, well, okay, I now need to learn new things about what they're doing and what they're stretching their tech in order to make my speed SIG tech better, but I also look at what they're going to deliver in the next. Whatever their production cycle is let's just say five to six months they're going to take that new technology into the field. I'm not going to worry about explaining what it is. It's for you guys to figure out down the track. But they're going to take tech into the field and it's sharp, there's no question, no question. But people are going to have to invest in understanding what it's sharp. There's no question, no question. But people are going to have to invest in understanding what it's capable of.

Speaker 1:
8:09

There's a great line from a song, the author of whom is going to elude me right at the moment, but I bought the book but never turned the page. Now, that is ridiculous. Same thing with tech. We buy tech but we don't necessarily use it. Push it to its extent, take how far you can. Now that's what I did with SpeedSea. Speedsea guy repurposed the technology we had, which is commercial GPS inertial sensors, and I built something that did a whole new job. Now I'm not saying I'm the be-all and end-all at all, but this is the point If stat sports go and bring out a new technology or whomever brings out a new technology, and you don't dig into it. If that's your field, if you're the sports scientist and I've met a ton of sports scientists recently so if that's you, you need to understand the tech, understand what it is, Understand where the flaws are, understand the researcher, all that stuff, but invest in it. Again, it's not the matrix, it's not an Apple iPhone. You're not going to open the box and you can just play with it and it works.

Speaker 1:
9:25

I know a lot of producers are creating more and more easy ways for things. Yes, I understand that we want things to be easy. We want workflows to be as user-friendly as possible because people are limited for time. But there's no way around the fact that, even in a space that's limited for time, to learn something new and to bring it into your way of thinking, your paradigm, your model, your whatever you want to call it, it's going to take time and you have to commit to that and you might need to say, hey, here's this thing I'm going to commit time to because I think it's the way to go versus this other thing, which may not be or you may not consider it as important. Those choices are up to you and we always make good ones and bad ones. There's no question about that.

Speaker 1:
10:18

Now you know there's lots of things you will be confronted with. I mean the classic one in coding is do you use R or do you use Python? You know everyone's on about how do you learn to code. Is it worth it? We might come back to that in a moment. But that choice is one that's predicated on a bunch of factors and sometimes it's who you hang with. If you're hanging out with people who all do R, you want to stay in community and work with people who understand that language. They can help you grow. So there are all sorts of reasons for taking that path.

Speaker 1:
10:55

But it comes back to time, and I definitely think within the sports science landscape, we've got to look at that paradigm, the computer science paradigm, if you've never heard of it. There's a kind of a pyramid where it goes from data up to information, knowledge up to wisdom. So data is just what we get in the field. It's what we. You know the incoming signal, information, is us putting it together right, so it's consumable, but knowledge is starting to bring an outcome. What does this mean? And wisdom is where we can really use it to influence decisions. Now, as sports science guys in particular, like it or not, we're not going to be working in the wisdom knowledge space. We're going to be in the data or information people want from us knowledge and wisdom. Because we've examined the data, we've examined what's going on, we've identified a problem, we've identified a plausible way forward and off we go.

Speaker 1:
11:58

Some will say the end of that spectrum is the answer. So some people will say to me I don't really care about all your data and all your analysis, just give me the answer, just tell me what to do, which I think is a very limited perspective on the world. I'm one of those ones who like to understand. I'm not one for trusting the computer per se. I like to use a computer as a tool to do things for me. But to say that the AI model just gave me this answer and that's what I'm running with. Maybe not so much, maybe that's my age, but understand again that paradigm data, information, knowledge, wisdom. As a sports scientist, you're going to have to work in that data information space and again it comes back to time You're going to have to learn it. It's the tool of our trade, so to speak. So again, pushing that time concept just a little bit further forward, I'm going to change tack for a second Now. This is just a personal one, but this is my podcast and Darren's not here to bully me. I'm going to go my path Now.

Speaker 1:
13:10

Time is critical. The older you get, you kind of realize how much time you don't have. You don't have time with people you love and you need to focus on that as much as possible and you have to try and be as efficient as possible, because we all still have to work and, to be fair, if you weren't working, I would find, if I wasn't in a productive output, your probably mind does go and that's probably the start of decay. So, happy to stay sharp, but multitasking not a fan, not a fan. I think. The more and more in the position I currently find myself that I have multiple things coming at me, my best option is to stop and try and put a few things aside and do one at a time and do it really well, and focus on doing it well, getting a job done and doing it really well, being proud of that job. You did Hark back, I guess, to my old man how I was taught growing up if you're going to do something, do it properly.

Speaker 1:
14:12

And in fact, if you're going to do something, try and be the best at it. Simple as that. There's no point just doing for the sake of doing. Let's get on with it. If you're going to do it, make it worthwhile.

Speaker 1:
14:22

I actually had a taxi driver today in Belfast, going south to Newry, and he was sort of just well, he wasn't the most positive guy on the face of the earth, but he'd come to Ireland and Belfast and people were like, oh, it was a beautiful day, absolutely beautiful, sparkling day today. But he was going, oh, it's a beautiful day today, oh, but it's so shit all the other time. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but it's beautiful today, it's great. And he then said something about making the most of it, making the most of today. And I said, yeah, absolutely, we've got to make the most of it. I said, yeah, try and hang with good people, have good conversations.

Speaker 1:
15:04

I was very lucky today, fortunate, to hang with some really cool people, that smart, creative, trying to solve problems, trying to move. You know, we talk about our company values speed, speed. I talk to myself because I'm the only one here but honesty and creativity, that's it. All the things that feed honesty are important Integrity, reliability, all those things all feed honesty in a way. And then creativity you want people who can think, who want to have a go, want to move, shape, change, adapt, grow, continue to evolve. I don't want to be static. So, again, if I pull back to that multi-passing thing, we want to make the most of what we're doing today, where we're at, who we're with, but don't get caught doing a thousand things averagely. Okay, don't ever sort of say, hey, I couldn't get that done because oh too much on, if you get overwhelmed, you get overwhelmed. But try and do one job at a time. I think, all right, part of that becomes a little bit of planning. There's no question I'm better when I say right, I'm going to stop and do this, I'm going to do the other thing which again, which again you reflect on a lot when you're traveling, because I'm at airports.

Speaker 1:
16:31

I was in one of the worst airports yesterday, manchester. I'm sorry. Manchester airport is a disaster, whether it's the airport itself, whether it was the not enough staff. Everyone was polite and all that sort of thing. But slow, slow, slow, slow and you go through security and they're all checking the bags and I get that. That's fine. But you know what? If you're going to check every single bag and we know there's approximately five people per minute coming through the thing, you're going to have to have more than two people at the counter examining those bags. The rate of people coming through, the rate of bags being tested ridiculous. So a waste of time. People not thinking whatever, whatever. But the idea if we come back to it is to plan get your time sorted out so you're getting things done really well, which is again.

Speaker 1:
17:27

People ask me regularly about the coding thing. One of the great things about coding is the time saver. If you've got repeatable tasks, write code that makes it do it automatically. Pretty much as simple as that. Last one, which I kind of was just sort of hedging to and probably wandered off a little bit with the fatigued brain, is the time to think right when you're on the road a lot. I've been on the road for five weeks now, so you've had time to stop and think, and I will say some of my best creativity has been in airports, where I've been able to sit and really try and ignore the world. Put the noise cancelling headphones in and think my opinion would probably be of that that there are not enough people in their day-to-day life doing that.

Speaker 1:
18:15

So in the course of us working in sport, there are challenges, there are hard conversations, there are situations when you react a way you didn't want to or you didn't like. On reflection you should think about those and reflect on them and figure out how you're going to be better next time, because if you don't, you just keep on keeping on and I think there's a lot of personal growth to be gathered from me thinking, hey, how did I handle that Self-reflection, how did I move forward? I think when I look at some of the guys younger, did I handle that Self-reflection? How did I move forward? I think when I look at some of the guys, younger, guys I've worked with who've gone on now to manage their own programs I've got one at the Michael Dobbin in the hockey at the Olympics in France, dan Zaknitch down there at Melbourne sorry, western Bulldogs, afl doing cracking jobs I think I know those guys sat back and thought and reflected and reviewed what they were doing. What was that conversation like? Was it good, was it bad? Did I do that task? Did I coach that thing? How did I coach that session today? Did I communicate well? And I'll often do that. I pitched speed sick twice today. Did I communicate well? And I'll often do that. I pitched speed sick twice today and I've pitched the same pitch, going on 300 times.

Speaker 1:
19:36

So you're always going to reflect and at the moment I'm reflecting on yes, it needs to change, it needs to evolve with things we're doing. So you're going to look back at that. But I think, looking back at your performance, you can think through the possibilities and probabilities, right. What could I have done differently? I think this comes back to the last point I'll make for my musings for today, and that is problem solving.

Speaker 1:
20:03

And I think, in that time to think, problem solving is really much better achieved with a quiet mind, right, where you can sit, extract yourself from the world, distract, get away from the phone, those things for a little while and have a quiet mind. A quiet mind particularly if we can lower brainwaves and this gets into a little bit of brainwave activity stuff. But lower brainwaves is associated with higher cognitive processing, which is why people meditate. We meditate to lower our brainwave activity and hopefully access deeper parts of our brain. So, if you're confronted with a situation that is challenging, take time. Take time to think about it, take time to dwell, examine it, think through the possibilities and probabilities.

Speaker 1:
20:57

Sometimes you sit there and think and you'll think through a problem and go well, look, now I've thought about it. I really don't want to go that direction to the left, I want to go to the right. That's just where I'm at. So take the time. So, in that, in saying that my time is up, I hope my time has not been a burden on you. I hope somebody gets something from this, but I really do appreciate the support. On this trip away, I've had plenty of people say hey, congratulations on the podcast going great. I would prefer to have my buddy, darren, around, but such is life. We need to press on, and I'm batting by myself, batting with a runner, so to speak. The other guy at the other end is not helping, but he'll be back next week. So in the meantime, I hope you're able to take something from this and I look forward very much to having a brew with my buddy next week. For the moment, ciao, ciao.

-----END TIME-----

-----BEGIN LEADERSHIP, HIGH PERFORMANCE, AND INNOVATION INSIGHTS -----
Jason Weber:
0:11

Hi, I'm Jason Webber and welcome to One Coach and a Coffee. As you might know from last week, unfortunately Darren and I have really been conflicted with time. His program with the Adelaide Crows and the AFL and my program, which has been overseas for the last five weeks, have really made things difficult. So in the absence of Darren Wright at the moment, what I'm going to do is just reflect on a bit of what I've been doing for the past handful of weeks. So I guess from an update perspective, viewers would know that I do some work. I consult to a military group from a scientific perspective. I've been doing that for a bunch of weeks and that included writing a lot of software. But also in the last week and a bit I've been in the UK, obviously promoting SpeedSig and launching up here. We've got our UK server up and going, but meeting with anyone and everyone a bunch of EPL teams, championship teams, league One teams. I'll actually get to meet with my first women's team next week. We had a women's team operating in the US but some leadership challenges there Certainly didn't get that to last as long as I would have liked. But we're going to meet with Liverpool women's team on Monday and their leadership and talk through what SpeedSig can do and how we might be able to implement it there and how it could help their program. So the objective is not to harp on about SpeedSig particularly, but what I am going to do is talk about a couple of key things and observations that have really come through from both environments in the last couple of weeks. I'm going to start with one of the things I just mentioned there leadership.

Jason Weber:
2:02

So, without question, the term that's come to mind and really really hit home yesterday is the top-down leadership that, even when I walk into environments and I've been privileged, because of what I'm doing, to be invited into some of the most extraordinary performance environments in the UK and, given that I've seen quite a bit in the US and I mean there are only two environments I've seen a lot in Australia. I haven't seen much else in Europe or South America, so forth, but between those three Australia, uk and the US some of the facilities that I'm seeing are absolutely unbelievable. Unbelievable, and that's one thing right, and I often say you know, it's not about the building, it's the people. And you can get great performance in a tin shed, right, if you've got good people operating. Obviously, all the little nuances, the equipment, the facilities, the TVs on the wall, all those things can help and can be part of things, but you've got to have the right people.

Jason Weber:
3:07

So, looking at that, you look at that top-down leadership what impacts the way an environment operates? And it really does come down from the top and I've seen a couple of examples the last few days where there's the leadership in a sporting team that comes from a ceo and the direction that they might take. A lot of that being business, but certainly one of the environments I saw yesterday just the creativity around how they were going to create different spaces and not just performance. Other areas, areas around the business, like when you've got a facility that has 21 fields, you guys are going to become very good at groundskeeping and so being able to generate and facilitate elite performance in that area is one of the things that I saw this week. But then you tie that back into the elite performance the staff that I saw at the same facility and how unbelievable they were pushing in the right direction to try and get the highest level of performance. So when I put the SpeedSig thing down, they reviewed hard, they asked some great questions. They were really in digging in to. Is this viable for our environment?

Jason Weber:
4:25

So that top-down leadership impacts the entire environment. But you can see it around the building that we were in yesterday and I don't really want to name the team specifically so I'll keep it general but you saw it in every element the way the meal rooms were set up, the way staff were operating, the way people acted to one another, the politeness, the respect that you saw. It was genuinely environment-wide. It wasn't just the sporting team. Now, I was there for a relatively short period, so do you see the good and the bad? Who knows? But it was very impressive to see, whereas there are other things that I've seen in recent times where that detail's not there, when the leadership from the top is a bit messy and maybe the environments have made attempts to make change by bringing in more experienced staff to try and tidy things up.

Jason Weber:
5:28

But I think, if I then go to my military experiences of recent, I have the pleasure in that space of working with a lot of very, very experienced, extraordinarily experienced special forces operators very, very experienced, extraordinarily experienced special forces operators. Now I'm not particularly interested in telling stories about what they do, but one of the critical things that you see in those type of guys is what I would call redundant leadership. So they all know what for lack of a better term what the mission is. This is what we have to achieve, and if the top guy's not there, the rest of them step up and they know the direction we've got to take. So they're very good at filling in the gaps.

Jason Weber:
6:14

And when I can bring it back to a sporting environment, I then see people waiting to be led right. You see young staff and some staff aren't that young, to be very honest. There's staff that are saying well, I want to be the head strength and conditioning coach. Well, there's responsibilities that have to come with that, that are environmental, that get your space right, get your equipment cleaned up. When something's broken, fix it. Don't leave it lying around. There are details like that that impact players, because players are going to respond to the environment they're in, they're going to lift to what's around them. Vince Lombardi famously said. The famous NFL coach famously talked about the fact that men like to be pushed. I don't recall the exact quote, but something about men, in their heart of hearts, like to be given a line. They like to be pushed. They'll challenge the line, but they want to be pushed. And I think when you're looking at a team environment sports where you're trying to bring in people that might be coming from different cultures, they might be coming from different knowledge bases. They might be coming from different cultures. They might be coming from different knowledge bases, they might be coming from different socioeconomic grounds. You've got to get standards set. So, without putting on a big speech, walk in the door and what you see is what you get. This is what you're going to be confronted with Now, if I reflect on my US experiences, I've seen some facilities and there's one facility in particular I saw earlier this year which had just changed leadership and the leadership who came in one of them in particular senior guy was is a senior beast.

Jason Weber:
7:54

He's been around a long time. But you know the first thing they did they cleaned the gym. They gutted it, not throughout equipment, but they got things off the floor, hung them up, cleaned all the machines down like, detailed them so that when the players come in they can see hey, this is what's going to be expected of me. Now, if you talk to military guys, they'll always say look at a soldier's rifle, the way they maintain their rifle and their weapon will reflect that soldier.

Jason Weber:
8:27

So when you look at our performance environments, I think that for people who are out there, people who are aspiring to leadership I hear all the time I want to be a high-performance manager. All right, what does that mean? You've got to try and influence culture of people. You've got to lead a culture. What is it going to be? Is it going to be, yeah, yeah, rough enough is good enough, or are we actually on it? Where's the line stand for you? And it's not just about facilities. It's going to be about the way you appear, the way you carry yourself, the way you act to others, all of those features.

Jason Weber:
10:03

So I think, with those people who are aspiring to leadership roles, I think before you get to leadership roles, you should be starting to write down and analyze these things of yourself. Do I convey these elements? I mean, I can speak to experience of a young guy who worked for me for many, many years and now runs his own team, a high performance manager. I would easily say that from almost the day I met him, he was establishing himself to go and lead a team because just the way he carried himself, his intent, his attention to detail at all times. It was just always lifting the standard of those around him, me included. Again, redundant leadership, it takes more than just one, and so I think he stepped into leadership easily.

Jason Weber:
10:56

But that would be a reflection then on people who are aspiring to leadership to say get yourself ready, be ready, understand what are the things you're going to do, the actions you're going to take, not just, hey, I'm going to tell people I'm the boss, not wear the badge, I'm the leader. How are you going to act? How are you going to deal with people day to day? How are you going to deal with them when you're in a bad mood, all of those things? So then, if I take that and go a little bit, step a bit further to another number of conversations I've had this week the idea of ambition and action. So, what's your ambition? Oh, I want to be a high performance manager. Okay, and okay, that's fine. What are you doing about it? Now, I just used that as a leadership piece. So I'm going to leave the leadership piece alone for the moment, but I'm going to go down a more technical path and say well, if your ambition is to be a high-performance manager, what do you need to know to do that. From a technical perspective, we've covered leadership, so what does it look like? What does your continuing professional development look like Now?

Jason Weber:
12:11

I come from a long time back. I started my career in the 80s, so there was nobody, there were very few people I could look up to. Most of the people I looked up to were not I was not engaged with, I didn't know them. They were overseas. You would read articles, you would, back in the day, go and buy VHS and you'd pour over these videos of just how people did things and how they spoke and how they communicated and what they knew.

Jason Weber:
12:40

Nowadays you're a lot more, you're more connected with people. Those facilities are available. So what do you need to do? What do you need to do to technically be the best? So I mean, I think, the idea of writing your goal down, actually physically writing it down, and then, on an annual basis, you reflecting on and writing down what you've actually done. Now I know for a fact, with representative bodies like ESSA in Australia, you're supposed to do that put down your continuing development points.

Jason Weber:
13:19

Now, personally, I hate that sort of thing, but I will say, even if I didn't write it down, as a professional, as a person, I am driven like a madman to be better at what I do and arguably I'll never be good enough for myself. That's my personality personality flaw, probably. But the idea is that I always want to be better. And I can tell you now, with SpeedSig, I am petrified going into meetings every, every day wondering if I'm good enough, and you put in more and more work to make it as perfect as possible. So I presented yesterday, and I'm starting to present now, much more of my level two work, and again, not promoting this, but it's the concept. The idea is that my level two presentations now are much deeper, more. They've got our new research in it, which will be published soon, um, and a lot more structured detail about how we operate and how we can impact performance, rehab, all the rest of it.

Jason Weber:
14:19

And I made a comment yesterday. I said I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry, I'm belting you, I'm bashing you with detailed scientific statistics, modeling, bits and pieces. But I said you've got to understand that I've got to go to that detail. I've got to go to that length in order to ensure that my product is viable and that people can trust in it at the highest level. So I am driven to that. But I think, if you take that message and put it into my career, if I'm driven to get to a high performance manager, what do I need to know?

Jason Weber:
14:57

And I had a conversation with a guy the other day and we were talking S&C coach. So S&C coach, how do you become a high performance manager? I said, well, who do you need to manage? Well, you need to manage everyone medically. I said can you read MRIs? No, never looked at one. I know what one looks like on a wall, but I couldn't read one. So I said how then are you going to be in a position to lead medical staff if you don't understand their language? So, straight away, without going too much further, there is a perfect example of what do you need to know. You need to learn that language so you can communicate with people, so you can help them go forward. You don't have to know all of their detail. You're going to have to have skills of your own, which, in that case, come from strength and conditioning, but you need to understand the requirements going forward.

Jason Weber:
15:50

Technically, am I good enough? Am I good enough at my job to be able to lead others in that space? So if I'm good enough to head up a strength and conditioning department, am I good enough? Where am I learning? What's my next thing? So if I'm going to lead others, how do I know? Do you know what masseurs do? Do you know what a dietician does? Do you know what the doctor does? Blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Jason Weber:
16:15

I met a doctor yesterday who was very humble, almost asleep, in our meeting these small children. But he said at the end of my presentation he said like unbelievable, unbelievable. He said most of it over my head. He said this is not what I do, but I get 100% what you're doing, but the detail is just too much for me. So he doesn't need to know the detail, but he needs to trust. He needs to know that when his head of rehab presents him with information, saying this is where a player's at we know he's already seen that the detail's ticked off the same becomes addressing your ambition. How much detail have you ticked off? How much detail? And I will tell you one thing about getting jobs.

Jason Weber:
16:58

One of the things with getting a job is about inspiring confidence in those who are hiring you. They want to reduce risk that's probably a better way to put it. They don't want risk. Nobody wants to risk. We've just hired this new person and we don't want risk. So we want to know how good you are and how long you've been doing it and how consistent this thing is. How regular are you going to be? And I don't mean going to the bathroom, I mean how regular are you at performance, elite standard, all of that type of thing, culture Can you bring those things and do you bring them every day? And is there a point at which that stops? So getting a job is about reducing risk. Getting people to go. This thing is a lay down. It's not even worth debating. This person is so qualified and so appropriate for this position. So, again, just float back to that idea. What do you want to be and what are you doing about it? Because too often I'm seeing people going yeah, I want to be this, but I haven't done anything. It's just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, and I think you can make a great start for yourself Now.

Jason Weber:
18:13

Being a high-performance manager is not for everybody, that's okay. No one's saying that you have to push to the ends of the earth. You may find yourself in a strength and conditioning role that becomes rehab, that goes back again, and you're very happy and content and fulfilled in that role. There's nothing wrong with that. But understand, if you want to put your hand up, put it up properly, because it's nothing worse than people saying, well, I want to be, you know, a leader in this department, but they do nothing. They do nothing. So there's my talk on they do nothing. So there's my talk on ambition and action. I'll twist that one more little step, because the next one I'm going to talk about is something I've talked about for you hear me with darren periodically get on my horse about it and that's sports science.

Jason Weber:
19:04

All right, there are a lot of people, excuse me, around the world now who are the head of sports science. I'm the director of sports science, I'm this, I'm that. Okay, so what do you do? I do the GPS. That's not sports science. That's not sports science. You need to be in a position where not only are you listening to the questions that are being asked around you maybe not directly to you but you understand what the environment, what are the people in the environment looking for, what don't they know? What answers do they need, but then being able to generate your own questions, your own inquisitive drive to find out that, hey, I can see things happening in this environment. If I could answer X, y and Z, that would really help, and to be able to feed that back. Being proactive, being able to ask a question and figure out the methodology to determine an answer, that's science. Sport science is not downloading GPS and putting it into a bugger. That is not sport science, not in any way, shape or form. Sport scientists have got to start thinking, got to start offering their environment something proactive.

Jason Weber:
20:34

All right, I got asked the other day if I were to go into a role at a particular environment what would be the first thing I'd do, amongst probably a handful of things I'd do very early on, but one of the very early on things I'd do would be do a forensic analysis of the whole joint. I would get every piece of data available and we would mash it together and find out, squeeze the lemon for every pattern we can find. Now, as much as it could be me doing it, it wouldn't be me doing it, it would be my sports scientist. Go and find me what we can connect the dots on here, what relates to their injuries, what relates to their winning, what relates All of those type of things. Now my expectation would be if you're going to wear the scientist badge, you need to understand, like I said before, the question and how to look for the answers. The answers aren't going to manifest and just pop up and hit you in the head. You're going to have to build something, build a model, build a pipeline, build something to process all that information. Now this heads down the path of coding. If it does, it does. I don't really care whether you can code or can't code, but can you figure out the answers?

Jason Weber:
21:52

Now I see a lot of bright people doing a lot of bright things, which I really enjoy. I'm very excited to see young people given I'm an old man young people busting to a new idea, going in a different direction at something. If I see one more PhD student hear from them saying oh, I'm doing a load monitoring or a fatigue monitoring PhD. Oh, tell me about what you're doing. And this is me regurgitating something from somebody I had dinner with the other night. Who will know this when he hears it? All right, what's your PhD about? Oh, it's about fatigue. All right, what aspect particularly? Oh, I'm just reading the research at the moment and looking for ideas. That's not. That's that's looking for an easy path somewhere.

Jason Weber:
22:42

Developing a question for a PhD which is a really that's the. That should be the sharpest end of the research edge you ever pursue has got to be about genuinely solving the problem and, given that I'm now well and truly an entrepreneur, I think it's not a dissimilar journey. What is the problem? Everything you do in entrepreneurship? I did a course. What is the problem? Everything you do in entrepreneurism?

Jason Weber:
23:12

I did a course, a fantastic course, at Curtin University, accelerate, absolutely fantastic. I'd be dead without it, dead in the water. But I did a course there at Curtin, accelerate, and I got badgered all the time Badgered, badgered, badgered. What's the problem? What are you solving? Be very, very clear. They are absolutely correct, absolutely correct, and I think a PhD is exactly the same thing. What's the problem? What are you solving? You could frame it slightly differently. What's the question? What don't we know? And what are you figuring out? Not just some ethereal, oh fatigue. It's not good enough. It's got to be hard, strong and straight at it. So I mean, I really challenge the PhD students out there to do more. I met a young guy this morning who is going he's sort of branching from the S&C path towards rehab and really working in and and, like some of the stuff I've been doing, I said, man, you got one choice Go and learn to code. It's not that hard, but you need to start to the.

Jason Weber:
24:23

Coding is just a tool. It gives you the ability to then go and do the statistics, go and do the work that identifies the patterns right and answers the questions. And I really don't care how nerdy or geeky that appears to be, but I think the journey I've experienced in the last seven to five five to seven years probably seven years now of really getting into statistics such that I can answer questions, so when I don't know something about the environment I'm in, I can answer it. A lot of the work I do in the military space, a lot, a vast majority of it, is analyzing data, analyzing patterns. Is there something we can see about the question we have? Can we answer it in that space With that tool or that drill or that task or whatever it is? Can we answer the question we're looking for or can we contribute something to that answer? And you can only do it by analysis. So, quick review I think leadership from the top down cannot be overemphasized.

Jason Weber:
25:36

So at times you'll find yourself in your career I did for a while where I had to try and lead up because what was above me was a mess. And you try to lead up and it's very, very emotionally and physically demanding doing that stuff because you're trying to influence all the time someone who really, really is not probably suited to what they're doing. But ensuring that your part of top-down works, that the way you speak, the way you look, the way you present the intellect you bring, is critical. What do you need to have those things? It's better to know them and work on them before you get to a leadership position. Same concept with those aspiring to leadership is build those skills, identify them. Not everybody's good at everything. Nobody's good at everything. Everybody's got weak spots. Figure out what they are and try and work on them. Build your skills if you genuinely aspire to go further on.

Jason Weber:
26:37

And there's no question in my mind, none with respect to this that there are generations within sporting staffs. At 55 now, it would appear I'm starting to be on the outer in terms of a team position. I've got other friends of a similar age who are finding similar things. It is what it is. People want younger people. So if you're the younger one coming through, you need to make the most of your time, because your time is going to be finite. This doesn't go on for 30, 40 years. You don't get a gold watch at the end of this and go, hey, that's my career done. You're going to need to work and work and work and work. So might as well start doing it now. And then, the last bit, just in review, is our sports science brethren Getting after it, lifting our game One of the things I say about SpeedSig quite often.

Jason Weber:
27:39

Why did I build it? Because I didn't think we were good enough, we being strength and conditioning coaches. We weren't doing our job well enough because we didn't have all the information that we need. Now SpeedSig fulfills a small gap of that. I'm not suggesting that I've suddenly filled every bit of knowledge, but the idea is that if you can have the information that's critical to your performance, we can do the job better.

Jason Weber:
28:04

But sitting around and saying, well, we couldn't do it any better because we didn't know the old saying we didn't know what we didn't know Well, that's just stupid. I think we need to be inquisitive, we need to be driving. Sports science needs to be driving. Your experiences need to drive you. What are the questions? What do I need that will make my job better?

Jason Weber:
28:27

I had a great entrepreneurial conversation the other day. A guy was talking about being a CEO. Now, if you're the CEO, what are the things that you do? Charge per hour that you could charge somebody else, or pay somebody else less money to get done, administration tasks, whatever. You've got to figure those things out so you can get them done and move it forward as quickly as possible. Same thing within our journey. If I can get things done within my job that make me do it better, get more information. From a sports science perspective, we can do our job better because we're gonna. We need you support in that space. We need to get more information. So be inquisitive.

Jason Weber:
29:14

So, a lot of soapbox for me today, but in the absence of the great Darren Burgess and we do miss him we do miss him a lot. Yeah, we push on. I hope this was of value to you. There is every chance that we'll be doing this again next week. I'll probably be doing it from Ireland. I'm currently in the greater UK at the moment, but unless I can find Darren in our schedule, you might get another blurb from me next week, so I hope everyone gets something out of this, even if you get one thing, but it really is today's been a lot about figuring out what you're going to do and actually doing something about it, not just saying, hey, there's my next thing. So good luck, enjoy. I hope you got something out of it and we'll do our very best to be back next week. Thanks a lot.

-----END LEADERSHIP, HIGH PERFORMANCE, AND INNOVATION INSIGHTS -----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 21-----
Jason Weber:
0:10

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. I'm sitting here with three shots in my cup. What have you got, Darren?

Darren Burgess:
0:18

Two shots, but it is in the afternoon for me, oh that's right.

Jason Weber:
0:23

It's morning where I am and this is my I think my ballpark. My sixth shot since about five this morning. So we are flying, my friend. It has been a busy period and it's about to ramp in the Northern Hemisphere. We've got England going to the finals in Europe. What are you thinking there? What have you seen? What's happening there?

Darren Burgess:
0:44

It's been interesting, because the talk at the start and I certainly was part of it in some, I think I mentioned last week was some UK as part of my role with FIFPro sort of spoke about how the English players have played a lot of minutes and so they have been sort of roundly criticised up until the last game, I would think, of being sort of boring and just getting through and not being very dynamic. And then the Swiss game they were probably the better team and then to get through on penalties though, and then this morning they won in the 90th minute and, interestingly, a lot of their goals have been in the last couple of minutes.

Jason Weber:
1:24

Late stages.

Darren Burgess:
1:25

Yeah, their individual brillianceiance. The goal this morning from Watkins was outstanding and, um, uh, the goals from Bellingham and Saka previously were again moments of individual brilliance, which is why you pay those guys the big bucks and why you you know why you have them so, uh, happy for them. Be an awesome game England, england-spain. And yeah, the preparation, I guess, is our wheelhouse between now and it's now Thursday morning our time and I think the game's on Monday morning, so they've got three days to prep. How's that looking for you?

Jason Weber:
2:03

Mate, I think the closest I can come is World Cup 2003. So we went to the final and, interestingly so, 2003,. For all the young pups out there, that was pre-GPS, pre all that stuff. So we were doing the RPE thing and we did that quite extensively and to this day the data still resonates. Our RPE is right up in the build-up to the. We sort of built right up until the quarters and then dropped off tapered.

Jason Weber:
2:35

There's definitely, you know, convincing the coach to not practice more at the cost of expending energy and creating fatigue is the big deal. Now, back in the day 2003, for mine, eddie Jones and I, we were on the same page. We had a great plan. We got beaten by a better team in the final, that's it. It wasn't for I would never. I would say the preparation was as great as we could have made it with the people we had.

Jason Weber:
3:10

So, being on that same page, what I have seen in AFL is the build to finals and the coach starts to panic and does more and more and more, and I've got plenty of data to support. We do more and more and more and then all of a sudden we get people falling off the perch. You know, overuse, calf injuries and in my AFL experience that caused a lot of drama. So there's no, absolutely nothing clearer in my mind than the ability to remove fatigue and let the players do what they've got to do. What about you, mate? You've been to a couple of grand finals, you've won a few, you've got more gongs than.

Jason Weber:
3:45

I do?

Darren Burgess:
3:47

Oh no, you know FA Cup and Carling Cup and things like that. What tends to happen I think we've spoken about this briefly previously is, I think you've just got to take away the sources of fatigue for the player, so the training is actually the easy part and that's the um, the part where they're actually escaping from their phone, going off people having fatigue, people wanting to congratulate them, parents wanting complaining about hotel rooms and you know just anything and everything. And Matching up.

Darren Burgess:
4:24

Yeah, all of that. I just happened to be in Melbourne for the game, or I'm in London when we made the FA Cup final with Liverpool way back when, yeah, I had people from Australia saying any chance you can get me a car. I'm a lifelong Liverpool fan and you know, these are people that you don't really know particularly well, so I can only imagine what it would be like for a player. So taking away those sources of fatigue, so sleep, nutrition, training and your point around making sure that there's not extra meetings, there's not extra information going in, so there's mental fatigue.

Jason Weber:
5:00

Not extra reps, we don't need more reps You're not going to learn more.

Darren Burgess:
5:08

Yeah, only ever going to lose, only going to lose in that week, so yeah. So I think it's important that you know, with all the monitoring tools that we have and I'm sure that at England's and Spain's disposal they'll be right across all of that and whatever they've done has clearly worked, because they've arguably been the two best teams in the tournament.

Jason Weber:
5:30

So I'm but even withstanding the argument that England were boring, like I've got no idea, but you could imagine like it's a championship. You have to win every game, like the Olympic final in the 100 metres is not one race, it's a championship. You've got to get through every race.

Darren Burgess:
5:49

It doesn't matter if you come second in a heat I have friends who are saying Southgate, this is probably his last game and all this, forget it. His record's pretty good, he's doing something right.

Jason Weber:
6:01

Yeah Well, let's change tact, mate. So this is a final, the Euro's finishing, but at the same time you've got English Premier League just about to. They're just about to go back and do a couple of weeks prep, go to America and do their international thing. We've got NFL. So I met with one of my NFL teams last night. They're literally like next Friday they're on, they're all in the door. You've got college football's all just gone back, Everyone's now they're only two or three weeks away from their camp and they'll go camp for a period for a couple of weeks and then play some games and then college football starts. So we've both seen a little bit of the NFL this year in terms of discussion, specifically about planning and college football. Mate, what have you seen? What have you seen in the planning around camps? And we know there's horror stories. What have you seen? What have you seen in the planning around camps? And and we know there's horror stories what have you seen?

Darren Burgess:
7:01

yeah, it's the nfl players association. Firstly puts a lot ring fences, a lot of um, a lot of make, a lot of stipulations about when you can and can't train, when you can train with pads, when you can't, how many days off, how many rest days, even stipulate what the first week needs to look like. So that's the first thing to to try and understand is a lot of the freedom to do whatever you want is taken away, and that's okay. They're the rules and that's what the players have negotiated. So, no problem, let's follow those.

Darren Burgess:
7:32

Um, that's the first thing. The second thing is you're allowed one day to assess right, so literally one day to assess where the players are at. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is you're allowed one day to assess right, so literally one day to assess where the players are at. So I think that's an important day to not waste. I think there's a mental and physical component to that. From there, your ability to individualise is, from my experience, either consulting or working or chatting with NFL teams is limited to the superstars. You know the superstars, where injury is, you know, incredibly damaging to teams and coaches. Coaches are understandably a little bit more relaxed when it comes to letting some of the superstars miss reps.

Darren Burgess:
8:18

The sort of mid-tier ones are the ones who, who, get in those in those five to six week camp periods which are genuinely, genuinely players arriving at seven and leaving at eight or nine. And if you know, sometimes, um, I speak to our coaches or players about um, too many meetings and too many this and too many that, and I look at one of those schedules in the nfl and just go.

