Two Coaches & a Coffee

Season 2, Episode 46 - Merry Xmas

• Darren Burgess & Jason Weber • Season 2 • Episode 46

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Discover the transformative impact of the AFL's three-week break on work-life balance for staff and players in our latest special on Two Coaches and a Coffee. Join us as we promise to unravel the key lessons from our exciting trips across the UK and US, visiting legendary football clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool, as well as the MLS Performance Association. Along the way, we explore the powerful influence of performance staff in sports, showcasing the innovative problem-solving skills and acute thinking that define these professionals. We also delve into the pressing issue of mechanical decay linked to athlete fatigue and discuss how performance experts continuously adapt by integrating new insights into their existing practices.

In the vibrant world of sports science and leadership, there's always something new to learn. Throughout the episode, we emphasize the importance of continuous professional development, networking, and experiential learning, balanced with formal education. From personal anecdotes with colleagues like Les Spellman to the richness of real-world conversations, our discussion reaffirms the value of blending formal education with practical experiences to enrich knowledge in the realm of sports science.

SpeedSig Intro

Sponsored by SPEEDSIG.com

Jason Weber:

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. A Christmas special, Berjo and Jason here. Berjo's just sucking back the last of his one-litre latte that he just had on his desk.

Darren Burgess:

He just called me and said I'm hitting record. I just anyway.

Jason Weber:

How are?

Darren Burgess:

you mate.

Jason Weber:

I'm well, mate. Now you've got that litre worth of latte in you, how are you doing? It's very much Christmas prep time.

Darren Burgess:

It is, mate. We finished training with the team on Wednesday and then sent them on their way with a three-week Christmas program.

Jason Weber:

So yeah, boys did well. It's not bad, is it the AFL three-week break for staff and players? I must admit I miss it. I think it was fantastic.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, for staff and players. I must admit I miss it. I think it was fantastic. Yeah, as an industry to work in AFL or as a sport to work in AFL's. Great for two reasons, or for many reasons, but for a couple of ones that are worth mentioning. One is the impact you have on the program is large. So that's the respect that they have for guys like you and me, for anyone in the performance industry. The respect that each club has on performance staff is large. And the second one is in the last 10 years, the work-life balance has improved enormously.

Darren Burgess:

So, through, predominantly through the good work of the Players Association, the work-life balance between you know time at work and time holidays and is excellent. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's a good time to obviously spend with family and friends and and the boys all get to do that and hopefully stay fit, because once we come back in january, it's it's a pretty quick countdown. What about you? More more importantly, you've just had had a fairly whirlwind tour. Tell me about it. I don't want to hear these guys have got a good facility or this team's great, I had a beer with this team. I want to hear some learned lessons Learned lessons.

Jason Weber:

Well, I guess the summary is 42,000 kilometres in roughly 23 days. 42,000 kilometres in roughly 23 days. Uk, us, us was very sharp. Short and sharp was the Major League Soccer Performance Association. Ah yes, but I think the learnt lessons. I reckon and this is we were just talking off air about we'll come to the what the Wallabies have done in a little bit, but it's really interesting when you say what's the impact you can have on an environment.

Darren Burgess:

Now.

Jason Weber:

I had the privilege of going to the big EPL teams thanks to some of your connections, undoubtedly, but I was at Arsenal, manchester United, man City, liverpool, everton. You know there's a big array of teams right there. Chelsea we caught up with a little bit, not as much detail, but that's one in the works. The facilities are unbelievable. What I was impressed with there were a couple of facilities where we had 30, 40 people in a room. So I was presenting to everybody first team staff, women's academy, everyone and, okay, the pitch and the story. The presentation is all great, but then, like quite often, it's interesting. Here's it for any entrepreneurs in the crowd if you book a meeting for an hour and it goes for three hours, I reckon that's a pretty good thing, right.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah so.

Jason Weber:

I would be hanging back and people would. Some people would leave, but you'd have this core staff and you'd have this mix of people and what I was really impressed with was the level of acute thinking. So what I mean by that is I obviously come in with a speed sick thing and it's different. It's a new body of information. But you can see the people who just go right, if you give me that, if I got A, then I can connect that to B, to C, to D, and when I'm presenting I talk about like I say speed sigs, like imagine it's like a fire. If you were showing a caveman the first time you saw a fire, you see people pull back from it, but then suddenly they go hey, you know, we can warm our hands on this, this isn't bad. But then you see the people who throw wood on the fire. Hey, if we light, if we put more wood on this thing, we can keep the animals away and we can cook stuff. But so when I say to people I learnt or I saw people throwing wood on the fire, my view is that the young and not only just young ones, but all measure physios, docs, performance guys, rehab guys, guys and girls, like connecting dots, and for me, who'd worked in this space for a long time, to see these people go, oh, bang, bang, I can connect that and that and that, and what if this and I'm standing there going? Oh, that's a cracking idea.

