Jason Weber (00:14)
G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Not only am I not with Darren, but as you can see in the background, I'm in Budapest Hungary. So it's a little bit Two Coaches and a Coffee on the road. I'm here with my beautiful daughter, who I came to visit. And we're going to get on with this episode real soon. But we're in the sunny part of Budapest and looking forward to our first European episode.
Jason Weber (00:37)
So another episode without Darren. Time has been challenging for the two of us to get together. But as I said in the interview, I'm traveling around Europe at the moment with my family. First holiday I've had in some time, but I'm still here to get this podcast done because I believe in it. So one of the things that's really hit me over the last couple of weeks is long trips. And on long trips, I always find I get a lot of time to think. And during these times,
It's when I make connections with lots and lots of things. I've been very fortunate enough on several long flights in recent years and waiting for a long time in airport terminals to be able to make some connections. Now, some of those have been in solving problems, but also connections with people. And that's what I found the most intriguing about this trip is straight away my mind's gone to connections. So with that in mind, I'd like to introduce you
to today's standing coach, is Mr. Rick Rubin. Now, for anyone who doesn't know who Rick Rubin is, he's one of the greatest producers probably the last 20 to 30 years. He was instrumental in developing the hip hop scene in New York. Not that that's my music genre of choice, but he has worked with a whole plethora of people, not the least of which, Audioslave, Red Hot Chili Peppers and the like. So they are musical.
genres that I enjoy and he is quite the genius. Now, Rick's widely been known to comment on the method of being an artist. And while he has nothing whatsoever to do with strength and conditioning, human performance, sport, anything of that nature, what he does do is describe the authenticity of being an artist. And I think it's something that really resonates with me when it comes to
what I'm trying to do as a professional. So with that in mind, I'd like you just to change your thinking for a moment. Don't think about the stats, the reps, the biomechanics, whatever. Think about making connections and how being an artist is really important of our profession.
Jason Weber (02:31)
Do you ever face the inner critic of, what if other people don't like this? No, I don't consider them at all. Really? Yeah. Something I say in the book is that the audience comes last. And I believe that. I'm not making it for them. I'm making it for me. And it turns out that when you make something truly for yourself, you're doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience.
Jason Weber (02:54)
So in this little section, Rick talks about doing it for yourself. Don't do it for the audience. Now there's a couple of takes on this for me. The first one is the one that people always ask me about. Hey, is it worth doing a PhD? Is it worth doing a PhD? My personal response is absolutely. It was a fundamental and a fantastic experience for me. But there's a catch to that. And I think it's what Rick says.
Do it for yourself. My PhD was all about me. It was all about me answering a question that I didn't know. And it's a question that I'm still going, which is what SpeedSig is. That was my PhD. I was trying to answer questions that I had about my practice in high performance sport. There was a gap for me. I know we could do all of these measurements in the gym and all the rest of it, but I needed to know what was happening on the field. with respect to...
people choosing to do PhDs, if you've got a question, if you don't understand something, if you've got a burning desire to pursue the research to create an answer, I 100 % agree with it. If you're doing a PhD because you think it'll get you the next job, I think that's a misnomer. I think it's a mistake. I think you'll hate it. I have met people who have said to me straight up, I hated my PhD. It was terrible.
Again, I reiterate my experience was fantastic. Not only has it made me a far better coach now than I've ever was 10 years ago, 20, 30 years ago. I think I'm better because I've learned more and I've answered questions about things I didn't know about. And I know more detail now in some areas, particularly running mechanics. But the side benefit to that, if you like.
is that the skills that I learnt along the way, which were majority computer science and statistics, I was able to retrain in those skills and they have what, that's what's been able to help me move on. So we talk about people getting dropped from jobs. Now Darren and I spoke about that in our last episode. He had three friends in the UK that have all been binned big jobs for no reason really. It's just that, we want to make a change type deal. Now I lost a job.
in the AFL some five, six years ago now, and for no real reason, probably around COVID, probably a cost thing, but whatever. But the skills that I learned in a PhD got me through that because I was able to go and work. I ended up working in tactical for a long time, but not as a strength conditioning coach, pretty much as a research scientist because I had the ability to do those things. So in terms of just reiterating what Rick said,
Do it for yourself. It's not about the audience. It's not about anybody else. If you're studying for a reason, you do it for yourself. And by doing that, as he says, turns out those skills that you learn are really effective and applicable to other people.