Jason Weber:
8:45

My goodness, it's just a different world oh it is, and you look at the numbers of players. So one of the discussions I was involved in last night was the this monitoring idea and clearly you know we're doing the speed sick thing, yeah Now. But they've got 100 guys coming into camp, 110 coming into camp over the next week. And then they said to me well, we've got a new, you know, head of football who comes from another environment. He wants to turn over the bottom. I think they said 20% of the list, 25% of the list. He wants to completely gut that bottom.

Jason Weber:
9:18

I think they said 20% of the list, 25% of the list. He wants to completely gut that in the next couple of weeks and rotate them out. So they said, like we're going to have 100 and whatever let's say 110. Then we're going to lose 25 or whatever and we add a new 25 in. And so the whole concept of how they monitor their athletes is got to be different and, like you said, it comes down to where. Where's the big money, who are the players who are gonna make a difference? And that's where their focus is on. Um, but the notion that, yeah, you're just putting these guys in through, they're like cattle, turn them up, bring them in a truck, put them down, the grate in they go.

Darren Burgess:
10:03

It's truly attritional.

Darren Burgess:
10:05

You can only do what you can do, and if players haven't prepped well, they know what's coming. Like these guys, whether it's players, or whether it's the veterans or the rookies, they all know what's coming. And if they haven't prepped appropriately, it's not up to the strength and conditioning staff at each club to make up for poor preparation, because it just can't happen in that environment. So there needs to be a level of acceptance in that and of course you're going to put in risk mitigation strategies and that's what your job is in that time. And you know we've both, as you said, been exposed to a little bit of it, and it's pretty hard yards for the staff working in NFL clubs because they can get the blame when things go wrong, but the environment is not set for that. So it's a matter of how can we cause the least damage in this amount of time and yet still sort of taper and periodise for the season that's to come.

Jason Weber:
11:07

And for some like, obviously a couple of months ago, when they were doing their OTAs. So the optional training sessions, I think there was some video of some of the more elite players are doing their OTAs. So the optional training sessions, I think there was some video of some of the more elite players coming in and doing those and you kind of think, well, that's good being able to get them to build under control. That's something we're more, I guess, used to in the AFL-type systems where we get the players through a period. But the ones I know what's his name out of New York Jets Rodgers the quarterback.

Darren Burgess:
11:42

So he's coming in Aaron Rodgers, yeah.

Jason Weber:
11:44

Aaron Rodgers with his Achilles. He's coming in and I don't know this for a fact, but he's coming in and he's straight into practice and it's like I wonder if the medical I wonder if conditions up know where he's at and have confidence that he's done enough work, that he's going to. I mean, aaron rogers has been around so I'm assuming he knows he's ready. But there's a lot of guesswork in there and it does speak to sometimes what influence like can we have when we're conditioning our athletes? What time have you got to actually make changes? And are you more like you just said, like let's try and not do damage, let's try and keep them healthy, and there's a role in that. But there's also a big role when you look at the States and I think this is changing in Australia ever so slightly is the role of the private facility, because these athletes go, they'll do their season with a club and so in the US a guy might play on the East Coast but he lives and his family's on the West Coast. He'll go back to the West Coast and train there, but he'll train with quite often one of the guys that he may have come up with through college.

Jason Weber:
13:01

Now I know some of my college clients again through SpeedSea they will be running team training for their college team. But then on the sideline down here you've got Green Bay Packers guys and you know whomever else. You've got NFL players because they go back to their college conditioning coach because that's where they did a lot of work formatively. So it means the path is not necessarily linear. So your whole development structure is a bit ad hoc. So it becomes who, if you're lucky enough to get a good, good people around you, because very even though it's a team sport, nfl seems to be very individual a lot in the development phase I'm sure it is and I used to think I don't know, it's a long time ago you could go over there and make a difference and you could just set up some really good.

Darren Burgess:
14:01

But the more structures and the more I speak to people who are over there working, there's an acceptance. Any US people listening to this would just be like, yeah, that's just how it is, whereas in the NFL we don't. Yeah, we have nothing like that. Of course it's emerging private facilities and and their exposure to um, you know, to some of the athletes, some of the professional athletes, but nowhere near um as much. So it it's uh, the us system. Um is designed, as you said, for individual athletes to then perform in a team setting and once you get into those team environments, for staff like us and whether it's at a director level or an S&C level, essentially you're trying to or you ought to be, trying to, establish what the chronic load is. The appropriate chronic load is get there in the safest possible way and then hold them there in season. And so you look at we spoke about that quarterback series, about Mahomes going to his private facility, that's right.

Darren Burgess:
15:04

Doing all his gym stuff at the private facility. There's some really good videos of Christian McCaffrey running back and slash receipt slash all-round legend for 49ers. Some of the stuff that he's doing looks to be incredible, but it's maintaining chronic load. That's what he's trying to do and the way in which you and I might monitor that is probably different versus how the Kansas City Chiefs or 49ers monitor it, but that's essentially the role that you're trying to do and it is, as you said, a lot of guesswork, because guys are going to be turning up and you've got no idea, really, because you're not allowed to know what they've done for the previous four weeks.

Jason Weber:
15:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Challenging environment, Do you, given that EPL starting exactly the same, and we know we've talked before about that so you're going to have guys coming off epl season into a euro season and then they're going to come. So the english guys are going to come out of english and spain, they're going to come out of playing this week or next week, a couple of days, and they're going to go straight. Are they going to go straight back to their ePL clubs, do you think, or will they get a window?

Darren Burgess:
16:20

You start in a month. So these guys have been training all the way through and let's say, england wins the Euros probably going to have a couple of days celebration, maybe a parade, I imagine, because it would be a massive achievement. And then the task becomes how long do you give them? There's nothing mandated, so each club then determines. So Bayern Munich will say I'm not sure how long we're going to give Harry Kane off and Manchester City Kyle Walker. But essentially, the key in that scenario is these guys are fit, they're fine, right. So don't try and add load to it even though they've had two weeks off. Don't try and bring them back into match load and say that you know either they can't play or, um no, we need, you know, three or four more weeks to build them back up. This is not perfect, right. By any stretch of the imagination, it's not imagination, it's not perfect. But don't complicate it any further.

Darren Burgess:
17:27

And I'm sure that the practitioner is most of the practitioners in premier league know this oh yeah, if they're ready to go, you just have a look at them when they come back in, do a quick assessment, speak to them about what they've done the past two weeks which ought to be nothing, and laying in a, getting some sun, and then you just pinch hit times throughout over the next five, six months, probably up until sort of January, where you can give those particular players time off. It might be a lower level cup game. It might be a game in which you've got two outstanding right backs, so Kyle Walker can take a couple of games off and not send him away. Or, like I said, harry Kane.

Darren Burgess:
18:08

There might be better strikers in Bayern's reserve team that could come and play in for a game or two, or you just give them a day or two here or there. So that's the key, and I'm sure they're all across this. But where people make mistakes, I think is go. Right now I've got my European championship winning player. I need to work with him one-on-one to bring him up to speed. He's up to speed, he's fine.

Jason Weber:
18:34

So that's probably the point of this, berjo, it's not, I think if we, you know, we talk to Sam Wilson at Arsenal yeah, I bet he's across it. But I think the point for us is the people who aren't there and the people who are coming up is to hear well, like, what do you do? So I mean your advice? Right, there is, and what I do see around the place is people overplaying their hand, Like I'm going to have this huge impact on this athlete because I'm going to have two weeks or three weeks to adapt all this. I'm like it isn't going to happen, particularly, with those guys.

Jason Weber:
19:11

We've talked about. You said that chronic low. They're trained, they're prepared to play. That's what they're conditioned for. That's how football soccer works, is they play, and they play and they play.

Darren Burgess:
19:26

Well, the other mistake that you might make and I'm sure I've made it, by the way is you say, okay, let's use Kyle Walker at Manchester City just for arguments. So listen, boss, coach, he can't play for the next two or three weeks because you know we need to build him. I'll use a better example Ollie Watkins at Aston Villa, right. So Manchester City might have eight other right backs that they can bring in, you know, to replace, but Ollie Watkins is the guy at.

Darren Burgess:
20:01

Aston Villa, get who the coach is and all that sort of stuff, but going to the coach and saying, no, oli can't, he needs a few weeks off. And then I need to bring no, no, no, no. Oli Watkins needs to play for Aston Villa for every single game in order for them to stay in fourth spot or whatever they came this year. Or you know, work your way down through the team. Declan Rice needs to play for Arsenal. You know, work your way down through the team. Declan Rice needs to play for Arsenal. You know whoever else, shaw needs to play for Manchester United.

Jason Weber:
20:28

There's no replacement for some of those guys.

Darren Burgess:
20:31

Yeah, except that they're going to play. And then do your best to get them in that position that they're going to play, because going to the coach, most often in those scenarios of course, some scenarios you're allowed to, you ought to, but in those scenarios I get to just make you look like you don't understand that the coach needs to win every game.

Jason Weber:
20:52

Correct.

Jason Weber:
20:53

But I think to your point and we're going to have to wrap up soon because I know you've got to fly but understanding the bandwidth these guys operate in, because when you work in different levels so I saw this at A-League they're bringing a guy from Europe or something that hasn't played for a long time and you go dude, like you are overweight, you are fat, and you're telling me what you've done and I'm like there's no evidence that you can.

Jason Weber:
21:17

And when you said and this is a key is what is the chronic load? So we understand, what do we have to achieve to be able to sustain training and playing football? And you get these guys down here and that's when you're going to say, hey, this guy is so far off it, whereas, like you've said, guy coming in out of Euros, yeah, we want to drop his load a little bit, but he's, principally, ready to go In two weeks. You're not going to. You know there's not going to be massive changes in tendons and all the rest of it, but, yeah, understanding that bandwidth in which these guys operate is absolutely critical.

Darren Burgess:
21:52

And understanding your coach and the coach's needs and the context of which your club is. Where's your club at? Do they need you in every game? Then, okay, your star players need to play, so let's try and work that as best we can.

Jason Weber:
22:05

Which then, sorry, your star players need to play.

Jason Weber:
22:08

So let's try and work that as best we can, which then, sorry, I'll cut you off. No, you're finished. I was just going to say that. That just resonates back to what I said before about the AFL. Final stuff is that you can say, yeah, we need to win every game, so we're going to put everybody on the field, but let's not train them so much during the week and expose them so badly that we lose them. Like, let's do a little bit less and just keep them on the field, mate, in order to finish first. First, you must finish. You've got to get them on the park, mate. I know you've got a role and you've got a heavy schedule. So, mate, good coffee, good brew. That wasn't bad at all. We will speak real soon, mate. Uh, very good, uh, chatting today and um, mate, we'll speak soon. Yeah, catch you soon, mate. Thanks.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 21-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2 EPISODE 20-----
Speaker 1:
0:12

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Jason Webber here and Darren Burgess. We're worlds apart at the moment, Darren, but how are you going, mate?

Speaker 2:
0:22

Going all right. It's late at night night here, so there'll certainly be no coffee.

Speaker 1:
0:25

But nah, you've done a great job accommodating me. It's late early afternoon. We're on.

Speaker 2:
0:31

I am just holding on, but we had a rare day off today. Jase and we did play the Speed Sig Cup over the weekend against great Nick Paulos and Andrew Rondinelli of GWS and we had a win which is breaking a long slump for us, so I was happy about that. Anyway, on the day off today I spent some time with a couple of the players, took the players down to Cirque du Soleil.

Speaker 1:
1:03

Yes, you told me, this was coming.

Speaker 2:
1:06

Yeah, yeah. So we spent it was only about an hour and a half or so with a couple of the performers there and one of the coaches and the performance coach, my goodness, and obviously everybody knows how good they are as athletes and 320-odd shows in a year. But I spent the most time with the contortionist, alexei, and he's only 22 or 23, been training as a contortionist since he was four. He didn't want to be anything else other than a contortionist in a travelling circus. That's all he wanted to be. But the thing about it is all around us in the background.

Speaker 2:
1:54

I've got some videos. I may load them up. They said you can post whatever you want. There's always athletes, performers, whatever you want to call them, just practising their particular discipline, athletes performers, whatever you want to call them, just practicing their, their particular discipline. And I went and spoke to one of the um, one of the guys who, uh, is an acrobat on the uh ropes, these uh ropes that he jumps from sort of rope to rope, almost from pole to pole, and like slides down the pole and stops himself. Uh, the poles are like two stories higher, incredible, like anyway. Um, he said, no, I don't do any gym, nothing. And if he was standing next to um, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
2:42

Let's say matthew pavlich or in uh any muscular athlete, let's say Matthew Pavlich or in Any muscular athlete. Let's put it that way American football like a wide receiver in American football big, but not too big, but completely tough, massive guns.

Speaker 1:
2:55

You wouldn't know the difference.

Speaker 2:
2:57

And it's totally built by doing body weight exercises. And I said, come on, mate, you must do curls. He said, no, no, I don't, mate, they are counterproductive to what I need to do. Right, it was. You know, it was a real, not a wake-up call, because I actually went 10, 12 years ago and took the Port Adelaide players and this time taking the Crows players, but it was just amazing. It was great to see the players because the contortionists took them through some flexibility routines.

Speaker 2:
3:31

Yeah, the take-home message is the attention to detail to a single discipline. It was also, particularly from the contortionist's point of view, the technique that he used in all of his stretches and he went through sort of the main hip ones. I just said can you take the boys through the? You know the main sort of ones that you do for pelvic flexibility and the placement of each limb muscle joint in order to get the maximal effect of the stretch was off the charts. And he has this closing thing where he basically contorts his body, where he sort of goes through his legs and back over again to touch the floor from a bench that's about half a meter off the floor, his whole routine, which I went and I've seen twice in the last two was where he's a snake and it's the show called Lucia which has been around for about six or seven years and he's been doing it for basically that time. He says listen, I can't that closing move. I only do every fourth or fifth night. It just puts too much strain on me.

Speaker 2:
4:44

If I was to do it every night, I'd Really Some of these guys they're going at about 80%, but that move takes me to 100%. That's like if I was at the Olympics and I'd pull that move out to win the gold. It just puts too much strain on my shoulders. But most of these guys here they're probably running about 85% 80% Because they have to do 10 shows a week, but they're doing two shows a day.

Speaker 1:
5:12

yeah.

Speaker 2:
5:13

Yeah, so they can't max out, but it's interesting, mate.

Speaker 1:
5:17

You think about the conversations we've had about EPL with compressed and probably NBA is the same thing compressed schedules where you have no time. The only time you have is the performance. And when you look at that, obviously not so much that guy but the guy jumping from pole to pole. Yeah, the whole predicate of his performance is strength every time he goes out, whereas even though you know an AFL player will go to the gym when he goes out to play, he's not necessarily like particularly upper body-wise not doing all that stuff.

Speaker 1:
5:49

It's really an adjunct thing, isn't it?

Speaker 2:
5:51

So it speaks to specificity. Yeah, he's. Yeah, he was fascinating to talk to and yeah, it just made me think of the, obviously the dedication to that task.

Speaker 1:
6:04

Here's just a little aside because it does link. We had a great message through the week from a guy I know, todd teakle, who's uh works in performance up in geraldton, wa, which will probably come to his all of his stuff a little bit later on. But when you talk about specificity, I was caught up with a buddy of mine yesterday whose son is about 13 14, trying to get basketball and he's going to the gym every morning and one of the big common things I said to him is what about skill? Is he on the ball every day? Like the gym's a thing You're going to get. Yes, you'll get bigger as you mature and all the rest of it. But man, basketball, as we've discussed, is such a skill-heavy sport as would be what you've just described guy jumping from pole to pole and all that stuff. That doesn't come naturally. That's going to be all skill developed. So making sure we practice those skills religiously is going to be critical to development.

Speaker 2:
6:58

Yeah, we won on the weekend and we won AFL's four-quarter game. We only won one quarter, but we blitzed them in that quarter and that was our lowest output quarter and we talk about that a little bit. It was our lowest output quarter by some and the other three were like it was a really high output game for us but you know the skill element in that quarter was elite and would have beaten most teams, but you know we couldn't do it for four.

Speaker 1:
7:30

Yeah, but we know in invasion sports which is what AFL is. Afl is very clear If you defend, you're going to run. More Simple as that.

Speaker 2:
7:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1:
7:41

You're being dictated to, you've got to go. So, mate, this sounds like the circle Cirque du Soleil was definitely an interesting day out for the boys yeah, and I'm going to just mess.

Speaker 2:
7:51

We had a 30 second chat about the order, but what, what? Um, I'm going to mess with the order a little bit. Go for it, man. I did think about the um, how they said that I don't max out every performance. So one of my consulting roles is with FIFA Pro, which is the Players Association for International Football, which, extraordinarily, international soccer is the only sport that doesn't have a Players Association, a FIFA-recognised players' association. The NFL, nhl, mlb, afl, all have it. So I work for them in establishing workloads and travel and what's safe and what isn't and what would be counterproductive to performance and what isn't.

Speaker 2:
8:43

The Euros are on at the moment and, uh, I went over to london and presented about, uh, some of the minutes played by, uh, some of the superstars and one of the comments, because it was in england and there was a lot of uh, pretty high profile um journals I think I mentioned it previously and I was on a panel with a guy called henry winter, who's probably the number one journal there, and said if we treated horses like we're treating these players, the owners would be up on charges.

Speaker 2:
9:14

And right then we showed a clip of Ike Gundogan, who's a I think I pronounced that correctly who's a Manchester City player and he says straight after the game look, I was probably going at 70% today and I don't say that to be arrogant, but I can only afford to go at 70% because there are so many games and we played on Wednesday night and now we're playing Saturday at midday. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous and walks off. So it's been interesting the English performances. Everybody roundly has been saying they're flat, they're flat, they're flat and England have had the second most minutes leading up to in the season per player leading up to this tournament, behind Portugal.

Speaker 2:
10:02

The difference is the Portuguese players play in some of the less intense four or five of them in Saudi Arabia, which is one game a week and, with all due respect to the Saudi Arabian Pro League, it's not there yet. It's getting there, but it's not the Premier League. Whereas when man City go and play against one of the weaker teams, the intensity is still sky high, whereas when Real Madrid go and play in one of the weaker teams in Spain, the intensity isn't sky high because the weaker teams just sit back and don't necessarily press. So it's been fascinating. England have got through by the skin of their teeth, but they had to go to extra time. They've got to play Switzerland in two or three days' time and they've been roundly criticised. So it has to. Physiology always wins, it always wins. So it's going to catch up at some point and coach has been criticised for not changing his team, rotating his players.

Speaker 2:
11:07

I'm not going to sit here and tell Gareth Southgate what to do. I'd be crazy. But what I do know is that physiology and fatigue it always wins, and we're seeing that in the Tour de France, even after day four.

Speaker 1:
11:20

Anyway, that's what I am, but that being said, man, man, you make a great point. It's interesting that when a player says, like you know, the, the Portuguese lad 70 I'm not going to try and pronounce his name 70 percent a minute's, not a minute, right, every minute's not equal. So, yes, longer minutes tend to mean more, but obviously it'd be great to be able to quantify and understand what the Portuguese are doing specifically. Now I know we're going to say his name again, but your mate, dave Carolin, there's data available on the whole tournament which Dave's pumping out, and I haven't paid it due respect just yet. But it would be interesting to see some of the distances and the work rate metrics associated with some of those minutes.

Speaker 1:
12:03

But we know, mate, we know from AFL studies that the teams that can get through that can win by doing the least amount. By the end of the season they typically can pick it up because once you come to finals it escalates. And that's your point about EPL. There's really no, it's always high, whereas those other leagues you can get easier games and AFL is like that. You can sneak through, sneak through and then peak towards the end of the year. But tournament play, tournament play, is going to be really hard when you're playing on quick spins and then going into a final series. Yeah, I agree, you're going to be challenged, and that's the depth of squad, right? How many have you got?

Speaker 2:
12:46

It's the depth of squad, it's the management, it's the load management, all of those things and the recovery. And I spoke in the UK Telegraph about this and the journo was saying to me do you think that's why england chose the training center that they did in germany, which has is a, basically a spa? And I'm sure it is because they had these unbelievable cryo and unbelievable recovery facilities, float tanks and float pods, and yes, it's going to help. There is no doubt that is going to help, um, but maybe, maybe next week we'll have a chat. I've been getting right into the, the tour, um, and there's an interesting sort of comparison in the physiology between last year's winner and the favorite this year. Who's, uh, who's just taken the lead in terms of their preparation?

Speaker 2:
13:40

And yeah, as I said before you just I mean you can cheat the system with drugs, but assuming everything is all clean in skill-based sports it tends to be less risky to cheat the system. You can't cheat physiology.

Speaker 1:
14:01

We could talk about fighters in the ufc excluding themselves from the drug testing pool and see how much and see how much uh drugs impacts performance. Now, that's a high skill sport. But, man, if you've got extra oomph at whatever, whatever class fighting your, what level weight, body weight you're fighting at like man, makes a massive difference.

Speaker 2:
14:26

But I agree man.

Speaker 1:
14:27

Physiology is going to catch up, but I think we've looped, certainly in most recent weeks, that the balance between the high-skill sports and the more physically orientated. You can imagine, and this is maybe something you can enlighten me, but if Portugal are playing and this is maybe something you can enlighten me, but if, if, uh, portugal are playing and this guy's saying I'm only doing 70, but they're playing a high possession game and they're just bouncing it around, making the defense move, move, move, you know they've got control, they've got great control. But when you look at the nature, let's just say, compared to something like a league in the australian professional soccer, soccer league, it's backwards and forwards because no one can hang on to the ball. So it's just all rebound football, it's all running and arguably they run further than some other competitions because there's no control. So it's horses for courses.

Speaker 2:
16:17

I doubt it and you still get the skill moments, particularly in soccer, less than AFL the skill moments, particularly in soccer, less in AFL. The skill moments will dictate the game. So Jude Bellingham, classic example, scores an overhead kick with I don't know however many minutes to go in extra time, in injury time to take it to extra time Now he's played more minutes than most, so there's no doubt that he's carrying some residual fatigue into the game. By his lofty standards, has had a pretty quiet tournament.

Speaker 1:
16:50

But he had one moment.

Speaker 2:
16:52

That was their only shot on goal for the whole game. And soccer's great like that. That's the beauty of it in that one skill. So as long as you can pull out that skilled moment, it's less, yeah, less, if you're, you know, in a boxing match or not. To say AFL is like a boxing match but there's so many goals kicked that there are so many.

Speaker 1:
17:14

But the nature of scoring is different.

Speaker 2:
17:17

Yeah, that's right. The nature of scoring, the scoring.

Speaker 1:
17:19

I had a great discussion with a coach about this many years ago. But the amount of effort it takes in let's say, soccer, international football, to get to one goal like it's enormous, whereas basketball you're scoring almost every end and it's like netball you actually miss. Afl is not. You know rugby is somewhere in between rugby league, but soccer is so predicated, like even my small time in football. A lot of the discussions about what do they call it? The XG, the position on the field where it's most high probability of scoring. But you can only get it to the probability position by structure. Then you've got to have the kid that can knock it home, like the Jude Bellingham thing like the extreme skill.

Speaker 1:
18:02

I mean that was amazing To be able to hit that, as he did alpha ricochet. Like there's no time to think about that, he just pulled the trigger.

Speaker 2:
18:10

They're just, you know, just a freak athlete. Now next week. I want to talk about the tour and also the US men's national team soccer team got knocked out in the round game, so there's a bit of homework for us both in the round of America, which was a massive upset because it was yeah they were expected to go through and yeah, particularly in that tournament and in that location.

Speaker 2:
18:39

But we need to address. We had a couple of people discuss a few things on X. Andrew Fraser said love the show. We'd love to hear thoughts on the six Achilles injuries to top line rugby Australia players, three of which are props. And then Jack Quigley jumped in and said we love an answer to this. Most important ability is availability, and we are lacking in rugby, particularly in the front row. Now, I haven't seen this, but I obviously saw the BL Achilles which stopped from getting to 100 caps, was it?

Speaker 1:
19:16

Yeah, well, he's just come out. He had a period out of the game. He's come back. He's played some great super rugby, was playing club rugby, got injured.

Speaker 1:
19:24

Now I can't speak to these specifics, I'm not working in the field. I certainly have been party to a lot of discussions in recent time. I think that the historical nature and I had a great discussion with some internal people in rugby in Australia recently and I won't go to names and all that sort of stuff, but one of the prop things is and this is from a guy who's worked extensively in the UK one of the big issues that we seem to face is that players are coming up through the tiers and they're not scrummaging as much per year, let's say total, or let's even say per week. Their number of scrums per week is not building sufficiently to give them the resiliency at the higher levels. That's one of the thoughts that we have. Guys that don't scrummage up, they don't play enough games. Um, their preparation doesn't build them up. They're not prepared. There is also a case to say that there are some that are simply not strong enough, particularly in, you know, in around the calf and the ankle, just not like bulk. Here's the line in the sand. You've got to be at least that level before you go.

Speaker 1:
20:36

The other thing that really impacted those six would be arguably inappropriate activities impacted those six would be arguably inappropriate activities. Were there people doing things that probably they shouldn't have been doing? Or with respect particularly to the argument of you know availability, the old sailing maxim in order to finish first, first you must finish right. You've got to be on the field. You can't compete if you're not on the field. So the question around things like, let's say, really highly dynamic activities that maybe would have a very small level of return, is it worth doing those when you've just got to get them to the field? So I know for a fact Damien Marsh has just taken over the head of the Wallaby Strength and Conditioning, which is only 20 years too late. He should have been appointed 20 years ago.

Speaker 2:
21:30

But you know things happen.

Speaker 1:
21:32

Now I can tell you he's not going in. They've been together for two weeks. He's not going in trying to change how they perform. He's trying to get them in one package. Let Joe Schmidt and his team do as much as they reasonably can to assemble the team, but get them to the field. Get them to the field. There's no case for bringing a national team together when you've got a few, you know, 14 days of prep where the coach wants to train more. They've got more time on their feet, and when you're 120 kilos time on your feet's a big deal, right, yes, so I think there's a few things. I don't know that you can say there was any one error, one incidence or one aspect of preparation that limited the Achilles, but I think there's been a couple over time.

Speaker 2:
22:25

So in that scenario, let's take scrummaging. I have a belief that and I've discussed this with many good rehab people in my time and I have a belief that say, let's say you're rehabbing from a hamstring or even an ankle, it doesn't really matter and you need to expose that. One of the things we look at is when can they get to 90%, 95% maximum velocity? And you build up to that, you build up in your accelerations, your acceleration density, and you try and periodise all of those things. You don't know how many scrummages per week these guys have been doing. You know from a national team point of view. When I used to work for the national team, we had no idea what they were doing. You don't know. So how does Marshy periodise that?

Speaker 1:
23:26

So that's what everybody's looking like. Yes, many do know the numbers.

Speaker 1:
23:31

Oh, they know how many yeah yeah, yeah, they're starting to understand it and what they're looking at is the younger groups coming through and so if you're at under 19 level, they're trying to start working on. How many scrums do they need and how much practice at that drill, Much like your Cirque du Soleil guy? Right, you can train all you want in the gym, but to put your body at that angle, crush weight onto that end and have that ankle really really dorsiflexing and taking load pretty much isometrically, there's a bit of dynamicism to it, but it's small movements, so there's a lot to learning that. Specifically. Now I know rugby australia puts some new personnel in place to try and start to build all this. This is all nice in theory, right? One of the limitations of rugby australia for many years has been the disassociation between the provincial teams and the national team, that they don't really work together. I know there are various people that have tried over the years. God knows, I tried 25 years ago. I think they're starting to get closer to a model that might work, but it then becomes who's in charge? So I don't know. I do agree with the second guy that commented. I think there's really got to be like the guys who are available now for the most part, have had a good build-up through super rugby. Get them on the field Now. It will be interesting.

Speaker 1:
24:58

As an example of this, Taniella Tupo. So Taniella is I don't know the guy, but he's an awesome athlete. He's a very unique athlete, huge guy, very, very strong, very, very explosive, very explosive. He's had multiple soft tissues over time. He in fact tore his hamstring the week of the loss to wales in the world cup. So he's one of the big losses that came from an overload. Now they're going to pick a team this week. To my knowledge and I'm happy to be corrected on this, but I don't believe he's played a full game all year in super rugby. So the coach has got to be saying how long is this guy going to last he's played let's just say, for the instance, 20, 30 minutes. He may have played 40 minutes, but he's not going to have played 60, which is the normal time you might get out of a prop before you swap them over. So they need to be saying what's the long-term plan here? We put this guy on the bench, we'll play him out, we'll get some extra scrums into him through the week and build him up all of those things exactly like you said.

Speaker 1:
26:00

But it would appear that in the recent history of Rugby Australia, particularly the Wallabies, those smarter decisions haven't been taken and there have been things going off on tangent and we know the staff that were in there at that time. It's been widely acknowledged, even by the coach that was there, but other staff members as well, that people went off on tangents that ultimately probably contributed to some of that. But there's no doubt I think we yeah, as a front row building nation, we haven't been the greatest in history, but we probably lack the high intensity scrumming over the course of a number of years building the kids up. But I know people are looking at it, so let's cross fingers. I'll be watching on the weekend as an old fanboy of rugby and hope that we can do something better, because in the environment I'm currently in and I will say this, this is a I won't say exactly what I'm doing, but I, in order to make a living and and get my business speed sigged up and running, I work in the military. I I consult in the military overseas, but I'm working with some special forces dudes at the moment, one of which is a South African that keeps giving me shit about.

Speaker 1:
27:21

He said that the Wallabies versus Wales would be like watching two retards at school go out and try and play handball. So I thought it was a bit harsh and politically incorrect. But he's that kind of guy. But I do hope that it doesn't amount to that. I think Wales did some good things against South Africa last week, but there's a lot of international rugby coming up this weekend, so we do. Yeah, I'm on board. I hope. I'm looking forward. I want to see my buddy, Damien Marsh, do really well. I hope. I wish Joe Schmidt and his team all the very, very best. I genuinely hope we get back up and going because, yeah, it will be good to see us back yeah nice.

Speaker 2:
27:59

Well, if anybody can.

Speaker 1:
27:59

I'm a big fan of Damien, so he'll be able to yeah good cat, good guy, smart guy and hopefully he has the voice of wisdom to manage some of these guys, and we'll see what happens. Keep you right and see what Taniyala Tupou does. Berger, you're looking gassed man. I need to get you off to bed and ready for your day tomorrow and the next round of 19,. Round 19 AFL this week Round 18. 18?

Speaker 2:
28:25

I'm one ahead of myself. Look at that 18.

Speaker 1:
28:27

We go to'm one ahead of myself. Look at that 18.

Speaker 2:
28:31

We go to Brisbane, which?

Speaker 1:
28:34

Oh, Brisbane on the up.

Speaker 2:
28:36

Yeah, one of the hardest trips in AFL, so we'll see how we go. Brisbane on the up, you get home safely from the desert and, yeah, we'll see you next week.

Speaker 1:
28:44

Oh, we've got a little bit to do. We're going to the UK. You know that we're going up to the UK. I've publicised it on LinkedIn, but we've got some great meetings going up there. But, yeah, if you're listening to this and you want to know about SpeedSig, hit me up. Hit me up on LinkedIn. You know, just catch in and we'll come and have a talk. I'd love to hear you speak about it and all that. So, man, it's been a pleasure, as always. You go get some sleep and we'll shout out to young Harry, who made an appearance just before we went on air. So he's one of our biggest supporters, so strongest supporters, so we might get him two coaches and a coffee T-shirt.

Speaker 2:
29:26

Exactly. We'll get us one first and then get one for him All right, mate, all right, see you later.

-----END SEASON 2 EPISODE 20-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 19-----
Jason Weber:
0:12

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee, Drs Burgess and Weber here. Burjo, I'll just make some acknowledgments, for the moment he's chomping away on his lunch. So this is, as we just said. This is very real. This is right in the middle of Burjo's commitments with the Adelaide Crows. I myself am packing bags and getting ready to jump on a plane. So, Burjo, how are you doing there, mate, you hanging in there?

Darren Burgess:
0:38

Going okay. Yep, just coming out of team selection and yeah, got another meeting shortly and then pick the kids up from school. So fun times here, mate Good stuff, but keen to get cracking. He had a very good conversation with Dave Tenney, one of the great practitioners, and of a similar. He won't be offended if I say a similar vintage to us Yep.

Darren Burgess:
1:01

And he picked us up on something where we yeah, exactly we said we were going to get to something in the next episode and Yep, similar experience, team sports players and the views or the alternate methods to do that, one of which is often when you find South American players and he's working in the MLS with Austin at the moment and gets a lot of South American players in who have grown up with different size balls, different new numbers in games 2v2, 3v3, depending on how many people there are about different surfaces, different footwear and just play versus. Let's call it the I don't know. We'll call it the Australian model, so as not to offend any of our European or American counterparts.

Darren Burgess:
2:00

Or contemporary model. Contemporary model where you do some running, you do a bit of the sport, you do some drills, you do some cone drills, you do some technique running, you do some gym work, you do a bit of Pilates, maybe a bit of yoga. You play once a week, Play once a week, but do a lot of stuff around the edges, which is designed to, I guess, make you more resilient and resistant to injury. And the two ways of looking at it go.

Jason Weber:
2:34

Mate, I think we've touched on this. But Dave's in a really unique position where he does have a lot of that South American influence. I saw that in my short tenure in the A-League, having worked with some Spanish guys who'd played La Liga and the like. Yeah, it's all I've ever done. I've always played Personally.

Jason Weber:
2:52

I don't think you can say one is better than the other, but I will say I will use a word that I've used quite extensively in this area and that is attritional. I think the systems that develop those players like the favela, the kids who play every day and they work their way up and that's all they ever do. It's attritional Because there's a kid that gets injured when he's 12. He rolls his ankle, he can't keep up, blah, blah, blah. You don't hear about him, he's out the door. But because there's so many playing, they push the numbers through. Now it's not dissimilar, a little bit of an overlap, but the rugby league model in Australia is very much based on being just hard. Right, there's not, they're not, and they have certainly improved in the, I guess, the sports sciences. But traditionally the model is smash the kids through juniors and the ones that come through at the top are absolutely unbreakable and my example would be so.

Jason Weber:
3:50

In my earlier, the earlier part of my tenure in rugby around 2003, 2004, we had three rugby league players come into the wallabies and I would agree and I would attest that they were broadly indestructible. They didn't get injured, they just kept going. They did their thing. Yeah, they lifted, but they ran hard, they ran a lot and I would attest that they were broadly indestructible. They didn't get injured, they just kept going. They did their thing. Yeah, they lifted, but they ran hard. They ran a lot harder than a lot of rugby guys. And it's interesting, eddie Jones comes out this week and says NRL players are much tougher than union players.

Darren Burgess:
4:20

Interesting sideline.

Jason Weber:
4:24

But I think there is something to that. I've had to fight all the way to get through, as compared to what happens in AFL, maybe a little bit which is you get the elite come through. So we've got a kid playing. Harley Reid plays West Coast. He was our first draft pick this year. Awesome kid, all the rest of it. But there are kids just below that who have been picked four, five, 10, and they're going to be average and they may never do any good, but they've been told all their life how good they are, yet they haven't actually had to fight for it. So I'm not advocating one versus the other, but I think one of the things we talked about remember you brought up that athlete in the UK who had voiced his opinion that he didn't want to do strength training. Yeah, I think the point of that is we have to acknowledge there's different ways. Anyway, what do you think, mate?

