Jason Weber (00:13)
G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Dr. Darren Burgess and Dr. Jason Weber here with you again. You laugh Darren, but we put a lot of effort in so sometimes I periodically feel like saying it. I know it's not common, but I just do.
Darren (00:28)
No, I try and avoid it, particularly on planes or something like that, because then you might get asked to actually do something. Anyway, I agree, work hard for it and yeah, exploit.
Jason Weber (00:32)
⁓ yeah. ⁓ absolutely, absolutely.
I will tell
you culturally, it's interesting. When I worked in the Middle East the last couple of years doing my tactical stuff, you get it all. As soon as they find out, that's what you do. It's Dr. Jason, Dr. Jason, all the time. So you kind of, I've had a weird period of getting used to it. Anyway, enough of that.
Darren (00:51)
Yeah.
Let's not
pretend that you didn't ask them to call you that anyway. ⁓ Exactly.
Jason Weber (00:57)
No, I put a big sign on my head. Anyway,
what have you found for us? What have you found?
Darren (01:03)
Well,
I sent you something that was sent to me and it was a manager, I guess it was a manager, didn't know exactly who it was, it a manager at, what was the, was it Preston? I think it was Preston. Manager talking about how one of their players has been injured seeing a personal trainer and how
Jason Weber (01:11)
I didn't know how he was.
Yeah.
Darren (01:25)
Personal trainer is really happy to put stuff on Instagram when things are going well, that they're using their players. But he said, I bet he doesn't, I think his quote was, bet he doesn't put on Instagram that he injured one of our players and he's out for a month. And he named and shamed him and that's not for us to do. Yeah. So. ⁓
Jason Weber (01:34)
Haha.
Yeah, nah, he had a big girl.
Darren (01:46)
He said, I'm going to name him here because he won't put this up on Instagram. We get no money whatsoever for one of our best players out for a month. And so we have touched on this a little bit. Yeah. Your thoughts on that.
Jason Weber (01:57)
Mate, look, it's a big issue, less so in Australia right at the moment, but I've got friends in the US in Major League Baseball, in NBA, in NFL, even in college football. They're saying that the kids go away on break, and that's disrespectful. The players go away on break, and they go back and train. now...
common occurrence in NFL is guys will go back to their college team and train with their college S and C coach, which for many of them is probably a great thing. It's where they probably made their biggest gains and they went from boys to men sort of type deal. But they're often people that have been in the industry a long time. There are also those that go to the personal, well, the private coach.
which in the US is on every street corner. All right. And are doing God knows what. Now you can't put them all into the same bucket. There are clearly those that have been practitioners in that space for many, many years. Take your, your Mike Boyles and the like in the US that have been around for an eternity. But I will say that there is a
Darren (02:52)
you
Jason Weber (03:07)
lot of people and there's a growing concern in Australia of practitioners who are running their own facilities and have no oversight nor accountability. ⁓
Darren (03:16)
you
Yeah,
think that's the I think the the onus is on both parties here. In fact, there's three parties that need to be in the conversation. One is the player. The player needs to inform the club. I am seeing I work. Let's let's just put our example in. I work for Adelaide. Jason, you're a private practitioner who's doing some
some speed work with one of our players and the player sources you by reputation. Now it's up to the player to disclose to you, I play because you might not know, I play for the Adelaide Crows, we don't do enough speed training in my opinion, Jase can you help me out one day a week doing some speed training. So there's three things here, one is the player needs to come to me and say I've sourced
Jason Weber (04:10)
So you as the high-performance manager? Yep, absolutely.
Darren (04:10)
Jason Weber, I've heard good things about him. Yep.
Then I would expect you to come to me and say, I've had an approach by this player. I want to take him up on it because, you know, it's good for my business. Like, be honest. it's, I really enjoy working with players of his caliber. Where would it fit in best?
Jason Weber (04:34)
Good and very much.
Darren (04:35)
And then it's a really easy conversation to have.
Jason Weber (04:39)
It's, think it's an easy conversation, but I don't think it's one that's had because I know guys in the U S I know a couple that now have their preferred providers. Like, we've got these guys, if you want to work outside, work with them. And they'd report back. know also a friend of mine who works in the U S has his own private facility, did work in pro teams, but he makes a massive point of connecting with the club. Now the thing with that is I've got, there's examples.
here in our little town of Perth, Western Australia. We've got two AFL teams here. But there are plenty of examples of guys operating out of their garage who are doing X, Y and Z and they'll post it on social media. And some of it, to be honest, looks a bit aimless. Like you're just flogging. Like we know it's easy to flog people and create fatigue and send tough. But I would say there's plenty of those conversations that aren't going on.