Jason Weber (05:44)
So much of why
If you go to the movies, so many big movies just not good. It's because they're, they're not being made by a person who cares about it. They're being made by people who are trying to make something that they think someone else is going to like. And that's not how art works. Art doesn't, that's something else. It's not art. That's commerce.
Jason Weber (06:03)
Now in this clip, Rick goes on about my movie example, but what he's talking about is genuine care, genuine care factor for what you do. And that is the most important thing, I think, in all of this strength and conditioning, performance, you have to care. And I think that care has to resonate into the amount of work you put into it. It's not something where you can just like, we all run off and do degrees. Everybody's dumb.
done them and I think they are critical components of what we do as sports professionals. However, getting a degree only gives you the ticket to get in the door. It doesn't give you anything else. The real study begins after that. When you start working with people, you start having to look at the nuances of how we bring our science and back-end knowledge into our environment. Now, our profession is absolutely steeped in science, but
There is an enormous amount of art. being able to understand that art and understand there's the difference. So integrating science, integrating data analytics, which is such a heavy thing now, with people is the most important thing. And it takes an artist's hand. If you don't take the time to develop your art, and that's the art of connections, which is pretty much where I'm going with this whole podcast.
is how do we make these connections and how do we build them? You need to be open to learning how to make connections. It's a really hard thing to describe. Now, I'm trying to work on it with this podcast telling you how I do it, but it comes from watching, watching how other people react, watching how people integrate together, watching how when you present something, right, does it work? Does it resonate with people? A great coach I used to work with used to say, take the feedback.
People are telling you it's off or something you're doing is not great. Take the feedback. It's not awesome. I saw a short Instagram post on Taylor Sheridan just today. Taylor Sheridan is a guy who wrote Yellowstone and about five or six other pretty exciting, pretty great TV shows. But Taylor Sheridan was presenting to a university. He said that one of the most important things you can do is be rejected.
Take the rejection, take the rejection, but be true to yourself and keep pushing. And I think that's the same message that Rick pushes along. Now I try to understand how to build those connections, but when you see something not go right, adapt it. All one of the first things I think we need to look at, and I try to do, is if something's not working, let's start with, haven't done it right. Rather than point the fingers at other people and say, hey, I'm perfect.
is try and figure out, if I'm not delivering this right, it's probably not being received right. Now I look back at my later stages in the AFL, and I'm absolutely confident that I confused the brains out of coaches. Not that I'm sure there were that many in some cases, but, and that's not personal derogatory, but you start pushing deeper and deeper into a subject that I've studied for a long, time, and you start to create, we're making data connections, but I think,
the way I communicated it was ineffective because it was too detailed. So that's the thing. I think people should reflect really carefully on their own performance in terms of creating those connections. But as Rick said, the most important thing is you have to care about this thing in a big way.
Jason Weber (09:19)
What's the path to success? Which success seems to be the carrot at the end of the stick. It's like,
There's always this something, you these guys have all this money. These guys have all these cars and these big houses. How do I get that? How do I get success? How do I fill up an arena? How do I become successful? And so there's this temptation towards imitation. Yeah, it's a dangerous path. if that's your, if you're getting into this business for that outcome, if that's the reason you're doing it, chances are it's not going to work out. don't think that's not what makes it great.
is the personal. With all of its imperfections, with all of its quirkiness, that's what makes it great. How you see the world that's different from how everyone else sees the world, that's why you're an artist. That's your purpose in sharing your work.
Jason Weber (10:07)
So to pick up on Rick's last point, to share your work with the world. That's what we're doing on day-to-day basis. If anyone watches MasterChef Australia, there's other variants around the world, but the MasterChef idea is exactly the same. Here I am bringing up what I've created for you to review. That's what we do when we're writing programs and we're creating interventions for athletes. We're taking our work to the world and we're offering it.
Same as when we present our programs in front of review for medical staff, other people within your club. You're presenting your work. Now you should be proud of that. But in the same breath, it is really, really personal. And it needs to be. Because as Joe Rogan and Rick talked about in that section was the rush to success. How do I get that next thing? How do I get now in our industry, we're not filling out stadiums.