Darren Burgess:
5:17

Yeah, there's certainly different ways, but what is really important and even I was speaking to an AFLW athlete, one of the Crows' best players today, not more than I don't know three hours ago, because match committee went for about that long and she was saying I'm really regimented and I'm really structured and I'm really and sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing because I don't quite get the variety of stimulus that I need and I thought that's a really mature way to look at it, because I think that's the key in this use your term and call it more contemporary is we say you're having gym at 2pm and you're doing lowers today and uppers the next day, and then we're doing breakdown drills on Monday.

Darren Burgess:
6:13

We're doing this, and so there is a certain amount of variety, but there is nowhere near the scenario-based strength as well as gameplay as what you would get from just playing, and that's whether it's league union, particularly football, basketball. Just playing means you're exposed to so many different scenarios where, unless you display or adapt strength or moves, you won't survive and you won't progress. So I think contemporary is good as long as there's variety. Obviously we'll call it the South American, which is a little bit.

Jason Weber:
6:56

Yeah, it's the attritional model.

Darren Burgess:
6:58

Yeah, yeah, the attritional model, yeah, that has certainly got the variety, but it might lack at times the overload that you might need. It might, but I think to dismiss one and say this young South American player has come into my system and has got no gym exposure. Oh shit, I'm going to have to take him through the lifts, or take her through the lifts and they're going to have to teach him how to Olympic. Or take her through the lifts and they're going to have to teach him how to Olympic lift and how to squat and how to you know, it's just hopefully no one's doing that, because it's just hammer, nail stuff.

Jason Weber:
7:35

I think people are doing it, mate. I think that's the point. So I mean, I do know.

Jason Weber:
7:39

When I turned up in the A-League I had one of these Spanish guys being told I have to lift the A-League. I had one of these Spanish guys being told I have to lift, I have to do this. And in fact, another player I worked with in that realm who was a wingback, so a really good running kid, fast but relatively inflexible, was told he had to squat. That's what you got to do, you've got to squat. And I met him and went there's no way you're squatting, my friend, you're not suited to it. You and I we haven't got the time to develop all the flexibility, but you can do single leg and we can do anyway, pressed on I. I think there's no question where there's horses for courses. Now, I know that gets challenging when you're in a big environment.

Jason Weber:
8:20

I was in uh in the in texas earlier in the year and watched uh, texas A&M running through strength sessions with their beginner athletes, their freshies, coming in. They just line them all up and everybody on the whistle like lift, lift, lift and that's just how they manage numbers. But it's still the same thing. Everybody do it and if you can't survive, out the door, man, I don't doubt you for a second. I think your comment about leading towards chaos variety, yeah, in some of our more or lower playing sports like teams, guys that don't play very often we have an issue. But I'll do the counter, which we have talked about before, that I've seen in in high school athletes over the last two years an immense number of lumbar stress fractures because kids are getting overdone. Now, is that because they're trying to run too much? Because they're trying to repeat speed, they can't run, they can't generate good vertical forces, so they're arching into their back. I don't know, but would they be better suited to just playing?

Darren Burgess:
9:34

So you're saying that a lot of kids coming into the US system are getting injured because you're suggesting that might?

Jason Weber:
9:43

be a reason. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying I've seen in Australia in the AFL, like in the AFL system, not at the AFL level, but kids coming through Australian rules football from 16 through to about sorry 15 through to 17, getting a ton of kids with pars, interarticular stress fractures, so lumbar stress fractures from extension rotation moments because of fundamentally too much of something it's not lifting because most of the kids that I've seen don't lift. So it's got nothing to do with that, it's got to do with what they're choosing to do. Now they're doing football. Some of them are playing cricket.

Jason Weber:
10:24

Cricket's a killer, but take cricket out of it because it's obvious. Basketball, jumping sports, volleyball, football, Now the football. Then I go for a 10K run on the weekend. Now, I'm not necessarily advocating for that, but I do think, man, there's, I think there's a sweet spot between them because the attritional thing the learn how to fight. I had a great talk yesterday with your great mate, Dave Carillon, and we were talking about exactly this that when we're doing whatever, let's say we're doing some speed, work, agility that make it a race, Make it that kid one versus two, two versus three, whoever it is, so that the kids compete, they learn to fight rather than just I'll just sit in my own lane because it's not track and field. You've got to physically fight and I think that's what you see out of that attritional system, with kids who just prepared to fight and prepared to give everything for sure you know at at the uh, to win the objective of whatever that is at that time.

Darren Burgess:
12:33

Yeah, I think what trumps a lot of things, or what's really important to add context to in your programs, is that competitive element.

Jason Weber:
12:46

Yep.

Darren Burgess:
12:47

I think that your body will find a way to adapt more often than not in that competitive element. And I think that's, yeah, Dave, certainly growing up on the main streets of Norwich, he would have had that competitive element in his, yeah, in his training at all times, which you kind of have to, you know, with some of the teams and clubs and organisations that he's been with, like the competitive stuff. It's just brutal.

Jason Weber:
13:15

Mate, I got another little twist right. So we've got the kids that succeed, the ones that come through. Let's say, we talked about Harley Reid before brilliant athlete, awesome competitor, like the kid.

Darren Burgess:
13:26

So the overseas people? Harley Reid was number one draft pick and fulfilled that Delivered. He's delivered big time in his first year.

Jason Weber:
13:34

And he's 18 years old and he plays like a 25-year-old man, like he is physically dominant.

Jason Weber:
13:41

Now part of that's attitude. He's not a particularly big guy, but his attitude and explosive Right. So all of those things. Maybe he did some good work while he was in his development years. But what about the kids that we work with Now? I can name. I'll name one, matt DeBoer. Now, no one overseas will know him Few in Australia might not even.

Jason Weber:
14:01

But Matt got recruited at a reasonable number, not too big, but he was okay. At best he was a plotter as an athlete. But this kid worked and worked and worked and got stronger and fitter and in his first couple of years he had stress fractures in his feet. He just couldn't tolerate the volumes that we're doing. And then came the shift in Australian football when we got extra rotations and this amount of running just went through the roof. He changed. He went from a very average at the time we were doing 3Ks. He went from a very average 3K to he worked his butt off and he came back and was like a top five athlete in our squad.

Jason Weber:
14:46

So there's a rationale to what we did was a a structured plan to help this kid get better. Now does he survive in a nutritional system or does he just fall by the wayside because he tries to keep up and he can't, whereas we're able to give him very specific work and we built, we built with and we got there. So does he survive a nutritional system? Yeah, do you reckon? I don't know, I mean, the kids are fine. He was another warrior, without question, so maybe he does.

Jason Weber:
15:18

But I think there's a case, for there are those that are going to succeed, maybe sometimes in spite of us, but I think there are a lot where we get to succeed because of us, and I'm not saying that we should intervene on everything. I think the example of the English guy that you noted some weeks ago that his opinion was and he had an example and he had facts I like that. That's a very, very self-aware athlete. Now, hopefully that's the truth. But as a professional I would respect that position Same as if I mean, I do a lot of work at the moment through college football and SEC and even into NFL, and there are conversations I have there where I'm like I will say you've got a kid who's got XYZ abilities and there are some deficiencies.

Jason Weber:
16:10

Now the deficiencies, in my opinion, are of a magnitude that we really need to get them up just to an acceptable level so he can go and prevent maybe in some cases prevent injury. So I've suggested why does he go and do all the general strength that everybody else is doing? Why are we going to put 200 kilos on his back when it's going to compress his spine and it's going to add to? This kid has issues in his hamstring that come out of his back. Why don't we change that? So, rather than have him in that attritional model, take him and do something different with him and focus on his ability, whereas he doesn't fit the group, which is no different to a kid who's saying we're going to play four times a week, five times a week, we're going to play every day. Some can't do it.

Darren Burgess:
16:55

I guess the determining factor in all of this is Breeding.

Jason Weber:
17:03

Well, breeding mate, breeding. Hitler had it right. Yeah, yes, pull that one up.

Darren Burgess:
17:09

I retract that the Cubans in the 80s? I think yeah.

Jason Weber:
17:13

Long jumpers.

Darren Burgess:
17:16

The Deborah example is a good example, right? Because um by any sort of objective judge um not the most naturally talented, um skillful player. So in that circumstance, um now ifl lends itself to being able to play when you're not super skilled. Not super skilled. There are plenty of really skilled people who aren't playing afl and are playing country leagues and things like that because they didn't have the physical attributes. So there's a nice mixture of skill and physicality in football soccer I would argue it's the other way because it's you know, probably 85 percent skill.

Darren Burgess:
17:54

So if all that work in the offseason improving your physicality, um, is at the expense of, or instead of, skill play, then and that's the advantage that the attritional jason weber copyrighted attritional model has um is that it's improving your match play as well I think I think you've nailed that with that.

Jason Weber:
18:16

Let's change and then go. Basketball Does basketball represent a more skill-based sport compared to a more physical-based sport? Let's say, whereas soccer, football and AFL are quite distinct, I agree, I think AFL is far more physical. You can get by in AFL by being a great runner and all the rest of it, but you can't get away with that in soccer if you're in the real football. What do you think of basketball Does?

Darren Burgess:
18:43

that fit. Yeah, no, I think that's probably in the soccer end rather than the AFL end, but I guess it applies really well to basketball, because one of the great things about basketball like soccer and we spoke about this last week is you need that resilience, that ability to play day after day, night after night, different time zones, different weather, different levels of fatigue, and I'm not sure you can get that in the gym.

Jason Weber:
19:12

No, categorically not.

Darren Burgess:
19:15

Yeah, so that attritional model really comes into play, then All right. And that we send our players to the streets to play pick-up ball at Venice Beach. You can get that within. You know the NBA setting. Of course you can, of course, but yeah, you need to be a bit more creative with it.

Jason Weber:
19:33

All right, matt, I'm going to throw you a coach intervention because this is right what we're talking about. So I've got the soccer player I mentioned earlier, the wingback young man who's just gone through cancer treatment. So he's come out the other end, thankfully. He's done well, but we've been training all the way through chemo and everything and building it up. But now he's starting to build back to hopefully getting an A-League gig later this year.

Jason Weber:
20:01

Now we're deliberately training double days and back-to-back days simply to prepare for the fact that that's what football coaches do. Football coaches will pull double days of soccer, whereas that doesn't happen so much in the AFL anymore. It's certainly rugby union, that type of sphere sphere where I come from. You might run one, but you do line outs or something later. But we're now prepping so he doesn't have a space, he doesn't have a favela to go to and play. But we're trying to recreate that by saying, yeah, you're going to run in the morning, you're going to go home, have a spell, you're going to come back and we're going to do another section later in the afternoon just to prep him for football. So I think maybe the point in all this, mate, is really people in the industry having a really good look at what they're doing.

Jason Weber:
20:53

And what's your sport? What's the heritage of the sport? Where are your kids coming from? Like what are they? And this is something I'll always argue is what's the heritage of the sport? Where are your kids coming from? Like, what are they and what? This is something I'll always argue is what's their trick? What got them to this point? What did they do if they were standing on their head an hour every day? Because that's what they think it worked? I think we should help them stand on their head. I mean, I know that's extreme, but you've got to respect what they've done.

Darren Burgess:
21:21

Yeah, yeah, it's really important to understand cultural, obviously, when you're in international sports, but also historical sense, and not walk into an organisation or not have people walk into your organisation and you dictate what they do because you know best and that's what has worked at a previous organisation or with a previous midfielder or with a previous power forward or whatever your sport might be, and I think sometimes it does take experience to figure that out. But yeah, it's a really important point.

Jason Weber:
21:55

Well, I think you've made a great point. Experience In my wonderful chat with the great man Dave Carroll on yesterday, which is always an entertainment.

Darren Burgess:
22:02

You've given him way too much publicity, Dave.

Jason Weber:
22:04

He gives us nothing on his podcast? Why?

Darren Burgess:
22:06

are we continually pumping him up, Mate?

Jason Weber:
22:08

I don't know, I just enjoyed the chat. Like I live my life on video chat so it's really cool when I get to have one. So anyway. But we were talking about the fact that he's seeing a trend in the UK of a lot of younger guys getting performance leadership roles. So I would counsel you got to listen to what Darren just said Takes experience, but it takes a second to stand back and not go hey, we're doing it my way. Let's look at what we've got. Let's see how did it? Like? I'm part of their journey. I talk to them and this is one of the things I learned in soccer which I was so thankful for.

Jason Weber:
22:48

You get guys who went to a club. If you're from Australia, they go to an Italian club when they're 17, 18, even younger, 16, and they learn stuff. And then they learn stuff somewhere and then they join you and then they're going to go somewhere else. So you're only part of their journey and so you're trying to add a nice paragraph or a sentence or maybe a chapter to what they're doing, but you don't own them. And I think sometimes we get young S&C coaches who feel like they own it. In America they're very big, I did this. I coaches who feel like they own it In.

Jason Weber:
23:19

America. They're very big. I did this.

Darren Burgess:
23:21

I got this player drafted, yeah, yeah, you know like they're putting on your resume, so you were the reason.

Jason Weber:
23:25

Yeah, putting them on your resume.

Darren Burgess:
23:26

I got 24 guys drafted, please, so I think there's a section there for the young guys going in Humility, look, listen, learn. And that's not to dismiss being a bit flippant there, not to dismiss what some people uh do in in those scenarios because they really can, um, you know, make a percent or two difference, um, absolutely um, and and in that industry you probably do have to self-promote a little bit more in than in other injury injuries, other industries. But yeah, I think, as you said, that humility and where we fit in the whole spectrum is probably an important lesson to learn.

Jason Weber:
24:08

When I say learn, I don't mean I mean you've got to learn from the guys who are senior to you. You've got to learn off knuckleheads who've been around, but learn off your athletes. Learn what's in front of you, watch it, watch how they move to you. You got to learn off knuckleheads who've been around, but learn off your athletes.

Jason Weber:
24:18

Learn what's in front of you, watch it, look, watch how they move. You know, someone said to me ages ago how do you get started in all this? I said train anybody, train old people, young people, like anybody, like I started as a personal trainer. Right, watch how people move, listen, learn and you will. You'll adapt. So yeah, learn from your environment, no question on that philosophical note.

Jason Weber:
24:45

Uh, we'll make it short and sweet, because I do have to, uh, get back to my proper job yeah one day we might next, maybe next time out we might discuss match committee and the frivolous nature with which AFL conducts selection for hours and hours.

Darren Burgess:
25:02

You can say that I can't say that because I'm gaming. I can say that my kids' education relies on me being here, but I'm happy to chat about it. Let's do that next week.

Jason Weber:
25:12

Or at least nod your head.

Darren Burgess:
25:13

Yeah, when you're in 42 degrees next week in the desert, yeah yeah, in the desert, all right.

Jason Weber:
25:18

Well, best to everyone Listen. Last week we had a little call out. We asked if you were listening to our podcast to just get one person else to do. It Looked like it worked. We got a few more last week, so we're going to ask again If you're listening to our podcast and you like it, share it with somebody, share it with one of your buddies and let's get this thing up in some numbers. Thank you all very much, and you guys have a great week and we'll speak to you soon. Bye.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 19-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 18-----
Jason Weber:
0:11

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren sitting over there in sunny South Australia. How are you, mate? You must be pretty pumped. Some good events in the recent last 48 hours.

Darren Burgess:
0:24

Oh, last 48 hours. Yes, I thought you meant the Adelaide Crows who can't buy a game.

Jason Weber:
0:28

Oh no no, no, no, we're not on that. So let's talk, let's go global. Let's start with the Celtics.

Darren Burgess:
0:34

Celtics massive win Couldn't be more excited.

Jason Weber:
0:39

Dominant.

Darren Burgess:
0:40

Yeah, dominant, dominant season and you go through all the stats dominant season and dominant postseason. I've done it the slightly less conventional way which I was reading some of the articles about it, some of the stats around what they pay and the superstars versus. You know there's no real dominant superstar in their team. There's obviously some very good players and that's disrespectful to the players that have done well, but you know, the best two players in the league played for two other teams and I think Tatum, their number one ranked player, was ranked seventh or something by whatever the you know some of the object websites. So, yeah, very excited by how they did it because, having had some knowledge of it and been a little bit involved with Some involvement yep.

Darren Burgess:
1:35

Yeah, so the Crows and the Celtics, through Coles' department and I guess my department did some PD sharing and consulting and information sharing have done so over the last couple of years. So it's exciting. What it shows me, jason, and hopefully some team owners over there, is that what Colesley has set up, and I would throw in Jace Delaney in there.

Jason Weber:
2:06

I was going to say we should mention Jace. Give Jace a call out.

Darren Burgess:
2:09

Yeah, one of the best in the business. I believe they've got the best high performance set up that I've seen in some time, if not ever, in that they've got good people with good processes, not doing anything unbelievably fancy or flashy, but they've got this way and this is, you know, colesie and I'm sure Jase as well has got this way of setting up systems and processes so that when something happens they can refer back to the systems and processes that they all agreed on at the start of Coles' tenure and the start of the season. New coach comes in slots into the systems and process, new strength coach comes in, new sports scientist, and lo and behold they have great Success.

Darren Burgess:
3:00

Yeah, great availability and the great they look like and all the objective metrics that they collect in the NBA, of which there are plenty, shows that they were able to maintain their energy levels throughout the season. Their load management of their players was outstanding, so, and they got the ultimate reward in one of the more dominant fashions over the last 10 years. So couldn't be more happier for the Celtics and for those guys in particular.

Jason Weber:
3:29

I think, mate, you bring up a great point, which I'm going to harp on for a little bit, because I think that idea how long has Cole been there now? He's been there 10 years, 12.

Darren Burgess:
3:40

I think no a bit less than that, a bit less 10 years. Yeah, he was at San Antonio Spurs before that?

Jason Weber:
3:46

Yeah, of course yeah, but your point is the Celtics have made a system and you said specifically they drop a new head coach, they find a head coach that suits the system to come in. He comes in and plays his game, they recruit to the system, yep, and they get going. Now, look, I think that's fantastic. I think in the era of professional sports where we're trying to be reproducible you look at in the AFL you'd have to say Sydney are in that market where they've been able to maintain success their dip in a year is like going to eighth position or seventh, as opposed to what they are now, which is two games clear in the competition.

Jason Weber:
4:32

I would have to argue that there are certainly sporting environments I've seen it. There's one massive one that I could speak to at the moment, but I won't name them but where you let the head coach come in and dominate everything, they change everything. And if you were just to look at a silly, like little speedometer, like they go from one aspect to another, so everything changes and the whole place gets gutted. Then the head coach leaves for whatever reason and we're now left with nothing but destruction and turmoil. And we bring new people in and all they want to do is reverse the polarity of the whole thing and we have players going from one thing to another, systems all over the place.

Darren Burgess:
5:17

It's madness it's extraordinary that, particularly in that owner-based system. You know in the US and you and I have a fair share of interactions with the US and then the owner-based system in elite soccer as well global football that you wouldn't see this more often. I was speaking to an NFL high performance director this morning and he was saying the systems that they're setting up sound like the exact same. They realise they're at the bottom, but they're just trying to build these sustainable systems and I'm sure other teams will follow suit and hopefully that's good for the industry. And, by the way, colsey and Jase would be the first people to sit there and say listen, we played a minuscule role, but it's still an important role. You know they're both pretty humble people.

Jason Weber:
6:08

They're good thinkers, mate. Like again, if we have a little think about that sports science position that we've talked about before, that we've said, you know, sports scientists can't be just processing GPS and move forward. Jace Delaney would be the absolute antithesis of that. Like, he is a smart, inquisitive, like a really sharp cat and he's looking deep. And we've spoken about it would be a little while ago now, but he was talking about some of the assessments he was making of freshness. Now they were doing it in training, in not full-blown team training, but with jump shots. Now, I won't say exactly how he was doing it in training, in not full-blown team training, but with jump shots. Now, I won't say exactly how he was doing it, but man, I thought it was incredibly insightful, user-friendly, player-friendly way to collect data. I mean, I'm one of that mate. I'm, for a lot of reasons, against the idea of shipping people in. We'll jump on forced platforms, we'll do this.

Jason Weber:
7:04

We'll do that Because players get bored, senseless of it and they consequently don't put in the effort. So you don't know what the actual output is.

Darren Burgess:
7:13

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
7:14

Jase was doing some really ingenious things, I felt, on the basketball court. So yeah, man, like they can say, small part, but you know, everybody has to play their role.

Darren Burgess:
7:26

Sure. So, those guys are doing a great job. Yeah, really good, really happy for them and unsurprising amount of success. Now next for you.

Jason Weber:
7:39

Well, let's talk podcasts, lag and lead time.

Darren Burgess:
7:42

You talked to me about lag and lead time.

Jason Weber:
7:45

Well, we need to.

Darren Burgess:
7:46

Before this podcast, we spoke for literally about eight seconds and you said ask me about lag and lead time. So go, jason. What's lag and lead time?

Jason Weber:
7:57

What's a lag and lead time? Well, I'm going to put credit where credit's due. So I was talking to Simon Harries this week. Now Simon is the head of strength and conditioning at the New South Wales Institute of Sport, comes out of Rugby, sevens, gws in the AFL really good, excellent rehab guy. That's really his superpower and that's where he's at Now. He's doing some education in that space. But we spoke through the week and he said man, I speak to people all the time and he did sort of say a little bit more the medical fraternity. But he said we talk about lead and lag indicators. He said they've got. No one seems to have any idea.

Jason Weber:
8:32

Really, simply, we're all on this monitoring thing. We always want to collect data. But when you look at the field of economics, which has been monitoring things for a lot longer than sports science has, they talk about two things lead indicators and lag indicators. So a lag indicator is a data point that you might collect that really doesn't give you any information moving forward but allows you to look at what has happened in the recent past, whereas a lead indicator might be something that gives you a piece of information about what's happening going forward. So, for instance, if you were saying our major economic indicator is, you know, gdpr, economic growth. Now the lead indicator for that in Australia could be something like wheat sales. So if wheat sales and wheat price goes up, we know the economy is going to follow. That Same thing being in sport would be if we've got an indicator that gives us some information about injury or about performance. What are those? But distinguishing between them is something that I don't think seems to be being done and that's been reported to me. So how would you?

Darren Burgess:
9:50

Give me an example of each for a people, or a hammy or a calf, or you pick your poison.

Jason Weber:
9:56

Yeah, right. So if you pick your poison, if you go, well, let's use what I do now running mechanics. If you were able to put someone through Vicon testing, so in full-blown three-dimensional assessment, and you did that in January and then you did that again in June, that would be a lag indicator. You're not getting information along the way that's helping you understand where players are at, whereas from a speed-seek perspective, the objective is to be able to try and measure things on the field regularly. So what you're looking at is one of the critical variables is sensitivity to change over time, so we can detect changes over time. So that change over time, if you saw a little bit of a dip in a particular variable over a period, you might go okay, that's now starting to change. Is that giving me information to get in front of the possibility of injury and or drop off in performance?

Jason Weber:
10:54

So you're doing, you might do things like I think HRV is very much in that market where you're trying to get in front of the curve. So I think that's the simplest explanation in a short period of time. But let's change tact again. Let's really bounce this thing around like a ping pong ball. Mate, you've had some movement. We talked about that last week some staff movement.

Jason Weber:
11:18

And there's a bit of action in that space.

Darren Burgess:
11:21

Yes, so I've got a couple of comments, a couple of friendship requests.

Jason Weber:
11:26

then I'll call that contact with us on linkedin friendship requests yeah, yeah, they sent you a little bracelet in the mail and said darren, will you be my friend, let's be honest.

Darren Burgess:
11:35

Um uh, they um dms. Yeah, just saying they heard the podcast and you know they heard there's roles going, so they want to put their hand up for it.

Jason Weber:
11:46

That's a unique way. That's a unique way to source them, isn't it?

Darren Burgess:
11:54

And the local news last night evidently mentioned that we'd lost a couple of staff members. So, yes, so there's some advertisements that will go out shortly and we'll look for the best candidates for the roles. One of the positions will promote internally but the other two will source externally, which means there's three positions that we'll be looking for. Interesting process. You and I have both done our fair share of that.

Jason Weber:
12:25

All right. So I've got a question's. I've got it. I've got a question. Before we do advice, I got a question for you. So you're hiring, do you model in your head this is the person I want, this is exactly the job I want them to do. Or do you go to market with a bit of a broader idea? But if you find someone with a skill set that's a little bit off to one side, that you might manipulate your environment because that person let's say that person's so good, you really like them, you think they'll fit the environment, but they're just their skill sets. Specialize a little bit, else Would you manipulate your environment. Or do you go? That's what I want, that's what I'm getting, so I've got three positions On two of them.

Darren Burgess:
13:06

That's what I'm getting. So I've got three positions On two of them. I'm going to be pretty specific on the skill set that I want and on the third, there will be that flexibility.

Jason Weber:
13:15

There you go.

Darren Burgess:
13:16

Depending on the skill set. So it's an interesting one because, yeah, the first two, yeah, I'm going to be pretty definitive. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how we go in that in that space. Um, uh, I guess the the question will be um in the generalist, because there's one of the roles will be quite a generalist. How do you go about finding out whether um or Jane Smith is the skill set's? Easy enough, right, because it's on the CV. You can speak to previous employers, you can do all of that sort of stuff. How do you find out about character, work ethic, applicability to your environment?

Jason Weber:
15:06

I'll go. I'm just going to go the other way. I'm going to say that you've got no time to understand their personality or who they are or any of that, so you're going to have to rely on can I speak to someone else as to their that, that work ethic, that quality, I think, worth it. Work ethic to a degree, I think, if nothing else, graduate study tells you where they're at with that, like how, what have they done? Yep, but I will say the skill set is one that I've changed my tune on massively. Okay, I, I and I'll tell you exactly why.

Jason Weber:
15:41

I was referenced a guy to come and work rehab for me many years ago and the person who reviewed him to me I trusted and I thought you know that's great. When I got him in, he didn't know squat about what he was doing, not, no, not well, yeah, he was pretty useless. In fact, I'm going to say he fucked up two serious senior players quite massively to the extent that I took over the rehab and it was a really, really big year for the team I was in at that time. So we're talking top of the league sort of stuff. So my challenge with that was I started interviewing differently. So I don't like doing the suits. So if you do a job interview with me if I've there's a few guys around that would remember this when you come to the job interview, don't wear a suit, don't wear any of that shit. Wear your gear to go to the gym. We're not going to get flogged, but we go to the gym and we're going to have a discussion and that discussion is going to go across all the skill sets that I want to deal with and we're going to talk and you're going to show me a couple of things. If we talk about running, tell us about your running philosophy. What sort of drills would you use to address this? That the other thing when you're lifting, what type of lifts do you focus on? Do you focus? Would you change from one person to another? Could you show me, show me, how you'd coach? What are your key points? So I would, these days, now I would, I want to know. Now I had.

Jason Weber:
17:20

I interviewed a female for a position in my strength staff, my strength and conditioning staff, a couple of some years ago now, and she was of unquestionable personal quality. She was awesome, in fact. Now I mentioned I did two, two different. I spoke to two different ones. Both had different skill sets and I both would hire them as people in a heartbeat, but the genuine nature of their skill set was insufficient for what we needed.

Jason Weber:
17:47

And I only learned that when I let's go in the gym, let's just talk, it's no pressure, let's just go through it and I'll just work through it. In my head I won't have an agenda. This is what we're doing, but you get a feel for what they know. And from a philosophical perspective, for me it's like well, you've got to be somewhat close to me in terms of we can come and fit and work together. Now, by that I mean if you come in and you're a CrossFit person and we're going to do a thousand reps of power cleans and we're going to work to fatigue, that's not going to be me. So philosophically we're in different places really won't happen. But if we're a bit closer aligned, so, mate, I figure out. I figure you've got to go and test it. You've got to go and look.

Jason Weber:
18:37

And one of my guys who I hired in that fashion, who is now the head of high performance at an AFL club, he actually got the job. I had him second to another guy. He got the job because of what he did in that process on the floor, the other guy I thought was more experienced and better and all the rest of it and blah, blah, blah. But the guy who I'm talking about now, who is now I'll tell you it's Dan Zaknitch, who's now head of high performance at Western Bulldogs. He was awesome and for me has been. You know, I've had a handful of really great guys work with me over the years and Dan is very much one of those who is an extraordinary operator and now moved well past me. Now you know he's doing his own thing.

Darren Burgess:
19:28

He's doing a great job at the Bulldogs.

Jason Weber:
19:30

Clearly they're hitting a real purple patch, so he's clearly doing it Well it's interesting when you talk about we go back to the Celtics thing they don't. Celtics didn't have a star. Well, western Bulldogs do have a star in Marcus Bonampelli. And for the team to be up and going and for Dan to be facilitating a player of that magnitude he was unbelievable last week Anyway, great. So that's my interview process, mate. That's how I do it.

Darren Burgess:
19:59

Yeah, I do like putting people on the spot with a practical scenario. I've done that with data people in the past. Show me what you can do with this. I'll certainly look to do that again for one of the positions. The running mechanics will be a requirement of another of the positions, so it'll be interesting to get them out there. I'll get them to coach me, which will be real low-end stuff. Yeah, so we'll see how we go.

Jason Weber:
20:33

Mate. What's interesting is I'll give you the opposite story. I was in a position again quite a number of years ago now, where I'd taken over. I was in rugby and I took over this sort of national development network and I basically said, look, we're going to get everybody in and we're just going to go through from ground up. I want to see what people know.

Jason Weber:
20:58

One of the coaches, who was an older guy at the time a little bit older than me at the time, which really he wouldn't have been 40 at the time, I was probably about 35. Anyway, he came in and he refused to do it. He said I'm too experienced, I'm too old for all this stuff. And he pulled out. And the reality was, mate, he didn't know what he was talking about. And that's where we get down the track of saying, well, if you've got confidence, I just want you to teach, I just want you to show me. It's not about me berating you. I'm not saying I'm better than you. I've been in some of these interviews. There's another kid I interviewed who's also doing really well now, who I was interviewing and as he's doing it, he's showing me stuff. I'm going, man, that's hot, like you've really got a great perspective on that. I like that, so straightaway, I'm learning.

Darren Burgess:
21:53

So I think people who are very, very defensive and wouldn't say, you know, I'm too good for this man, I think that shows their lack of confidence in their skill going for one of my early job interviews and the question that was I was at N-Swiss and a question was put to me early on and I thought, yeah, I've done everything, I've prepared, I wore the suit, everything, I'm good to go. I was only young and it was one of many jobs I got knocked back. They had I think I was a year out of uni. If you train, train somebody, which direction would you hope the lactate curve would shift? And I froze and had no idea and the guy handled it really well and just said okay, mate, we might come back to that one.

Darren Burgess:
22:47

Let me ask you another couple of questions. And and from then I was done and it was just a real simple, practical question. But it wasn't tell me about your time at the you know Fremantle Dockers? Or tell me about your time at the you know freemantle doctors? Or tell me about your time at the like. It was a literally practical question. Failed. Next, didn't get the job.

Jason Weber:
23:05

Fair enough mate, I already I remember doing one of my master's level physiology degrees courses and we had to do a, an oral exam and sit there and get fucking quizzed and I still to this day remember that being. I don't think I did very well, to be very honest, probably skin of your teeth type passing but I still remember to this day that there was a real difference in sitting down and writing about it versus hey, here's a practical example, exactly like your lactate curve, and the lactate curve in itself is interesting.

Jason Weber:
23:47

What athlete am I talking about? Am I talking? About a track sprinter or am I talking about a triathlon runner?

Darren Burgess:
23:52

Like there's different answers 25, 26 years ago, so maybe more.

Jason Weber:
24:00

Well, but it's mate, so I'll be interested to hear how you pursue your interviews. But if someone's going for a job with Berger and he says don't wear a suit, you turn up ready to rock and roll.

Darren Burgess:
24:15

Absolutely, I think, back yourself in, back yourself in.

Jason Weber:
24:21

Same with the data stuff. If you're going for a data job and this is quite, very, very common in larger scale businesses here's a data set Hack.

Darren Burgess:
24:33

It Show me what you can do, yeah 100% You've got That'll be part of the part of the scenario, so be be warned, yeah you've got.

Jason Weber:
24:44

You've got 12 variables. There's the dependent. Tell me which one is the closest to a lead indicator. Tell me which is the worst. You know that's. That's the stuff you would need to know, um and mate if I got a data dude coming in, I'd be smashing them with machine learning questions. Yeah, absolutely, because it's such a valuable part of what we do now.

Darren Burgess:
25:06

Yeah, for sure. We're involved in one with Arsenal and we hired a data scientist there, and there was actually four different projects that we put to whittle down to one between me and the StatDNA team.

Jason Weber:
25:23

And we got the right guy for that.

Darren Burgess:
25:24

And we actually hired the girl who came second as well, because she was so good. So, yeah, it worked out pretty well. But, mate, we're out of time here. Let's keep it to the short, sharp thing that people seem to like.

Jason Weber:
25:39

Well, what we need to do. We've just had a quick review of our podcast. What we need to do is everybody who's listening to the podcast weekly. Which data would suggest it's the same people every week. We need you to tell some friends. If everyone tells one person, we'll go. You know great, we're not trying to achieve anything magical or commercial, but yeah, we'd like to reach out to a few more people and have a wider story. Anyway, mate, it's been a pleasure, as always. We will catch up again next week.

Darren Burgess:
26:13

Enjoy the week, Mike.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 18-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 17-----
Jason Weber:
0:09

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Darren Burgess back in town. Jason Weber here as well. Burgess, how are you mate? A couple of tough weeks in South Australia. Yes, yes, welcome and good to see you again, my friend. For context, the club that I work for, Adelaide Crows, is a two team town of sport mad and AFL. Mad people and the Crows are probably a bit more popular than Port Adelaide, the other team here. Port Adelaide, are doing quite well and have done for the last few seasons. Crows have been through a rebuilding phase and last year we missed the finals sort of controversially, which I've spoken about before. So there was anticipation, if not expectation, that we'd go further up the ladder. At the moment we sit in 14th or 15th out of 18 at around about the halfway mark.

Darren Burgess:
1:11

So we've been on the front and back page of the local paper for five days straight. They even had a vote in the local paper. They put the assistant coaches, senior coach, the president and maybe one other, the head of recruitment or list manager, and the fans could vote on their grade for the season online, um, on saturday or sunday. So it did become quite personal and um, so yeah, it's been a rough. M You can imagine there's cameras outside the car park trying to catch someone out, cameras all at training last night, yeah, yeah, so there's been a bit going on, so it's an interesting environment at the moment and, yeah, there's been a couple of new meetings added to the calendar to check in on people and make sure everyone's doing okay, because it is hard to come into work each day with cameras around and you know that even if you don't read the paper or listen to talk back or watch the news, it's happening If you're in London and the team's not going so well. There's still six other teams, seven other teams in London to report on, plus the other, you know, manchester and Liverpool teams and things like that. But it feels like, as you well know, being exposed to.

Jason Weber:
2:37

You've got two horse down as well.

Darren Burgess:
2:39

Yeah, it feels like in Adelaide the newspapers don't care about Melbourne teams and yet in Melbourne they're now starting to report on the crisis at Adelaide, because it is literally five days in a row of front and back paid. So, yeah, it's been interesting. There are some reasons why we've probably not performed as well, which I won't get into now. Like in terms of you know, there's been some injuries to key players and not many injuries, but the ones that we have broken hand, broken fracture phase all to it.