Darren (05:27)
No, and if I put your hat on in our little scenario here, I reckon I might have told you the story before and maybe I've said it to apologies, but I remember speaking to a bunch of tennis coaches and saying to them, this is at the Australian Open.
Jason Weber (05:30)
Yeah.
Darren (05:42)
day before the Open started, all the coaches are gathering there and they asked me to come and speak. And I just said, look, the best way that you can get your young tennis players to play at the elite level is get them to play different sports. All the research tells us that. Don't just focus on tennis before they get to sort of 16, 17, spread them out a little bit. First hand goes up. What about Andre Agassi? What about Tiger Woods? What? Yeah, for every one of those, there's, you know, 10,000 people who've had to multi-sport.
Then person came to me afterwards and made the best point that's been made in this space to me. Darren, I appreciate what you're saying and I'm sure you're right, but I get paid per hour to teach kids tennis. If I go and tell a kid, kids parents know you should go to basketball, that's potentially 500 bucks a week that I'm missing out on for four sessions. So I can understand that, but...
Jason Weber (06:20)
There.
Not telling.
Darren (06:33)
And so I don't want to be one of these people who says, I get that, but my point's more valid. So I understand that. What I think might happen is if that person works with the club and says, and does a great job at working with the club, they would get more and more business come through. I've had people in Adelaide that I've used, I've sought out by reputation to help with our players.
Jason Weber (06:45)
Steps.
address.
Darren (06:58)
outside of the club practitioners. So this can work both ways and can benefit everybody if it's done really well.
Jason Weber (07:06)
it absolutely does.
All right. I'll give you two points which concur with yours is in my 12 years at Freemantle, I had an external provider that when I needed someone out of the building for whatever reason, and there are multitude of reasons, sometimes it's just a different face. No problem. I've got a guy that I trust that we can go and work with. So there's that side of it. But I would say that the other side, as someone who is outside, now I'm not.
running anything particular, but in recent years, including the example you just gave, like I've done work for you in WA, I've done work for other AFL teams in WA, but I make it an absolute priority to report back on what we've got, particularly in the instance. there's one sterling one for mine is when you get a program, like I'm happy. Like if the team.
One team previously sent sent me a guy and said, Hey, here's his program. I'm like, right. I'll just, I'll do what you've asked me to. But it was so far off the mark for the guy that I ended up bringing back up and saying, listen, I think there's maybe a better path. You try this, this and this, which ended up working out. But I do think that it's the onus needs to be on the person on the outside and not even the onus. I agree with you. The ability to do a really good job.
and be that person that is sought out by the professionals. I think that's a business card in itself. Like that is, that is ideal. So I would encourage anybody who's working outside of a pro system. If someone comes to you to be going back to them and saying, Hey, this is where we're at. is what we data we collected, whatever it is. Communicators catch as much as you can. I think you'll find that people will respect that.
Darren (08:27)
Mmm.
Yeah, it's when it's, my view is the most dangerous thing to give an athlete is misappropriated load. And that could come in a whole range of different areas. It might not be on legs, it might be off legs, it might be mental, it might be, but that's the most, the highest risk activity to give to a player. this can...
Jason Weber (08:56)
Yeah.
hope so.
Right, hang on, hang on, mate.
Let's give the viewers, the listeners, misappropriated load. Give me a bit more of a working definition of that.
Darren (09:16)
So I'll give you a couple of practical examples. You giving a crows player a speed session is, I couldn't think of anyone better that I would want to give that speed session to. But if it's not put in the right place in the week or the month or the year, that's misappropriated load. Even though that speed session itself is the absolute perfect thing for that player at that, but not at that time. ⁓
Jason Weber (09:35)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Darren (09:40)
We've had players go and do Pilates, yoga, off their own bat with the best intentions, but doing it the day before a game because they're a bit tired and it's just a new stimulus that they've never done before and they've done a hamstring within two days. And no one knows why that hamstring happened. It may not have been that, but what I do know is that's a new stimulus.
