Two Coaches & a Coffee
With nearly 60years of professional experience between them across the world in Premier League, International Rugby, AFL and consulting in a plethora of other sports and industries; two old bulls of the performance, injury prevention, and rehabilitation world: Darren Burgess and Jason Weber catch up over a brew and discuss all things Sports Performance.
Two Coaches & a Coffee
Season 2 Episode 20
What's the secret behind the electrifying performances of Cirque du Soleil's gravity-defying artists? Explore the fascinating world of elite athletic training with us as we focus on Alexei, a young contortionist, and his journey from childhood dedication to mastering incredible body-weight strength. Our conversation bridges this unique artistry to high-demand sports like AFL, emphasizing how athletes manage intense schedules and balance between physical training and skill development.
We also tackle the immense physiological demands of professional athletes, with insights drawn from England's recent football matches. Unpack the strategies behind squad rotation, player recovery, and the critical role of load management. Using examples from football, the Tour de France, and AFL, we highlight the necessity of balancing skill and endurance in high-pressure scenarios, illustrated by Jude Bellingham's heroic goal despite obvious fatigue. Discover the tactical intricacies of high possession games and their effects on team performance and stamina.
Shifting gears to Rugby Australia, we address the concerning trend of Achilles injuries among top players, particularly props. We'll discuss possible causes like insufficient scrummaging practice and inadequate physical preparation. Learn about the importance of effective training periodization and workload management to keep players match-ready. Finally, get excited about our upcoming AFL trip to Brisbane, significant meetings in the UK, and our innovative SpeedSig project. Plus, hear about our special plans for young Harry, one of our biggest supporters. Don't miss these compelling discussions and updates!
SpeedSig Intro
Sponsored by SPEEDSIG.com
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:Going all right. It's late at night night here, so there'll certainly be no coffee.
Speaker 1:But nah, you've done a great job accommodating me. It's late early afternoon. We're on.
Speaker 2: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:Yes, you told me, this was coming.
Speaker 2: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: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: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:You wouldn't know the difference.
Speaker 2: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: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: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:yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they can't max out, but it's interesting, mate.
Speaker 1: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:It's really an adjunct thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2: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: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: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: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:Yeah.
Speaker 1: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: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: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: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: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: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: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: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: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: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: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:But I agree man.
Speaker 1: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: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:But he had one moment.
Speaker 2: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:But the nature of scoring is different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. The nature of scoring, the scoring.
Speaker 1: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: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: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: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: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: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: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:But you know things happen.
Speaker 1: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: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:So that's what everybody's looking like. Yes, many do know the numbers.
Speaker 1: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: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: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: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:Well, if anybody can.
Speaker 1: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:I'm one ahead of myself. Look at that 18.
Speaker 1:We go to'm one ahead of myself. Look at that 18.
Speaker 2:We go to Brisbane, which?
Speaker 1:Oh, Brisbane on the up.
Speaker 2: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: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:Exactly. We'll get us one first and then get one for him All right, mate, all right, see you later.