Jason Weber:

And there were things about, let's talk. One I would say would be like the decay of mechanics associated with fatigue. So we bring an athlete back, we do a sprint over a couple of efforts and we go right, they're good to go. We do a sprint over a couple of efforts and we go right, they're good to go. But in fact, do they fatigue after 10, 15, 20 minutes? And how might we describe that? So you've got and I had multiple people coming to me with that, with concepts like that so the fact that I think these practitioners were so good at taking new information and like they hadn't tested it yet and there's all those things to be done but they were able to connect and put it into space where they hadn't used that before.

Jason Weber:

But it was clearly information that was pursuant to things they'd been thinking about and questioning in their own environment. So that was probably the most impressive part to see minds actively thinking like here's some information, what could we do with this? We've got this problem. This is the questions we have in our environment, because one of the things I do I presented about to MLS.

Jason Weber:

I said I think in many ways there are people that get bluffed by the technology side of our industry. Hey, we've got this equipment, this is the equipment we have. Therefore, that's all you can measure, and people sort of stop at that. But I would say and not just in the EPL clubs, I saw it in the MLS as well I saw people like those, what I call. They're the ones throwing wood on the fire. How can we make this better? How can we take this spark of information and grow it out? So I was really impressed with some of the individuals I met and, I would suspect, some of the conversations that are going on in those environments, which is really I think, it's encouraging, mate.

Jason Weber:

I mean I've been directly out of the environment of a single team for some time now. I will say that, having worked extensively in the US in the football industry, the American football industry, I get disheartened by the massive gulf that exists between performance and medical, which I do think is one of the big challenges of our environment. But in some of the spaces I saw particularly, I'll say, world football. So in the UK and in the US, some great thinkers I came across an interesting here's an aside. So SpeedSig's been going for really commercially for just over a year and a bit, but I've been working on this for five years. So you're learning, you're meeting a lot of people on video calls all the time. So post-COVID, the advent, the advent or the acceptance of us being able to use video calls is really interesting. So one of the best parts of this trip was I met people who I've known for five years but I've never met them in person, I've only known them on video calls.

Jason Weber:

So to be able to go face-to-face. Here's one for you, and he'll laugh at it. Do you know how tall Rob Pacey is? Yeah, oh, my Lord.

Darren Burgess:

Did Rob say that when they first met him?

Jason Weber:

I walked, I had no idea. I walked into the lobby of the hotel in Florida and I saw his red head straight away and he knew who I was immediately and he just come straight up to me. I just said, man, I had no idea. So, yeah, but that was interesting. I mean, even I had great opportunity to spend a good bit of time with martin boucher, uh, which we had a wonderful conversation. I mean, uh, as you have we've all experienced, by the time you get to this age, you've experienced the highs and lows of, you know, achieving certain things and then, okay, okay, the job no longer exists, you're out for whatever manner of reasons. But to share that with Martin and talk through what he, the methods he's taken to move things forward, and obviously we talk a lot in our line of work at what's next, yeah.

Jason Weber:

You and I talk about this all the time. Right, what's next? What's next? And I know, looking at the guys who are maybe, let's just say, a generation or two behind us, that are now some of the younger ones running high-performance roles in the AFL, I know they're thinking what's next, Because there's only so long we can go and everybody's wondering yeah, where do I go from here? I'm at the top job. How long does it last? Do I get to go to another facility or another team? You know another guy, you'd know Darcy Norman.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah.

Jason Weber:

So, Darcy, you know, great success with the German soccer team a bunch of years back. Has been at the head of US soccer for a long time. He's moving on. I won't say what he's doing because I'm not sure how public that is, but again, great guy to meet in person and spend some time with and thinking. So he comes from the physical therapy, physical therapist background.

Darren Burgess:

He does yeah.

Jason Weber:

But again, I love the way he thinks, the way he questions about a lot of stuff that's really not, I would be blunt and say, not necessarily the domain of a physical therapist, but this is a guy that's really trained himself up to be what I would consider, you know, elite department manager, whatever you want to call it high-performance manager, director of performance, all that stuff but extraordinary to speak to and spend some time with, and not, you know, obviously not just speed, sick stuff, I mean across the gamut of everything we're doing. You know, travelling.

Darren Burgess:

You've got to think. Guys like Galky, imagine how many scenarios they've been exposed to in their time. Like, just imagine I'm not talking, we can maybe get to. The other thing that I want to chat about is more formal education. But imagine how many different scenarios. And even if you were not particularly trying to learn, just imagine what you would learn through osmosis of being in all of those performance meetings and all of the. You know so.