Jason Weber:
3:11

Really, we've done the injury crisis to death. I tell you what's a good question for you is you've provided a good context and you've been experienced across other domains, like you know in domains, like you know in EPL, you know Liverpool and Arsenal. What happens when these changes occur and let's say they occur let's use the example you've got there's an external stimulus that's gone. There's noise on the outside and there's noise in the EPL. There's lots of chirp in the papers. What happens when you see reaction side and there's noise in the EPL? There's lots of chirp in the papers. What happens when you see reaction? Like you've seen coaches change. I've got similar stories about what happens when there's expectation and we go from. I was in a team that finished the league number one and then we couldn't find a goal in the finals and went out in straight sets. You know what happens. What happens when your coach changes? Let's not say coach, but the leadership changes. They change not their personnel, but their personalities, their manners, how they're. What do you think? Yeah, I guess so at Liverpool.

Darren Burgess:
4:20

we had three coach changes at Arsenal. Arsene Wenger left and Unai Emery came in. He'd been there 23 years, so that was a massive change. I haven't experienced it in AFL as yet, but certainly in my Premier League time. Just everything changed, obviously, when Arsene left. Unai came in. He brought in a whole Spanish model and so people who had only been employed under Arsene Wenger were just losing their mind and the stress about what's going to happen now and what's going to happen to my job.

Darren Burgess:
4:55

So in the current situation, all I can do as, let's say, a team leader or department leader, is stay pretty calm, stay pretty positive about our area, as in. What can we do to help the team win? How can we celebrate little wins? We're having players who've come back from long-term knee injuries, long-term Achilles injuries, rehabbed a hamstring injury in pretty good time. How can we celebrate those wins in an environment where team wins are pretty hard to come by? On top of that, jason, I've lost two staff members in two weeks to have gone on to bigger and better jobs, which is great. One gone to SACA in Jared Wallace and one, sam Dodge, is a head of performance at Ulster Rugby Great position, you know, fantastic, and so they go with my blessing, even though some others might have said no, we'd need them for the end of the season. I've spoken many times to you about how development of staff is something.

Darren Burgess:
6:10

I take pride in as development and players, so I'm so happy for those staff. So you can imagine. Then there's pressure with less staff and two crucial senior members of staff that have gone. So it's an interesting environment. Stay calm. What can you change about it? I can't change the fact that there's 10 cameras out in front of training. You can't change the fact that the team's under a fair bit of pressure. All you can make sure is that your processes are good. Everyone's calm. One thing I did learn, though, Jason I might have spoken about this before in the Arsenal times and even the Liverpool times is you can't be reflected to the players. Sometimes, if I'm a bit cranky, I'll make sure I stay in my office and not go around the players. You make sure you put front-facing, player-facing people.

Jason Weber:
6:59

Why is Darren in his office all the time?

Darren Burgess:
7:04

It's because you can't kick.

Jason Weber:
7:05

No no.

Darren Burgess:
7:08

So you've got to use your resources wisely and make sure you put the always happy, always upbeat stuff in front of the players at times like this when you know they might be a little bit down, a little bit worried about their place in the team, their careers, all that sort of stuff. I've had meetings with coaches who are all under threat because we all are in this environment and I try and be as positive as I possibly can to make sure that you know there's something in the room that's positive and certainly the coaches have been great in that space but there's no doubt.

Darren Burgess:
7:38

There's some doubt there, so I've spoken a lot. What about you in those situations? What can you control my area? What about you in those situations? What can?

Jason Weber:
7:45

you control my area 100%. I would say that in the heaviest of times, you know, my environment's been fine, like I've always had good people around me, good staff, everyone's pretty calm, all okay. What I do think is, if I reflected on what could I do better, I wonder if at times I could have been better at approaching the coach, the senior coach, to say listen, I'm not having a shot at you, but I need to let you know you've drifted from the path, from our path, from what we were doing earlier. Now, sometimes that got done because of confrontation that I didn't initiate but I certainly defended let's put it that way, so you put the point across incorrectly.

Jason Weber:
8:40

So I think if you've got that relationship, that ability to say to the coach hey, listen, there's some really practical things from what we're doing on the field. That's where the big impact comes. When the field changes, and particularly when you said before you've you've said numerous times, stick to what we do, stick to our processes. When you've had a process for all of pre-season, all of season, then you come to a point a couple of weeks out from finals, where it all starts to change and you're going hang on. The data's telling us we're changing, why we don't need to change, we're on a good path. So I definitely think I would hope, if I ever did it again, to be a little bit better at getting that message to the coach in a manner that he understood and didn't find confrontational. Not that I tried to be confrontational, but you've got to be very careful when people get defensive, and one of the things I did have a great experience. I've done this multiple times. You may have too.

Jason Weber:
9:45

I've been involved in psych profiling of staff, yeah, and we shared some around, and so for one of our staff I certainly saw that when they got stressed, they got super defensive and they can only solve the problem. They can't get other help. No one can help them. And we had that information, yet we were not in a position to action it to make the situation better when the person involved had to listen to others. The person involved had to listen to others, and so it's one of those frustrating things where you go well, we kind of had the answer, but we didn't.

Jason Weber:
10:22

There was no way to implement it, and I think when you're looking at head coaches like that, it's difficult because they're running the show. I'm not suggesting I want to be in charge, but at the end of the day, you know, that sergeant at arms type guy like which is what we end up being. We rally the troops, we get around people. You've got to be able to say hey, we've been around a long while here. You know you're like that gnarly old sergeant in you know one of the old army movies. You know, go and tell the young lieutenant hey, come on, don't do that Heartbreak Ridge, something like that. But that's the story, right. You've got to be able to convey experience and I will say, as you would probably say, we're now at that stage of our careers where we've seen a lot and done a lot, and often more than the coach.

Darren Burgess:
12:16

Yeah, I think that's important to understand, if not acknowledge, because you are the right-hand man or right-hand woman in that sort of role. But I think you do have to tread carefully. I actually put myself through an uncomfortable conversations course about I don't know, maybe 18 months ago, because maybe I wasn't handling some of those situations as well as possible, just always to learn new things. And so you learn the art of having those conversations, getting your point across without providing you know offence or because Give me your top three.

Jason Weber:
12:57

What's your top three learnings from that course? Because maybe I should go and do it. I can be uncomfortable, but it's not. I need to be more helpful.

Darren Burgess:
13:07

Well, I think, when you go into a and when you go out I want to give you some examples, but I won't, because there are people that people know and coaches that people know- no, don't do that you immediately put yourself in the other person's shoes and you're immediately saying, okay, why are they acting this way?

Darren Burgess:
13:28

If I was in their position, how am I seeing this conversation and you know they're being played out in your head and how can I put my point across with empathy and understanding of that person's situation and listen to what they're trying to say? And that's what I took from it. Obviously broad brush, but what the people under pressure in an organisation need is support and know that you've got their back and that's it and that's all that. I think that's our job is to do that, but I think it also is to see it, say it. So you know, I think that's really important is to not because if things did go even more pear-shaped and suddenly coach or the football director or the recruiter or yourself or whatever is out of a job and you think, oh, I wish I had have said something, then it becomes a little bit, then you don't live without regret.

Jason Weber:
14:23

But that's that whole review process. Oh, we'll do it in the review. Well, the review is too late. The time is now to say hey, this is where we're at.

Darren Burgess:
14:33

There's every chance that we I don't know what's going to say hey, this is where we're at. There's every chance that we I don't know what's going to happen, but there's every chance that there'll be some external review done if our performance keep dropping. You know how people get in those situations.

Jason Weber:
14:48

It's interesting, mate, when you and I have both been part of external reviews, like we've conducted them and had them done. But it's interesting when you get to our age and experience to be able to say, well, who's coming in to review? Because I've seen some reviews done in the recent times where I'm thinking, hmm, I'm not entirely sure that person should be doing that review, because I don't think they have that level of experience to do it Well.

Darren Burgess:
15:18

I think that's a whole other viewpoint and it is just staggering, particularly in some other environments not necessarily the AFL, because the money isn't as free-flowing in the AFL as it is in other environments where people are coming in to review doctors, physios, performance people, coaches, without the necessary you know skill set to do it. So it's been interesting but, like I said, the other part of the puzzle at the LA Crows anyway is this loss of staff. So everybody else is having to pitch in which, unless you have a cohesive, trusting and I don't know collaborative team, me sitting down saying listen, head of strength and power has gone off to live his dream in rugby In all stuff.

Darren Burgess:
16:18

Can you just come in and add an extra set of responsibilities to your plate for the next 10 hours? And I'll give you a really good example At Melbourne, when the Dees won the flag 2021, dave Watts, who's one of the best strength coaches that I've worked with, absolute star. He got a great, fantastic role in Queensland, so he left halfway through the season. Dave Regan, who's now at Brooklyn Nets. Can you add the strength responsibilities to your sports science responsibilities? When do I start? And you know we win a flag. It's fantastic for everyone and you know it doesn't interrupt, so I couldn't be more pleased for those guys.

Jason Weber:
17:04

But I think that's a really great test of your team right to see how they react. I mean, again, with 12 years under my belt and one team and staff coming through, we had a number of occasions like the one that you get. Often someone gets sick, you know someone's sick and they can't be there. Right, and you go, right, let's cover off who can do this. But I think that comes back to the system. We've talked before about this, that educating the system, getting people in place and not having them siloed so much that they can't see what the other group are doing. I mean we at times would have physios cross over because we had people of that calibre, you know that you could move across.

Jason Weber:
17:49

Never sent an S&C coach to treat anybody, but they go the other way quite comfortably at times.

Darren Burgess:
17:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly um yeah, so anyway, I'm glad we've spent this podcast talking about the woes of the crows, as if I haven't heard enough about it.

Darren Burgess:
18:03

But um, yeah, yeah simplified context and at the end of the day, um, like I said, yet, um, it's not in a case at all of making sure your own department is fine and, you know, worrying about the other department. But I think you've just got to keep things in context and if you're continually reviewing and continually auditing your own team as I don't know head of performance or director of, you know, vice president of health and whatever your title is here or overseas, then I think you're okay, because you're ready to answer questions at any time, because they'll come. They'll absolutely come already.

Jason Weber:
18:47

I'll change tact on you with answering questions. I, given what I do with SpeedSig, we're talking to teams all the time. I was on a meeting last night with an EPL team and I won't say the people involved, but I do want to sort of give them a shout out, if they listen, that some of the questions I got were awesome, and the reason I point this out is because I get quite a few questions on LinkedIn and certain stuff about what I write, about being a sports scientist and saying, hey, we need to up our game and be a bit better at what we are and what we do. But I had some great questions about just simple things validity, reliability.

Jason Weber:
19:28

So, rather than just accept the show, because everyone you put a show on when you, you pitch to people, you're going to say, hey, here's the thing, I got a cool picture, I got a graph, I got this. But, um, I would say again to the sports science people out there who are wearing that badge, I think you've got to be better than just getting on the bandwagon. I think, as I said, to, without naming them, to give people a bit of kudos for some really cool questions, really insightful, but from the point of view of bringing a technology into a team, just digging into the nuts and bolts a bit, which I have like I interview or I pitch to a lot of teams. So you kind of see the question. Some people just go, yeah, yeah, this is all good, let, this is all good, let's just do it.

Jason Weber:
20:13

And that's nice like, yeah, your beauty from a business perspective, but that's kind of not what I want to see. I want to see I really get quite well, I do get very engaged by the people who want to ask questions and want to dig in, and particularly in newer technologies.

Darren Burgess:
20:31

Yeah, no.

Jason Weber:
20:32

I just know that when I look back at some of the technology that you and I have seen evolve over the last certainly 15 years, there's ones that I could name where people just go yep, we're FOMO, we're in. Anyone who doesn't have teenage children FOMO, fear of missing out All right, and that's a big thing. You get people who go. Well, this team over here, team X, has got that technology I wanted as well.

Darren Burgess:
21:03

Or I've got X amount in my budget to spend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to do this, otherwise I'm going to lose my budget.

Jason Weber:
21:09

Yeah, yeah. So I think again that perspective that if you're going to wear the sports science hat and I was on a conversation with, uh, two guys who would consider themselves sports scientists one was a strength conditioning coach, one was a physio the strength and conditioning coach asked some good questions but didn't hammer in. He was, it wasn't quite his area, but the two sports science guys had really good questions and the questions were like I I said what I would expect. I thought, right, I'm getting grilled by a guy, somebody who understands science here. I like it. So I really would continue to encourage people who are out there. It's a legitimate career path, but I think you've got to really earn it. You've got to.

Jason Weber:
21:54

We've said before you know, if you're on a Darren Burgess' new sports scientist next year, you should be knocking his door down saying, hey, we're mapping these things, we've got these trends, this is what we're seeing. You know we're five games in. This is what we see the league doing, this is what we're doing, all that type of stuff. Yeah, so just Absolutely, if those guys who are on that call happen to be listening. Kudos, gentlemen, that's a good lesson Very well done.

Darren Burgess:
22:23

We're going to wrap it up because of our time, self-imposed time constraints, but I think gone are the days where sports science. Here's the report. There you go, I've done my job. It needs to be, yeah, far more detailed and nuanced than that, for sure.

Jason Weber:
22:41

Correct, correct. Well, you're right. We have the clock on the clubhouse wall has donged and we're out of here. So, mate, it's a pleasure as always, and we'll catch up again real soon with something. We've got all sorts of things happening, I suppose, over the coming weeks EPL's on their break and starting to go to international games, euros start and basketball's just about to finish, with the Celtics probably getting up, so plenty to talk about. Yeah, yeah, all right, mate. Well, you have a good weekend and all the best to the Crows this weekend.

Darren Burgess:
23:13

Thanks, mate, we'll see you next time. Thank you.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 17-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 16-----
Jason Weber:
0:19

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. We've got Darren Burgess and Jason Weber here back on deck for another riveting round of our podcast. We now are aware, Darren, we've got direct competitors in the UK with the Breaking Lines podcast. I heard one of the greatest stories from Dave Carrolyn, who's one of the hosts, on that. He said to me I was sitting on a beach on holidays listening to you talk about my podcast, talking about your podcast. So there's a little bit of circular work going on there.

Darren Burgess:
0:59

And he did send me a photo and his pasty white skin did not look so pasty, it looked bright red. But anyway, dave, he's one of the good guys and an outstanding practitioner. So he'll probably be listening probably still in Greece somewhere, so good stuff.

Jason Weber:
1:20

Well, he's not entirely, but part of the motivation behind what I'd like to open the batting with, because I've had a lot of discussions recently, a lot, a lot in the US, not so many here in Australia, but there's some stories to add. Who should be doing rehab? The medical fraternity, and we'll open that up. It's the physiotherapist In the US. It's the athletic trainerist in the us. It's the athletic trainer. And now I know they're different cats, unquestionably, but we're going to put them in the same basket. Or should snc coaches be doing rehab now? Darren, you're widely known for being able to get on the other end of a telephoto lens doing rehab with an athlete. Now, I say that in jest. But yeah, man, you've done enough rehab. You've done it all over the world. What do you think? What's the look? Is it the physio? Is it the S&C? Is it something in between?

Darren Burgess:
2:21

I think it's something in between. I don't think it's necessarily should be one person or the other. What I do know is that they need to have experience in conditioning and strength prescription in order to do it properly. So you can pick your poison in terms of whether it's a physio or a conditioning or a chiro or whatever it might be, but they need to have experience in strength and conditioning prescription. So, as long as they have that, um, along with, of course, knowledge of anatomy and injury and yeah, um, but I think the the best people that I've worked with in this space are people who have had both qualifications both a physio slash, you know, some sort of medical background and then strength and conditioning qualifications and experience, and they're probably the best that I've worked with. Have you got you know, have you got an opinion on whether it should be one or the other, or how do you see it? Well, I think.

Jason Weber:
3:28

Well, there's two parts. It's interesting you said it could be either or, and I think there's a point to that. I definitely think I'm going to put a weird caveat on it and it has to be. The person has to understand running.

Jason Weber:
3:47

Now, one of my very early gigs in rehab back in the late 90s I worked with Cameron Lillicrap, one of the great prop forwards in Rugby Union, australia, but a great physio, and he was awesome at rehab and he was actually quite a good running coach and I thought he did a lot of really good things Awesome.

Jason Weber:
4:08

But I have worked in a lot of other spaces where I've seen the physio running elements that they shouldn't be doing, that they have no idea about. And I'll extend that further and say what I've seen overseas, particularly in the US, is athletic trainers taking athletes back to particularly to high speed running and really having no concept about what they're doing. So I'm not I'm not buckled up about one or the other, but I think you've got to have some real intricate knowledge about what you're doing. Which brings me back to a question I had about yours, about the. You mentioned that whoever it was would be skilled on the field and in the gym. So in your mind, does that, does your rehab model have the sort of that one person overseeing almost all of the program for that individual?

Darren Burgess:
5:01

Yeah, more or less they do. That doesn't necessarily mean that they don't get help from elsewhere. Um, yep, they, uh, we have a rehab coordinator and they coordinate that program and then, uh, you'll have various people having input into that. Yep, I guess the running is a really important one because it's the only space in in the sports that I've worked with anyway where you can do some running re-education. So I think I agree with you, they need to have a running background the return to play, and whether people say return to perform or however you want to label it, return to train.

Darren Burgess:
5:42

I think the thing that gets missed out often if you're not experienced in that area, is that gap between ticking off GPS or numbers in what you think the person might need in order to perform and then, and maybe even energy systems. You can tick off those reasonably quickly by doing some mas running and you know some pretty, pretty simple running. But what you can't do is, uh, unless you're experienced at it, unless you have a knowledge of the game that you're returning somebody to, you can't close the gap on being able to perform straight away with that mixed conditioning model and go straight back into training and games, and I think that's where most rehabs get let down, not necessarily by re-injury, but by an inability to cope with the demands of the game that you're being rehabbed for. So I think that's the really key component of it for me anyway, once you've turned the strength to the area and go through those stages.

Jason Weber:
6:50

I think I'll throw because, because we should, this is less hypothetical than we normally do. Um, I'm going to go three stages return to function, return to run and return to play. That's the way I would look at it, I think. Return to function so let's say post-surgery or post a big acute event, there's no question, physio, medical have got major eyes on that. Return to run is probably somewhat of an overlap that you could have either or professional doing, depending on their skill set. But return to play.

Jason Weber:
7:19

I think if it's the snc's task throughout the course of the year to prepare athletes to play, it's not the physio's responsibility that in the return to play. So they're running, they're functional, but we've got to get them, as you said, let's say after a long injury. So now we've got, you know, we might have a couple of weeks where we're really building towards playing. Definitely should be the conditioning staff. So I think, think there could be overlap.

Jason Weber:
7:44

But if I hark back to your idea of the rehab coordinator, I think that's a great perspective. My opinion in the last my 12 years in AFL, I always had one guy assigned to rehab. He was always an S&C. I had a rehab physio and an S&C Cool, but the S&C took the running and the gym but he had close oversight from medical, so we had that great interaction, yeah. But I definitely agree that ability to, or that understanding of the tolerance that a person can put up with what's going on the field and what's in the gym or, let's say, off field it's not just gym I think that's incredibly important yeah, I think the um, the examples where I think rehabs are not done well and that they don't return to training, to match play or to performance very well.

Darren Burgess:
9:44

Often it's the um. I don't need you to get to 80% speed here. We need to maintain. You know appropriate running mechanics. So let's do three sets of six, 80 metres or whatever. Pick your poison. Okay, we've ticked that box. I'm just going to go and set up the next drill while you have a drink and then you have a bit of a chat and all that sort of stuff.

Darren Burgess:
10:07

So you're just losing that intensity, um, and I think that's one of the areas that gets let down so much. And you know we could talk about accelerations and decelerations moving at the same percentage of speed and, and do you do those at the start, the middle or the end, because I'm pretty sure you have to accelerate at the end of a game? Um, so we should do them at the start, while they're fresh. Well, they're still going to sprint at the end of a game. You know all those sort of things come into it. So I think that's where the really good rehab coordinators and conditioning coaches, and whatever term you want to use, are separated.

Jason Weber:
10:41

I think, mate, I think it's a good. You make a great point with respect to something I get asked relatively regularly how do I learn rehab, how do I get good at it? Well, there's only like many things, you've got to go and do it to get used to it, but you've got to be in an environment where you can learn. Now I think if you're in an environment where someone like you was giving that overarching view of what rehab should be and then a re-coordinator is doing it, but they're educating the people coming through what I dislike immensely is when I get a new staff member and we just shovel them off to rehab yeah, yeah and it's like hang on, you've got the most technical, most challenging environment possible, because the athlete's not just trying to be better, they're obviously coming getting over something.

Jason Weber:
11:34

But we put often a kid in there who's got no experience and they don't know what they're looking at. I think that's a travesty, I think that's too hard on the young coaches and I you. If you're trying to get a job somewhere and you're getting into that rehab space, you need to be clear on and this is my message for those listening you need to be clear on who's guiding you. So when you could, I mean I used to plenty of the guys I worked with would say hey, jace, I'm seeing this, can you come over here and have a look and let's confirm it together? Yeah, and we get it. And then you do that for a little while and then no longer they really need to ask you because they can see it whatever it is we're discussing. But I think that education piece it's critical that and we'll get to this bit too about the age but I think as leaders, I think it's relying upon a department manager to be able to educate those guys through and practically develop them in their skill set.

Darren Burgess:
12:36

I think that's where the person in charge of the department is really, really important, because the education of younger people and let's take the AFL In the AFL we've got a few different models going around around the world.

Darren Burgess:
12:55

Sorry, but in the AFL at the moment there's a soft cap or a limit on spending off the field, so you could potentially have the situation where you have a really experienced head of department whatever the title that might be and then a bunch of younger practitioners around you, and so that education piece on appropriate rehab, appropriate conditioning, appropriate strength is really, really important and the philosophy around that becomes really really important. So the onus then comes on the department lead to be able to coordinate and educate the staff, and I think that's a really important role that often gets overlooked when hiring for those particular roles, I think they look at oh, which teams has he or she worked with? A really good way of and I'm speaking this with a little bit of internal knowledge, which we'll get on to in a minute, but a good assessment, I think, anyway, of a good practitioner or a good department leader is where have those people who have worked under or with him or her have they been able to progress?

Darren Burgess:
14:08

and I think what I am noticing and you probably are as well, jace is that there is um a lot of um department leads that are um, uh, you know, head of performance or head of fitness, particularly in football, people in soccer, people who travel around with managers that are of varying ages. And it's just interesting to note, you know, the ones that have had a lot of experience leading departments versus the ones that maybe don't have as much experience leading departments but just as importantly, or very importantly, know the way that that manager works and therefore can implement that manager or coach's strategy. But I certainly am noticing a really big age difference in the UK particularly, or sorry, in particular, the UK and the US.

Jason Weber:
15:04

Yeah, there's no question. There appears to be that. I don't know my good self, maybe you're nearly there, as we've traversed an age barrier. I had a conversation earlier this week with another really experienced practitioner and he was actually asked to interview for a job and then he interviewed for it and they said look, you're not innovative enough. He's like hang on, you asked me, you came to me looking for this and he said who have you spoken to? Nobody. It was like they were just making up numbers.

Jason Weber:
15:38

So I feel like and I've sort of come across this a little bit whether people start to pigeonhole you, does that do that? I don't know. I know another guy who I'm not going to mention by name, a guy in the UK who's now probably into his 70s, but, yeah, one of my great mentors, but he hasn't worked in teams for a long time because I don't know whether he didn't want to, but it seemed like he was still a good practitioner and it just evaporated. So I don't know, mate, I don't know whether there's an element of budgetary restrictions. It's hard to say.

Jason Weber:
16:25

I know in the US there are certainly guys working, you know, ahead of strength and conditioning. Particularly. There's a couple of guys there who are working quite old, they're in their mid-60s, they're all bulls. You know they're cracking it, but yeah, I do feel like there might be. I don't know whether I've broached that line in the sand, maybe I don't know, but it does feel that line in the sand. Maybe I don't know, but it does feel like in some areas people are going younger. There's some resumes that I read that I just look at them and go, wow, would I employ that person in that position with, you know, a handful of years of experience? I don't know.

Darren Burgess:
17:10

Do you feel over the hill, mate, at times? Yes, I certainly don't feel over the hill. You know, from a leadership department, leadership point of view at all, I think I'm infinitely better at 50 than I was at 40.

Jason Weber:
17:25

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darren Burgess:
17:26

I don't feel like I'm over the hill from a department leadership point of view. Can I keep up with the players in running rehab? No, but I've never done that anyway, even when I could sort of keep up with them. So yeah, it's an interesting discussion, mate. Like I said, I'm more convinced that as a department leader, the more experience you have in a range of different roles, the better off you will be, whether you're a physio or a fitness or a sports science. But the range of experiences becomes really important, and a range in not just in different clubs but different sports that's.

Jason Weber:
18:07

That's what I was just going to ask you, mate, like I like, if we characterize my career, I had two jobs over 20 years. All right, two long-standing jobs. You had some big, big jobs, like certainly EPL, but you moved around. Do you feel that being in a few different situations kept you fresh? Because I could easily agree with the observation that by the end of my tenure in AFL I was probably sick and tired of maybe the same routine, maybe that environment. Did I need something different? Who knows? But there's a point that I look at and think well, Darren's been around a couple of different gigs. What do you think?

Darren Burgess:
18:55

been around a couple of different gigs. What do you think? I think the more exposure to a variety of circumstances, the better, the more well-rounded. And yeah, it's like, um, if you give a kid, um, a soccer ball and um, put them out on the street and let them play three on three every afternoon, they, or four on four, or five and five, they're going to be exposed to a whole range of different scenarios that they will eventually think their way out of. If you are only in one club or one sport, you'll certainly get a range of scenarios, but you probably won't get enough or as much as somebody who's been in a range of different sports or a range of different clubs. There are massive downsides to jumping around, like I have and we could. You know that's a whole other podcast. So but yeah, I reckon, by and large, I would employ the person who's had more experience under more scenarios than one who's had less.

Jason Weber:
19:47

Hey, mate, let's. We're going to wrap up one more subject, I reckon, but you've just hit on something which is a bit different to what we were just talking about. But when I flew solo last week in the podcast and I talked to myself, one of the things I brought up was Dave Carlin and Greg on Breaking Lines had talked about the robustness of athletes and I said, well, one of the things I'm seeing I've been coaching high school again for a couple of years. I've seen a lot, a lot of back injuries, a lot of pars, intraarticularis stresses, a lot Like I'm talking, maybe 20 in the last two years, and not all from majority from running sports.

Jason Weber:
20:32

Certainly, basketball has been a contributor and cricket, but if you take cricket out of the equation running and jumping sports you may note of the soccer ball and going outside and playing four on four every day. That's really the South American thing, the favela, right, we're going to go and play every day and we're just going to play and then, by law of the jungle, the strongest survive. So what ends up happening is the dude that turns up from South America in EPL and this is a question, not a statement, I'm assuming like they're bulletproof in many regards Is that fair? How have you seen? Because soccer development is very different because of the numbers.

Darren Burgess:
21:17

Yeah, this is another whole subject, another sorry, my phone just rang. This is another whole subject for a podcast. But what I can tell you is there is no difference in the robustness and resilience of players that I've worked with that have grown up in the gym versus those that have grown up on the streets.

Jason Weber:
21:35

um, there is no, no difference none whatsoever and in fact, there it is ways.

Darren Burgess:
21:40

if I, if I really put some thought to it, um, I reckon I could I'd be swayed to say that those who, uh, grow up on the streets playing and playing, and playing yeah, I guess I could name some players offhand, but I wouldn't be doing any great analysis of it.

Jason Weber:
22:01

Mate, because what I'm seeing what I talked about in more detail last week is the kids that are trying to. They're training more and more now, coming up with these crazy injuries. They're training more and more now, coming up with these crazy injuries. And I've got to say the AFL experience is probably the most one because of the volume, because the game seems to go so long and training's long for everyone. The kids are getting burnt.

Darren Burgess:
22:30

Yeah, let's discuss it next week, because it's something I'm pretty passionate about with my beef pros. So let's hold that.

Jason Weber:
22:37

Let's do that next week, all right.

Darren Burgess:
22:39

One thing I need to do before we go. My son has started listening to the podcast, so I just want to say I told him, I promised him I would say G'day Harry, harry. So a little legend, not so?

Jason Weber:
22:53

much. That's what happens, man. You, you get little ones, and my fifth, my 19 year old son ben, is now well taller than me. But, harry, it's a pleasure to have you, mate. Um, I met you a long time ago when you were very little, but I haven't seen you since. But welcome, welcome, harry, and hopefully we get some more young listeners on board. But, mate, great to have you back, great to have a chat, and next week we'll have a bit more of a deeper crack at the developing athlete thing.

Darren Burgess:
23:23

Nice Good stuff mate.

Jason Weber:
23:24

All right, mate, great Speak again real soon. Cheers, we'll be right back, thank you.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 16-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 15-----
Jason Weber:
0:10

Good day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. I'm Jason Weber and I'm here with Darren Burgess. . Well, I'm not trying to make a joke, but Burgess is not here, unfortunately. He's decided to leave me alone and fly off to the UK on another job, but I'm going to fly the flag solo today and from that perspective, obviously I've got no one to argue with.

Jason Weber:
0:35

What I thought I'd do is have a look at another podcast by a good friend of Bu, Dave Carolan, and a guy named Gary Rowett. They do a podcast called Breaking Lines out of the UK, which does, funnily enough, almost the same thing that Virgil and I do, and it was awesome. I've had a good listen to it this week. Obviously, being in the UK, they're very experienced in the EPL and football the real football, the beautiful game so those guys do their podcast based around that. But last week they did a podcast around injury crisis. Is there an injury crisis Now? That's very similar to the same subject matter that Darren and I have been talking about, so I thought I'd use some of their input to try and build a conversation, given I've got no one to talk to. But what it is really good about their podcast is, from our perspective, is that they're doing something very similar to us, so they're facing the same issues. They're both very pragmatic guys. They've got very realistic observations around what's going on in the league, the various leagues in the UK and I think the fact that we're on the same tangent means that there are people in the same area trying to solve similar problems. I think if you look at the evolution of the wheel, the wheel was created probably across in multiple places at similar times. The fact that we're all thinking along the same lines means we're challenging the same ideas, we're having the same problems. That means there's some trends there. That we're all thinking along the same lines means we're challenging the same ideas. We're having the same problems. It means there's some trends there that we can work through.

Jason Weber:
2:09

So let's start with that. One of the things David and Gary brought up was has the game changed? Birgit and I have talked about this Now. I think you can do this and address it from. Think about it from a number of perspectives. I think from the first point of view I'd like to talk about is the sports science perspective. Why are we asking the question?

Jason Weber:
2:30

Sports science as a profession should be examining this consistently and being able to say, well, this is where the game's going, but it needs to be examined explicitly. It needs to be examined explicitly within the sports you work in and at the different levels, because I'm sure epl, the championship afl, to vfl and waffle in australia would be very, very different. Same in the nfl in the states. Nfl to college football is very, very different. So I think the sports science team need to be having a really, really good look at those patterns and understand their evolutions over time and being able to be sure that they can communicate that to teams. Now, I've certainly always been of the opinion that we should be examining opposition as much as we can. I've just published I was on a team that published a paper recently looking at how to examine the different rates of work of other teams through the AFL and we'll link that in the podcast but the idea behind that, the motivation to do that, wasn't sort of duplicitously trying to undermine anybody, but to understand the patterns. Are we pursuing the right path? I mean, at the end of the day, you spend a whole big pre-season getting set up for what you think is going to happen. So understanding the patterns around the game.

Jason Weber:
3:49

The evolution of the game is really, really important. And does that game cycle across the course of the year? Is it faster in the early parts, colder and slower as the game gets colder and wetter during the winter months In any case? Are there changes? Winter and during the winter months, in any case, are there changes?

Jason Weber:
4:07

In my experience, if I look at the rugby, the evolution of rugby union from, I did the World Cups in 2003 and 2007. If you look at the rate of contact now, in particular the impact from players both in the tackle and contesting the ball on the ground, it's gone through the roof. Now there have been changes to the way we condition for that, but we're still seeing problems. We're still seeing problems in Australian rugby around props with calf problems. We've had an Achilles problem in the Australian Rugby Union. We've got props in the UK at the moment who are not coming on tour in the southern hemisphere in winter because of calf issues. Genji, one of the big UK English props, will be unavailable through calf tear. So we've got common problems, right? Is there something? The game has clearly changed and I think I'll ask some more questions about how we're training in a little bit, but the game has definitely changed.

