Jason Weber (00:01)
G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Darren Burgess and Jason Webber in the same, well, not the same room, but the same studio. How you going,
Darren (00:11)
Good, Jason, I noticed you went on without me last week to speak about humility. That was less than humble of you to go on without me, anyway.
Jason Weber (00:17)
Yes. Well, come on, I've got to, I've
got to, I've got to keep moving. I wonder. ā Yeah, just between the two of us, we got so busy. It's not as easy as it was a little while ago, but ā yeah, I've made the humility piece. Wasn't made doing it by myself, but to be honest, it's my venting. Like these are the things that are happening day to day in my life and I hear them and I see them and I thought, well, you know what?
Darren (00:40)
Yeah.
Jason Weber (00:47)
Maybe we should call them out. I'm not made people who go to me in absolutes. Hey, this is what it is that you're, know, it's 100 % this way and nothing else. It's like, I'm not so sure that it is, you know, standard.
Darren (00:49)
Yeah, nice.
All good. I've actually
got two topics for us in the next two weeks. I haven't had a chance to read up on them, but two people have sent me messages saying you guys need to speak about this in your podcast. So we'll get on to that. But you go first today.
Jason Weber (01:15)
Right.
But in the meantime,
well, well, we've got let's let's quickly do the AFL thing. So the AFL check is everyone's we're going to the buyers, but we've had a couple of big teams. Cop some pastings, get in a bit of trouble and then have the old school. I hear the old school bashing the next day. There any inside gossip on that and not so much gossip, but the rationale as to why that may or may not be appropriate.
Darren (01:39)
Aw.
We are.
did read so we the crows. My team played this ones on Saturday night and we beat them. ā The crows won by 90 points, which was no nobody anticipated. Yeah, it's like a 8-0 thrashing in soccer, I guess. But and then it came out the next day that the players went down to one of the many fine beaches in Sydney. But at 5am in the morning to do a bit of a ā
Jason Weber (01:55)
substantial.
Darren (02:14)
you know, session and I reckon I've been part of those sorts of things, not for a while now, but maybe a dozen times in the past where the teams got beaten either comprehensively or, know, physically, you know, in one stat in the tackle status, something that didn't tackle hard enough. So everybody went down there and mind you, when you say everybody, it's a Berger, we're taking them down.
at 5am so what I want you to do is come up with something for them to do at 5am. let's. So let's not pretend that it's you know it's a conditioning session. It's just you know the conditioning coach needs to come up with it. So I just wonder whether it. Yeah, it certainly might have an immediate response or a sugar hit. Let's find out if it has a more a more long term effect. Hopefully it does for the swan sake.
Jason Weber (02:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want you to, I want you to torture them.
Darren (03:09)
But I'm more talking about the impact that it has on, impact that those losses have on the staff. And this is not Sydney specific. Like I know we lost the grand final in 2007 with Port Adelaide by 136 points. So that's not an 8-0 loss. That's a 12-0 loss in the grand final.
Jason Weber (03:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Darren (03:37)
I left to go to the Socceroos but still maintained a pretty close relationship with those at the club and it took them a couple of years to get over that. So staff and players. I just wonder about the pressure that those sort of losses, like when you've had one of those losses, I was assuming that you have, how's that been on you and staff sort of the next day and the week because it's clearly not a physical thing.
Jason Weber (03:59)
Yeah, yeah, man.
Yeah, well, there's not sometimes sometimes I think it may be is I mean, I remember again, we were talking in the the noughties, but 2002 2003 in the winter, we lost to the All Blacks by 50 points. It's in rugby is pretty much, you know, it's an eight nil dropping in football. And we had the World Cup coming up in October, November of that same year. So July through to October, November.
And we just weren't there at all, whether it wasn't physical, was physically, mentally, the whole thing. Now we didn't go out the next day and do anything, but we took very specific steps. And that was still, I would argue under at that time, under Eddie Jones leadership, one of the best groups I've ever worked with in terms of staff and planning to resolve a clear issue. ā but the one that doesn't get me is when something goes wrong.
Darren (04:36)
you
Jason Weber (05:00)
And we decide that a drug is going to change everything. I don't I don't think that ever works. A drug like we're just going to like you said, just go out and pound them like this is a punishment session of a sort. need to go on. Tell them up. Doesn't doesn't seem to work. One of the ones I liked, I really liked in terms of just switching on the great.
Darren (05:07)
What do you mean a dropping is going to change everything?
Mm.