Jason Weber:

But across the environments, mate. So as a national director of US soccer, he was the same as you with Australian soccer. Like you've got, all your players are at other clubs. So the ability to work across mate, different time zones, different countries, different cultures, different languages like just extraordinary, you know. And again, if I again I've got notes, I wrote notes on meetings. I must say I've not finished the MLS stuff yet but you talk about we'll get to the formal education in a moment.

Jason Weber:

But I met a young guy, felix Prossel, who has a PhD out of University of Pitt. I met him originally when he was working with their football team but we had a good chat back then and a broader discussion about sports science and you know, coding and data and all that. Anyway, he's now with the Colorado Rapids and he's running the you know sports performance data there and doing some really cool stuff. I went to his presentation and he was kind enough to mention me in that as someone who kind of put him along. But it's not formal education, mate. He's taught himself all of that stuff and I was.

Jason Weber:

You know, I can rag on sports science a bit because I think some are quite lazy. He is not. He is one of those guys who is pushing the barriers of what can we all? Right, we've got this level of data. What can we do with it? What other information can we? All right, we've got this level of data. What can we do with it? What other information can we extract from that? And once we've got that information, how can we bring that up? So, data, information, knowledge, wisdom, that's a computer science construct or data science construct, and I just saw him as a guy going right, we're going to extract everything out of this data we can, which I thought was very impressive, very impressive.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, nice, I can imagine you know that's. The best form of CPD is spending time with people like that. Oh, 100% More experience, whatever it might be, the conversations that you have in those situations, especially someone like yourself going in there, as you know, the experience that you've had to go into an environment like that it makes me think of. So the head coach at the Crows, matthew Nix, just came back from spending a week at a leadership course in Harvard. You know, came back with some, you know, some really good things and some good learnings. The thing that he was most excited about was spending some time at the Boston Celtics with our mate, with Colesie. He got out of the gym in time. Yeah, he, you know. He just said Colesie was superb, as we know Colesie is and yeah, just the access that he got, but not only that. Colesie took him through the decisions that they made, from Colesie in the leadership position, as well as the coach and the general manager that led to them, you know, getting a title and people just think, well, they've got the best team. But it's not, I mean, it's not just the best team. You're going to create the best environment which Phil and Jase and his team have Jase Talao, I guess that's the conundrum is like.

Darren Burgess:

I'm going through some formal leadership education now through a Master of Sports directorship and there's been some really good aspects through through Global Institute of Sport and, yeah, and University of East London and and there's been some really good aspects of that, but there's been some bits that are not as as good and not for designed for people like me, I guess, which they're not all designed for, but I think it's. You know, people often ask me should I be doing an MBA or should I be doing yeah, yeah, this course, or what about some of the Harvard courses? And first go and spend as much time talking to other practitioners, be they in big clubs, small clubs, different clubs and then, once you think you've got a grasp of it, don't go and look at facilities, go and you know. Then there's some education. That's good, but I think the conversations at the Coalface are going to be more meaningful.

Jason Weber:

Mate, I had a. I didn't have a lot of time. Les Spellman and I hung out for a while on a Friday night and we probably had one too many margaritas. But we started talking, we got, we had a you know about a 45 50 minute cab ride back to where we're staying and we were into. We were talking about um sacral torsion in running and compression of sa si giant. He's talking about how steve mcmillan's work on that and treating that and teaching him.

Jason Weber:

And I said I said to uh, to man, look, you know what? I'm not having this discussion many places in the world. I'm privileged to have worked with a guy named Dr Jeffrey Boyle who is extraordinary at muscle energy technique and the movement of the sacrum relative to the pelvis and all that stuff. But I said, like even that conversation, to be able to have that, and go in my head, hey, these guys are thinking in that space. I've seen that great, that that's like. It emboldens me to say, yeah, well, what we we learned, that what I might have learned with Jeffrey is right because we've seen it elsewhere. So and I think, mate, you did pose now you mentioned it last episode you talked about well, do we do formal education or do we do just CPD? We go out and meet people, Mate. I reckon it's probably got an element of if you imagine you're climbing a hill right or a mountain or whatever, you're going to have some handholds, some footholds, a bit of both mixture.

Jason Weber:

I think there's a place for all. I don't think you can say one is right, one is wrong, but I would counsel everybody to the ability to network so that you can get, because if you go on site, what you want to do is you want to have time spent with people just to see what's happening, but to have time to have some more in detail and non-pressured discussions, which I think I was very fortunate to do in America. I think the ability for me to sit and have breakfast for two hours with Martin, to hang with Darcy and those sort of guys, you know, even Dave Teeny we had a bit more time to chat Get Harrison Draper I mean all those guys, my lads from Charlotte, you know, Adam Parr, the great coach, Gorka, Pete Gorka like great conversations that we were able to have. Yeah, so I think if you get a CPD opportunity with an environment, it's good to set some benchmarks.