Jason Weber:
5:04

From an AFL perspective, there's been massive changes in the last 15 years, certainly that I've been involved. We have the addition of rotations Now. The addition of rotations was supposed to protect players from getting injuries by allowing them more time to come on and off, because they're unlimited. They're kind of like ice hockey back in the day, back in the sort of 2010, that era, but the game sped up. The coaches took advantage of that and they played towards that thing, so the game got faster. And there was a change in defensive strategies. Instead of us playing AFL, a game where people were almost like netball, back in their zones, now they're pushing super hard. So when we get we're almost like a forward press, so we're getting defensive structures moving right up into the defensive 50. Increases the physical load on the entire game, particularly when teams get out and you've got to run back in defence. And more recently, we've had a reduction in rotation, so the game stayed the same time. We've got one or two. More recently, we've had a reduction in rotation, so the game stayed the same time. We've got one or two more players. You know we're interchange players now, but you've got less rotation, so you've got to ask more of certain players and when you look at the fundamentals of rotating people around, you've got to have X number of people on the ground. You have 18 people on the ground for the time of the game. So there's mathematically a limit to how many you can do, but it means some have got to run more or less. So there's been massive changes. There's no question about that. But if we consider that, if the game has changed, the question I want to ask is has our training changed to accommodate it? Now, I come from a strength and conditioning background. I've been there, I've tried to push the bar. I mean, I started back in the late 1990s, you know. So this grey beard is all quite real and we always think, you know, we're smart and I think, as a young S&c coach, when I was a zealot knew everything and all the answers. Yeah, I think I did have all the answers, but I've got to ask the question now have we changed enough to accommodate the game? The game is the game. Okay, we, we know the time frame of the game on the weekend. We, we know when the games are going to be. They're not going to change the things that change within that are going to be tactically, how the coaches approach it, and what we have to ask ourselves is what we're doing through the week contributing to that possible injury crisis? Now, if you did nothing, that would equally be as bad, but somewhere there's got to be a sweet spot. I feel at the moment when we start talking about injury crisis Now, if you did nothing, that would equally be as bad, but somewhere there's got to be a sweet spot and I feel at the moment when we start talking about injury crisis, that we're probably missing it a little bit. I certainly know I was involved in some injury crisis back in the day in the AFL and mostly that had to do with basic training, team training, going overboard and going overboard for a period and that exposing our athletes. Now I had an old guy I used to work with in rugby league who would say well, training's training, it's what the coaches want to do. Now we have to adjust on the other side of that. So we have to do more or less in the gym or more or less of whatever else we're doing to accommodate for that. Are we doing enough? I don't think I specifically have the answers, but the point of this discussion is to like when we burge us hypothetically, pose well, what if we did less? We talk about the minimal effective dose. Well, are we in the right spot? Are we close enough to that minimal or effective dose? Because if we're still getting these injury patterns and we're seeing it you know Dave and Gary talked about in Breaking the Lines, in Breaking the Lines podcast we're seeing it in AFL Rugby League in Australia at the moment has got someone emailed me the other day and said, hey, there's a hamstring crisis there. So the issue's there. The game, yes, we acknowledge that it's changed in different places, but have we changed enough on the outside? There's only so much work we can do to prevent an injury before we can also add too much work and then we create injury by overloading the athlete. Something to closely consider. One of the things we don't consider or I don't hear discussed as much I know it's out there is the concept of monotony, but monotony comes primarily from the triathlon world, the running world. We talk about the sameness of training. Now, I certainly saw this extensively in the afl, where you get into that routine week by week by week and it's almost the same thing every week. Now, what happens with that? And what I saw was a period where we just started to overload training too much and you're saying, hey, the coach, hey, we've just got to pull back a little bit, we're just going too far up and up, and up and up. And then you go, okay, we'll recover. Well, the coach finally says, yeah, we'll just go on too far, up and up and up and up. And then you go, okay, we'll recover. What the coach finally says, yep, we'll back off. But that overload creates a shadow and now that we've got this training that's been really monotonous for a time, that monotony has a shadow effect. So you've deloaded training or you've started to reduce it and you're getting injury hits, particularly the insidious onset A lot of. We see them in the AFL the calf. The calf that comes off the field is fine and 24, 48 hours later it rears its head. So that idea of monotony and of the shadow effect of when you peak, it might take three or four weeks before that overload clears. I actually saw on LinkedIn today someone I don't recall who had posted some great reports of all their monitoring data and all their data's out there and I'm looking at it going. It's just stating numbers, it's not telling us yes, there's a mean and they did this much sprint, but it's not really conveying the impact of that overload and how long that lasts for, because what we might need to be doing is really having a look at when we go overboard with speed in a game, because that's just the way the game went. There are changes in the total training amount for the following week. Now I know there are people out there making those changes not suggesting that no one's thinking like that, nor that I've got the. You know, I've had a light bulb moment. Suddenly this is solving it. But I think for younger coaches and I guess this is what Darren and I and I know Dave and Gary tried to do by talking about it by speaking about it, it just gets those ideas out there. We live in a very complex world and that complex world has so many things in it that sometimes we get focused on one area of our work and we let others go. So really have a look at your monotony of training and maybe ask yourself the question have we changed training enough to match the changes that are occurring in the game? So again in the Breaking Lines podcast, I think Gary brought up a great point he talked about. Are our players robust enough that back in the day in English football guys were playing 40 games a year. They train all week, they play every minute of every game. You know tough as nails, without question, and I think we could say that of many sports Now it all harks back to. Has the game changed? And I think there's unquestionably yes, it has. It's faster. I mean, if you look at the UK, the boys in the Break the Lines podcast talked about the changes in the surface that you, that you go from a mud-sodden pitch to really nicely manicured, you've got higher technologies in drainage and all that. The game is faster, the field is better, it can run faster, boots have changed, the ball's changed, all those type of things. So, has the game changed? Yeah, do the players need to be more robust? Well, there's no question there. Has the game changed? Yeah, do the players need to be more robust? Well, there's no question. There's two points that I'll probably bring up with regard to this. One is humans haven't evolved. We haven't changed since the last 100 years of sport, organised professional sport in the world, be it the beautiful game or whatever else. The human species hasn't evolved. So we can handle a certain amount. There's a level of tolerance to which our tissues can handle. So the question has to be are we doing too much, you know? Is it the game goes too far, and the point I'm making for us, the game's the game all right, the end of the day. I know there's in australia at the moment, afl coaches, there's some calling for a shortened game. Now, football in all its forms is a product and that product has a TV audience and a paying audience and that audience wants the product. Now, if you don't change that product too much commercially, there can be issues. So is the game going to change? I don't know. I kind of don't care. You're playing the game as it's presented to you. So are we doing too much? Well, we have to. We're trying to play the game faster, play at a better rate. But when we talked before about training and how we're doing too much to run, one of the questions I have is about monitoring. Now we spend an inordinate amount of money and time on monitoring our athletes. Gps is front and center in that. That's telling us what we do. Everyone no doubt, with the whole speed seat thing, that from my perspective I'm adamant about how athletes run and that biomechanics is a piece of it. It's not everything, but it's a piece. The biomechanics is a piece of it. It's not everything, but it's a piece. So the question I have is are we monitoring the right thing? Now? If I go back 10 years, to when I started doing the research that led to SpeedSeq, my conclusion at that time was, hey, we've got these issues, these issues being soft tissue injuries. They're not going away. So what are we looking at? The signals we've got aren't quite right now. We've tried different things and I've continued to evolve. We have the evolution of innumerate things off the field in terms of force plates, eccentric hamstring contractions and the like. Those things have evolved, but we really haven't changed injury rates at all, not one bit. Now, are they the right things? I'm not going to say they are or they aren't, but if we still keep having the injury issues, I think I've got to push it back to the sports scientists among us and those to question are we looking at the right thing? Have we got the right? It is a complicated issue. I'll talk a bit more about this in a moment but I think it comes down to the leadership in our groups, you know, in our teams being able to say, hey, we're not quite there yet, we haven't got it, not to put all our eggs in that one basket. I spoke to an NBA team just a couple of nights ago from a speed sick perspective, and one of the things we talked about was the idea that they were saying, well, hey, we've got a bunch of projects going on, but once we get going, we really have no time. Now I 100% get that and I think if I got Dave Carroll on this podcast he would agree. Once you're going in a team sport, it's very hard to keep that. Keep your eyes on anything else. But that's where I think it comes down to a crucial part of leadership within the team's professional sports environment. And I get asked about this a lot what's the difference between a high-performance manager as much as I hate that name and just being an S&C coach high performance manager as much as I hate that name and just being an S&C coach? One of the leadership qualities is the idea to step back from the trees and see the forest. You've got to really have that Google mindset where the Googleites can have time allocated through the week to work on projects. As a leader, I think you need to step back and keep trying to look and understand. What are the patterns we're seeing in the game, which we'll talk more about, but can we evaluate those? So that's one thing. The other observation that I would make about being robust is the last couple of years I've coached high school sport predominantly AFL, but rugby and football, soccer as well and just strengthening conditioning for the kids through this high school program. Now one of the patterns I've seen just go absolutely rampant in the last two years is the prevalence of lumbar par stress fractures, par's in the interarticular stress fractures. Now they weren't from lifting because guys weren't getting them in the gym and certainly there were a lot of kids that were coming, you know, referred to me because they had injuries outside, had nothing to do with the gym previously. So there was no question in my mind, it wasn't stemming from what we were doing in there. So there was no question in my mind, it wasn't stemming from what we were doing in there. But we're getting kids at young ages 14, 15, 16, some of them going overboard. In my opinion personal opinion but let's just say in general they're doing more in a specific sport than they would normally have or that a similar age kid may have done 15, 20 years ago, and is that contributing to this pattern, this beginning of injuries back when they're kids? Now, when you look at past stress fractures, fundamentally it's excessive and multiple extension rotation. So it's an overload injury that occurs across time, the stress fracture. But you've got to look at when that occurs. Now, for most of these kids cricket probably being the exception because of the bowling action but for most of these kids it occurs in running. So they are running. Not only are they running in theory too much because you're getting the creation of a stress fracture, but they're clearly running in a manner in which their back is doing two things they're trying to create extension, to generate height, lift off the ground and therefore flight phasing, running. That generation of vertical force is not happening directly from the lower body. They're extending, in my opinion, into their spine to try and get more extension. But then they're also, when they land, when they make ground contact, instead of absorbing that force through the leg and in the pelvis structure, they seem to be copying it in the back. So when you look at we talk about spring mass model and running. I won't explain that too much here. It's very hard to do it verbally, but a spring mass model basically assumes the upper body to be fairly fixed and the leg to be one, both legs to be big springs as you land on the ground, the spring absorbs and then it pushes off again. But in reality what we're seeing is these kids that have probably got a spring in their lower back that's doing too much spring in the lumbar spine and creating this extension rotation moment that's occurring as the athlete swings their arms and they consequently try to go faster with less ability and less capacity it'd probably be a better word and creating these injuries. And now I've seen these. I would have seen nearly 20 of these past fractures in the last two years. That's massive. So do we need to be more robust? That's the question it still comes back to. Are we doing too much? Have we gone too far? Has the game become too much such that our training is overboard? There's an imbalance somewhere. Now, if I remember back to my childhood, there was no. You know, we played multiple sports, but we never had kids out every other week with a back fracture. We were out for six months. One of the first kids I met at this school I met him in year 10, he'd had three past fractures, back to back to back to back, and it wasn't until I got there and we had a formulated plan and we slowed him down and we got him up and we identified this excessive back problem in his running. We're able to tidy that up, get him stronger and hopefully he'll be drafted into the AFL next year. So we had a good intervention there. But if that pattern exists elsewhere, if we're pushing our kids too far, how do they become robust? If they're being stressed to the point of breaking when they're 14, 15? Not sure, but I think again it's one of those things we need to look at. If they're being stressed to the point of breaking when they're 14, 15? Not sure, but I think again it's one of those things we need to look at From a pattern perspective. I talked about patterns a little bit earlier. I think again I'll hark back to the boys on the Breaking the Lines podcast. They asked the question what's the pattern? Is there a pattern between the gain and the injuries? Well, I think there is. I think in computer science. What's the pattern? Is there a pattern between the gain and the injuries? Well, I think there is. I think in computer science there's always this idea that if you can physically see a pattern, that the computer should be able to detect it and we can work with it. I think it's there, but I think the patterns are more complicated than I think some people are giving them credit for, particularly when we're looking at one or two variables and trying to associate that with an injury rate, it is far more complex. I was in a team that published a paper at the MIT Sloan Analytics Conference in Boston a bunch of years ago, looking at injury rates in a very, very tight group. So I mean, I don't think it's plausible to extrapolate that too much further, but nonetheless we were looking and trying to find the patterns. But we were using neural networks. We're using very complex computational techniques to bring a whole lot of information together. Now I think I'll throw this back to the Sports Science Committee guys again, I'm very much of the opinion that sports science is not a badge. You shouldn't just put it on and go hey, I'm the sports science guy, I do GPS. No, I think what a sports scientist should be doing is examining all these questions Should be on the. You know, yes, you're doing the normal day-to-day data flow, but you've got to be looking for the patterns, looking for the exceptions, pushing so that we can start to feed the practitioners, feed the S&C coaches, the medical staff to help them generate interventions that are going to make a change. Now I see this pattern quite a lot in the mail. I'm seeing younger guys and girls getting into the sports. I'm seeing people coming in and out of mathematics and science more straight sciences and being able to have a genuine impact. But I think, from a person coming through your Bachelor of Sports Science and a Master's maybe in sports science, I can't go past the computational ability, your ability to manage data at volume, be able to start looking at these patterns and really contributing to the team more than just pushing data around in circles trying to find patterns that can help practitioners make valuable change. So I think that's really something. If you're in that sports science market, I think you need to be starting to think about what you bring. I mean I've said this over and over If I was interviewing a sports science guy now, or girl either, or I would be really pushing on. What are your capabilities with data sets, with answering questions to understand how can we find this path? If you go into business, in business. There are innumerable courses around the world looking at time series data from a finance perspective, from a business perspective, from projecting. How much stock do we need? What price? What's selling, what's not it's kind of the same thing. Right, we're trying to keep our players on the field, but I think that high level ability in computational science is super important. Okay, so that's a wrap for me for two cups and a coffee for this week. Um, if you've got this far, you've listened to me the whole way. I really appreciate you getting on the podcast. Um, we do value very much our couple of hundred people that are following us every week. We'd love to see more, so get it out, share it with your buddies where you can. Like we said cross promotion, go and check out Dave Carolyn's podcast, breaking Lines. It's awesome. It's very similar to us, just a very different accent and probably a little bit different context, but nonetheless an awesome podcast. So we look forward to next week having Darren back with us different accent and probably a little bit different context, but nonetheless an awesome podcast. So we look forward to next week having Darren back with us and you guys have a good week.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 15-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 14-----
Jason Weber:
0:10

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren and Jason, back with you. We had a bit of a week off last week. Very well, not a week off. I think that either of us were sitting in the sun doing anything but very, very busy. But we're back at it and with plenty to discuss. Darren, how are you going okay?

Darren Burgess:
0:27

Jase, what's? Uh, there's a bit going on at the moment. Um, I reckon we start with. Our listeners overseas are probably not going to be aware of this, but there's a fair bit of talking in um AFL media about an injury crisis going on in the AFL. Even one of the leading coaches came out and said the game needs to be shorter because they've got a bunch of injuries. Yeah, what do you think about that shortening the game a little bit? For those who don't know, it's a two-hour game, so yeah, there's some merit in that.

Jason Weber:
1:03

So let's put that in context. So NFL is like a three-hour game, but the ball-in-play time in AFL is the better part of that two hours. So it's like give or take 28 minutes. So let's round it up to 28 minutes per quarter ball-in-play and players are rotating in and out of that, but some players play the bulk of that. So it's a massive ball-in For ball-in and out of that, but some players play the bulk of that. So it's a massive ball in for ball in play. It would be the highest in the world Would that be fair, yep I think it's not the first time it's been discussed.

Jason Weber:
1:40

We certainly know. Years ago in the AFL they used to have, you might remember, what it was called the Telecom Cup or something of that effect. Anyway, it was a midweek game. I don't remember the game, but it was a shorter game and we used to have players, and this was probably back in 2010,. But players would come out of that having played 75% of what they normally do and think, yeah, I'll just recover, fine, this is great, no problem, easy. So there's no question, I'll just recover. Fine, this is great, no problem, easy. So there's no question. If you shorten the game up, it would be easier on bodies, but there's no doubt there's a relationship to the absolute amount players have to do.

Darren Burgess:
2:15

Well, I think a couple of things. I think one there's more load-related injuries now than I can recall, so there seems to be more.

Jason Weber:
2:24

Can I be a dick and say load or exposure? So they're exposed to more training and competition than they've ever been exposed to, as opposed to load that they're physically carrying more.

Darren Burgess:
2:39

Yeah, so I would say it's exposure. Yeah, I would say it's exposure. Yeah, I would say it's exposure. But I think things like stress responses in hips and groins are starting to become a little bit more prevalent, and this is just going through. Looking at the injury list around the league, there are yeah, there's certainly more of those, but I've found that there's also more shoulder. There seems to be more shoulder and impact injuries and I think that's a result of the game of just athletes getting faster and the rotations are still there. So we still get 75 rotations, but the average speed of games seems to be going up. So games are staying the same length. The average speed is going up. The collision injuries are becoming more and more substantial. There's certainly more concussion, whether that's awareness or incidents. We could argue that Would reducing the number, would reducing the duration of the game fix some of those. I believe it would. So I've been in that camp for a long time. But yeah, it's just an interesting.

Jason Weber:
4:04

It's a big step. It's a big step for a traditional sport to drop its timing. But I tend to agree. There's no doubt that that exposure question and the rate of the speed of the game, if a coaching group get it wrong, as in one group, don't rotate enough, like, let's say, um. Back in the day we used to see that the um, we try to distribute more rotations into the midfield and say and the, the high running backs, um, would get more time off. Uh sorry, more time on the field and their exposure was just more. They didn't run less, they just ran more and we end up with those insidious onset soft tissue injuries. So I tend to agree with you.

Jason Weber:
4:52

The interesting one is the stresses and the change in the stress structures or stress incidents. I'm also questioned that when we see the late onset so the older guys who suddenly get osteitis pubis at 26, you've got to ask the question why has that? Osteitis pubis is typically a younger athlete's issue, but yeah, to see it in older athletes you go. Why the change all of a sudden? Hard to say. But yeah, it's a big step, it's a big step for them. But maybe if you've got anything else to go on that, I'll switch there.

Darren Burgess:
5:32

No, I just think it's certainly for performance coaches, high performance managers, whatever. It's a massive management issue now because again in AFL more so than other sports that I'm aware of anyway or that I've been involved with the scrutiny on injuries um is just enormous and we had a player who's out for six weeks with a facial fracture. Um, uh, well, it could be up to six weeks with a facial fracture. And like, I woke up this morning and there's all these um, uh online messages, uh to me or or quoting me or um, or tagging me in these messages and you're just thinking it's a facial fracture like this is, yeah, quite interesting. I've not not had that sort of. There is the inference that you're just thinking it's a facial fracture Like this is quite interesting. I've not had that sort of.

Jason Weber:
6:26

There is the inference that you're involved, that it's your fault.

Darren Burgess:
6:29

I could be honest, mate. I've made it a point this year. I can't tell you how liberating it is to not listen to any AFL-related radio show, podcast, TV.

Jason Weber:
6:42

Oh God.

Darren Burgess:
6:43

Not a single one has, and so even if I'm tagged in those things, I just don't even look. But you?

Jason Weber:
6:52

bring up a great point and I've got on my high horse about this before with respect to the AFL that the injury status gets. The finger gets pointed at the conditioning staff, particularly whoever's heading the department, when in fact, most of the exposure that we're talking about, which is games and training, is precipitated and run by the coach, and no matter how many times you say, get this guy off, or um, we, we need to, just training's been going up and up and up for six weeks, we need to just temper it. That's where the and up and up for six weeks, we need to just temper it. That's where it lies. When we come back to the old one, oh, you know, I have to face the media. It's my job. I get to say, well, you do, but the finger gets pointed at our staff. Anyway, enough of that.

Darren Burgess:
7:39

And we'll finish up on this what happens during games is generally the high-performance person is in charge of the rotations during the game generally Not always it goes, but generally, yeah.

Jason Weber:
7:57

So just for those in the US. Rotations in AFL are kind of like hockey rotations ice hockey.

Darren Burgess:
8:03

They are and, generally speaking, we're in charge of that and you're in the middle of a close game we had a close game on the weekend that didn't go our way and you might have your best player who's doing really, really well and they're due for rotation of your best player who's doing really, really well and they're due for rotation. All of your metrics objective metrics, are saying that that person is fatigued and in need of a break. And yeah, the message coming down from the coach's box is why is Jason Webber off the ground? You know we need him and the commentators are saying I cannot believe that. You know Jason Webber's off the ground for eight minutes and literally that will happen.

Darren Burgess:
8:40

There'll be a camera. Go straight to the bench and see that your star players off the ground with so at some point in the last quarter because everybody gets a break in the last quarter generally um, yeah, so there is that, that pressure as well, that comes on. So it's an interesting environment. It's one that that's fine. You all sign up for it, so you know what's going on, but it does create a bit of extra pressure that doesn't seem to be around in some of the other sports around.

Jason Weber:
9:07

Fair play and absolutely correct. Let's twist it a little bit. A couple of things happening at the moment simultaneously. So you've got NFL have moved to OTAs, so the organized training activities we just lost the big guy there for a minute. He's back. So NFL have just gone to OTAs, college football is coming into summer training and we've got the EPL in the UK is just about just going on a break pretty much. Now I've seen a picture posted in the last handful of days of Patrick Mahomes so the multiple NFL Super Bowl winning MVP quarterback coming into training and the training. Pretty much they're saying he's rocking the dad bod, which, as I own a dad bod, I pretty much know what that means. Um, I think the question is the guy's got two MVP rings, the guy's got more silverware than I'll ever own. Am I in a position to say to him Patrick, you're carrying too much weight? Now, it's an interesting one because it comes up a lot, but he's at the sharp end of the stick, right, so it's an interesting one. What's your views on that, berger?

Darren Burgess:
10:33

Is it affecting his play? Mm-hmm, so just come back to that his play. So just come back to that. In the AFL, excess weight absolutely 1,000% affects your ability to perform, right? So excess, superfluous weight does In soccer, yes, I imagine in basketball, yes. Does it affect Patrick Mahomes's ability to play? Uh, I don't know the answer to that. Um, seemingly no, unless there's a massive change. But what we do know, um, that's undisputed for indisputable, is that excess weight can cause a greater risk of injury and less explosiveness.

Darren Burgess:
11:28

So it's going to be up to Patrick Mahomes what to do.

Jason Weber:
11:33

Yeah, yeah Now he might have a plan. I think this is the hypothetical piece. Again, I'm not going in any stretch, but I think he illustrates a great point because I will say that I had an argument years ago in Rugby Union with a very well-known coach about the fact that I presented a report that was based on all of the players we had in a particular position and the player that he liked the most, which was a great player, rugby player of Australia was in the middle of the rankings. He wasn't at the top of the rankings and I got told that's a rubbish report. He should be at the top. I said hold on, I'm not reporting on whether he's a good rugby player or not. I'm reporting on a fitness parameter in which we have two other guys that, even though he's good enough and I'll come back to good enough he's good enough in that. Let's just call it. It was a fitness. It was a beep test. He's good enough in the beep test to be the greatest player ever, but in the same group we have we have two other players that are infinitely better and we're talking running 15-5 beep test versus a 13-5. So I said I'm not saying he's not good enough, I'm just saying that's where he ranks.

Jason Weber:
12:44

But I think this comes back to is the player good enough on whatever variables you consider appropriate? So, is Patrick Mahomes mobile enough, fast enough? I mean, the guy rushes, the guy runs. Is he fast enough? Is he mobile enough? He can get out of the pocket, he can scramble, but does he compete on exceptional skill? Probably yes, afl, I think, given the amount of times we see guys missing goals in front of the sticks. A lot of people compete on fitness premise or on a better runner than somebody else you know. So I think it comes down to understanding your population. Understanding, but also understanding what makes someone good. What do they compete on? What is their trick?

Jason Weber:
13:34

I mean I can comment on another one of the great open side flankers in Australian rugby. Ever he was never. He was always kind of high on skin folds and all that. He wasn't the greatest runner. He was okay, but he wasn't the fastest. But he was strong. So when you looked at his strength compared to everybody else's, he was way stronger in that position and he played exceptionally. So do I need to bust his balls to be one level higher? Beep test, because that puts him in a good market and it looks good on a report, or do I need to understand what makes him tick?

Darren Burgess:
14:16

What do you think? Yeah, I think it's. I don't ever want to be far. Be it from us to be telling someone Patrick, my mom's the greatest ever, one of the greatest ever, certainly the greatest currently Mr Brady might disagree. Yeah, what we can do is speculate on the facts. I'm sure he's got a plan. I'm sure he's enjoyed his off-season. He's entitled to it.

Darren Burgess:
14:43

He deserved it. From everything that you read, he's fairly competitive and he'll be fine. But as a general rule of thumb, this body weight stuff, which nowadays we're not going to be able to know only high-performance managers, doctors and sports nutritionists are going to know what people's body weight and body fat is. With some of the new rules that are going about, yeah, I think you just can't deny that excess body weight affects performance. So it's a factor, it's a controllable factor and you're just relying a little bit on the athlete and a little bit on education to get that right.

Jason Weber:
15:22

All right. So body weight's a thing, but what about? Epl have just gone to a break. So English Premier League? They've got some of the most outstanding football slash soccer players on the planet playing in that league. What would you expect? You've worked in the league. What do you expect? They're going on a break. When you come back, you really only have a couple of weeks before you get going into pretty hard training. What's your expectation of them walking back in the door? Let's say, a Patrick Mahomes type player in the EPL, he's walking back in the door. If he comes back in rocking a dad bod, what are you? What are your thoughts?

Darren Burgess:
15:59

yeah, I guess that's a different. Um, it's slightly different because in the EPL you only have about four weeks of pre-season, that nfl aren't playing for another three months, and true, you only have about a four or five week period. Um, the best player in the epl is probably playing in the euros or the copa america, which are going on so, or the olympics. So the chances of that happening are, yeah, very slim. But if it did happen to a lower level player who has been away from football and the club for you know, six weeks, which is basically all they get, six to eight weeks I think the environment would throw that person out or would make it really clear to that person that how they've presented themselves is not befitting of a professional athlete in that environment.

Jason Weber:
16:53

Which, given your comments, particularly around how it relates to performance in that league. That's critically important.

Darren Burgess:
17:01

Yes.

Jason Weber:
17:03

The other interesting maybe just sideline before we head off is you get a player back in. Let's say he's middle tier, he's not the greatest on the field but he's certainly a strong player for you. He's a little bit underdone coming into that four-week period. Do you allow him to do some work with the team to build up his condition and control it, or are you of the mindset that he's out altogether and we run him and we get him ready and when he can run he can go in?

Darren Burgess:
17:34

Okay. Answer to that is it depends, but by and large, the sooner you get a player into team training in any way the better. I don't care if that's warm-ups, Whatever you can do to get that player in the quicker the better. I don't care if that's warm-ups, Whatever you can do to get that player in the quicker the better.

Jason Weber:
17:53

Yeah, I think there's a huge problem with I've seen the disciplinary thing where they go no, you're out, and this is the one I love where the coach goes, you're not coming to team training and you have to come to train at 5.30 in the morning and I say, well, and who's running that? And it suddenly becomes a conditioning staff thing. So the problem now is being owned by staff, not just by the player. But yeah, I think your ability to get them into training is critical, absolutely critical.

Darren Burgess:
18:26

Sure.

Jason Weber:
18:28

Right, mate, it's been a pleasure again. We've got garbage trucks running past me in the morning. Man, you have a great week and we'll chat again real soon. Ciao to everybody.

Darren Burgess:
18:40

Cheers.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 14-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 13-----
Jason Weber:
0:12

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Gin. This is a really special episode. Darren Burgess has raced off around the world. He's in Singapore at present. I'm in Western Australia, it's dinner time and I'm sitting here with a gin, not a coffee. I've had enough coffee for today. My blood has exceeded its caffeine level for today. So, Burjo, you're in the travels. How are you mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:38

You well. Yeah, let's not make this sound any more exciting than it is. It's literally one night in Singapore and I'm about to get the red eye back home. So yeah, it's literally one night.

Jason Weber:
0:51

Anyway, it's been good. Speaking at a conference, you make an interesting point. People say to me oh, how interesting is what you're doing? And I'm like, right, I sit in front of a computer 23 out of 24 hours a day drinking coffee and doing like everything. It's just work. It's still work.

Jason Weber:
1:14

I will say today, I'm going to say today I met with I'm not going to say the team, but I met with a super rugby province. I met one of the physios, a young physio, female, and she was awesome. When I say awesome, I mean in the construct of one of the most innovative young minds I think I've met in some time and I just was very impressed for a physio to think about holistically, not just about treatment and really linking in. And I do think the particular environment she worked in is quite holistic. I think their S&C and medical staff are quite close, which is great, because I do a lot of work in America where I don't see that. But I was very impressed. I was very impressed by the innovative way in which she thought she was very humble. I don't understand this, I don't understand that, but I'm keen to learn. I'm just super impressed. So it's really good. I'll say from my perspective for today, to have interacted with really cool practitioners like that, so I'm super impressed.

Jason Weber:
2:23

But we've had a good week. Man, we spoke last week. There were some people who said we were like we did the Nostradamus thing, that we talked about that hamstring injury at Captain of Port Adelaide. Now I'm going to preface this. We're going to talk about what happened, but only the outcome. We don't know any details, so this is hypothetical. So, port Adelaide, Captain Connor Ozee, the week before last weekend or, sorry, two weeks ago, he has a hamstring incident in a game. They pull him out of the game. He then has the week where everybody reports that he trained and then he played and then they pulled him out of that game. Whatever it was, was it before halftime? I think it was.

Darren Burgess:
3:11

No, it was after halftime. Just after halftime, just after halftime.

Jason Weber:
3:14

Okay.

Darren Burgess:
3:15

But he spent a lot of time on the bench.

Jason Weber:
3:17

Yeah, yeah. So he was ineffective. Combat ineffective is the term they would utilise in the military. Now I think we should examine this not from the perspective of we know anything. We don't know what happened, but let's go through the motions.

Darren Burgess:
3:33

He's had an incident. I'm on the bench five metres away while all this is going on.

Jason Weber:
3:39

Oh yeah, well, there you go. We're watching him All right, so let's play it out, berger.

Darren Burgess:
3:45

The incident happens. What did you say? Well, he obviously started and there was a lot of speculation. People probably won't understand the media scrutiny, I promise. Teams are under here in Adelaide. It's just brutal, you know that well. Teams are on, are under here in adelaide. It's just brutal, you know that well. But um, it's all like it's leading leading stories on sports bulletin back page, probably front page. Um will rosie play. Yeah, rosie will play um on wednesday night apparently. Uh, there was footage of him sprinting um and so at training. So that's fine, we're playing Thursday night. There's 55,000 people. He gets named and looks like sometime in the middle of the second quarter. He sort of pulls up a bit short and then he spends about 8 minutes or so on the bike and then comes back on, but just doesn't look like his usual dynamic self as somebody who's, you know, not watched him much. But we're on, we're on the bench going.

Darren Burgess:
4:51

I'm sure he looks right early in the third quarter by something out and um yeah and the coach what everybody should know, those who don't know the incident and I've obviously worked for the coach involved, port adelaide under Dan Hinckley. He was incredible. In the press conference he said it's my fault, my mistake. I let the player down. It was ultimately my call and I'll take responsibility. It was the wrong call. This is the coach.

Jason Weber:
5:21

But I think that's really important to talk about Berger because let's say, right, so he's had the incident and now it's not Connor anymore. It's just an incident, right, an incident. We're going to assume there wasn't much on MRI Because they would have MRI'd it 36 hours later. I will say that one of the threats you'd face you shouldn't MR super early, like guys running off the field and going to an MRI scanner is ridiculous, but anyway, so let's hope they've done it about 36, 48 hours later. Whatever They've got not much signal. There might be something. There was a definitive incident, but I would hope that immediately post-game, clinically the signs would have been low. So everyone's confidence must have been high early. You said you mentioned he sprinted through the week and there was good vision of that.

Darren Burgess:
6:15

On TV they showed him sprinting.

Jason Weber:
6:17

Okay, so that's good. My only bent on that is was he sprinting in the way that he would normally sprint, which is, like you know, I'm confirmation bias king, because I would speed stick everything, but whatever, I think right. So they've gone with the decision to go. Now here's the thing. This is a really important one for me is that, let's say, the performance staff and the medical staff have all sat around and said, look, we're pretty confident, there's a risk. Let's say we're at 70% probability of this is a good thing, 70% of success. Now the great General Colin Powell, who marched into Iraq with the, you know, ran the US military. He famously said if I've got 70% probability of outcome, good outcome, I go Right. So Ken Hinckley's made a call. Someone's got to make a call. He's the boss.

Darren Burgess:
7:17

Now he said in the press conference and I can only go on what Ken said Ken Hinckley is physically incapable of lying, right, he's one of the most honest humans I've ever come across. Ken said and Ken is physically incapable of lying, he's one of the most honest humans I've ever come across. He said I saw it with my own eyes he could sprint, he could kick, he could do everything. I saw it with my own eyes, but he used his words. But when fatigue set in, obviously he couldn't quite go. That's cool and that begs the question we'll come back to obviously he couldn't quite go.

Jason Weber:
7:44

That's cool and that begs the question we'll come back to. What are we really trying to assess? Is it one-off effort sprint or is it? How do we assess volume of repetition? But I think the fact that Ken's come out and said it's my call, that's fine. But having sat in the hot seat as you have, let's say, down the track, there's a couple of injuries and the performance staff at this team don't worry who it is. They get reviewed on the injuries and we've got to remember now the coaches called that athlete in.

Jason Weber:
8:21

Now I've sat and watched last year the wallabies unfold with what happened there. The coach makes the call. Eddie Jones famously says it was my training plan, my players blew up, he got fired, but I'm sure he walked away with a lot of money. But Australian rugby is in disarray. So that ultimate ownership, because I've been in the situation where I got hauled over the coals and I got pulled out publicly, publicly for injuries when I was the one on the sideline saying don't play that guy, don't play him, and he gets played and gets injured. Yet that gets pulled against you.

Darren Burgess:
9:06

So I, you don't know what happened. No, no.

Jason Weber:
9:10

But I think we should say Taking the responsibility and oh, I respect Ken Hinkley. I think he came straight out and said it. Yeah, but I do wonder what other signals were there. And that's the art right rather than the science.

Darren Burgess:
9:27

I guess you've got a five or six-day turnaround from when the injury happened. I think there's a six-day turnaround for them. So you can't really assess the impact of fatigue, you can't really bring on enough fatigue, too much fatigue, 100%.

Darren Burgess:
9:46

Like. You're certainly not going to put them through a full game of AFL, so it's a tricky one. What can you assess in that time? You probably can only assess function and probably all their objective markers, probably all their visual markers. They all came up drunk, so I've got full faith in that medical and performance team. I'm a bit biased.

Jason Weber:
10:11

No, I agree, I think it's just an interesting one.

Darren Burgess:
10:14

In that situation Would you say there is some signal, therefore we're taking them out, or it's a massive game, massive play on Mate. You've got to say, with the signals that they would have been getting, or we're taking them out, or it's a massive game, massive playoff.

Jason Weber:
10:25

You've got to say, with the signals that they would have been getting, which is GPS, they've done the scans, they would have done everything. Probably an oddball.

Darren Burgess:
10:33

They would have done everything isometric.

Jason Weber:
10:38

Yeah, I'm not questioning Port Adelaide's approach. No, not at all, and I respect Ken Hinckley implicitly for what he did. My question? There's two questions. One is as a scientist, can I figure out another signal? That's the speed sync thing. But that aside, I'm going to throw another hand grenade and that is that I've been discussing with a national sporting body around about how things should grow and work.

Jason Weber:
11:12

I think there's a real case for, as a profession, I would argue as a professional that we should keep a diary on this. So let's say you're the high-performance manager of a team and this incident like we've just described has happened. You should keep a record of what was said and what you recommended because ultimately there are points in time that come where you are questioned and it's not our decision, our role as whatever you want to call it high performance manager, sports science manager, whatever is to advise. We don't technically make a decision. The coach makes a decision. In the Ken Hinkley case, he has put his hand up and said I made the decision to go. I'm all for that right, but we can't then I would not. I would hate to see that staff get hauled over the coals in six months' time for an injury, ravaged, situation where the captain had been destroyed and whatever Like. I just think there has to be accountability.

Darren Burgess:
12:19

Yeah, what we're trying to do and we'll move on to the next one. But in that situation it's a perfect. It's a perfect time and over. I guess someone who leads a department I'm going right. What was our process? Who was our line of communication? Who made the decision? If it was, you know, in that sort of situation it's absolutely the coach who makes the call. And what sort of leadership did he show after? It's pretty bloody good, oh excellent.

Jason Weber:
12:59

What sort of leadership?

Darren Burgess:
13:00

did I show during the process? Did we do everything? If you came in, if you, jason Webber, came into the club for those six days, as someone who's not emotionally invested, who couldn't care whether it was a showdown or whether it was a game against the last place team, were the processes good and I'd be really confident in the case they were, and that's all I'd be worried about Agree Almost take care of, about Agree, and then the athlete would almost take care of itself, agree.

Jason Weber:
13:26

And what I would counsel and I can only do this from I have this idea always of I'll walk in the shoes. If I was in the shoes there, if I went back into sport in that capacity, I would keep a documented journal of what I recommended. Okay, because having gone up against boards before who have brought rubbish, I would say I would keep a documented journal, official, including email trails, of what you recommended. Now, in that case, everybody might have been on the same page Great. But there are going to be times when you say I don't think that guy should go. Coach says it's my call Great. But we got that on record because I know, not just myself, I can name other people and there are guys you know, darren, we look at the level of PSG and clubs like that that have been high-level staff performance. Staff have been hauled over for injuries that aren't their fault.

Darren Burgess:
15:37

Yeah, it's a really delicate one and it's um.

Jason Weber:
15:38

I don't think there's any any great solution to it, because ultimately protecting back then in the boat.

