Two Coaches & a Coffee

Season 2, Episode 9

• Darren Burgess & Jason Weber • Season 2 • Episode 9

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Darren and Jason explore the delicate dance between peak conditioning and injury prevention, taking cues from Giannis Antetokounmpo's calf scare, shedding light on the deceptive nature of low-intensity activities. We discuss on the critical speeds that place undue stress on an athlete's calf musculature, and understand why knowing each athlete's response to training is foundational for crafting injury prevention strategies. There is also discussion on Notre Dame University's partnership with the NFL, and their research project examining how running gait and volume training uniquely impact the hamstring injury risk profiles.

As we pivot to a biomechanical debate that's likely to be a popularized subject in the coming year, we have an introductory discussion of Serge Gracovetsky's spinal engine theory and its potential game-changing role in sports. We wrap up the podcast looking at  the pressures of high-performance programs amidst public scrutiny and the weight of victory expectations. Our firsthand experiences with the turbulence of professional sports and navigating criticism shed light on the criticality of maintaining a robust process. Tune in for an immersive experience that goes beyond the playbook and into the minds and muscles that fuel athletic greatness.

Sponsored by SPEEDSIG.com

Jason Weber:

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:

Going okay.

Jason Weber:

Busy busy.

Darren Burgess:

Busy, busy, but looking forward to catching up.

Jason Weber:

Good man.

Darren Burgess:

All things sport. Now.

Darren Burgess:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

Yeah.

Darren Burgess:

Now hopefully.

Jason Weber:

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:

Yeah.

Jason Weber:

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:

There's still players missing out. The reason soccer and AFL, we know, haven't actually changed, even though games got quicker.

Jason Weber:

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:

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:

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:

Do you want to give me an update?

Jason Weber:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

No, I know.

Darren Burgess:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.