Jason Weber:

So, practically from my perspective, as someone who certainly when I was at Fremantle I had a lot of people come in. Actually that's unreasonable. Not a lot, I had a few, but when I had them come in I would have an agenda. I said I want you to see this and this and this and this. I want you in this meeting. There's this meeting you can't go to just because it's too heavy, whatever. But then there are other sides, so you've got to give. So I always said you know, you've got to owe me. You come into my environment and the number one thing I said was you've just got to review. I want you to review to my key staff and I what you liked, what you didn't like, what you've seen different, because we have to learn as well. But I think that always is a great learning opportunity for the person visiting and for you, because you want to get something out of that visit.

Darren Burgess:

It was again showing my age. 2006 was my first visit to Tony Strudwick at man United. First of many, yeah, yeah, he said to me at the time. Yeah, mate, you can see this, this and this, but I want you to present to me and my staff about how we can use GPS. Yeah, there you go, I'm presenting at GPS. So Alex Ferguson comes in for a brief period of time and then leaves again. They're saying, yeah, we'll show you, man, you, but at that point Aussies were at the forefront of GPS.

Darren Burgess:

So, yeah, come and present. So brilliant, that's exactly how it should be. And whenever in that situation whenever I'm in that, certainly at Arsenal when people would come through, you would find out, okay, what's your expertise? Okay, your expertise is, you know running mechanics. I want you to present to the group on running mechanics If you want to have a look through our facilities and you know. So, find out what their expertise is and find out what you can use from them.

Jason Weber:

And maybe like maybe that's something like young coaches always say it's hard to network, and you know. So find out what their expertise is and find out what you can use from them and maybe, like, maybe that's something like young coaches always say it's hard to network. Well, I think if the opportunity presents, you should be front foot, hey this is what we're doing in our environment.

Jason Weber:

I'd be more than happy to present to you. And, yeah, like, front load it. Front load it so that when you go into these places you feel like you're contributing something to them. The other aspect I would say and you kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier is don't get like, yeah, it's great to go and see all the big ones and everyone aspires to that, but sometimes it's not possible.

Jason Weber:

I learned something years and years ago when I first started. You know, training anybody out of university. I was once told by a coach train anyone you can, because you will learn about the human body and how it responds from every single person you ever train and it will get better and better Again. My point to that is, I think, even if you can get into like I tell you, I've been impressed like Bolton Wanderers, who are a Tier 3 team in the UK, but, mate, I'm very impressed with their staff. Like they've got some again, in my opinion, people that would throw wood on the fire. They can think quick.

Jason Weber:

Jack Inman, which we've talked about. I've got a couple other guys. They're just proactive guys who are looking for an opportunity to be better, and I don't think because they're not at man United yet, or man City or whatever, that they're not that good. It's just sometimes that opportunity doesn't present or whatever, but I think there's some cracking minds. So I would always counsel people not to be too stuck up about things but in the same breath, work with it.

Jason Weber:

One thing I have learned from SpeedSig absolutely categorically and this is probably more of an entrepreneur thing, but it is relevant in that you treat everybody exactly the same and it comes around. So I've met with coaches who aren't at the top university and not the top this, but they're like, yeah, we can see it with the value we'll get on speed seat. Or I've had ones where they go, well, we can't yet, but then that guy goes from that bottom team to a top team and then all of a sudden you're there. So I think that's not so much the speed sig story, but I think the critical message is respect everybody and really try to see what people have got to teach you and you've got to teach them. You've got to bring something to the table for sure.

Darren Burgess:

um, certainly it is the the time of giving, and we've given plenty of shout outs today. It's probably a record of the number of people that we've mentioned today. Let's wrap it up Thanks for a solid year.

Jason Weber:

This is a big year. Big year. Thank you, eddie, thank you.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, hopefully people have enjoyed it. I've enjoyed chatting to you and we'll go around again.

Jason Weber:

Yeah, well, we'll be back. We yeah, probably about 10 days on. Well, we'll be back. We'll be back a little bit in January, We'll have a bit of a spell. But yeah, it's been a pleasure. We've clearly got more than 13 listeners now I've had so many people in America claim to be in the top 13. So that joke's long gone.

Darren Burgess:

It's done. That's the New Year's resolution for you is to not mention that.

Jason Weber:

Yeah, yeah I didn't mention it, that was just an update. But to everyone who does listen and talks about us and shares, thank you and we look forward to next year.

Darren Burgess:

See you.

Jason Weber:

Virgil, you have a great week. Hope Santa looks after you. See you, sir.