Jason Weber (09:53)
Yeah.
Darren (10:04)
that's been brought in to that environment. And if that stretching session, Pilates session, which by itself is absolutely fine and no problem whatsoever, in the context of that athlete's week, it's probably not been put in the best place a day before a game. If that wasn't there, then we wouldn't be having these doubts. We could look at other parts, you know, and see why that hamstring may or may not have occurred. anyway, yeah, it's,
Jason Weber (10:23)
That's
Darren (10:27)
It can be low placed with the best intention but not within an integrated system.
Jason Weber (10:32)
I'll give you, here's a horror story on this misappropriated load. So I'm rehabilitating an absolutely mission critical player through a calf injury that was secondary to, so started with quad, started with knee, became quad, became hamstring, became calf. So all of these wonderful things, which is now that I'm into it, the reason I built SpeedSig, because I would have understood more at the time, but.
So we've got this calf thing where we're recovering the calf where everyone, my staff, medical, everyone, every bit of detail that we could possibly have, we have. And so he finishes up training on the whatever, let's say it's the Monday and the kid's got Tuesday off. So we had a big load on the Monday, Wednesday's a lighter load and then Friday's a bigger load for us. That's how we were organizing rehab at that time. So he comes in on the Wednesday.
and strains and everything's off to the root and we're good and we think, look, all we know is the last thing that happened was he finished on Tuesday, all thumbs up, all good, no issues, progressing perfectly. Come in Wednesday, everything seems okay, starts running, starts building up, going through whatever the progressions were, but it wasn't super quick. wasn't anything. Anyway, pings the calf again. And so straight away for whatever hair I had left, that's all falling out and you
You start going, right, we're in this is investigation mode. we're digging in, digging in. Coach flies past what the F's going on, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I'm like, yeah. Back up against the ropes. Anyway, so you dig in a bit and we go through all the detail and it's all there. It all looks good. What's going on? Anyway, I catch him at one point for sit down the athlete. I just said, listen, mate, just talk me through what's going on. What's happening around the world, like your life, everything.
He goes, mate, was great. Monday, I felt awesome at training. He said, Tuesday I got up and my mates went out for a boogie board, surfing. I went, all right. And I knew this kid had surfed. I actually didn't know he had boogie board. I thought he was stand up. Anyway, he goes, yeah, I went out and had a boogie board. I said, yeah, did you? How long were you out? Two and a half hours. Okay. Did you have flippers on by any chance? Yeah, I did. Yeah, it's all gone great. We've got some great waves.
Darren (12:31)
Mm.
Jason Weber (12:36)
felt fantastic coming this morning. I was done. That was my meeting. That's all I needed. so straight away you're going, well, we're on an edge almost. We got them right where they need to be. So this kid's done what he felt was right. Go and do something bodily, spiritually, mentally good. Completely cooked his calves. And guess what? We got calves straight again. How do you reckon that went? When I presented that up the chain,
Darren (12:40)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jason Weber (13:01)
to the boss. said, look, mate, you're not going to like this. But we've got all the detail. This is where we've been at. It's been modeled, been mapped, blah, blah, blah, blah. And not to mention a kid had a disastrous knee injury that was driving and all. that's the bit. Mate, he went for a surf yesterday. And it was like, No, but I misappropriated loans. So yes, there is the baddies amongst
Darren (13:16)
Yeah.
Well intentioned, yeah, misappropriated.
Jason Weber (13:27)
the conditioning community that can do things that are stupid. I agree you should definitely, I'd always be buying in, like telling you where things are at and understand the context in the right place. But equally, players can do it themselves sometimes with all the best intentions.
Darren (13:44)
Exactly. The summary is it can work. This relationship between private practice and professional elite athlete training staff could work as long as there is that really odd thing called communication, which is often the worst thing.
Jason Weber (13:47)
Yeah!
And I think the
guy on the outside's got to work hard. So let's change topic. Let's pivot for a second.
Darren (14:07)
I got seven minutes, so hit me with your best change.
Jason Weber (14:09)
Gotcha. Gotcha. This is one
we might talk about a little bit more, but it's come across my desk a little bit recently. I have this theory about strength and conditioning coaches, in fact, many professions, but with S &C coaches, we all go through what I call a zealot phase. You can look up zealot on ChapGPT if you'd like, but a zealot pretty much means I've got it all covered. I know everything that's going on. I'm across everything.
