Two Coaches & a Coffee

Time

• Darren Burgess & Jason Weber • Season 2 • Episode 23

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Are you ready to unlock the secrets to staying ahead in sports science and strength conditioning? This episode is your key to understanding the importance of continuous learning and skill development. As I journey through the UK, I reflect on how younger professionals may fall into complacency, risking their growth. Drawing inspiration from legends like Charlie Francis and Derek Hansen, I underline the necessity of blending academic knowledge with practical wisdom. Plus, I highlight the game-changing potential of AI and machine learning in this ever-evolving field.

We also dive deep into the realm of personal growth and effective problem-solving. I discuss the critical importance of aligning with company values such as honesty and creativity while emphasizing efficiency and planning. There's a special focus on managing younger talents and how coding can revolutionize time management. Traveling, especially through the challenges of airports, often sparks my most creative thinking. Finally, I explore the art of decision-making—illustrating the importance of taking time to thoroughly think through problems. Despite hosting solo with Darren busy in the AFL, I remain optimistic and grateful for your support. Join me for an enlightening discussion on professional development, personal growth, and making well-considered decisions.

Sponsored by SPEEDSIG.com

Speaker 1:

hey, welcome to one coach in a coffee round. Number two, um. So I'm still on the road in the uk and darren's still flat out doing afl back in um Australia. So at the moment we're struggling to catch up. So for this week you're going to have to tolerate me by myself musing along while Darren's fighting the good fight in the AFL and hopefully, with any good fortune, next week we'll be back on when I'm back on Oz time and we can get together.

Speaker 1:

So in the interim I've been thinking about time, the time you don't have, the time you can't waste the time. It takes time to go, time to think all of those things. But what I'm saying and to be clear and transparent, I've been in the UK for nearly two weeks, fundamentally launching SpeedSig in the UK. So we've had a great experience up here. We've met plenty of teams, got lots of meetings coming up, great opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. But along that way I get to meet a lot of people and inevitably you're evaluating, and that's part of how I learned to do my job is you're always evaluating, evaluating. What does that person know? What does he know that I can learn from? What can they learn from me? Maybe You're trying to figure it out, because you are always trying to learn, but you also see people that aren't pushing as far ahead as they might otherwise. Or what I see these days very strongly is a lot of younger staff members, be it S&C, sports, science, particularly kind of content with what we've got, that where we are is right, we're fine, we've got everything, it's all good.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm not entirely sure people's perception of themselves would be the same, would be that, but that's an old bull saying things. But I definitely think, and most people, as you'll ascribe to, will say yeah, we need new skills. We always need to be learning more. So if you identify that thing, one of the things that worries me about time is people don't put enough time into learning new skills and to getting better at something. And unfortunately this isn't the matrix. You can't plug a bolt into the back of your head and download jujitsu in one go, or any other skill for that matter. So when we're looking at the skills that we need to be better at what we do, we need time to do them. Now I'm going to tell you this that having a bachelor's degree or having a master's degree in strength and conditioning isn't a passport to. I know what's going on. You're going to need to study more, and you're going to need to study not just academia, but you're going to need to study more. And you're going to need to study not just academia, but you're going to have to study coaches.

Speaker 1:

And I had a discussion today with a couple young bucks who are in the sports science performance world. They had no idea who charlie francis is. Now hopefully people know who charlie francis is. But charlie Charlie Francis is one of the great sprint coaches of all time. Ben Johnson's coached 1998, and, despite all the drug convictions that went with that, it's widely acknowledged that Charlie is one of the great coaches of all time and a therapist. So he incorporated not just performance from a speed, power, strength perspective, but function. So how does a joint work? How does the limbs of the lower body coordinate with the upper body to produce force and projection? All the rest of it, anyway, I was talking about, I was showing the graphic that Derek Hansen put out on LinkedIn a few weeks ago with the red and the yellow man and showing the low ground contact versus longer ground contact and hip height, and Derek very generously shared that with me. But that work that Charlie originally developed and Derek's now taking forward.