Darren Burgess:
15:42

If management decide that you're the reason, then it doesn't matter what you put it wrong because, you're the reason.

Darren Burgess:
15:47

It's just you. Just you can help yourself on the way out. But I've got a question for you. I am speaking at this speculative conference today, which was a BeefPro Asia conference, and my discussion today, as part of my work with BeefPro, is to talk about technology and sport and who controls the data. I mentioned SpeedSig as one of the emerging technologies that are coming up in the game. I'll give you an example.

Darren Burgess:
16:25

At previous clubs that I've been involved with, where I've been in charge of the analysis department, we have used information to assess whether a player's contract is worth renewing, and what you do is you have a look at their physical point of view, from a tactical point of view, you have a look at their information, you model that against similar players in similar age groups with similar injury history and you have a look at how they did. And then you um try and model uh exactly what the decline or in fact, the non-decline of all of those factors, both technical and um physical, um speed c would be part of that suite, along with a whole range of different testing services. You put them all in various um uh statistical tools and you come up with a um I guess an algorithm that is used to predict fucking too long on that already. That's what I've been. Uh, what?

Darren Burgess:
17:23

What preparing for this presentation made me question is if the information coming into your system is crap. If you're relying too much on gps that we know is not quite accurate, if you're allowing too much on um I don't know poorly collected wellness data, or you know poorly collected sleep data? Um with trackers that are not particularly you know. Whatever it might be using the central magazine to predict a player's future? Um? A? That's dangerous. B? Um. Who owns the information? Who owns it? So can?

Darren Burgess:
17:57

you, there's a great, great story before I finish, with kevin de bruno, one of the best players in the world, who wanted to contract renegotiations with manchester city with his own data that he collected from Opta. And he went and got that himself and his management company went and got that himself and said no, no, no, don't you tell me about my goals and assists. Here are my expected goals and assists. I can't help it if the striker won't put them away. I'm doing all the work. Now you could argue that Gidon is one of their players, so of course he's going to get a pretty good contract, but it was a great discussion today on who owns the data and we've got to be careful how these players' careers are under jeopardy.

Jason Weber:
18:39

Great, great stuff mate, no mate, magnificent, really quickly. For anybody who's not familiar with football soccer data expected goals is the probability of score based on getting the ball into a goal-scoring position, so it's a highly valuable statistic in football slash soccer man. I spent 18 months working in the University of Western Australia Law School doing a paper on data privacy and you were a part of one of those presentations and there's no question in my mind, both as the academic who pursued that work but now as a business that deals in data. My opinion is the data is the players 100%. It has to be, it has to be, it has to be.

Jason Weber:
19:31

There are rules internationally, particularly the GDPR in Europe. In America, there's about 52 different rules. America is not one country, it's like 52 little countries all banded together but they all have data privacy laws. But the push is towards the athlete owns the data. Now, my entire data system is built on, predicated on, ensuring that that athlete's data is his. I think if an athlete moves from one environment they move from the Adelaide Crows to Port Adelaide their data goes with them, everything. Now, that doesn't happen everywhere, but there's no question and I think that the example you used of the player getting his own data and having it analysed. I think that's going to happen. I think that's the future man, it should be.

Darren Burgess:
20:20

That's smart.

Jason Weber:
20:21

Yeah, I think it's really good.

Darren Burgess:
20:23

You've got to analyse.

Jason Weber:
20:26

And you make a great point about. Well, how do we trust the signal coming in? What do we think about GPS? It's a great argument. It's what we've got at the moment, but is what we've got really as good? Can we predict future outcomes? I don't know.

Darren Burgess:
20:47

You present error ranges, then you're okay. I think, as long as you know, it's like the old days of taking skin color scores and people are saying you've gone from 51 to 58, they're very much like good stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you project error ranges, which is what I've always done, if you project error ranges, which is what I've always done, and the error range is the CV percentage of the particular tool that I'm using. So there's plenty of published data on GFS that show what the coefficient variation is. So, as long as you're predicting, as long as you're using a range when you're predicting, it's just a little bit of a. If you give me food for thought on the red eye, I'll play on the sleep Before you go to sleep.

Jason Weber:
21:37

Then let's have a quick shot. I'll have a quick shot over the bow of sports science. Right is that? I think everything you said was spot on, absolutely spot on. But I think the days of sports scientists being the download GPS, put it into Excel is rubbish. I think sports science really has to push, and I know there are people pushing. There's no question but the ability to model data and understand how you model data and to bring out the ranges. Within that, you know there's all manner of techniques and sometimes, sometimes, bullshit baffles brains. You've got to be careful.

Darren Burgess:
22:22

People can overfit models, so I think there's a One more before we go, because I know this is a bugbear. I've just seen you for those listening. I've seen Jason just down at the other, quickly. So for the last four minutes. Nfl started today. This is right in your wheelhouse or this week. Sorry, a lot of the training started this week. Have there been any Achilles yet, and when can I start chalking them up and when are we going to talk about them again?

Jason Weber:
22:51

Mate, look, I do have my toe in the NFL pond. There's a fair bit of discussion. There's been a lot of discussion around the place. I had the privilege of talking to a great practitioner in Australia, Professor Craig Purdom, yesterday for two hours Magnificent.

Darren Burgess:
23:10

One of the best.

Jason Weber:
23:11

Absolute gentleman of science and sport in Australia, absolute tendon specialist and the most humble man. But there is unquestionably in his the way he expressed to me and some of the radiologists I've spoken to recently there's no doubt there's got to be. His thought was there's got to be some pathological indicator underneath. You can't have tendons just exploding for no reason. So I don't think we have a definitive answer by any stretch, but I think, again we come back to that what signals can we define? And I think anybody that I've worked with in the NFL I'm certainly saying like we've got to start looking and if there's signal like and the signal might be the player I'm waking up with morning stiffness, not anywhere else but in your Achilles. You get up and the foot's stiff, stiff and it takes time to warm up Straight away, that has to be actioned and you need to be looking at that and your predictive model start to build from there. To be honest, because there's got to be a pathology.

Jason Weber:
24:24

The tendons don't just explode for no reason. I think there's the case where there are radical overloads, like there's one picture last year of a player got compressed. A guy landed on his shoulders and compressed his ankle that hard that you go. Well, okay, that's external load. But I think people jumping on the sideline in the Super Bowl I can't, there's got to be a pathology under that. So everybody's looking, everybody's looking at the moment. But let's fold that page over and we'll dog ear it and we'll come back to that one, darren, because you can't chalk them up yet. But I think people are going to be looking.

Darren Burgess:
25:09

Forward to having the conversation. Matt, I have a plan to catch. People are going to be looking, so I look forward to having the conversation.

Jason Weber:
25:13

mate, I have a plane to catch. We draw to a conclusion our Singapore enterprise. I'm out of gin and it's time for me to go. It's been a pleasure, as always. As always, Darren.

Darren Burgess:
25:27

Thanks very much.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 13-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 12-----
Jason Weber:
0:00

This computer G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee Darren Burgess and Jason Weber here bringing you the deepest, most insightful real-world strength and conditioning. I won't use high performance. I hate that term, darren. I hate the term high performance manager.

Darren Burgess:
0:22

I hate the term marginal gain, so we'll just both avoid using those. I hate the term marginal gain, so we'll both avoid using those.

Jason Weber:
0:27

I hate the term fitness guru. There you go. We'll avoid that, just so. Anyone listening overseas and we have got quite a few at the moment we encourage everybody in the UK and the US and in Europe if you listen to us and you like what's going on, text it to a buddy message. It get it around. But in Australia, if they ever write an article about you in the newspaper, they would always say Darren Bird is a fitness guru every time, no matter who you are.

Jason Weber:
1:01

And it wouldn't matter whether it's not, no, it's like whether you're a fitness coach of collingwood carlton.

Darren Burgess:
1:08

You know, west coast, the crows it's always anybody fitness guru jane smith or you know, yeah, yeah, terrible, anyway, terrible.

Jason Weber:
1:15

Listen garen's. Uh, we've had a good conversation this week. You've got that. You've got it, man, it in.

Darren Burgess:
1:22

Mate, the biggest story that's happened in our industry this week, and I reckon I've had, conservatively three, four people say are you going to talk about this on your podcast? So Anthony Gordon, who is a very, very talented recent English international footballer, soccer player who plays for Newcastle, signed on a big transfer fee from Everton, I reckon a year and a bit ago. Anyway, he came out and said, and I'm going to quote I don't do weight training at all. Never the lads at the club do it. My game is not really relying on it. I just think we do enough running. So adding weight onto your muscles and your body is just going to put you under more stress, resulting in more chance of injury. It would probably make me stronger, I'd probably actually get quicker and more explosive, but I might get more injuries, so it's not worth it. I've been pretty injury-free this year. I have been injury-free this year. The gaffer, which is the coach, and the gym staff they're fine with me doing this. They know I don't like it. I just like to do what makes me feel good and this season I've been injury-free. The club are understanding with me.

Darren Burgess:
2:33

I do a lot of stretching, a lot of yoga, but actual weights and treatment. Some are there every morning, but it's not for me. The only thing I do is stretch. I stretch before training, after training, do a lot of recovery. My gym stuff is more recovery placed, so I do a lot of what bike, norma tech, love an ice bath pool and stretch, do some meditation. Um, a lot of the time when the session finishes and the lads go into the gym, I stay out all the time finishing or doing extra bits because I feel training has ended too quickly and I'm not ready to go in. So it goes on and it's worthwhile giving a bit of context to this In 2018, chelsea manager. Sorry, we don't use any weights. It's all natural work that we do in the gym. Nobody does weights. I've never seen a player with a weight on the pitch Mourinho's assistant, rui Ferreira. With gym work, you're going to lose mobility and agility. So the concert pianist doesn't run around the piano to get ready or do push-ups on his fingers.

Jason Weber:
3:42

That's a good analogy. We'll come back to that one, darcy norman. What's he got to say?

Darren Burgess:
3:47

darcy norman. A lot of people, even to this day, say you don't need to train weight, you just need to run. You totally need to do that, though strength doesn't equal size. If you're, pound for pound, as strong as possible, then energy it takes to do the same step is less and there's less metabolic consequence. Uh, talks about a few des ryan, former academy um sports medicine. I'm just reading this article from the training gown ground guru, which talks about it um, he advocates weights as well, so he advocates weights. He advocates weights, des ryan, um, so, um, certainly there was a lot of banter on Twitter about it and a lot of our fellow. You know, strength slash, sports science slash, performance slash whatever.

Darren Burgess:
4:35

Human performance not high performance, human performance, human performance. People jumped on the back of it. So I've got my thoughts, but what say you, jason?

Jason Weber:
4:46

Let's just add a little bit of the low hanging fruit. I think when an assistant coach says a piano player doesn't do strength training and doesn't have weights, the amount of force required to depress a key on a keyboard is minute right, so it's not a same conversation. The amount of force to decelerate a human body when it's moving at six meters per second, which is not even very fast, that's a lot more. So I think we throw that guy out straight away. Marino's assistant we turf him. I don't know who he is, but that's a ludicrous comment um what I?

Jason Weber:
5:21

do think. Um, I think if you start from a pyramid, from a global like this is just a general philosophy. Yes, I think we should have guys capable of developing force and, generally speaking, having coached a bunch of 16-year-olds this morning, they're uncoordinated, they can't apply force, they have inappropriate muscle mass for what they're trying to do, which is one of those sports they play, is soccer.

Jason Weber:
5:48

So I think there's definitely a case for it and, I think, doing it in a highly coordinated manner. I'm not an advocate for bodybuilding per se in sport there's that but I do think at the sharp end of the stick. I think the very sharp end of the stick. So when you're elite, you're there and you have a pattern. And if this guy, anthony Gordon, my first question to him would be and not question of him, but question of his body is can you apply force? Because we had one of the other quotes you made there saying well, if the person's got relative capability of applying force, well then then great. So if this kid can apply force and show me that, demonstrate that he has appropriate capability, well then fine. I'm never going to make somebody do things they don't want to do, but I will work with them to figure out what works for them, particularly in someone. Let's say I walked into. Let's say I walked into where is he? Newcastle? I walked into Newcastle today. I'm not going to walk in and say, right, everybody's getting under a bar, because that's just inappropriate, but I would work with them.

Jason Weber:
6:55

I worked with a Spanish player, soccer player, a couple of years ago and he didn't want to do weights but he'd ended up having some injuries that were just a function of he got weaker and weaker. Anyway, we started doing some bodyweight stuff where he was pushing me around and now I weigh 110 kilos. This guy weighed probably 72 at best. So once we had started discussing, I said to him what do you do? What's your position? You do, what's your position, what do you? And he was very much one of those um, a forward in soccer that was almost more like a forward midfielder, like he would take the ball and he would pivot around, so he would be holding guys off, controlling the ball and dishing it off, and so we ended up just making up exercise around that. But they were strength exercises. Were they weights? No, but they were strength exercises. Were they weights? No, but they were resistance activities.

Darren Burgess:
7:45

Yes.

Jason Weber:
7:46

So that's kind of my broad overview. But I think, yeah, to walk in, I know like even in the NFL I'm doing work at the moment and I know a new management group that have gone into one of the NFL teams. They would be the same If you walk into an NFL team and there's a bunch of 30-year-olds that have done X, y, z for 10 years and been very successful, and you come in and suddenly go, hey, we're not doing that, we're doing this whole other thing.

Darren Burgess:
8:14

Yes.

Jason Weber:
8:15

It would be, it wouldn't work.

Darren Burgess:
8:18

Yeah, I think yeah, go, no, you go mate, no, no, you hit. I think it's horses for courses. I think if a player, if you had a $50 million house on Cottesloe Beach there in Perth and Cottesloe just for anyone overseas, look up Cottesloe on Google.

Jason Weber:
8:45

But Cottesloe is very, very high real estate value right on the beach in Western Australia.

Darren Burgess:
8:53

Jason lives there, obviously.

Jason Weber:
8:55

No, I don't. I don't. I live a couple of suburbs back.

Darren Burgess:
9:07

So if you had a $50 million house and the builder or the owner builder said, no, I am going to put the structures in this way because this is the way I want to do it, and you're an advisor on the project and you say, no, it should be that way, but you know the owner wants to do it that way. You're not going to force the owner to change his mind. It's his house. It's worth 50 million dollars, so you need to be very, very careful. So anthony right now believes that his 50 million dollar body is better off not doing weights. If you say to him you should do weights because you'll be more metabolically efficient, which probably he would be but he's he's. It's quite an intelligent argument that he brings to the table. He says because you'll be more metabolically efficient, which probably he would be. But it's quite an intelligent argument that he brings to the table. He says I know it might make me a bit quicker, it might make me more explosive.

Jason Weber:
9:55

I did like that bit, yeah, but I thought that was very good from him, for sure.

Darren Burgess:
9:58

But I've assessed that cost benefit and I think it might give me more injuries, so I'm not going to do it. So is that an educated opinion? Um, probably not. He's got an n of one that he's basing that on right.

Darren Burgess:
10:12

So true, um, I just think you need to tread carefully, and it would be if I was in, you know, leading that program and trying to guide the strength coach on how to to um operate. I would say let's build up some trust with anthony over a period of time and then let's introduce, exactly like you said, some form of resistance training on pitch, some band work, some, um, you know, body body contact work, that sort of thing.

Darren Burgess:
10:41

So I don't think it's as big a deal as what the you can't say Twittersphere anymore the Xsphere has made it out to be.

Jason Weber:
10:48

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
10:50

And it's just not binary. So many of these things.

Jason Weber:
10:53

But I think too, when you look at football, like the soccer in the UK and this guy's a UK player I would always argue that soccer is a ttritional l sport in that there are so many people playing at so many levels that the competition just to make it like god forbid, like you get to a champions, championship team that are epl team. You've already. You've already developed the capacity to play the game at that level. Now how you achieve. You get the guys coming out of the favelas in South America. They're not doing weight training but they're playing every day. And that's what program would we ever do where you'd say let's go and just play every day? That's the law of the jungle, that's how they survive. Now we only do strength training to fill a shortfall, right?

Jason Weber:
11:46

Yes, so there's no shortfall, but in the same breath, I think, if you expanded it, because soccer slash football is not a mass-dependent sport, and by that I mean it's not a heavy, it's no question there's contact, but it's not rugby, it's not rugby league, it's not NFL, where mass is hugely important. So I think that takes on a different argument.

Jason Weber:
12:12

But, in the same breath. If I take my 16-year-old kid I was working with this morning, he's a soccer player. He plays first grade at school. At high school he is. He's definitely on the negative side of skinny Like. His muscle mass is extremely low. He cannot. He's very awkward in deceleration and acceleration, so it makes sense to try and help him be stronger.

Darren Burgess:
12:41

Yeah, I think you know when there's a deficiency that's preventing somebody from reaching the top. So if Anthony Gordon is showing deficiency, then you might need to have that education with him. Yes, but from what I know of the player and also from what I know of the staff at Newcastle, they're very, very competent. More than competent, they're excellent staff there.

Jason Weber:
13:05

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
13:06

So I'm sure they've got it covered.

Jason Weber:
13:09

I do.

Darren Burgess:
13:10

You know I quite like the debate and you know that's probably what.

Jason Weber:
13:14

Let's twist it another way, mate, because we're saying this guy's saying don't do weights, I'll throw in. This isn't hypothetical. So I worked with George Gregan, who was a Wallaby captain for a long, long time, played 130-some-odd tests for Australia Smaller cat but incredibly powerful. Now this is a guy that I worked with middle of his career but was with him at the Wallabies right to the end of his career. Now he's a guy who, yes, we would all come off the field and we would go and do a certain amount of lifting, but he would go the other way. I would say to him, like man, we don't need to.

Jason Weber:
13:50

And this kind of links to our periodization discussion last time. What's the minimum we can do, mate, to keep you where you need to be without going overboard? So we used to work towards saying look, maximum strength is going to decay peak value in about 21 days, so that means we only need to lift you once every three weeks. Get a really good stimulus in to just keep you where you need to be. We're not trying to get you better, we just need to keep where you are. And so we developed a training pattern which suited what he was. He liked to squat, so we made that happen for him, but it was about figuring out what he needed.

Darren Burgess:
14:30

Yes.

Jason Weber:
14:31

And then taking it to the right spot. Like everyone other people would say well, how come George doesn't need to do X, y and Z? I'm like man. The dude's played 125 tests. His body weight's perfect. He's this, he's that. He's doing what he needs. So, I think the argument cuts the other way too, Like when they do try to do too much there can be an argument to say what's the minimum effective dose?

Darren Burgess:
14:56

Yep for sure the number of players that have come into that have been transferred in. At times that I've been in, I'll have to go and grab that mate, the number of players. I have to go and grab that mate, jim. Recording the number of players that we've transferred in from other clubs that haven't touched a weight program when I was working in the Premier League is extraordinary, and yet they're just fine. I think I've told the story about a couple of them on the podcast before and they're just fine. I think I've told the story about a couple of them on the podcast before and they're just fine.

Darren Burgess:
15:34

So I think, particularly in Australia, we're a little bit obsessed with the only way to get big and strong is to spend it in the gym. When you can do field-based exercises, I challenge anybody. I think there's a couple of premier league teams coming over here, um, playing in melbourne, maybe playing in perth as well, I'm not too sure, but just if you go on and have a look at their training session or their, just have a look at their shape, their core, their glutes, hips, um, yeah, and just you'll see, without doing a whole lot of gym, they're pretty thick. They might not be as heavy overall as AFL players, for example. But I guarantee you the dimension, circumference of their hips, arse core area, is equal to any AFL player. You can talk your Patrick Cripps or your Elliot Yeo at the moment he's a bit of a buzzword Any of those people.

Jason Weber:
17:41

Mate. I think the other point that was made in that tweet, or that X, or however we frame that now was about being faster. One thing I do think is we get caught up in the illusion that if I lift more weights, I'll run faster.

Darren Burgess:
18:00

Yeah, all right.

Jason Weber:
18:01

That does not happen. It can contribute, there's no question. There's no question. But if the relationship was absolutely linear, that would mean the heaviest lifters in the world were the fastest runners. That is not the case and there's ample examples there's. I know JB Morin's story about the runner LaMetre so the great. Apparently he was a under 21s world champion. 200 meter was a great runner. He did some work, obviously through JB Morin's modelling, but the coach kind of took it the wrong way and the coach went and made him lift and he got bigger and heavier but it didn't improve his running at all and I think that is a big. I mean, I'm a big, I'm a lover of JB's work and I think his technical application of force work is brilliant. But I think that's where we get mixed up in that just getting stronger doesn't make you faster, like you've got to run fast and then you go back to what we said before.

Jason Weber:
19:03

If the way you were brought up playing soccer football is that you played so much, so many games, their repeat speed ability is going to be off the charts.

Darren Burgess:
19:13

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
19:14

And by natural selection they've survived. So they've survived the attritional model.

Darren Burgess:
19:19

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
19:20

So listen, mate, while we're on speed, a bit of an incident in the weekend. So over the weekend in AFL in Australia we had there's always a couple of injuries here and there, but one of the better teams at the moment is a team called Port Adelaide. Their captain is a guy named Connor Rosey excellent athlete. They've done a magnificent job with him over at Port. Only a young fella but super quick. Now he's took a bit of a weird landing and jagged a hamstring. It was clear. He grabbed at it, he came off the field. He walked off the field.

Jason Weber:
19:57

Now I don't want to specifically talk about Connor because we don't know what's going on and we're very clear with that. But this is a hypothetical. I think it's a good thing for us to share that idea of. Well, okay, you're in a running-based game which has a high fatigue element. The kid's clearly done something. You can identify an incident. He comes off, there's some clinical signs, but at this point the word is he's going to play this week. So what's that? Six days later or seven? Is it seven days? Six days? I reckon Six. All right, so he's had an incident. Six days later he's going to play again in a game where this kid's high speed. He's probably going to run. Let's say they've been reducing down a bit. He'll probably still go 10, 11 kilometres at the least. So, not discussing Connor, we're going to discuss his situation. But what are you looking for, darren? How would you make that decision? What would you see?

Darren Burgess:
20:55

So I'll give you an example of one we had earlier in the year where we had a player complain at three-quarter time of some hamstring stuff. And it was a tight game and he was a key player and he said I think I can go. He did a couple of run-throughs. Yeah, I just feel it. Look, give me the first five minutes and I'll see how I go, and then I'll let you know. He plays the whole last quarter. He sprints. He does about 30 odd percent of his sprinting in that last quarter.

Darren Burgess:
21:30

So it was all fine, had some awareness. Do a scan, there's a little bit there, not much, but a little bit. He trained during the week, enough for us to think about it, but it was round three or four, I can't quite remember and we just said you know what? No, we're not going to play. It's a big season, it's a long season. Even though we were struggling and he's an important player, we just rested him, not rested him, but we ruled him out. He played and has played since the week after and has played since. Could he have played that week, I don't know. So with the Rosie case, he couldn't continue the game, which is a little bit of a. You know, it was a smart decision. They were probably going to win the game anyway, so maybe they took him off. I don't know. I actually didn't see any of the incidents.

Jason Weber:
22:23

I saw all of it. But same thing, mate, he looked like he was kind of hedging towards yeah, I'll give it a go, I'll give it a go. And is yeah, I'll give it a go, I'll give it a go. And let's just again we're hypothetically dealing with this. Let's say the decision was made, you were on the sideline, it was your guy, we don't need to risk this. This isn't a position we need to push. We pulled him out, so the kid probably wants to go. So again, we're kind of moving away from it specifically being that guy. So the kid's had an incident. He's come off, he's clearly got a clinical sign or two, but we've said no, we're going to spell him. So what happens the next day? What are you looking for?

Jason Weber:
22:59

I've got a story I'm going to add as well in a minute.

Darren Burgess:
23:02

Oh look, you're essentially looking for objective markers where you're not relying on the player to and for me. I would have full faith in the staff staff, the physios and the strength coaches that I work with to. But if I'm in the room I'm looking at objective markers and so whatever test you can do on that guy through the week to move him through the stages really quickly and get him to training because it's a five-day break, there's probably no real main session, there's probably just the captain's run the day before the game. So get him to perform fully in the captain's run and once they can do that then as long as they can reach, I'd be making sure they can reach peak speed. Whatever testing protocol you use is adequate.

Darren Burgess:
23:55

The left to right leg imbalances are good and the player feels and is confident that they want to go. Then you have the decision to make. All of that information gets you to the decision right and then you say okay, five-day break, easily replaceable player, yes or no. I can't determine that for another team. Obviously, from the outside you can look at it and go. Well, you know pretty good player Importance of the game. You know four points is four points, no matter who you're playing Stage of the season, all of those things come into that decision. But you can only get to that decision once all the objective markers and the players' input has been added.

Jason Weber:
24:42

You know what's one I used to hate in AFL. The question would come from the coach if it was a grand final, would he play? Yeah, and it's like that's ridiculous. Ridiculous, mate, because in a grand final I took uh, in the grand final we played the team I was with an afl. We took a guy with a torn calf in, but we treated it in a certain way which I won't go into. Um, but we took the risk. We played one game. He got through but he couldn't run for 12 weeks after that because it was a grand final and he tore the shit out of it. But he got through with, you know, local anesthetic and all that shit.

Jason Weber:
25:19

But, that was would you play him if he was a grand final? Yes, you would, but would you have done that? Made that decision in round three? No way. So I think that from a coach, is an inappropriate thing.

Darren Burgess:
25:32

What I like about that. I'm just going to interject really briefly here because I know we're running out of time. But what I do like about that is I like the thought process of whether it's round two, round seven, round 10, making those aggressive decisions so that come grand final. It's not a different decision because it's a grand final.

Jason Weber:
26:02

Yep, but I think that's where and this is my nerd side coming in. That's where I would always say to a coach you've got to look at what's on the other side, so what's the probability of outcome? So if we've got a lot of data, so the kid, let's say for me, the kid does the incident on Saturday night, sunday morning he walks in clinically he looks clean, he's got full range of motion. He's got full range of motion, he's got full strength. So we would test isometrically that day in a couple of different angles. He's demonstrating basically full strength. You go and scan him. Yeah, there's a little bit there. It's myofascial, there's no cross-sectional area damage. It's looking. There's a little bit of something, but not much. But clinically he looks really good.

Jason Weber:
26:48

And then, as you said, you progress him through the week. You're going to have a lot of boxes ticked and you didn't use that term before, but you were right on it. Like you were saying, that's a tick, that's a tick. The kid comes off the incident, he walks off, he comes off under his own scheme. He wants to go again. All great, again all great. So you're ticking a lot of boxes. Yep, um, I will push the barrow man. This day and age I would be running in with clearly speed cig on.

Jason Weber:
27:17

I know it's a fucking gross um gross, gross um product placement for me, but I can't help that.

Jason Weber:
27:23

like that's where I'm at. I would want to know and I know categorically the hamstring markers, like we know that we'll publish that soon, but in the absence of that you still got to tick off all the boxes. Now I'm going to throw you one before we go on a reverse the the story. So I had a player elite, elite player injured himself domestically the night before a game, didn't tell anyone, comes in, plays the game. One of my very, very astute assistants said oh, did you see something different in that warm-up? I said I missed it, mate. What did you see? He said I think he's off. I'm like, okay, well, we checked. We went and checked the physio and everything. Anyway, it shows you the power of good coaching. But anyway, we went. So he played, played into I believe it was probably the second quarter, so he's got a bit of work under his belt.

Jason Weber:
28:19

Comes off, comes off the field and goes. I've got a hammy Right. We didn't see any incident, there was nothing there. He comes off On the sideline. He's got clinical signs. So on a single leg bridge he's got awareness. So it's my alarms going off. High value player. This would have been round, let's say five. So we need this kid all year. I said to the doctor simple question mate, does he have clinically positive signs? Yes, then he doesn't go. I called up the coach and I said don't think he should go, it's not, the risk is too high, the risk is too high down the track. So coach talks to the player. Player says no, I think I can go, goes back out, goes back out, runs across the field no more than 150 metres, not at high speed, runs across, takes a ground ball, bobble, bobble, bang, hamstring snaps, tendon, a whole lot, 2c big tendon injury. So my point in that is it's a really dicey situation and that's where I come to this probability idea.

Jason Weber:
29:31

Yeah, that if the kid presents with a few ticks. Now, if it's a kid again, this coach used to say to me all players are equal. Some are just more equal than others. Right, if it's a high-value guy and it's early in the season, maybe you make the decision, the conservative piece, which is maybe what they did with Connor Ozee the other day. Smart, I think. If it's a kid that just got to go, we need the numbers. Fair play. You got to do it. You got to put 18 players on the field.

Darren Burgess:
30:04

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
30:04

But I think you've got to weigh it up. I don't believe this is black or white. There's probably plenty of art in this. But I think the position where the grand final discussion you talked about, like you can say, yeah, we want to be aggressive and have good discussions, yeah, but it's not the same If you've got nothing on the other side, if it doesn't matter what happens to you, then you can go Spend High risk, high risk, high reward. But if the value of that kid coming out and that and I will tell you now that injury then dogged that player for a bunch of years for a number of other reasons. But when you go from a grade one and you start to step it up, sometimes those injuries haunt athletes for a number of years yeah so there's a risk either way.

Jason Weber:
31:00

But I think you've got to. You've got to look for outcome. What's the yes, they might play, but what's the cost?

Jason Weber:
31:07

yeah so that's, that's, you know, counter-argument. And I don't think it's an argument, I think it's just a position. But I think, in terms of whatever you want to call it, I said I don't like high-performance manager, but if you're the one holding the reins, if you're the one who gets asked, and it's your decision, what do you think? And I do like that. I think when a coach says I want your opinion, I don't want you to sit there and go. Well, the group thinks this.

Darren Burgess:
31:33

Yeah, yeah. What do you say?

Jason Weber:
31:36

I think you've got to come with an opinion, and that's why I think, understanding radiology, understanding what clinical signs that a physio and a doctor would assess, understanding them and understanding that cross professions, you need to get a full idea of where this thing's at.

Darren Burgess:
31:56

For sure.

Jason Weber:
31:57

That would be my view.

Darren Burgess:
31:59

Agreed. Well, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Jason Weber:
32:02

Well, we'll review him next week see how he goes, but he's an awesome athlete and I can understand the value he brings. Captain and arguably best player. I mean, he's probably in the Brown Lows. The Brown Low is our MVP.

Darren Burgess:
32:17

He'd be in top five. He'd be up there. Yeah, Midfielders, and the comp players and the comp. So for sure, oh yeah.

Jason Weber:
32:23

Yeah, so well mate.

Darren Burgess:
32:26

Well, mate, it's been a pleasure.

Jason Weber:
32:27

The coffee's done. We need to get on with other work today. More's the pity, but we've got to get it done. You have a great day To those out there. Like I said, we love to see more people on this. We're getting some great feedback, but, you know, I'd love to see more people listening. I've been very happy with this. There's some people that are, you know, pro guys ringing up saying, hey, we really love just the discussion. So, you know, share it, Share it with your buddies, Talk about it. We'll try and talk more. That's exactly what Darren and I do. It's how we learn. So, mate, it's been a pleasure. You have a great week and I'll speak to you real soon.

Darren Burgess:
33:04

Cheers. Speak to you.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 12-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 11-----
Jason Weber:
0:12

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. I'm Jason Webber and Darren Burgess alongside me, albeit in a state that borders where I am at present. How are you, mate?

Darren Burgess:
0:22

Yeah, good, and that sounds close, but it would take me about 27 hours to drive to you.

Jason Weber:
0:28

Yeah, it is. It's unnerving how big our country is and it's funny not funny, but interesting that you still look at the States as well, and the States is about geographically similar landmass to australia, but when you go, it's not until you go there and you try and move from state to state. You try it like I was visiting other universities and teams and whatever.

Jason Weber:
0:52

it takes such a long time to get anywhere yeah and it's the same here, like man, where wa is the most isolated capital city in the world. Um, and it would take, would it take me three hours to fly, two and a half hours to fly to Adelaide? So yeah, man, we're a fair way away. Coffee would be well and truly cold by the time we got there.

Darren Burgess:
1:14

Or I'd need another one. Exactly One or the other Exactly.

Jason Weber:
1:17

I'm already out. I just went through another batch. I could probably go another one.

Darren Burgess:
1:25

Five o'clock in the afternoon, so if I had a coffee I'd be in trouble. But um, what were we going to talk about? One thing I was going to ask you about is is is periodization. When I went through university, at university new south wales, just way back, when you know the tutor bumper periodization assignment that I had to do for Paul Batman in exercise science 1.

Jason Weber:
1:49

Shout out to Paul Batman.

Darren Burgess:
1:50

Yeah, yeah, I thought it was the greatest trick to periodize all of the aspects of training and performance and to put it all on one annual plan. I thought it was amazing and it introduced me to Excel, which has been a love-hate relationship ever since. But what strikes me as interesting is that I don't use a lot of it. Now you know you could argue you use a form of periodisation, which you do, but essentially the periodisation is based on when are we playing and work backwards, and that is your periodization, and if you're in the end, it's everything.

Jason Weber:
2:32

What about preseason, mate? You've just come through your 472nd preseason with AFL and, like it's 15 weeks of go, go, go, you're not playing Now.

Darren Burgess:
2:44

It's 15 weeks of go, go, go, you're not playing.

Jason Weber:
2:46

Now, what's the difference? So where do you see periodisation fitting in there?

Darren Burgess:
2:51

Yes and no. Yes, you do. So I shouldn't say I don't use it anymore. But now the AFL has three weeks pre-Christmas, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're not good enough to play in the finals which my team hasn't been the last couple of years then two weeks till they have five days off, then another three weeks till you start playing games and then you play trial games, which in every club around the country is. These are massively important games, even though they're trial games, but they're massively important. We want to get confidence, we want to sell memberships, we want to do all that sort of stuff.

Darren Burgess:
3:24

Yeah yeah, yeah, no correlation between trial game success and season success, but you cannot tell anybody that at that moment, and so then you've got to go. Okay, we're playing a game, so we better back off. So of course there is some pre-season periodisation, but nowhere near as much as what the commentary or the you would think. Or the education, or the education, or the education that we were offered and I read reams of books that I had to order from the US way back on it. So your take on it.

Jason Weber:
3:56

Well, mate, I think you're absolutely right. I think we're so often these days bound by logistics. The calendar is set Like they're telling you and, interestingly, this is how this subject sort of came up a bit and I'll share my view on it as we go along. So I did a review. I was asked to review a unionisation plan for a college football team just in the last week. So I've done that, had a look, and it was Tudor Bomper-like, the way it was set out, right. And for anyone who doesn't know, in case you're unaware, tudor Bomper is like the father of periodisation. He put everything in boxes and there was some research to it, I don't know how much. But then, subsequent to that, I've, you know, you read certainly a lot of the Russian and European texts Vladimir Zatsiosky, volodymyr Shansky, a lot of the stuff of the Russian stuff.

Jason Weber:
4:54

Lifting was very periodized but very Olympic, right, so you don't have competitions for a period, anyway. So I saw this plan and I went into exactly the same mode as you're going, like, well, okay, what are the logistics here? When? When can we train? When can't we train? When's the opportunity? But the thing that struck me the most was those core sort of values that you hark back to. What's your cycle like? Is it two on one down, three on one down four? Is it two on one down, three on one down, four on one down, five on one down whatever? I'm not arguing for one or another, but what is it? And then you look at things like you know. Zetsi Orskill talk a lot about the rule of 60, so that your deload week should be 60% of the load of your heaviest in the preceding phase. Now I mucked around with that in the AFL for years. I never got to 60%, never, never had a coach allowed to go that low.