And I'm super enthusiastic about everything. Just ask me. Now, when you're interviewing cats like this and I'm okay with that because I did it. But the thing you've got to get to that point where you realize that there's so much you don't know. The one thing I know for certain or the only thing I know for certain is that I know nothing. It's Socratic ignorance, right? So that's two weeks in a row Socrates mate.
Darren (15:00)
Yeah.
Jason Weber (15:01)
What we've got to be careful of and what I think young practitioners is going to be aware that you're in that phase a little bit. It's a transition because you get to the point where you do know a lot and you've experienced quite a bit. But the next phase is even better when you calm down a little bit and you move. It's almost like computer science. There's that data, information, knowledge, wisdom. At some point, you're in that information where it's just lots of stuff and
I see people with the way they run monitoring, like 52 pickup. Here's a dashboard with 52 variables on it. Here coach, you go and figure out which one matters. No, let's go a little bit higher. Let's go to knowledge. Let's slow down to wisdom, to a calm voice. And I had a great, I was chatting with a triathlon coach a bit earlier today, which was fantastic. But she was saying that, you know, I did all this studying. I worked for 10, 15 years to build up to my experience.
And she goes, now it's more intuition. I said, actually, you know, that's that's a lie. It's not intuition at all. said, all you're doing is subconsciously processing all the right experiences that you've had and you coalescing them to patent recognition in what you're saying. That's where I reckon young S and C countries go take their time. It's not just S and C, it's probably everybody, but take your time and try and jump out of that. from information.
Darren (15:57)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (16:21)
mechanics to a of noise just go a bit slower. Anyway that's my rant mate I think. Have you seen that in me?
Darren (16:30)
I haven't seen it in you. What I have seen is because I yeah I'm I met you when you're ancient so yeah well I guess I guess to take that a bit further is
Jason Weber (16:33)
Cause I was old when you met me.
Ha ha ha!
Darren (16:45)
Yeah, it's that transition, I guess, from single discipline or narrow discipline practitioner to ⁓ general generalist. And if if a NFL, AFL, rugby, whatever club came to me now and said, would you have hire somebody who has been at the elite level but
Jason Weber (16:52)
Yeah, trust is the party.
Darren (17:09)
has been working in, let's say, sports science for 15 years at the elite level at different clubs, but in sports science and has got Champions League experience, if we're talking soccer. so versus somebody who has worked as a generalist in division three or in, know, in league one or series C or whatever, whatever.
⁓ but has been running a program. I'm taking the person who's run the program all day, every day, just because they've seen the pitfalls and they've seen how everything patches into each other rather than just their particular area. So I'm not sure if that's exactly what you mean, but I think, yeah, the generalist and there's been enough podcasts around, not just this one, which talk about the generalists. So we're not the first to bring this up, ⁓ but it's...
Jason Weber (17:57)
No. ⁓
Darren (17:58)
it's pretty important and more people should listen but they don't.
Jason Weber (18:02)
Well, that's, that's one thing that can be said about podcast, isn't it? More people should listen, but they don't. But that's okay. Let's just, just for me to wrap up. If you feel like you're on the zealot path, like you say a lot of big words that just try to bullshit people, just take a moment. All right. One of the, just in the background in the gym, there's some music going on and Mark Moffler playing guitar, right? The sultans of swim.
Darren (18:08)
Yeah.
Jason Weber (18:29)
One of the greatest, what are the greatest skills in music, which is Eric Clapton once said, it's the note you don't play that has the most impact. All right. So it does, you don't have to fill voids with lots of noise. When you say something, say something meaningful and then let it settle. Don't keep throwing words at people, try to impress them with whatever terminology you know, try and get some value in what you're saying.
Darren (18:29)
What a stud.
Jason Weber (18:56)
Anyway, with that end of the lesson.
It's been a pleasure Darren. It's been a pleasure, mate. We had a great coffee the other day, great to catch up and get a day started with way too much coffee beans. Made all the very best running into the last two rounds of the AFL. I'm sure we'll chat again, but you just never know. Knock them out of the park, my friend.
Darren (18:59)
Short and sweet, I like it.
No worries mate, I'm sure we'll chat next week.
Jason Weber (19:18)
Take care.
Darren (19:19)
Cheers.