Speaker 1:

I think is magnificent, very much a part of what I do, but in having a discussion today with a couple of young bucks, I had no idea who that is. Who's Charlie Francis and, with all due respect, who is Derek Hanson? I said, well, it's not diabolical that you don't know, but you should go and look at these guys. These are premium guys in our space when you're in running sports. They're the guys right and there's always going to be others and you should know. Like I would always in a job interview, I would quiz people as to what their coaching pedigree Like. Not only what have you read academically, but what coaches do you read, who do you look to, who do you listen to, who do you learn from those type of things?

Speaker 1:

So, understanding that those things take time. It might take time to get to those people that you know. You might need to take time to download multiple things off the internet and collect them, collate them and get through them. Some guys don't write books, some do podcasts. Some do write, some just put stuff on the internet that you would need to bring together. But it all takes time and I think it's critical that we're not just evaluating what's immediately in front of us in our job, but where we want to go and who has that information and the information that might help us or might expand our thinking.

Speaker 1:

So that takes time. I think it's time that is well worth the investment. And the same thing comes when you go to the new tech space. Right, and this is when we're in the era of the quickening. Everything's going fast, there's more more tech, we're at ai now. Everything's got ai in it right now. As, as a guy who's closer to 60 than he is to 50 and move forward with and I'm quite adept at machine learning, I know coding, blah, blah, blah, but those things I've need to move with to progress myself, I think the young bucks people coming through now, if you're looking for where's my next evolution, it's not going to necessarily be an academic one. It might be, but I think you've got to embrace where you're at Now.

Speaker 1:

I spent today at Statsports in Newry in just south of Belfast, as the guest of Andrew Morrissey and CEO Alan Clark. Magnificent, great day, great tech day, going in deep into detail about what they're doing. But I look at that and say, well, okay, I now need to learn new things about what they're doing and what they're stretching their tech in order to make my speed SIG tech better, but I also look at what they're going to deliver in the next. Whatever their production cycle is let's just say five to six months they're going to take that new technology into the field. I'm not going to worry about explaining what it is. It's for you guys to figure out down the track. But they're going to take tech into the field and it's sharp, there's no question, no question. But people are going to have to invest in understanding what it's sharp. There's no question, no question. But people are going to have to invest in understanding what it's capable of.

Speaker 1:

There's a great line from a song, the author of whom is going to elude me right at the moment, but I bought the book but never turned the page. Now, that is ridiculous. Same thing with tech. We buy tech but we don't necessarily use it. Push it to its extent, take how far you can. Now that's what I did with SpeedSea. Speedsea guy repurposed the technology we had, which is commercial GPS inertial sensors, and I built something that did a whole new job. Now I'm not saying I'm the be-all and end-all at all, but this is the point If stat sports go and bring out a new technology or whomever brings out a new technology, and you don't dig into it. If that's your field, if you're the sports scientist and I've met a ton of sports scientists recently so if that's you, you need to understand the tech, understand what it is, Understand where the flaws are, understand the researcher, all that stuff, but invest in it. Again, it's not the matrix, it's not an Apple iPhone. You're not going to open the box and you can just play with it and it works.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of producers are creating more and more easy ways for things. Yes, I understand that we want things to be easy. We want workflows to be as user-friendly as possible because people are limited for time. But there's no way around the fact that, even in a space that's limited for time, to learn something new and to bring it into your way of thinking, your paradigm, your model, your whatever you want to call it, it's going to take time and you have to commit to that and you might need to say, hey, here's this thing I'm going to commit time to because I think it's the way to go versus this other thing, which may not be or you may not consider it as important. Those choices are up to you and we always make good ones and bad ones. There's no question about that.

Speaker 1:

Now you know there's lots of things you will be confronted with. I mean the classic one in coding is do you use R or do you use Python? You know everyone's on about how do you learn to code. Is it worth it? We might come back to that in a moment. But that choice is one that's predicated on a bunch of factors and sometimes it's who you hang with. If you're hanging out with people who all do R, you want to stay in community and work with people who understand that language. They can help you grow. So there are all sorts of reasons for taking that path.