Darren Burgess:
5:53

Yeah, okay.

Jason Weber:
5:54

But I certainly saw if we could breach, if we could get under 20%, like if we could drop by 20% to 25%. I saw massive health benefits.

Jason Weber:
6:06

I saw players not breaking down the colds and flus on long periods. But if I hark back to the program I looked at, one of the observations I made was well, there's periods where there's just build in load for like six weeks, and so my question to that is should you be looking at that and saying, hey, is this two three-week blocks, or can I really keep them going for six weeks?

Darren Burgess:
6:33

So it could not depend on the group that you have.

Jason Weber:
6:36

Could do, could do and it could depend on where you start. So I'm not saying anyone's right or wrong, but I think there's got to be and I look forward. I'm going to have the discussion with the team involved later, but I think you've got to be in a position to say well, validate, can we keep going? Is there a way to keep going? Six weeks, six-week builds, you know, depending on where the athlete's at and the not the issue, but the observation I made in this program was that their highest, their highest block of work didn't come until their camp that preceded them playing. So they're building up. There was no, there was no kind of peak in training and then, okay, let's hold for a bit, stabilize, let the body adapt, body adapt to it, and then we'll go. It was like we're here and now we're playing.

Jason Weber:
7:28

So if I go back, my opinion is that I think there are elements of periodization that we should understand and utilize, but you're going to have to manipulate them based on what you've got. If you've got a really young team right, you're going to struggle to hold load early. You might need to give more time and I will say I've used with older players, particularly in rugby union, the great George Gregan. We used to run a three-week cycle two weeks load, one week down. Two weeks load, one week down because particularly with his lifting he only needed two weeks and he could drop down and maintain no problem, equally. You know, you could keep him fresh going in and I still think at times we send players into games completely overdone.

Darren Burgess:
9:23

Yeah, that's the interesting one for me and maybe it's a conversation because we've got a few other things to get through a conversation for another day that match day minus and I reckon because I've done what number did you say? 1420?

Darren Burgess:
9:40

472 472 pre-seasons. That means I've done about the same in-seasons and, yeah, or I've supervised people who have been doing those in-season and the different models. I could give you eight different models that have won the last eight premierships in the AFL or the last eight Premier Leagues, and everyone's going with a different model. So anybody who comes to this model works, and this is the only problem you can do is I'll say I'll make an interesting observation of last year's AFL.

Jason Weber:
10:11

I know of a team that ran a certain program. They ran a two-day, like two heavy training days up until the vice or the first half of the season. Then the second half of the season they made a choice to drop down to three to one and had one heavy day in a week and they the second, they back half. Uh, use swimming parlance, they reverse split, they negative split. You know they. They went really well. They flew the second half of the season.

Jason Weber:
10:41

Yeah okay so there's no question, mate, there are. There's no one model. But what I think there should be, and my opinion is that if we you've got to put something to paper, you've got to be saying, well, like, if you go to a coach and you're not giving them parameters, we're going to be lost. That would be my opinion. So those, you get something to paper. But there should be some semblance of biological adaptation. Where are we taking them up? When are we bringing them down? When are we doing? Is everything happening at once? So are we going volume aerobic, volume, speed, volume lifting all at once or are we mixing it up? So I think a periodization. I remember, with a very unique coach in Australia in AFL, sat down when I first met him and he said what's your opinion on periodization? I just gave him a general idea. He said well, I think it's all shit. But the reason I think they think it's all shit because it's a plan of some nature and when there's a plan of some nature and when there's a plan they're constrained.

Jason Weber:
11:48

I learned off a great old bull, kelvin Giles, great old bull of strength and conditioning, british track and field, broncos Rugby League in Australia, famous for that. He used to say write your plan in pencil and just make sure the most important people have their races yeah because you're gonna have to change. But you've got to have something. You've got to have a plan, yeah, and it's at some point some understanding of when things are going to go up and down.

Jason Weber:
12:19

Yeah, it'll change yeah but I definitely think there should be to go up and down, yeah, it'll change? Yeah, but I definitely think there should be echoes of the past.

Darren Burgess:
12:27

Yeah for sure. No, there's no doubt there should be that. It is dictated a bit too by games, but when you have the opportunity to push and pull Of course it is.

Jason Weber:
12:37

The one that sometimes loses me is the old two-to-bumper model where it's the whole team. Well, actually, you might might have, depending on your group, you might have 42 different plans going, because they're all different cats and you manipulate. You're manipulating different things, but I I do think there's. It's like I always say to my son with music, man, you're playing guitar, learn the basics, we learn the chords, then you can go and play all the fancy stuff, but if you don't ever learn the basics, you're kind of out the back door a little bit. Anyway, I got one for you. I got one for you.

Jason Weber:
13:13

Great, very interesting conversation just in the last couple of hours. The we talked about the achilles thing in the NFL. All year, also the beginning of this year, there's been a couple of blips in the AFL. I've kind of been like a bit of a dog with a bone. I haven't let it go.

Jason Weber:
13:33

I've been talking to a radiologist, a very good friend of mine, who's published a lot in this area in radiology and medicine in the tendon space, and he's telling me that there's the accuracy that he's getting to at the moment, independent of UTC, because of what they've learned and what he can move with is fantastic and they're doing a lot, getting a lot more positive results. But the cornerstone to that is quick question I asked him was do you think it's plausible that tendons just explode or would we think that there must be a pathology underneath? He said there has to be. There has to be something underneath to make those massive changes. Yes, I think there's going to be the car accident events on a field where the kid gets put in the wrong spot and bang it just goes. So be it. But the guy jumping on the sideline and then taking off in the Super Bowl had to have been something underneath.

Jason Weber:
14:29

So I'm not saying we have a solution to anything yet, but I think we can't say the jury's out. I think we need to keep looking and I think investigating surfaces and boots and all that is appropriate and necessary investigating surfaces and boots and all that is appropriate and necessary, uh. But I do think looking at how we classify our athletes and how we understand their movement is critical and it's not finished yet. A lot to go yet what do you say?

Darren Burgess:
14:54

the calf uh, calf pathology well, achilles, achilles, pathology like a tendinopathy yeah, so a tendinopathy, but, um, the detection of that and the assessment of that becomes, um, yeah, the critical factor and how we monitor that and this changes, yeah and Virgil.

Jason Weber:
15:18

I think this comes back to that thing we always talk about with, uh, what we do here, which is talk hypothetically. We don't know what the athlete was reporting in the four weeks beforehand. Yeah, so I've just a good friend of mine, track and field athlete, just finished at the Australian track and field championships. Didn't go particularly well, but she's been fighting Achilles tendinopathy for quite a number of weeks. She rings me up and we're talking through some stuff and she goes oh yeah, I'm fighting this, this thing. I'm like what do you mean? You're fighting it? Oh, I've been fighting for about six weeks. I can still run, I can still compete. I'm just not very good and I'm like hold on, what, what are you doing? Like you know. So she's doing isometrics, but we come back to that piece of there's performance and so if I'm just putting my hand for people listening, I'm putting my hand arbitrarily in the air, but she's able to continue, but performance has markedly dropped.

Darren Burgess:
16:19

If the performance has dropped, that's the telltale sign. But there are some people with Achilles presentation of some sort of pain or Achilles pathology, discomfort, but are still able to perform. Oh exactly, hamstring tendon and all that.

Jason Weber:
16:40

Yeah, oh, absolutely. But I think you've hit the nail on the head If it's symptomatic. When you've got, let's say, particularly in Achilles, you've got large-scale, observable changes, like you've got swelling, like the Achilles is larger on that side, you've got a visible atrophy on, say, the medial gastroc on that side. You've got things there that you should be dealing with. Now we don't know if the 23 Achilles in the NFL had any of those things. There's no data on that. But I think we've got to not beat it up so much that, hey, this is an epidemic. People might be having the discussion exactly like you're saying yes, we've got it. Yes, we know what it is, we've got it, but we've got to go. We've got no choice. You know it's the Super Bowl, I'm going.

Jason Weber:
17:28

Yeah, but from a practitioner's perspective, for me, like I only we talked about this the other week about reviewing yourself. As much as I'm happily a lunatic entrepreneur at the moment, if I had to step back into a job next week, let's say I step back into the Adelaide Crows, you know, you move on what would I do? What would I do if I was confronted by an Achilles, like I've got to? I pride myself in continuing that practice. So, yeah, I think we've got to keep looking. And what would you do? At what point would you make a change?

Darren Burgess:
18:06

Yeah, it's a tough one.

Jason Weber:
18:08

It's very challenging.

Darren Burgess:
18:09

I can think of a couple of examples where we've managed Achilles tendinopathy or Achilles presentation or pathology for a full season.

Jason Weber:
18:18

Yeah. And the players, but clearly the kids, they play, but clearly they still played well.

Darren Burgess:
18:23

Yeah, yeah, they did.

Jason Weber:
18:26

If you're keeping them on the field and coach is going, what the hell's Steve Gerrard doing? He's not running. Well, he's got to kill his tendinopathy. Well, get him off the field and fix it. That's where it ends up.

Darren Burgess:
18:38

Okay. Well then we take him off for six, seven weeks, or do you want him to keep playing, because even him at 80% is pretty good.

Jason Weber:
18:45

He's better than everybody else, and that's then the judgment call, but then that's the judgment call of what performance is exactly like yes, I'll accept steven gerrard at 80, because that's better than everybody else's 100 yeah no brainer, let's go for it.

Jason Weber:
19:00

But I will say I have seen maybe not players of that magnitude, but certainly brown line medal level in afL not performing and have an issue. And you say, there's the issue, shouldn't play, shouldn't play. And you say it, and you say it over and over again, and then he plays and then something worse happens as the tendon goes kaput and all of a sudden. You know you're the idiot.

Darren Burgess:
19:27

High performance manager who can't prevent injuries? Yeah, exactly.

Jason Weber:
19:32

Like you can't do more than say don't play.

Darren Burgess:
19:36

The risk is too high.

Jason Weber:
19:39

We should get T-shirts made up Me too.

Darren Burgess:
19:44

Last one for you. We've got five minutes left.

Jason Weber:
19:46

Good mate.

Darren Burgess:
19:47

One of the most exciting days in the sporting calendar for anybody who follows US sports is coming up, and that's the NFL draft. When you were thinking I like about the draft is obviously the theatre of it, and they turn it into a two-day event, which they're trying to do here with the AFL.

Jason Weber:
20:05

Massive.

Darren Burgess:
20:06

The thing that I don't like about it being on the inside is the complete ignorance on what data we should be looking at that leads to career success and what data we should be throwing out.

Jason Weber:
20:22

Well, give us a bit of background, darren, because it's worthwhile people knowing that your PhD research as a younger man with much prettier hair and more of it, and all the rest of it, was exactly in this space. So, man, get on your high horse and give us a quick.

Darren Burgess:
20:39

I used Will Hopkins and those who know statistics know that Will's a mad scientist and one of the best statisticians. Applied statisticians out there used him and we looked at predicting career success from a the draft. So 10-year career success, we we looked at the 2001 draft and 2002 draft and we looked at, by the time I got around to publishing it, five and ten year career success in 2010 and 2011 how many games career success dictated by how many games did you play? And there's confounders like high draft picks go to crappier teams so they have more of a chance of playing games, and Will accounted for all of that.

Darren Burgess:
21:20

So for anybody who says yeah, but yeah, but answered a Will not me Mixed effect modelling is what he used, I believe.

Darren Burgess:
21:29

It was unbelievably complex, so much so we used these Monte Carlo simulations, so much so that we had a computer running for about eight days straight with all the simulations for each simulation anyway, and what we found is that the draft itself was a poor predictor. But when you combine the draft with some metrics that we collected during games when those kids were playing games, and those metrics were around high speed and sprint per minute, the draft was an excellent draft. Plus the games, or metrics during games was that were an excellent predictor of career success, and and by the margin of like 10 games per season, which is half a season worth of success. So those metrics were the agility, the 20-metre time trial here in Australia I know they use 40-yard in the US and weight was important in the positive, and then that, combined with high speed and sprint metres per minute, were excellent career success predictors. But if you took the draft by itself, no matter what combination, and we combined everything over and over again, it was hopeless.

Jason Weber:
22:50

Yeah, but that's the thing of it, isn't it? Like I was thinking when you spoke earlier, I had a CEO sit me down once and say what's your job? I said, oh, I'm the head of performance. Whatever. He said no, you're in the entertainment business, your job is entertainment. You just got to put bums on seats. That's all that matters, which, when you look at the draft, is what that is. I guarantee that, although you know this, even in our little world of AFL, there's that much other research done on the back end that I feel like the 100 kilo, the 220-pound bench press for as many reps as you can do is really for the crowd and it's tradition. It's a big tradition over there like massive.

Jason Weber:
23:35

And some of the reps they get out is unbelievable, just insane.

Darren Burgess:
23:40

What I do find interesting, and some guys still say it. They still say he's a 4.98, 40-yard dasher.

Jason Weber:
23:46

Well, they've only just started using timing lights. It used to all be hand-timed, so the variability between you and me and the next guy was unbelievable.

Darren Burgess:
23:54

I listened to the odd NFL podcast and these are people who've been in clubs saying, yeah, we got the official times, but no, no, we took our scouts. Our scouts were timing it on the line. I'm like, oh my goodness.

Jason Weber:
24:11

Yeah, it's a bit like Moneyball, isn't it that scene in Moneyball where Brad Pitt's sitting there and going like what are you guys doing the scouts? And they go. Well, he dances well on a night out and he talks to good-looking girls, so he must be good.

Darren Burgess:
24:25

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
24:26

You know that's all the skill. But you would think in this day and age, particularly in the NFL with the Zebra stuff where they're doing LPS local positioning system data on every game, they would know.

Darren Burgess:
24:40

I guess the thing about that is as well. The answer to that might be okay, we'll assess them using a skill battery, which both the AFL and the NFL do. The problem is there's probably the top 20% of draft. People in the NFL don't test, because I'm not going to test there. I've just played four years of college, or three years of college. Go and have a look at the tape. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to throw for you here. So, yeah, there's a number of ways in which they do it over there, but I will still, if I have a chance. Jason be watching.

Jason Weber:
25:09

Oh, yeah, Well, I tell you in the physical performance industry, then one of the big ones that you see is how many guys did you work with? That got drafted.

Darren Burgess:
25:20

There'll be Instagrams of plenty, yeah, yeah.

Jason Weber:
25:24

And the 40-metre sprint's a big one. The guys will say how many did you get in the top 10? You know, and they're talking small margins of gain, but these cats are fast. I mean they're fast. They were fast when they started Like yes, we made them a bit faster. But you know, at that end of the market, getting guys running, you know, low fours over 40 yards, I mean those guys are genuine speed coaches.

Jason Weber:
25:50

They're there. You know track and field almost. Anyway, mate, listen, we need to move on with the afternoon's shuffle. You have a good afternoon. Best of luck for the weekend. We've got Anzac Day games coming up in Australia. So, man, you have a good one and we will speak next week and go from there.

Darren Burgess:
26:11

Cheers Josh.

Jason Weber:
26:12

Cheers guys, thanks group.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 11-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 10-----
Speaker 1:
0:10

G'day. I'm Jason Webber and this is Darren Burgess, and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. We've got a slightly different venue today. Darren's reclining on his lounge. Kick him back. I'm hard at work, as usual. But, berger, there's been a bit of action in the AFL in the last let's say the last sort of 14 days. A whole bunch of injuries have come about. What's your take, mate? Let the world know what's going on, given that everybody's not AFL-centric.

Speaker 2:
0:42

Yeah, I guess what people who listen overseas or watch overseas might not realise is the scrutiny that comes under AFL clubs, coaches, high-performance staff and players, certainly around performance, and we're five games or five rounds into the season and because there's more journos than players believe it or not in the afl, which, um, those overseas would would struggle to comprehend.

Speaker 2:
1:13

We might have mentioned that before, but, um, so everything is under scrutiny, so it really makes everybody accountable, but often unjustly so. So at moment there's a couple of clubs that are going through so-called injury crisis and you have to publish accurate injury data, which you do in some other leagues as well. So there's a lot of commentary both from media and, you know, social media on clubs who are currently got, you know, reasonable injury rates, and we've all been there, we've all been in those positions and I've no doubt I'll be in those positions again, whether it's this year or next year, where you just go through a slate of injuries. But I think it's really unfair to pin it all on the high performance department because, as we know, and you've mentioned once or twice on this podcast before, there's just a whole gamut of reasons why injuries occur, most of which, by the way, we don't understand.

Speaker 1:
2:12

Many, we don't, I agree.

Speaker 2:
2:13

There's things that we can measure, and I don't want to get into that debate again because everybody who's listening to this podcast is, I'm certain, of the same.

Speaker 2:
2:22

Well, yeah, they're on the same mentality of us, that you know, we can only measure a few things, so that doesn't mean that they're the causes of injury, no, but I think it's just really interesting that high performance teams are copying it a bit at the moment, and it's not absolutely not always their fault. Sometimes it can be. I've certainly made mistakes in the past, and probably we all have, but it's just, yeah, there's been a lot of I'm talking mainstream media, even the AFL website, where they're saying you know, darren Bird is under pressure or Jason Weber under pressure because of injuries at you know wherever. It's interesting what you all thought. You've been through it, mate, I copped it because of your injuries at you know wherever. Yeah, it's interesting what your thoughts.

Speaker 1:
3:07

You've been through it, mate, I copped it Mate it's worthwhile from the experience perspective for listeners to understand. So my contract ended with Fremantle Football Club in 2020 and basically it was dragged out and clearly we went through the whole COVID thing, but basically I just wasn't re-signed. But I got thrown under the bus that all the injuries were my fault, but in fact we had one soft tissue injury and all the other injuries were ankles, syndesmosis, collision. I got blamed for one kid who was jumping ludicrously on a bag In AFL you can practice jumping up onto people's backs and he'd come off the bag and blew his ankle up and couldn't play. But apparently that was my fault. Now that's darren's thing. Like we get hauled out in the media because you're the high performance guy which, as many would know, is a name I hate for our role. But what's really interesting, like, given like there's at least two teams in the afl that are in soft tissue threat, like they've got a lot of injuries hamstrings and quads are the predominant. I'm going to throw it back a little bit on the coaches because, like there's a lot we can do, like we can measure and we can. We can, we can intervene in a lot of areas, but at the end of the day, if you look at the most high-value component, that is, training right, people can go overboard in games and, yes, we've got to condition them for worst case.

Speaker 1:
4:35

But I was at a presentation in the US in January at a conference and there was a guy working in the nfl, a guy I know quite well. He was talking about his experiences meeting coaches across the world and he spoke about one coach in particular with whom I have a lot of experience. But he was talking about the implementation of tactical periodization and how important it is and how. This guy was an expert and I'm going to tell you this without a shadow of a doubt and I'm happy to bring out proof at any point. But this coach, as good as he was, set a plan but then on the field, made decisions to go so far, past the point, that he'd said that players got injured. Now, that wasn't my fault. That wasn't anybody's fault other than the coach going too far. Now, in 20, nearly 30 years, I've seen this over and over again. We set a plan, whether the coach sets it, or we came to it collaboratively. However, it happened, but the coach goes.

Speaker 1:
5:40

You know what? I'm not happy with this or I'm getting emotional because it's goes. You know what I'm not happy with this, or I'm getting emotional because it's an emotional part of the year. We're going this far and, while you might sustain it for one week or two weeks again, I've got plenty of data to suggest that that, much like what has been published, you get to three and four weeks of this. We're talking 15, 20% overboard and pop, pop, pop. This we're talking 15, 20% overboard and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop sequence goes. So it's really interesting and it'd be something that I'd love to hear coaches talk about. Is they go? Oh, it was the captain's call. That's a big one in Australia. It was captain's call or it's my executive decision? Well, yeah, it is your executive decision, but and I'm more than happy if you get fired for it, but unfortunately there are other staff members that do cop it quite regularly- and I mean, that's not even to make comment on what players are doing away from the three to five hours that we might get them to do.

Speaker 2:
6:42

But yeah, it's just an interesting narrative and it makes stories and, um, you know, it can work for you if you, um, as you know, if you win a last quarter and you might win a few in a row, and so, yeah, you're the fitness guru yeah, when, when there's a whole range of things that contribute to that as well.

Speaker 2:
6:59

So, um, it can work for you, but it certainly can work against. It's a bit like for the people listening over in Europe, the Premier League. When they change a manager in any division, it doesn't have to be Premier League and the manager. First thing they come in and do is put players through a rigorous training session that would exhaust the fittest players on the planet, but they deliberately make it hard and then they go oh look, they're not fit. Look at them, look at them. Look at them. They're all haunched over, they're all breathing heavily. They're not fit. So you know and that's a great narrative to be able to sell it means buy me some more time, give me some more time, because the previous manager had no idea what they were doing Of course they did, of course they did.

Speaker 2:
7:57

It's an interesting one, but how you navigate that and, having been through it, I remember at a previous club we had three hamstrings in two days for three incredibly important players and I was straight, despite three years of impeccable injury record.

Speaker 2:
8:11

The following Wednesday night I was straight before the board injury record the following Wednesday and I was straight before the board and um, you know. So what that does is it means that you know it rams home the uh temporary nature of your um, you know of your position and the sort of lack of trust it also rams on the accountability, which is okay and that's something we all sign up for. Um, but the really um, the thing that I learned during that process was stick to your process and if, as long as you're, obviously, if it repeats a lot, then you might have a few issues. But if you could control what you can control in your environment, um and I've said it before and I'll say it again on this podcast um, have the mindset of what happens if. What would it look like if I came and audited this club?

Speaker 2:
9:02

always agree if I came and audited my career, then what would it look like? Are we ticking off all of the you know, research, evidence-based factors? I contribute that we know about Tick, tick, tick, tick. Okay, we're good 100%.

Speaker 1:
10:21

I couldn't agree more, mate. I'm the same. I always look at my environment from a third-person perspective. If I was reviewing this, what would people say? And in fact, over time, you know how you're in a performance environment and you get people visit. So I would have people visit when I was back in the afl and I would say, okay, you can come, but you've got to pay, and your payment is, you can come, you can have a look around, I'll show you everything, but at the end of it, you've got to review it to me yeah, nice and you've got to come and say what you liked, what you didn't like.

Speaker 1:
10:57

Now I got to take it on back. But it's feedback, right, it's an external review you get for free and I think that's a valuable. I found that extremely valuable. And there's a few guys who I'm now still quite good friends with, who couldn't believe that I was saying I want you to review me, review what I do, review everything. And they were shocked and I said, well, it's not a humility piece, but it's a practicality. Like, if you assume that you know everything, then you're screwed. But if you assume that, okay, I'm doing a good job and it's okay, but what can I improve on? You maybe can't see the forest through the trees.

Speaker 2:
11:37

And I think that happens when you're involved in it within a culture. Um, so you're just involved in, in, you know, your afl club and say no it's coach's fault. No, it's this fault.

Speaker 1:
11:47

And you need to have a chance to I'm gonna mate, I'm gonna steer this another way, a little bit like you, you quite often talk about, you know, maintaining process, which I couldn't agree with more. I think it's fantastic, but clearly I've, quite with the speed thing. I've quite often spoken about the need to try and investigate other things, try and figure out what we don't know. Now here's one. Here's just a little horror story, right, and I don't. This isn't a solution, but maybe it's something for people who are in the gig anywhere to be aware of. So you talked about what players do. So I had a player who was extremely important, high value, high value player who had a string of injuries. Now the string of those injuries dated back to an injury that he had before he even got drafted into AFL. So it was like this had this cork hematoma in his thigh that had calcified by the time he was 16. So he comes to the AFL and he got an innocuous scan on his groin early in his career and we found this thing and he was like there's this body, but for 10 years nothing went wrong. But then he has a knee injury and the knee injury unravels and so this calcification becomes an issue. Anyway, long story, but this kid at one point has this calf injury, this low-grade, so we're rehabbing it. Going through all the process and everyone's on like my staff were on exactly what reps, what distances, everything was calculated. We were looking at the structure of days. Anyway, the kid finishes training on like a Wednesday, no problem. Has Thursday off and he's coming back Friday. So we're all planned up. Yep, we're going to go again, we're getting ready to play. Comes back in on the Friday, we expect, right. So we had a lower intensity day on the Wednesday. Friday was going to be up. He comes back in and he's I don't know 15, 20 minutes into the session. I can feel my calf. Anyway, shit hits the fan. Done Scan, it's gone, again Low grade, and we're like pulling our hair out. And I've got no hair to pull anyway, right, but we're like pulling our hair out. I've got no hair to pull anyway, right, but we're pulling our hair out. Anyway, long story short, the kid's done the right thing. He's had the day off. He's gone and tried to do some recovery stuff, but he's decided that he would go boogie board surfing.

Speaker 1:
14:09

So in Australia, like in America as well, but you get the short board, but on your back, on your legs you've got flippers, but you get the short board, but on your back, on your legs, you've got flippers. So you're kicking and so we're digging into this. And the coach was into me what have you done? What have you done? You've created this. You can't do your job and I'm like man, we've measured everything.

Speaker 1:
14:33

Anyway, you start quizzing the athlete and the athlete goes oh yeah, I went for a surf. I'm like, okay. And so I'm thinking, because I grew up stand-up surfing, yeah, it doesn't seem like much, but yeah, oh, no, boogie board, right, and did you wear flippers? Yes, how long were you out for? Oh, two and a half hours. When was the last time you did that? Oh, I haven't done it for maybe a year. And I'm like righto, so we have a calf that's already on the edge. We're allowing it 48 hours to recover. In that time he does something that loads the calves up quite a bit. He comes in and does that. Now, I reported it back to the hierarchy. Didn't matter, it's ridiculous. You're drawing and I'm like how else explain it, mate? Like the kid was fine, Everything was going great. So that's a horror story about stuff you can't control and you're never going to be able to control everything? They do? Not at all.

Speaker 2:
15:31

Yeah, no, it's, yeah, it's something that you can't factor in and you're just hoping and you go through education, oh mate. But on the same token and we've spoken about this before I don't want to stop people from going surfing, boarding or anything like that, but when you've got a highly sort of high-risk athlete, Neither do I.

Speaker 1:
15:52

But it's interesting, mate. The reality probably is of that athlete at that time was that he was so far down the path of he'd had this issue then that issue and training volumes had got smaller and smaller. I don't think it was something we were ever going to recover, but that's just what happens.

Speaker 1:
16:12

Mate, just while we're kind of we've had a crack at that injury thing, but with respect to you know we've said two AFL teams are struggling with soft tissue, my quick question to you about is game speed. Has the game changed this year? What are you doing to have a look at that?

Speaker 2:
16:30

Yeah, we just look at the player speeds and you know from GPS and just going through that it doesn't look like it has massively compared to the last sort of four or five years of data.

Speaker 2:
16:46

What I suspect will happen, though, is what I suspect is happening is you're going from defence to offence quicker, I know, is you're going from defence to offence quicker, I think, whilst the game speed as an average speed hasn't changed, the explosiveness has, so the sprinting volumes has probably gone up or has likely gone up. So I suspect what that means is yeah, the real emphasis within AFL is that transition is how quickly you can get a turnover and attack, as it is in a lot of sports, but it probably hasn't been as influential or as critical in AFL as what it has in some other sports. So your ability to go at an opposition when they've got the ball, when they're least prepared to defend, is massive. So I think that that's probably where there's been a lot of reacting to high speed. You know, high velocity running. That hasn't been there before. That'd be my best guess five, six rounds in.

Speaker 1:
17:53

Mate, did you see in your time in the EPL and any experiences with people in the EPL at the moment? Does EPL change much? Yeah, it does.

Speaker 2:
18:03

It's changed massively and there's some decent research around that. But certainly the average and max velocity bands or high velocity bands has gone up remarkably in the last four or five years, let alone the last 15, 20.

Speaker 1:
18:22

Mate, it's interesting talking to college football guys in the last four or five years, let alone the last 15, 20. Mate, it's interesting talking to college football guys in the US and talking about the number of reps that they're doing in offence. That's one thing. They clearly have a defensive metric for the same thing. But just looking at the number of reps and that some teams that are playing up-tempo offences that are really dictating, hey, we're going to try and do more reps, force the defence to do more and get things moving faster.

Speaker 1:
18:49

But it is a remarkable thing and maybe something people should be constantly evaluating is not just your environment, but making sure you're seeing the trends of the game, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, where I'll be publishing with one of my former PhD students some trends that we got in the AFL, using different AI technology to build them out. But I think we've talked before about staffing and what do your staff do and where's your vision? I think, from that high-performance manager's perspective, I think the ability to sit back a little bit and this is what staff allows you to sit back and be able to look at the minutiae, the trees within your team, but then sit back and look at the forest and see what else is happening in the game is critical. And then I guess it brings me to the point is what staff have you got to be able to help you do that?

Speaker 2:
19:49

Yeah, that's a really interesting one and I'll finish on this because I want your advice on it really, if I can.

Speaker 2:
19:57

Yeah, I was having a conversation yesterday with someone around how many times I've kind of had to go into a place and reorganise staff or reshuffle staff. It's that good person versus good skills debate, and by that I mean, okay, you've got a really talented strength coach, let's say, let's use sports scientists. You've got a head of sports scientists who has sports scientists, who's really good, talented, but you've got a junior in there who is we've spoken about the ability to code and the ability to see a little bit of a bigger picture in that space. But the head of sports science is a really good person, so you want to keep him around. He's got some skill set in the gym, but you really want to promote that young person up. Can you reshuffle them into a different position? Or is it better just to promote that person who's eager and keen? And you know, I like to think that you keep good people around. Yeah, yeah, that would be, my way of doing it.

Speaker 1:
21:13

It's interesting, matt, I was actually I've got a young coach I mentor and I was working with him this morning and it's Smartcat. But anyway, he was asking me about stuff and I said well, I said I have a very clear picture in my head, so I talk about models all the time, like you've got to have a framework principles. I did a podcast on it the other day when you were away. I did a podcast on this to try and fill the gap, but I think it's like episode. This must be episode 10. It was probably episode seven or eight, anyway.

Speaker 1:
21:47

So my principle around department is I have an idea of what I want, of the people I want in it, subject to volume. So if I've got an idea for, like, a staff that had 10 in it versus eight, versus six versus three, what would you do? Who would you pick? That had 10 in it versus eight, versus six versus three, what would you do? Who would you pick? I think, without question, the number one is that every executive leadership book talks about. You've got to have the right people, no question.

Speaker 1:
22:11

That being said, I'm going to say something a little bit horrible. Some people might say it, but I'm going to say it anyway, right? I often think of professional, professional people as mechanisms, right? So what mechanism do you fit in, the machine that makes this whole thing work? So what is your role? Now, some people I've had coaches work for me who were very skilled in one specific area but not much else. But I brought them on anyway because they did that and they did that thing so well that I made allowances in our model, in our system, for all the other bits and pieces, because that gave us an advantage. I valued that advantage. Now I have other staff members. Let's say, in my last 15 years I've probably had three guys work with me who were I've mentioned them before on this podcast but three guys work with me who are unbelievable all-rounders and they were just rock solid.

Speaker 1:
23:17

They did development, they did rehab, they ran senior positions, so I think you've got to mix it up.

Speaker 1:
23:24

when it comes to sports scientists, I've got a real bent yes because I think if you're going to worry, if you're going to wear the sports science badge, you've got to bring some firepower. I cannot rationalize sports scientists who download gps data and that's really all they do, like. I'm looking for people who can really start to define pictures. So the guy who we're going to publish with soon about the AFL patterns he did his PhD with me but when he came in he was really awkward. He was really quiet, he didn't fit too well, but we nurtured him. I nurtured him personally and got him through and and he was great, fantastic, but very, very smart, but very, very analytical. He was actually a very good running coach. He just wasn't very good in the environment, but we nurtured him through the, the the environment, and got him in and protected him at different points. But I think the point is you've got to define a. Is this person going to complement the skills that you need?

Speaker 1:
24:26

yep what do they bring? But they've got to be good people. They can be quiet people they can be. I've got a. I've got a sports science, a genuine phd in biomechanics, in biomechanics from one of the big tech universities in Germany. When she came and worked with me she didn't speak to anybody, she was so quiet. But you nurture her along and turns out she's a former 400-meter sprinter, so she really understands running and ran at a high level. Now is an elite bike rider, but brilliant. But sometimes it takes. You've got to see potential in people and you've got to see, I think, my opinion. You've got to look for some skills that go beyond what you've already got.

Speaker 1:
25:11

I think generous, like I'm a generalist mate. I am a generalist. I've worked with some great generalists. But I think then, as a leader, though, if you can look for people that can ratchet up and turn up a notch, who can look at game styles, who can? We were pulling data. So one of the keys, I think let's say in AFL, is you can understand yourself, but understand the opposition. Sun Tzu, the art of war Know thyself, know thy enemy, Win a thousand battles. So what we're going to publish, our AI paper was about detecting and quantifying opposition team running based on what was published publicly. Yeah, okay, about detecting and quantifying opposition team running based on what was published publicly.

Speaker 2:
25:58

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:
25:59

But I couldn't have done that. I knew what we were trying to do and I had the idea. But my sports scientist, who was a genuine gun, did his normal GPS work, but on the side we built this AI system that could detect other teams and build patterns. So I knew, game to game, what the opposition ran versus us.

Speaker 2:
26:25

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that we've brought in an honours student who has got no domain knowledge whatsoever, yeah, but she's been able to do some things that I've not seen because she comes straight from a mathematics data. So, yeah, the ability to combine the two, I think, is pretty important and, yeah, that's where it's heading. So it's just up to more general, traditionally educated sports scientists to upskill themselves, isn't it really?

Speaker 1:
27:02

Correct. Well, it's again. If you're going to wear the scientist badge, I think you need to be bringing some firepower. I mean, if you had two roles and one of them is you're the GPS guy and you do all that great. Yeah, if you had two roles and one of them is you're the GPS guy and you do all that great. But my scientist would be like a friend of ours named Brains. Like I want that person, girl or guy, to be looking at patterns and looking at other structures and coming to me and saying, hey, jase, I've seen this thing, what do you think?

Speaker 2:
27:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1:
27:34

Because as the boss boss you can't see everything you can't. You're often manipulating people around.

Speaker 2:
27:41

You're moving, you're working with the coaches, so having those cats is important yeah, you've just got to be curious enough to explore it yourself and then come in and say listen, I was just having a look last night and I saw this what do you think? Or yesterday, yesterday, or you know all that, so I agree, it's just that technical versus character debate.

Speaker 1:
28:06

Oh, they've always got to have character mate. You cannot hire Like I tell you what man my SpeedSigs. Company values are honesty and creativity, that's it. So honesty states straight up you've got to be a real person, you can't be a. Hey, I spoke to someone the other day the same thing. No dick policy. You can't work with dicks. You've got to work with people that genuinely, every day, you're going to enjoy coming to work and spend time with them, because we spend more of our life at work than we do anywhere else. Big truck going by.

Speaker 2:
28:53

Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1:
28:55

So you've got to work with good people. Anyway, mate, listen, I know you are pressed for time and our day is rapidly dwindling, so, man, I appreciate your time. We we need to next one out.

Speaker 2:
29:06

We're probably gonna do another coffee review or a bit behind on that yeah, yeah, actually, I've just just uh transformed, transformed or transferred to a new coffee, so let's do it. I look forward to it.

Speaker 1:
29:17

All right, mate, great chatting and we will speak real soon again.