Jason Weber (05:28)
Ross Lyons has a thing he calls the blast. And he just has this little skill drill that he does. It's a building thing, but it's quite physical. It's quite a demanding aerobic activity. It ramps over about 10 minutes, but by the end of it, guys are going pretty solidly. But he used to do that as a, as a switch on mechanism. And he might also use it if we hadn't played well, right? We're going to start with this. Let's get switched on. But I never found it to be a massive physical.
cost, even though mentally and the immediacy of it straight after warm up, it got people tuned in. But I don't know about the cost of like I just said, a physical beasting just to say, hey, you guys didn't do good enough. Let's let's get back on. I'm not suggesting that's what the swans thing was. I have no idea. But you get the feeling that there was that.
Darren (06:20)
No.
Jason Weber (06:23)
Now can I ask you question, mate? Was it the players called it or the staff called it? Is there any indication of that?
Darren (06:27)
Yeah, that's the thing.
No one knows. It was just like it was just documented yesterday in the media because the media report on everything as you know.
Jason Weber (06:35)
So there's a, there's another story
out of rugby, mate, I won't name the player, but there was a famous all black who, if he didn't play to the standard that he thought was appropriate, he would be seen the next day running on any hill that he could find, blasting himself away. Like, so he's, he's played arguably 90 minutes of rugby at the highest level with one of the greatest rugby teams of all time.
And if he thought he didn't do a good enough job, he would go and beat himself the next day. And to that end, the staff who I knew over time would try to speak, talk him out of it because it's like, dude, you've just played 90 minutes of extraordinary level. Okay. You don't think it was good enough, but then the the cost benefit of you going out and ripping in yourself the next day is another whole thing.
Darren (07:32)
There's stories everywhere I reckon of Jared Healy, James Heard, these guys Jared Healy used to call it in the famous FL play now, Common Taylor used to call it making a deal with the devil and we'll do 5k every single day. That was his, he'd wake up to 5k whether he had a night on the drink or whatever, 6am every day, rain, hail or shine, 5k. So 5k is not going to damage you that much. It's probably more mental and physical.
Jason Weber (07:46)
Yeah
Darren (08:01)
And I would argue that we've probably gone away from building that resilience. So I don't necessarily have a problem with it. I guess it was more. ā
But it brought back my experiences of the many times I've been involved with teams who got flogged. And you've just got to resist the temptation to pull through the data that week and say, do we train too much? Do we train too little? we? Because I'd wager that ā the cause of that loss was not physical. If you lined ā the Adelaide Crows and the Sydney Swans up and did a beep test or a 2K time trial,
I guarantee you there'd be no difference in the two teams. But it's clearly something has gone on mentally over a period of time, who knows, with one team and not the other. it just, I'm reading about that torture session that just brought back many memories where I've had to do the same. the pressure on the staff for a team that's performing below expectations is immense.
Jason Weber (08:46)
Mmm. yeah.
Hey.
It's interesting how you make a good point about, you you talk about the, the five pay every day to deal with the devil. ā I will flip the conversation a little bit and say that sometimes, ā we see, I see around the place, this focus entirely on intensity and we miss that volume of training. ā I've, I've had, I had one athlete who did a summer program, but he did the running that we
Darren (09:23)
Thank
Jason Weber (09:38)
guy, but he would run to the ground, do the running and then run home and we count probably equate to three or four pay extra every session. And he came back and like was markedly better than the rest of the group. it wasn't the program that did it or was it him doing this little bit of aerobic volume additionally, who knows? But technically I would, I would really challenge people to look at.
Darren (09:54)
Okay.
Jason Weber (10:03)
Whereabouts is that general prep volume? I'm doing some stuff at the moment with a couple of different Olympic level athletes. And the same thing, I've looked at programs and gone, hey, we've got all this intensification, but where do we bring the volume? Like where do we accumulate slightly lower intensity, but bigger volumes whereby we can get cellular adaptation on which we layer then neural adaptation? Anyway, it's mostly from a strength perspective, but it is a good one for folks to have a look at.
Darren (10:34)
I see I'm talking about the more mental side, you go straight into physiology, don't ever change. yeah, I think. No, no, give it time, we still got time left. I think. ā
Jason Weber (10:34)
and re- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Come on, mate. Come on, mate. It's not even running mechanics. I didn't even go there.