Speaker 1:

But it comes back to time, and I definitely think within the sports science landscape, we've got to look at that paradigm, the computer science paradigm, if you've never heard of it. There's a kind of a pyramid where it goes from data up to information, knowledge up to wisdom. So data is just what we get in the field. It's what we. You know the incoming signal, information, is us putting it together right, so it's consumable, but knowledge is starting to bring an outcome. What does this mean? And wisdom is where we can really use it to influence decisions. Now, as sports science guys in particular, like it or not, we're not going to be working in the wisdom knowledge space. We're going to be in the data or information people want from us knowledge and wisdom. Because we've examined the data, we've examined what's going on, we've identified a problem, we've identified a plausible way forward and off we go.

Speaker 1:

Some will say the end of that spectrum is the answer. So some people will say to me I don't really care about all your data and all your analysis, just give me the answer, just tell me what to do, which I think is a very limited perspective on the world. I'm one of those ones who like to understand. I'm not one for trusting the computer per se. I like to use a computer as a tool to do things for me. But to say that the AI model just gave me this answer and that's what I'm running with. Maybe not so much, maybe that's my age, but understand again that paradigm data, information, knowledge, wisdom. As a sports scientist, you're going to have to work in that data information space and again it comes back to time You're going to have to learn it. It's the tool of our trade, so to speak. So again, pushing that time concept just a little bit further forward, I'm going to change tack for a second Now. This is just a personal one, but this is my podcast and Darren's not here to bully me. I'm going to go my path Now.

Speaker 1:

Time is critical. The older you get, you kind of realize how much time you don't have. You don't have time with people you love and you need to focus on that as much as possible and you have to try and be as efficient as possible, because we all still have to work and, to be fair, if you weren't working, I would find, if I wasn't in a productive output, your probably mind does go and that's probably the start of decay. So, happy to stay sharp, but multitasking not a fan, not a fan. I think. The more and more in the position I currently find myself that I have multiple things coming at me, my best option is to stop and try and put a few things aside and do one at a time and do it really well, and focus on doing it well, getting a job done and doing it really well, being proud of that job. You did Hark back, I guess, to my old man how I was taught growing up if you're going to do something, do it properly.

Speaker 1:

And in fact, if you're going to do something, try and be the best at it. Simple as that. There's no point just doing for the sake of doing. Let's get on with it. If you're going to do it, make it worthwhile.

Speaker 1:

I actually had a taxi driver today in Belfast, going south to Newry, and he was sort of just well, he wasn't the most positive guy on the face of the earth, but he'd come to Ireland and Belfast and people were like, oh, it was a beautiful day, absolutely beautiful, sparkling day today. But he was going, oh, it's a beautiful day today, oh, but it's so shit all the other time. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but it's beautiful today, it's great. And he then said something about making the most of it, making the most of today. And I said, yeah, absolutely, we've got to make the most of it. I said, yeah, try and hang with good people, have good conversations.

Speaker 1:

I was very lucky today, fortunate, to hang with some really cool people, that smart, creative, trying to solve problems, trying to move. You know, we talk about our company values speed, speed. I talk to myself because I'm the only one here but honesty and creativity, that's it. All the things that feed honesty are important Integrity, reliability, all those things all feed honesty in a way. And then creativity you want people who can think, who want to have a go, want to move, shape, change, adapt, grow, continue to evolve. I don't want to be static. So, again, if I pull back to that multi-passing thing, we want to make the most of what we're doing today, where we're at, who we're with, but don't get caught doing a thousand things averagely. Okay, don't ever sort of say, hey, I couldn't get that done because oh too much on, if you get overwhelmed, you get overwhelmed. But try and do one job at a time. I think, all right, part of that becomes a little bit of planning. There's no question I'm better when I say right, I'm going to stop and do this, I'm going to do the other thing which again, which again you reflect on a lot when you're traveling, because I'm at airports.