Speaker 2:
29:21

Ciao, mate.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 10-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2, EPISODE 9-----
Jason Weber:
0:06

G'day. I'm Jason Weber. I'm with the great Darren Burgess. I don't know whether you're Batman or am I Batman. Who's Batman? I'm Robin. I'm absolutely Robin. I'm gonna be Spider-Man. You can be Batman. Well, it's good to have everyone back. We've had a bit of a week off, with challenging schedules, which is always the case, but we're back. Man, how are you travelling, Darren?

Darren Burgess:
0:30

Going okay.

Jason Weber:
0:31

Busy busy.

Darren Burgess:
0:32

Busy, busy, but looking forward to catching up.

Jason Weber:
0:35

Good man.

Darren Burgess:
0:36

All things sport. Now.

Darren Burgess:
0:37

Yesterday my players, or the Crows players, were just all they kept showing me with footage of Giannis, because they're mad NBA fans of Giannis going down saying he's done an Achilles, done an Achilles, done an Achilles, and showed me vision of the incident and then vision of him walking afterwards and I sort of said I don't know that it's an Achilles because of the way he's walking, but it could be, given how it happened. Obviously it's turned out it's a calf injury. I don't know how bad, I haven't followed the media reports on it, but it's just interesting because he was literally just jogging and not even that it was more of a trot or a canter or whatever comes below jogging.

Jason Weber:
1:22

Yeah, what's interesting when you start talking about calf injuries is the magnitude of calf load at low-level running. So we go, oh, it was just jogging right and I made this mistake years ago. You think you've got some calf issues and you go, oh, we'll just do some low-tempo strides, and then the fucking thing just gets worse. So the calf contraction at just moderate jogging is very, very high. So, um, it would be maybe interesting. Maybe we should chase up Jace Delaney up there, the Celtics, and say, like, just find out. Like, is there, did you see? Was there a signal beforehand? Or did this just sneak up on you? Because, as we know, they do.

Darren Burgess:
2:08

Yeah, so the calf injury, yep, that's one thing. Andrew Rondinelli, who's up at GWS, he's right on top of this stuff and his theory and this is not just his theory, but one thing he keeps a close eye on is running at certain speeds, so that's sort of 18 kilometres an hour through to oh sorry, 15 kilometres an hour, through to about 20 kilometres an hour. And his theory is you know, the calf and soleus activity is pretty big during there. So whilst we have a look at periodisation of sprint loads during there, so whilst we have a look at periodisation of sprint loads, perhaps we should be adding that to our arsenal and to our monitoring. In terms of the rehabbing, if you say the load on the calf is highest at that time, are we avoiding that speed or are we just monitoring it really closely?

Jason Weber:
3:06

No, I think we're monitoring it. I think Andrew's on the right track. I mean, certainly I played around with some injury prediction stuff years ago. I presented a paper at MIT at the Sloan Analytics Conference about this and one of the things we found was the volume of work in that space, in that, whatever you want to call it stride pace running you've got to go there but you've got to go through, I guess, the period of the tissue, an appropriate time for the tissue to heal. You've regained fundamental strength and then progressed through. But it's like everything. I think maybe you're correct. It's understanding those volumes and I would say, given my current, I guess, professional career choice talking a lot to NFL guys lately in American college football, they just worried about sprint, but I said, like you do a, a lot of you transition, for you jog off the field and you jog on the field and you go to training camps, which are two and three a day and you're jogging around. They're still retained that those things are all fundamentally loaded that at some point may cook.

Jason Weber:
4:16

An athlete and I I had a conversation the other day with a very, very elite college program and they've got an athlete who they're saying is the best athlete they've had in their program ever, which is a pretty big statement given the college. But they're saying he can only do a couple of reps and then he cashes out and he has to have a spell. And so they sort of want to know is there a difference between this kid and the other kids? And I'm like I think that then speaks to that volume piece. He can do his one or two speed effort and then he's got to jog off the field. Jog on the field, do all the other sub max things that you might do in, let's say walkthroughs and jog throughs and learning patterns and things. They're all still volume and for the kid who's not volume orientated that could be a problem. Now that's shifted a fair way away from what Giannis is, but you've got it. Those volumes are absolute. That's what your body's exposed to.

Darren Burgess:
5:19

Yeah, yeah, I think. Look, we don't have all the information, but certainly what we do know is that radical change is in volume, yeah, but also what we do know is that running gait can have an impact.

Jason Weber:
5:35

Well, it's interesting you bring that up. I just said I just saw this morning Notre Dame University in the States have just done a deal with the NFL like a research deal. They're doing a big hamstring study looking at contribution of running gait, and they're using sequenced inertial sensors, so multiple across the body, to look at that. They're looking at, you know, eccentric hamstring strength and all that. But I think from what I read it's only a brief paper that they're looking at running mechanics and starting to say, well, is there a difference? And it'll be interesting to see what they come up with. I want to keep an eye on.

Darren Burgess:
6:12

Yeah, okay, yeah, because, obviously, yeah, the running folk of which that's not my background, but it is yours and many others will say that it's a significant contribution to injury. We can be prior to speed, see, we can only really measure loads.

Jason Weber:
6:36

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:
6:37

Now hopefully.

Jason Weber:
6:39

Well, a true biomechanist will say you're not measuring load, you're measuring exposure. Yes, biomechanist will say you're not measuring load, you're measuring exposure. Yes, because we, we. I got berated by one of the great biomechanists my time, the professor Jacque Alderson, who is a little bit shorter than me but she's like Yoda and she just smashed me. But she always used to make me say correctly, you're not measuring load, you're measuring exposure, because load, then, is function of exactly what, what force you're putting into the ground, um, and that's. You know, maybe that's, that's a thing, and I mean it's we, we do. We have, for a long time, as a profession, drifted towards giving everything over to GPS. That's the answer. It may not have been that done that when it all started and kicked off. I first used it in about 2004, 2005, something like that.

Darren Burgess:
7:36

Yeah.

Jason Weber:
7:37

You kind of were going well, now I've got all the answers, I know how fast they're running, how far. Then just things, more questions keep coming and we start progressing more. So I think, as good as it is. I think as a profession we can't just say, well, we've got everything, we've got all the answers, because I don't think we do, because we're doing, you know, there's still injury patterns.

Darren Burgess:
8:01

There's still players missing out. The reason soccer and AFL, we know, haven't actually changed, even though games got quicker.

Jason Weber:
8:07

Oh yeah, and we've gone, and that's the thing you know. We say, oh, nothing's changed, which always makes me laugh about old guys who commentate on the game. The game is going, particularly AFL, if we just go there. Afl is going so fast and, yes, it ebbs and flows, but you know the nature of the game is incredibly explosive for a long period of time.

Darren Burgess:
8:32

Yeah, exactly. So, speaking of that, a term that I've heard bandied about by the sprinting sort of fraternity, the community, community, spinal engine, spinal engine, okay, and that you're leaders of the uh, the community do you want to.

Jason Weber:
8:52

I don't know about leaders. I'm I'm trying to facilitate the community there's dudes who do it better than me.

Darren Burgess:
8:58

Do you want to give me an update?

Jason Weber:
9:00

right. So yes, mate, there are. There are um in the sprinting community at the moment, there is a lot of discussion about spinal engine and and I should be fair, given given how off the cuff we are this isn't quite off the cuff, you know. We talked about this. I've got to be honest. I can't be promoting the fact that we just make this up as we go, and this is clearly not.

Jason Weber:
9:24

But yeah, I'd say 90 of what we do here is yeah at least 90, if not more like half of what we just talked about was made up. But here's the thing. So, yeah, I had a conversation. I've had a lot of conversations about spinal engine Really brief history. A guy by the name of Gr Avetsky proposed it probably around about the late 80s and he's pushed it 90s. There's a couple of smart cats um running looking at it.

Jason Weber:
9:55

Now, spinal engine the fundamentals are that as your spine flexes laterally, is that creating, uh, the setup for you to exert force through your limbs, through your legs, so your legs are like the, the end result. They're not the key result. So speak Now, there's some cases for and against that. There's some biomechanists that strongly argue against it. Some argue for it. But what is happening? As I said, I had a conversation yesterday with one of my NFL guys and he asked me about spinal engine and I think it's going to be something that that is going to get popularized is probably the term. I think there are some big guys talking about it and people will just go hey, we're doing spinal engine and the question is whether doing something that's a lateral flexion in your spine. So when we start as we, we push off. If you watch someone from behind as they push up and you get that that shift your pelvis up. You know, you push on your left leg, your pelvis goes up and to the right and then you put your right leg down, it goes up and to the left. Now Franz Bosch would call that in and of itself hip lock. Um, that's a school of thought I strongly subscribe to. Is there something, is there an action from the lumbar spine, quadratus lumborum and the like doing something to actively elevate that pelvis? Hard to say. That becomes a really heavy biomechanical question as to what's driving what. But I would say and this is the direct answer I gave yesterday, without necessarily going one way or the other, there is no question in my mind. I got taught very early that you run like a pepper grinder. So your lower body wants to rotate, your upper body wants to counter-rotate and that's all coming through the middle and the pivotal point of that is the pelvis. So what happens to the pelvis during running?

Jason Weber:
11:54

Lots of people will talk about hamstring. Injuries are predicated on the pelvis. Rotating forwards, you bring your leg into flexion and that hamstring gets lengthened out. Couldn't couldn't agree more. We see in afl the guys who spin out the back and have a lot of backside in their mechanics. Their foot loops around and it's a long way forward. So I think it's a term people are going to hear about. I don't think we'll dig into it too much deeper here, but I think it's a term people need to look out for and what I would counsel is go and read about it. Gracovetsky Sivetsky would be one author. But don't get caught up in the popularisation of the term. You know that's what will happen. You'll start seeing it on Instagram and we're all going to start doing these bizarre exercises to do spinal engine. I think there's a fair bit of work to be done in that space. But heavy running mechanics aside, mate, not a comfortable question. But zero and four with the crows tough times. The boys are going. They're running hard man, they're running super hard yeah, it's.

Darren Burgess:
13:00

It's interesting like so people, perhaps people um, overseas don't um, maybe don't fully understand the scrutiny in AFL clubs in austral that all aspects of your program, so probably Essendon, are going through a bit of scrutiny at the moment because you've got to publish authentic injury lists each week and it has to be authentic and you have to give timelines and all that sort of stuff. And so each week when the injury lists come out, if there's a club that has a few hammies or quads or cars, regardless of how they come about, that department is under pressure, because we were expected to be somewhere around the eight and we're obviously not. We haven't won a game in four games. Then the pressure comes on all aspects of the program, including performance, coaching, playing and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, there's been plenty of my after games, my social media. Just I get a few messages, which is always a bit interesting, and that's okay, it comes with the territory. You can't want to be in these jobs and then say, yeah, but I don't want the pressure associated with it.

Jason Weber:
14:14

That's just what it is, and every one of them has been through it. Tell me this, mate. I know when you were in your various tenures in the EPL probably more so with Arsenal oh no, there were some Liverpool ones. I can remember, given looking at Gerrard in the back there you used to get people on your social media pro you and against you. Do you get that in AFL? Do you get people berating you on social media directly? Oh yeah, absolutely.

Darren Burgess:
14:45

And I know people say this, but I do not listen to a single news AFL podcast, except two coaches and a coffee. Yeah, but that's not AFL.

Jason Weber:
15:00

No, I know.

Darren Burgess:
15:02

So if we win the next five games in a row and we have an unbelievable run with injuries, my only gauge on how things are going is A talking to people. B what the coaches say, because they, by and large, listen and C incoming messages at different times in a performance centre called Peak, and I got tagged on all these Instagram things which people may have seen and all these comments came up. Maybe you should be concentrating on the Crows, all this sort of stuff. Oh, really, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that happens. That's okay. Honestly, you just stick to your process. How's the club going? Look, the club's not going great, but we're hopefully all just sticking to what we know is good process. And, yeah, what I saw in pre-season doesn't relate to what I'm seeing in season, so there's a disconnect somewhere. Physically, we're okay. You know, our soft tissue injury rate is good. Our GPS numbers in games are fine, so there's nothing I can necessarily pinpoint physically, but it doesn't mean it's not there.

Jason Weber:
16:23

No, that's true, but it becomes very clear, like I watched some games on the weekend I won't say whom I watched, but there were one or two I watched where it was noticeable that players were slower than their opposition and they were getting run over at different times and it to me looked like. I mean, I'm quite a big Gareth Sanford anaerobic speed reserve fan. I really like that idea.

Jason Weber:
16:56

And when you see guys doing these longer efforts, so let's say AFL, you might have a, even if it's like a 40, 50-metre effort, not much more but a rolling start, and you just see them start to fall apart and they're running like this and the guy beside them, the oppo, is just smoking it smooth and I'm like looking at that, going mate, that's Sanford stuff.

Jason Weber:
17:21

He's saying like they're not mechanically capable of maintaining a higher fraction of their speed. They're falling apart. So, and visually you know you can see they're off, physically you know so we thankfully we don't see that in the crows group, um, but there are certainly, there are certainly some teams who look, um, really look to be struggling in that space again the games got faster. I would even say, and this is an interesting one, this is obviously very afl-centric, um, but there are some teams to me that are looking to be carrying a little bit less weight at the moment, like they're not as bulky, like a couple of midfield guys are not as big as maybe if you look at Connor Rozee out of AdelaidePort , like jeez, like just competing completely on speed and obviously very, very high level of skill. But do you think there's a move to that?

Darren Burgess:
18:16

There might be, because that Port Midfield with Rosie and light and agile and quick, the other two Francis and Wines are not necessarily that, but yeah, there might be. I'm not aware of that at all.

Darren Burgess:
18:31

No, but yeah of that at all no, but yeah, it's certainly one to watch. The most exciting thing before we go the most exciting thing that happened on the weekend, Jase, was the high-performance industry in AFL got together in a cafe at 6.30am Friday morning Okay, in a cafe at 6.30am Friday morning, which was, yeah, the sort of, I guess, brainchild of myself and Matty Innes as the two elder statesmen in the AFL High Performance Director or whatever term you want to call this role to try and form an alliance, an association, to represent us. Dave Tenney and some others have done that really well in the MLS. We don't know. I know there's some unions in the US, but this was us getting together as a group saying, right, what are we going to stand for? How can we influence? Because the coaches have got one, physios have got one, dieticians have got one, doctors have got one. We're the only group that doesn't. We've got Mick Poulton involved to help us out.

Darren Burgess:
19:37

Oh, he's back Mick's To to take the pressure off Myself and Maddy Matty and we probably had 50 people represented there, and there was probably another 50 that couldn't make it because they weren't in town by then. So anyway, that's exciting. We'll keep you posted on what that looks like. But it's nice to have a voice, or to start to, um, have a voice for the industry, because we're both pretty passionate about our field and I think that is definitely the case.

Jason Weber:
20:07

um, I think we're very much in need of a voice and it's interesting you get that sports science S&C overlap because you have some of the bodies in Australia, you have the NSCA in the US. But I would say sometimes, what do those groups do? I know when COVID was on, we got a lot of questionnaires about this and that how can we help? And didn't help one brass razzoo anyway, make it a bit more.

Darren Burgess:
20:39

We've been down this path before, probably haven't got quite as far as we have now. Okay, but it always takes time.

Jason Weber:
20:46

It always takes time, mate, very quickly before we go. You did mention it. The peak thing I would say from the outside, because I don't know a lot about what you're doing, but I sent your message with the old bravo on it because, um, despite what your social media fan base is saying, I think it's awesome that you've got a diversified presence right. Um, I think I I think our tenure within sporting teams is diabolical and if you've got the capacity, the ability to have something on the outside, like I said, all going okay, all going okay.

Darren Burgess:
21:27

Going well. We're getting very much into end of time here, but it's a performance centre in Adelaide. Sean and Jamie the husband and wife that run it have done an amazing job. We're moving facilities into a massive recovery facility. We're going to have biomechanists, podiatrists, physios, nutrition, the whole bit as part of our whole allied suite of services. So looking forward to it.

Jason Weber:
21:57

Well, maybe we'll hear a bit more about that as we go along, mate, but great to catch up again. I'm glad you survived the weekend of Gather Round and maybe we'll look forward to catching up again next week. Thanks, mate.

-----END SEASON 2, EPISODE 9-----

-----BEGIN SEASON 2 EPISODE 8: CRAFTING A DYNAMIC TRAINING PHILOSOPHY FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE SPORT-----
Jason Weber:
0:00

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. I'm Jason Weber and I'm by myself today. Sorry to say that, due to Gather Round, which is a big gathering in Australia of all our AFL teams in South Australia, my co-host, Darren Burgess, is not with me today. So in place of that, I've put together a quick video blog about some of the ideas I use in professional sport, particularly in this case, building a training philosophy. So, in the absence of the ideas I use in professional sport, particularly in this case, building a training philosophy, so in the absence of the wonderful conversations that I have with Darren, I hope you enjoy this episode and I hope you take something out of it. Thanks, hi, my name is Jason Weber and welcome to the SpeedSig video blog.

Jason Weber:
0:51

In this blog today I'm talking about philosophies. Now, I used to call philosophies training philosophies, but really they're far more than that. They cover the entire profession, not only of strength and conditioning, rehab, athletic training, physiotherapy. It could amount to anything, any profession that you're involved in, but fundamentally, a philosophy is the skeleton upon which you build your career. It's the central ideas that dictate the way you conduct yourself professionally. Now we build those philosophies over many, many years and they start based on research. Those research comes in many different forms Academic, okay. Obviously. We're reading research in the strength and conditioning, physiotherapy, athletic training world. There is a plethora of research out there, in fact. Sometimes it's too hard to keep up with. But that's the starting point. We build the basis of our philosophy on that research.

Jason Weber:
1:48

The second key part about developing research for our philosophy is our industry. Our industry comes in a number of parts as well. Number one is your group of friends. Who are the professionals you hang out with? Who are the people you speak to? Who are the people that you test your ideas on? Say, hey, what about this? What about that? No, you're a fool, don't do that. Or, hey, that's a great idea. That's how you build confidence in the concepts that you're building and basing your practice on.

Jason Weber:
2:21

The next one, which is a really hard one from an industry-based research perspective, is social media. Now we know in social media there's no particular categorization or qualification. You need to put something out on social media. So your ability to filter information from a social media construct is absolutely critical and you've got to test it against something. What are you testing your social media observations or viewings against? Well, for me. I'm always testing them against my philosophy. It's a really simple model. Here's my philosophy I read or I see something and I match it against my philosophy. Does it fit? Read, or I see something and I match it against my philosophy. Does it fit, yes, no, if it doesn't fit and I'm opposed to that then it's gone. If it does fit, well, is it something I should include in my philosophy? Can I learn from this? That's how we develop our philosophies based on research.

Jason Weber:
3:24

Another one of the great developers of philosophies, of personal philosophies, is experience. Is how much do you learn from being on the job? Now, people always ask me where do I get started in sport? Where do I get started? How do I get into it? Well, when I started, I started coaching anybody, anybody and everybody that would listen to what I was saying, and you learn and you've got to learn fast.

Jason Weber:
3:48

Now, as you progress and you deal with higher and higher level athletes and more and more complicated situations, you start to learn more. And you've got to accept one thing You've got to make mistakes and you've got to learn from them fast. You hope we never want to do damage to people ever. Our primary responsibility is to get people healthy to their sport of choice. But the reality is there are going to be mistakes and you need to learn fast. And every time you make an error or even if you don't make an error but you see something and go, look, I'd never do that again Well, they're the things that develop your philosophy and they develop them fast, and you've got to be fast. If you keep making the same mistake twice, well you're not going to survive.

Jason Weber:
4:33

But experience is everything and that means if you can get experience by coaching a young person, you know coaching kids. You know coaching high school. I still, at the ripe old age of 55, I still coach high school, because it's an extraordinary environment in which athletes get to start from the very, very bottom and develop motor skill and physiological capabilities. Plus, in this day and age, when kids are doing all sorts of weird things, we've got a high injury count with athletes. So I'm quite often dealing with athletes that are young and have injuries based on overuse. So, making sure you expose yourself to as much experience as possible and as you go further and further up the experience tree, you can take those experiences and develop them, not only just, as I said before, into training philosophies, but you start to build them into management philosophies. So when we start to talk about things like how do I become a high-performance manager, how do I become a department lead? Well, as you're going up that chain, you're starting to try and get those experiences as you go along and you're going to get them from working with your senior.

Jason Weber:
5:41

You might work with someone and go, hey, I would never behave the way that person behaves. Or alternatively, you know, there's a great person, what can I learn from them? I can take three or four things and build them into my philosophy Because ultimately, we're all a function of the people we worked with. There's no question about that. There's a great author out of Texas. A guy named Austin Kleon wrote a book called Steel Like an Artist Sorry for the pause there, steel Like an Artist and in that book he talks about how everybody, every artist, is a function of everybody they've seen and studied. And it's the same in performance, sport. Everything we are is a function of the people we've worked with and learned from. Sport, everything we are is a function of the people we've worked with and learned from. So you've just got to make sure you work with good people and build those education and experience moments into your philosophy. Okay, so it's time to start developing your own philosophy. How do we do it? Well, here's my top six points for developing your own philosophy and getting it set and making sure that you can develop over time, because philosophies are not about a one-stop shop. They're going to keep evolving over time. So let's get into it.

Jason Weber:
6:58

Tip number one get off the fence. Okay, with respect to any subject matter that comes up, you don't want to get stuck on the fence. Oh, I do a bit of that and a bit of that. All right, you want to say, yes, I'm that way. Now, getting off the fence will lead to some other points we'll talk about in a moment, but what it means is you're making a decision Am I for or against that practice? Same thing we talked about with social media. If I watch something on social media and you're going to look at it and you go, yes, I like that exercise, that's getting off the fence. Yes, I would do that. Yes, I would ask an athlete to do that. Now, down the track, you may reevaluate that position. But if you get to a position where you're like, oh, I'm for single leg or I'm against single leg. I do them both. I do a bit of each. Okay, you have to get off the fence. Now you can qualify those sort of statements to saying I would use single leg activities in these cases, bang, bang, bang. I would use double leg. I would use a squat in these cases, I would modify a squat for these things. Now, that's getting off the fence because you're making a decision about the components we're talking about and qualifying exactly where and when you might use it.

Jason Weber:
8:20

Now these things get more and more complicated over time. But what you've got to do is be brave. You've got to be brave and take a stand. You've got to say yes, I am for or I'm against that thing, or I would do that, but I'd only do it under these conditions. Understanding that you've got to commit to a decision makes you put yourself in a position where we develop that philosophical structure, skeleton, backbone of what we're going to be. If you're constantly hedging your bets, what you're going to end up with is you'll work in programs that you do a bit of this and a bit of that and you're just covering off. You're not really committing to trying to understand what makes change in an athlete and how we can help them.

Jason Weber:
9:05

Now, the other great complexity of this is the human condition, that one particular philosophy may suit different people. And again, as you get older and older and more experienced, you can start to build those out. So you can say, yes, I would use a single leg squat in this condition for this and this and this, and they may be different reasons. They may be vastly different. For some people, putting a heavy bar on their back and squatting psychologically doesn't suit them, but psychologically they can handle single leg. That's not even a strength-based observation, but that may be a philosophical intent that you have within your structure. So get off the fence, make a decision and accept the ramifications and we'll talk about how we modify that as we go along.

Jason Weber:
9:56

Okay, tip number two for creating a. Okay, tip number two for creating a philosophy, a professional philosophy for your career. Number two is commit to paper. So that means not unlike getting off the fence, you've got to make a decision, you've got to put it to paper. Now the first thing I'd say about that is you don't need to share it with anybody. Writing down your philosophical perspectives are for your benefit, all right. They're for you to develop your philosophy. They're not about sharing it with anybody. Writing down your philosophical perspectives are for your benefit, all right. They're for you to develop your philosophy. They're not about sharing it with anybody All right. Now, committing it to paper is like getting off the fence, but it's making a rigid decision. Now. These things work together.

Jason Weber:
10:34

If you can commit to paper and start to develop your ideas, then over time they become solid. If you just make them ethereal and they're just these ideas that you have in your head, they're not rock solid and as we go down the track later and we talk about the Terminator, which is towards the end of this, you need to have that locked in right, because this again is this idea about committing to a path. Right, I've committed to a path, I'm going that way. Writing it down makes it real, right. So it's like sometimes people talk about having dreams and aspirations. Write it down, commit. This is what I want to be. It's not this ethereal idea that's just changing up here.

Jason Weber:
11:12

Sometimes, when we're working in highly complex environments with a lot of information we talked about the academic research background before. There's so much of it, not to mention social media. There's so much stuff, right, you need to sometimes say, hey, I can't deal with all of it. We're focusing on this. This is the way I'm going Now committed to paper. It's a critical step in getting your philosophy right Now. This links very closely to step number three, or point number three.

Jason Weber:
11:44

You are going to be wrong, right, get comfortable with it right. Even in my experience, 30 years plus in the game, I am still wrong. Right, I'm a lot less wrong than I used to be when I started, and you'll find that as you go along. But everyone's still learning. So being wrong is about not saying that you're going to make deliberate decisions the wrong way, but you've got to start moving. You've got to accept that. Yes, that was wrong and we correct it, and that's why we get off the fence.

Jason Weber:
12:18

If you never get off the fence, then you can kind of never be wrong. And the same with the commit to paper. If you just leave this idea floating around your head and this is what I believe about running mechanics, this is how I see it implementing in performance and injury prevention If you never commit to the path, then it's just this idea that floats around. You'll flip from one idea to the path. Then it's just this idea that floats around. You'll flip from one idea to the other, one concept to another. You need to get locked in Again.

Jason Weber:
12:45

Like I said earlier, with the get off the fence, you can always qualify specific things. So I would use an A drill in this circumstance, but I'll use a B in another drill. Why is there some cases with a B drill? I would never use it. Well, there are some athletes that I wouldn't use it for. There are some that just aren't suited to it. That's fine, but you build those ideas through.

Jason Weber:
13:08

If you're always leaving your ideas up in the air, all right, you'll always be indecisive, right. So you've got to be strong and commit and accept that you're going to be wrong. But being wrong is about finding the best way forward. There's a big thing we talk about in the entrepreneur world Minimum vol, product iterate, iterate, iterate, which means get your first idea up, make it functional and then make it better all the time, all the time. That's what a philosophy is.

Jason Weber:
13:42

Philosophy is going to be where we start out with a single point and then we're going to get better and better and better. But we're going to accept that we might need to be wrong on occasion and you might find that you trail off on one path based on your research, be it in experience and research. But then you become, you get mentored by an experienced person. You might say, hey, this person's really taking me the direction I want to go. I can see the results are effective, I can see the logic behind what they're doing and I'm going to adapt a lot of that. You may end up turning some corners and that happens. That happens.

Jason Weber:
14:15

We can't all know everything, but building a philosophy is about acquiring knowledge over time and putting it into a structure, like we said earlier, a skeleton on which you can build everything else. If you've got that skeletal structure in your framework of your professional activities, you can build on that. But if you don't have it, you can't intend up like you'd imagine, a body with no skill and it's going to blob out in all different directions. That's kind of the way your practice becomes. It's all over the place. So accept you're going to be wrong and get on with it. Minimum, viable product, iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate. We just keep getting better and better.

Jason Weber:
14:58

Step four Step four tightly ties in to step number three be humble. Part of being humble is being able to accept number one, that I made a wrong decision. I've got to move on. But being humble is also about being able to continuously learn. If we get to the point of arrogance, arrogance is one of the first things that stops learning. Now I often talk with my staff when I am in my professional career, I always talked about a zealot phase. Lots of people, including myself, go through a zealot phase. In a zealot phase, you know everything, you've got the answers to everything. A zealot phase. In a zealot phase, you know everything, you've got the answers to everything. But unfortunately, until you get a little bit older, you realize the one thing I know is that I know nothing. Classic Socrates, all right. So be humble. Be humble all the time. I think if you can do that from point three about understand, you're going to be wrong. Okay, I went that path, but now I can pull it back. But it's about being humble.

Jason Weber:
16:01

I can't speak for other careers, but the career of sports science, strength and conditioning that I've been involved in over 30 years. It's constantly evolving and I'm going to learn from different people. I've learned from great strength coaches. I've learned from great running coaches. I've learned from great physiotherapists and I'll tell you what I've even learned from great interns. I was in a conversation a little while ago where I was talking about my philosophy of just how I group exercises and this young coach said to me hey, what about this? And I just stood there and went man, that's brilliant, that's just something I'd not considered before. But I weighed it up against my philosophy and it fit and I started to work through it. So being humble is about being to learn, being able to learn from multiple sources. Okay, step number five in our top tips for building philosophies Be scientific in your approach.

Jason Weber:
18:03

All right. So by that I mean work through a system. Now I talked before about the entrepreneurial mindset minimum viable product iterate, iterate, iterate. The scientific approach is a little bit more structured. We want to postulate an idea, we want to test that idea, we want to iterate and we want to repeat. So being scientific is about saying, yeah, okay, here's this idea, I've got this idea. How do I test it? Well, I'm going to test it through the experience, through getting out into the field and doing it. Now this becomes challenging and sometimes there are risks involved.

Jason Weber:
18:38

So, particularly when you start going through the rehabilitation let's say the classic hamstring, right, you want to read the research and you're going to understand that. But then you're going to speak to other people. You're going to speak to people in track and field who said I've done this, this and this, we can get them moving faster, right, you're going to have to start weighing that up and at some point you might need to push things here and there and I've done that over time. I've done that over time many times. And collectively, in groups. I would never say we go off on a tangent by yourself and make decisions, but when you're working in a collective group you might say, hey, we've got a time scale of this, we've got to move, and in that breath there are errors and you would never go back and do that again. And I can look back now and say there are things I would never do now that I did 15, 20 years ago. And I've got to say, with respect to my development of SpeedSig, Speedsig has taught me so much about what athletes are, so many things that we assume we know, but we don't. I mean that's the entrepreneur journey. Right, we need to minimum viable product, collect some data, understand, test, move on. It's exactly the same in the scientific approach.

Jason Weber:
19:49

I postulated that I felt within the construct of what I did as a professional in high-performance sport, particularly in the AFL 10, 15 years ago, that there was a big gap in what we're doing. We're measuring physiology, we're measuring heart rates, we're doing a great amount of stuff off the field. We're jumping isometrics, all those wonderful things. When we get them on the field, it's just displacement how fast from point A to point B, how much distance, how many reps? And my postulate, my idea, was well, maybe, maybe the way we're failing and maybe the way we're not getting results in all fields performance, injury prevention, rehabilitation is that we don't understand how the athlete's doing things. So I postulated the idea, I tested, I collected information. Now, I did it at a super high nerd level. Right, we go out and collect 100 hertz sensor data. But I tested the idea. I didn't get it right straight away. We iterated, we kept iterating, iterating and we go back and start the process again. Now, that's my tech story, but there are plenty of stories.

Jason Weber:
21:00

Simple, simple, simple things. How do I get bench press better? What's the optimum hand position? Well, you're going to have to have an idea about that. Where do we start? We've got to start. When I coach bench press, I start in a single position, but then we start to modify it based on arm length of the individual and where they get most comfortable.

Jason Weber:
21:23

So you're going to have a philosophy and this philosophy brings itself into every aspect of what you do. I have a philosophy about how I treat my staff. I have a philosophy about how I lead. I have a philosophy about how I spend my day. . I have a philosophy about how I spend my day. I have a philosophy about hamstring rehabilitation, calf rehabilitation, all of those things.

Jason Weber:
21:44

But if I go through the steps you know, we get off the fence, we commit it to paper, we understand we're going to be wrong, we're going to be humble, and that's going to allow us to apply that scientific method. Be postulate an idea, test it, iterate, repeat. I still apply that scientific method. B postulate an idea, test it, iterate, repeat. Step six and this is probably one of my favorites be the Terminator. If everyone doesn't know who the Terminator is you're too young for that you need to go and search that up. You can YouTube it, you can Google it, no trouble. But Arnold Schwarzenegger was the original Terminator.

Jason Weber:
22:20

In the original Terminator movie there's a scene where Arnie walks in to the bar. He's just been transported through time, he's naked and he walks into a biker bar and they give you a point of view of Arnie. He's looking through the bar and you can see the red screen and all the data coming up beside it, and I've always thought that's how we need to operate. You need to be systematic In order to make our profession the strongest it can be. We're going to work off this philosophical approach and we're going to be systematic, so we're always going to hit that mark.

Jason Weber:
22:54

If we need to change it, we can change it, but I feel like I want to be the terminator. So when I look at a situation, when I look at an athlete running, I'm going to run through a checklist against my coach's eye. Are these the things I would accept or not accept? Should I change it quickly? Is there a danger to the athlete? I'd stop it immediately. Is the athlete just learning? They're exploring, so maybe I don't say anything too quickly, but that's all being measured against my philosophical approach.

Jason Weber:
23:25

But I want to try and be the terminator, same as when you're interacting with staff. Right, you want to understand what's the list of things that I need to deal with. I've got to treat the person first, I can't treat the problem right. So we've got to engage as a person. Then we step down and you've got to be genuine, you've got to be real, you've got to be authentic. You can't be this cold thing. I talk about Terminator being a robot, but you can't be that. But the Terminator approach allows you to build your philosophy into an actionable item every day. So every day when you're practicing, when you're doing your task, when you're out training, you're always ticking off. Would I accept this?

Jason Weber:
24:05

Now, running mechanics again is a really interesting one. We have constructs that are built around fundamentally sprint mechanics, right Sprinters, elite runners and, yes, a lot of those things are correct. But there are athletes that have more heel strike than they do forefoot strike and that's the way they run and they aren't going to change. And particularly when you see them in field sports, they're not elite runners. That's the reason they never did track and field. They had a penchant for other aspects of sport, more skill related, but their speed is the way they do it. Now you've got to start to decide for yourself. Do I accept that and do I work with it, or do I move a different direction? Do I try and change the way they're doing it. Again, philosophical, bent, philosophical direction. But as far as being the Terminator goes, you've got that list running in your head. Okay.

Jason Weber:
25:03

So that's my take on building a professional philosophy. Clearly, it can be applied to anything, but from where I come from, which is strength and conditioning, sports science, athletic performance, injury prevention and rehabilitation, that space, that's how I do it and that's how I've always instructed my staff to do it. Over time, I think you can figure out your own methodology within that. There's no problem, of course. But I think you've got to start. I think, as a young practitioner, even as an older practitioner, if you kind of find yourself getting caught between subject, particularly when things get complicated, when things get real complex, when there's high level injuries and you've got timescale to get an athlete back, you're going to find do I go this way, do I go that way? You need to get off the fence and you need to make a decision. You need to make an action because you need to get results and I can guarantee you over time that the more you do, that that philosophy will build.

Jason Weber:
26:01

As I said earlier, be humble, understand that we're going to learn through the course of our career and we're going to learn from lots and lots of different people. And don't be afraid, you don't have to learn. Everything doesn't have to come from the guy who coached the Olympics. Like I said earlier, I learned off a kid who's second year university but just made a great observation. I missed something that was hiding in plain sight. Simple as that. Be humble, but I hope you've enjoyed this. I try to offer as much as I can in this space. We're going to continue to do this, so please check in with my website, speedsig. com, our YouTube channel, all of our social media, all the rest of it. But I hope you enjoyed and you can take something out of this. Thanks,

-----END SEASON 2 EPISODE 8: CRAFTING A DYNAMIC TRAINING PHILOSOPHY FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE SPORT-----

Season 3, Episode 12

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