The mental things,
the mental things, again, I agree, she's all part of it. But I had a guy here the other day, a big rower, lift, he did five sets, five sets of 10, 110 kilos squat, and the last one he punched 16 reps. And he was cooked at the end of it. I'm telling you, that was mental. That guy pushed through enormously. I spotted him and I had to pick him up on the last rep. So yeah, there is a mental piece to it, but there is also that
Darren (11:16)
ā no death.
Jason Weber (11:18)
technical side like What's his name? Kobe Bryant the basketball am I right there?
Darren (11:25)
I should hope so, Jason. You're not that old to forgetting the name of Kobe Bryant. But anyway, go on.
Jason Weber (11:27)
I would hope so. Yeah. No, I'm not. I'm not too.
I'm not too old. It's whether I got the name correct. But he talks about that going training at three o'clock in the morning. He'd go and shoot. Now, did he go or did he not? I don't know. He's training a legend. But if he did, what's he doing? He's working in more shots, more volume. I'm sure he's not sprinting around the place. But is he doing another hundred shots? He probably is, which maybe at some level pushes him.
Darren (11:52)
If you look
at, there's a part in the brain and I'm going to get it wrong. So I'm not even going to go into it, but if you listen to neuroscience podcasts and things like that, which I do from time to time, there is a part of the brain that gets bigger when you do hard shit and stuff that you don't want to do. And so I'll put that in that category.
Jason Weber (12:12)
yeah.
Darren (12:22)
Somebody asked me today about the media guy, Cain Cornes. Cain Cornes is everywhere in Australian media and the AFL at the moment. And some people like him, some people don't like him. worked with him for, he was a ā player for probably five years. And what I can say about him is there was no one, there are very few athletes more dedicated than him. So when people say, he never ran the media, know, surely he must get burnt out. No, no, that's just how he's built. That's how he's made.
Jason Weber (12:28)
Yeah.
for a long time.
Darren (12:52)
he would do hard stuff all the time if he thought it would get an edge over his opponent. So whether that's 5K or you know, early morning beat session or riding or running to training when the easy option is to not do that. I think it builds something within you and it just builds that resilience so that when push does come to shove in, you know, in the...
Jason Weber (13:07)
Yeah
No question.
Darren (13:18)
April and May games in the Premier League or in the July game, we're to go to Tassie next week when it's two degrees and no one wants to go there. Like there are things that you can draw on, not consciously, but subconsciously.
Jason Weber (13:30)
Well, mate, like I
agree, but you look at anything in military that requires a selection process. Now, the beasting is one thing, but I had a couple of guys. We live very close to the SAS barracks here in Western Australia. So we've got we have trained with those guys quite regularly. Anyway, we're talking the other day with a couple of their sergeants who were running their selection course.
And we're talking about the fact that the first 10 or 15 days, whatever 10, 12 days is just physical beastings, not to for the sake of beating people up, but get to the point where it's that hard. Now we're going to teach you something and we're going to see how quickly you can learn it and then how quickly you can recall it. But the same story is absolutely true of everyone when they get to the end. No matter what other areas of combat they've been in.
Darren (14:15)
you
Jason Weber (14:25)
99 % of them that I've met all go, you know what? The hardest thing we ever did was selection. Cause we got through that thing. We can get through everything else. So you're absolutely right. If you can set yourself up mentally by saying what are, what do they say? I'm leading peacetime. So you don't bleed in war. If you, if you train that hard, that right when I get to the game, it's just easy because we've all done this a thousand times or done more.
Darren (14:31)
Thank
I hope she had a good.
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Weber (14:54)
I think there's a massive part to that. If we get a bit of protective on, bit tricky sometimes on load and athlete monitoring. just had a fascinating conversation over coffee, not 15 minutes ago with a physiologist and going, you know, lot of the monitoring stuff's just rubbish because we've got to read the athlete. I couldn't agree more. Like reading how your athlete is, if you ask them,
What are they going to tell you? Well, I'm a seven every day or a five or whatever. But when you watch them move and you go, hang on, this is not right. He was telling me the story of a rower who ā was absolute A type person, like go, go, go, go. Anyway, he's in a car accident and he comes to, in an Uber, like, you know, big, big car accident, not injured, but clearly taken. Gets in an Uber, comes to training, jumps on the ERG and starts training. But if it's going to like,
The guy's watching and saying, Hey, hang on, what's going on here? You don't look right. But he wasn't going to tell anybody, but he was just hard. I'm gone. You know, I'm hard at it. And I'm not suggesting you get in a car accident or train yourself. But I think that mental edge of I'm going to push through everything. That's that can be developed money. It's developed through practice, is it not?