I'm not sure about the cars and all those sort of things. But nonetheless, I do see in our younger S &C population particularly a rush to the next job. How do I get up? Not worrying so much about where I'm at. And I think that's something for coaches to really think about. Think about where you are, what you're doing now, what's the task I have to do and being really good at it. Someone, a very, very wealthy, self-made businessman many years ago said to me, if you're really good at something,
Money can be arranged. Now, I'm not entirely sure that's always worked out for me, but I have always taken that on. And if you try to be good, you try to be really good, like find the holes, find the holes in what you're doing, fill them up, try and be as knowledgeable as you can. We're never gonna know everything. There's no way, there's no possible way, right? Which goes back to the connection thing, because you need connections from other people to fill out the gaps you don't know. But you can get stronger.
by studying within them and understand where your limitations are, but trying to be the very best you can be, all right, no matter if you can't fill that stadium. Now, I would also say that given Rick's comments about you having a unique view of the world, that for me falls back to you having a philosophy. And now I've rabid about this before and I'll probably keep rabbiting on about it. But when I meet young coaches,
And they have, you can see them, they've got bits and pieces of ideas. They've got some good stuff. They've got components that are here and there, but you can just see it doesn't come together. It doesn't come together because they don't have a central philosophy. They're outreaching for bits and pieces. I saw this program, I read this, I did that. Not being able to bring it together. You need to be able to bring it together because change for change's sake is no good. Just jumping from one program to another.
I had a senior member of our national institute, Narroch, other day drop me an email saying, hey, you know, we want to teach our young athletes how to program across the year because we just seem to be doing these little snippets. To which I think is a great idea. But it worries me that young coaches are losing that. Now, I've got some, I presented at a conference recently on how I use mathematical models to produce
be able project data into your tutor bumper style and your plan. I don't like just having plans that have no, what I call, temporal components. So there's got to be a, there's a race. We only have a certain amount of time. You you go to the EPL, Darren's talked about it all the time. You have four to six weeks to get them ready to play. That's it. AFL, have longer teams that are out of the season early into pre-season. There's sometimes 15 weeks. What's happening across those 15 weeks? What changes are we?
required to see. We can't just bumble along, right? So that feeds a whole body of information about getting our philosophy right, right? But then understanding where those changes are required. Now,
your work should resonate your history. So like, to use the music analogy of Rick Rubin, if you listen to a song today, your favourite song of the last three or four years, you can go and find that artist and who they worked or who they listened to, who they worked with previously, and you'll hear those sounds coming down through it. I think that's exactly the same, particularly in the S &C industry. You should see in someone's programmes the relationship to where they've come from.
to be able to see and understand it. And I think that's critically important. In fact, to the extent that when I do job interviews now, when I interview, I would go looking for those relationships, because they're not in a resume anyway. They're not. And you're not going to be ringing up people saying, how did Joe Smith work? They're going to say you're great, blah, blah, blah. What I want to know is when we walk into the gym or the training facility, training environment,
We want to have a discussion about how you program things. How do you bring them together? So if you ever get interviewed by me, don't worry about wearing a suit. We're going inside not to lift, but we're going to talk about how things work together because understanding how your philosophy can integrate different pieces of information and take it along and build out your philosophy such that, like Rick said, right, you can
you can change the world. you're not going to change, we're not going to, unfortunately, we're not good enough to go and cure cancer or anything like that. But for an athlete, for an injured athlete, for the kid who's trying to make it from whatever level to the high level, you are going to change their world. All right, make no mistake about it. Make no mistake. How we interact with our athletes changes their world. And we are put in a position of trust in order to do that.
So I mean, I think you need to be concise. You need to be clear. You need to be unique in the way you think, but that needs to be conveyed to athletes, but it also needs to be developed over time. So don't rush to success. I think at any time when you're training anyone, people say, where should I start? Train anybody who will give you the trust to allow them to. Develop your skills. And as much as you're conditioning with someone who might be a...
Personal training, a generally overweight person when you're training a high end elite athlete. In my case recently, I've moved into some Paralympic sports. Just phenomenal how you can build your body of information or your body of knowledge around working with new people. So don't rush to success, focus on developing your skills in the moment.