Speaker 1:

I was in one of the worst airports yesterday, manchester. I'm sorry. Manchester airport is a disaster, whether it's the airport itself, whether it was the not enough staff. Everyone was polite and all that sort of thing. But slow, slow, slow, slow and you go through security and they're all checking the bags and I get that. That's fine. But you know what? If you're going to check every single bag and we know there's approximately five people per minute coming through the thing, you're going to have to have more than two people at the counter examining those bags. The rate of people coming through, the rate of bags being tested ridiculous. So a waste of time. People not thinking whatever, whatever. But the idea if we come back to it is to plan get your time sorted out so you're getting things done really well, which is again.

Speaker 1:

People ask me regularly about the coding thing. One of the great things about coding is the time saver. If you've got repeatable tasks, write code that makes it do it automatically. Pretty much as simple as that. Last one, which I kind of was just sort of hedging to and probably wandered off a little bit with the fatigued brain, is the time to think right when you're on the road a lot. I've been on the road for five weeks now, so you've had time to stop and think, and I will say some of my best creativity has been in airports, where I've been able to sit and really try and ignore the world. Put the noise cancelling headphones in and think my opinion would probably be of that that there are not enough people in their day-to-day life doing that.

Speaker 1:

So in the course of us working in sport, there are challenges, there are hard conversations, there are situations when you react a way you didn't want to or you didn't like. On reflection you should think about those and reflect on them and figure out how you're going to be better next time, because if you don't, you just keep on keeping on and I think there's a lot of personal growth to be gathered from me thinking, hey, how did I handle that Self-reflection, how did I move forward? I think when I look at some of the guys younger, did I handle that Self-reflection? How did I move forward? I think when I look at some of the guys, younger, guys I've worked with who've gone on now to manage their own programs I've got one at the Michael Dobbin in the hockey at the Olympics in France, dan Zaknitch down there at Melbourne sorry, western Bulldogs, afl doing cracking jobs I think I know those guys sat back and thought and reflected and reviewed what they were doing. What was that conversation like? Was it good, was it bad? Did I do that task? Did I coach that thing? How did I coach that session today? Did I communicate well? And I'll often do that. I pitched speed sick twice today. Did I communicate well? And I'll often do that. I pitched speed sick twice today and I've pitched the same pitch, going on 300 times.

Speaker 1:

So you're always going to reflect and at the moment I'm reflecting on yes, it needs to change, it needs to evolve with things we're doing. So you're going to look back at that. But I think, looking back at your performance, you can think through the possibilities and probabilities, right. What could I have done differently? I think this comes back to the last point I'll make for my musings for today, and that is problem solving.

Speaker 1:

And I think, in that time to think, problem solving is really much better achieved with a quiet mind, right, where you can sit, extract yourself from the world, distract, get away from the phone, those things for a little while and have a quiet mind. A quiet mind particularly if we can lower brainwaves and this gets into a little bit of brainwave activity stuff. But lower brainwaves is associated with higher cognitive processing, which is why people meditate. We meditate to lower our brainwave activity and hopefully access deeper parts of our brain. So, if you're confronted with a situation that is challenging, take time. Take time to think about it, take time to dwell, examine it, think through the possibilities and probabilities.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you sit there and think and you'll think through a problem and go well, look, now I've thought about it. I really don't want to go that direction to the left, I want to go to the right. That's just where I'm at. So take the time. So, in that, in saying that my time is up, I hope my time has not been a burden on you. I hope somebody gets something from this, but I really do appreciate the support. On this trip away, I've had plenty of people say hey, congratulations on the podcast going great. I would prefer to have my buddy, darren, around, but such is life. We need to press on, and I'm batting by myself, batting with a runner, so to speak. The other guy at the other end is not helping, but he'll be back next week. So in the meantime, I hope you're able to take something from this and I look forward very much to having a brew with my buddy next week. For the moment, ciao, ciao.