Darren (16:09)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 100%. And
it can help you. Now, given that this is gonna be short and sharp and I've got about six and a half minutes left, you met up with the Sockaroos while they're in Perth. They're playing.
Jason Weber (16:23)
We had the
Socceroos visitors at Waste yesterday, which was good to see me. We met Lee Eager. I hope I pronounced that right. I don't feel that I have, but Lee's the new conditioning coach there. ā yeah, good things. Lovely guy. We had a quick chat for a little while. ā But more is the point, probably with the Socceroos, my limited experience around football. It was really nice to see them come in and
Darren (16:36)
I've not met him, but I've heard really good things.
Jason Weber (16:51)
do a couple of hard things, right? They're in the middle of the prep, a guy that just got off flight. So they didn't come in and have a massive session, but clearly there are a few guys that were in a window to train and they put some weight on the bars and they had, it was really nice to see. mean, I, to be honest, I thought they looked fit. I thought they looked well prepared and it's just good to see from that side, the world football athletes.
given it a good lash. ā again, it's always you can always pick the goalkeepers. They train like mad men. ā But it was good to see that they look fresh and they've got a big game against Japan this weekend for World Cup qualification. But yeah, we wish them and the boys all the very best.
Darren (17:35)
Yeah, well, I guess
one of the things about soccer rules, GAMS having been in a few, obviously in my time with them, you're always picking fit players, so you never pick an injured player. So you sort of do no harm, but it's good to see that they're actually lifting rather than just in, you know, 100 % protection mode. We would argue that, of course, being in protection mode is lifting.
Jason Weber (17:53)
no, no, no.
They looked like that. came in with a real intent, to be honest. thought they warmed up. They warmed up in the classic soccer style of everybody in lines and doing their little things. But I thought there was a really good intent to the session. The coaching staff were all here. Coach Popovich was right over the top of them all. But yeah, I think when it comes to that, if I just reflect what you said about the let's do hardship.
Darren (18:00)
Good.
He's a good man, he wouldn't be missing anything.
Jason Weber (18:25)
These guys have mostly come in from all over the world. They've all had shit flights to get back to Perth. Perth's a long way from anywhere. One guy had just gone Washington, Denver, Sydney, Perth. Having done that flight exactly in December, it's a hell of a flight. But I came back and slept for a day and went surfing or whatever. This guy's straight off the bird. He was probably the guy squatting. That's just hard shit. And I would say I'm very...
I was very respectful of what I saw because they're professionals, mate. They turned up. I know they were off shit flights and stuff. And even a lot of the team that had already been in camp had gone Abu Dhabi, Perth, train, and then they're straight back to Saudi to play another game. So ā I think when teams complain about a little bit of travel across Australia or something like that, probably shut up because
Darren (19:03)
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Jason Weber (19:22)
These guys are flying 30 hours and God knows how many time zones ā and they all fronted for mine. So yeah, good again.
Darren (19:31)
Yeah, well,
I tell a story often, of my first ever Socceroos games. This was in non-FIFA windows. Tim Kaleo played for Everton. Sunday, lunchtime, jumped on a flight, arrived Tuesday lunchtime, played Wednesday night, scored, jumped on a flight, late Wednesday night after the game, arrives in...
Manchester, Friday lunchtime plays in a Merseyside derby for Everton against Liverpool, Saturday midday scored. ā So if it's important enough and if you're mentally resilient enough, you'll get it done.
Jason Weber (20:09)
Yep,
that's it. And maybe that's some of what we've talked about today, mate, is deciding where some things are mental resilience and just get...
Darren (20:18)
Yeah. And for those
soccer is that's normal for them. When we played when ā Lord Adelaide played in China, everybody lost their mind saying, they're going to fly on Wednesday, play on Saturday. And I'm talking to the players going, this is this is called every second week for, you know, international soccer and basketball for that matter.
Jason Weber (20:21)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. But that's it. Maybe looking outside of what we do. I'll be honest and say having spent the last couple of months in some Olympic sports, I'm like, man, this is genuinely hard. is not compared to what the support you get in a big AFL club and all that. This is really doing it tough. Some of these guys. So interesting to look outside the fishbowl.
Darren (20:52)
Mm-mm.
Absolutely, Gotta head off. Bad wicked.
Jason Weber (21:06)
Thanks buddy,
appreciate your time and ā we will catch up again probably next month.
Say my tell-all.