Jason Weber (16:21)
And that seems to be the case with everything. With literature, it's definitely the case with stand-up comedy. Everything. We experienced that in stand-up comedy where there's these kind of derivative voices where they're kind of like finding what they think other people want to hear and they start saying it because they've heard other people say similar things that are now successful. And even if they have some sort of a short-term success doing that, it's not revolutionary. It doesn't change the world.
It doesn't last. It can be a momentary thing, but it's never the thing. It's the people who you first see and you might not like that you come to like because you don't understand them at first. Those are the ones that change the world. Those are the ones that you dedicate your fandom to for life.
Jason Weber (17:07)
Okay, so the final bit of gold from Coach Rick Rubin, really talking about not replicating others work. I will tell you categorically, I Steal Like an Artist is a great book written some years ago. I can't remember the author offhand, but I will put it in the show notes at some point. But Steal Like an Artist, like I said before with songs, if you can.
The song that you're listening to now has a history of all the people that they learned from. I've seen recently, or in recent years, people writing programs that are snippets of what other people have done. It's something I learned here and there. Again, it's like I resonated earlier, that they're not connected. I can't see how they relate together. Same when I'm looking at a complex rehab like an ACL. When you're looking at the pieces and you're watching someone who's...
never really done it before going, here's all these bits and pieces. And they're kind of, you can see them all lumped on top of one another, but there's not a genuine cutting through a thread of thought that holds the whole thing together. So while you're doing these components, you need to learn from them. You need to be able to make sure you never copy someone. But if you do need to learn something, let's say you learn a little, you see a macro cycle or a little mesocycle of some.
You might want to ask how that works. But then when you try it, make your own notes so that you can understand how they work. What person did it work for? Would it work for everybody? Those are the answers that only come from experience, from knowing that these people work really well with slightly lower repetitions. These work higher. When I'm doing speed work that I know if I've got this hugely neural athlete, they're going to get bound up fascially and they're to get tight quickly and so forth.
The volume I have to do is not as much. Those are the subtleties. are the art of us trying to get our systems together. Now the last point I'd probably like to make is something that Rick sort of intimated, right, with regards to artists not being liked. I think there's a big message in there for young coaches. Don't be afraid to not be liked. I can assure you I am not the most popular person on the face of the earth.
But because I care, I'm going to make the decisions and make hard decisions, ask hard things of people such that they can move forward. And the trust and the love, for lack of a better word, comes from them seeing how you develop. like Rick Intimated, that fandom comes. You don't have to be the drill sergeant. You don't have to be the nasty person in any respect.
But you do have to be direct. And in this day and age of sometimes beating around the bush, I'm a bit too old for that. I need to be straight. Tell my athletes where they're at and help them get to the next level. All right, so be really clear on that. You never want to be a bully. You never want to be nasty to people. You certainly don't want to be speaking down to them. But in the same breath, don't need to be their friends. And too often,
particularly with young male S &C coaches, I see people being too friendly. Right? Keep your distance. Athletes want to be coached, they don't want a friend. They have plenty of friends. Right? That's for somebody else to do. Your job is to keep them on the path. Like the path that they've chosen, if they choose not to stay on that path anymore. That's cool. They can make that decision, but our job is to try and help them stay on the path. So stick with honesty.
and make sure that it's the core of what you're doing all the time. So as we start to wrap this one up, I know it's been a bit of a stretch for some people to me to connect music and S &C and performance. But unfortunately, not unfortunately, but that's what I do. That's how I try to think. I try to always look for learnings in people who've been exceptional. Right. Rick Rubin would be fun. I mentioned Taylor Sheridan, who's a writer, writes fundamentally.
know, cowboy based stories. But how did he change? How did he go from someone who had nothing to being this elite performer? You know, we used that example earlier. He said he took rejection and he dealt with and he used rejection to move forward. Right. Don't lose your vision. As Rick said, there is a massive artistry to what we do. And as Rick said, sorry to reiterate, being an artist is about being authentic.
And you need to be authentic. There's no space for BS in what we do. We need to try and stay straightforward. So I hope this episode has something in with something for you. And in the near future, I hope to get Darren back on board. But you never know. We might have a couple of guests out of Europe in the next couple of weeks. Enjoy.
