Speaker 1: Welcome back to Athletes Authority on air. We are on
Speaker 1: to episode one hundred and eighty four. We continue to
Speaker 1: tick them off and we've got a couple of people
Speaker 1: in the studio here. We've got Tommy Watkins. Welcome back mate,
Speaker 1: two weeks it is mate.
Speaker 2: It's good to get a bit of a regular thing
Speaker 2: going in.
Speaker 1: Huge, yeah, huge, and you might be able to sense
Speaker 1: the nerves through the microphone because Big Alex Burger is
Speaker 1: in their house.
Speaker 3: He is our residence speed guru.
Speaker 1: I don't really like using the word guru all the
Speaker 1: time because an old manager used to say today's guru
Speaker 1: is tomorrow's hack.
Speaker 3: So he is a very talented man.
Speaker 1: But he came on board a few months ago with
Speaker 1: Athletes Authority and really leads out our field program, our
Speaker 1: speed and conditioning side of things, but also fantastic coach
Speaker 1: on the floor.
Speaker 4: So welcome, thanks you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: It's obviously good to be in here with some big
Speaker 5: dogs and talk about some cool stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, it's exciting to get you on for
Speaker 1: a bit of background so people know who you are,
Speaker 1: because everyone knows who Tommy is.
Speaker 3: What have you done? Where have you been?
Speaker 1: Obviously your key role at the moment is here with
Speaker 1: AA along with the Oli Rus. So give us a
Speaker 1: little bit of a background. I know, if you're into soccer,
Speaker 1: you'll love it. If you're not into soccer, you might
Speaker 1: tune out. But Burch hit us up for what the
Speaker 1: past sort of decade has been for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so football has always been been my passion. Never
Speaker 5: was good enough as a player, so for me, the
Speaker 5: next best thing was to kind of get involved in
Speaker 5: a strength and conditioning capacity and sort of still be
Speaker 5: in and around it.
Speaker 4: I spent about.
Speaker 5: Six years in the UK working for various different football
Speaker 5: clubs in academy settings, and then sort of when Covid
Speaker 5: hit took a specific interest in speed and sort of
Speaker 5: developing speed for footballers, and then kind of mash that
Speaker 5: all together with my role at AA, and then concurrently
Speaker 5: with working with the Oli Rus when we're in camp,
Speaker 5: which happens kind of within FIFA windows. So yeah, kind
Speaker 5: of working those two things.
Speaker 1: And for those overseas, Oli Rus are our Olympic representative
Speaker 1: soccer team or typically under twenty ones per se.
Speaker 5: Under twenty three three bad twenty threes Nash, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 5: under twenty three is men's national teams, So that keeps
Speaker 5: me busy at different times throughout the year. And yeah,
Speaker 5: cool to be able to put that together with what
Speaker 5: we do here at AA.
Speaker 1: So one hundred percent and it is. It is obviously
Speaker 1: a speed theme today. Hence I've got burge on Tommy's
Speaker 1: not that fast, but we thought it would bring them
Speaker 1: anyway because it's available. But let's kick off with a little
Speaker 1: bit of discussion, which is quite topical at the moment.
Speaker 1: We see going back and forth a lot between speed
Speaker 1: coaches versus strength editioning coaches that maybe teach speed in
Speaker 1: team sport. You've worked with both a real pure speed
Speaker 1: side of things through Roger Fabri's academy along with team sport.
Speaker 3: Athletes a lot.
Speaker 1: What's your take on the fact where we'll see an
Speaker 1: argument to say team sport athletes run differently, therefore they
Speaker 1: should be trained differently, versus they're still going to want
Speaker 1: to identify proper shapes, proper technique. We want to hone
Speaker 1: in on that and we know that it will bleed
Speaker 1: down to what they need into team sport.
Speaker 3: Where where do you sit with that?
Speaker 1: Because obviously your current role is pretty much training speed
Speaker 1: for if it's not the only ruse which are all
Speaker 1: teams sport athletes. It's our athletes here, which our team
Speaker 1: sport athletes. But also a mixed shure. You we had
Speaker 1: May running Yesterdayho's a boxer. You know she got out
Speaker 1: on track obviously for conditioning. Good to mix it up
Speaker 1: on stuff. But you're still teaching shapes, positions, all these
Speaker 1: type of things. So talk to us a little bit
Speaker 1: around your suppose mentality or your reasoning and principles around
Speaker 1: the application of it.
Speaker 5: Yes, So for me, I think the main difference is
Speaker 5: people I'm on neither side of the fence in the
Speaker 5: sense that some people argue that field sport athletes don't
Speaker 5: need to be trained like track athletes. They make slightly
Speaker 5: different shapes. Their starting position isn't off the blocks, for example,
Speaker 5: and that you know that the things that apply to
Speaker 5: a track athlete don't necessarily apply directly to a field
Speaker 5: sport athlete.
Speaker 4: I think for me, they make similar shapes.
Speaker 5: So becoming a more efficient mover is going to a
Speaker 5: positive flow and effect to field spoort athletes, even if
Speaker 5: you make slight changes. And where the difference for me
Speaker 5: really comes for field athletes is that acceleration piece in
Speaker 5: that with a field track athlete. A track athlete, sorry,
Speaker 5: we're trying to really teach them to project from the blocks,
Speaker 5: and that's not always applicable for a field athlete. You're
Speaker 5: constantly moving. So the way I kind of think about
Speaker 5: it is that applying force quicker to the floor in
Speaker 5: a field athlete is more relevant to say, a track athlete,
Speaker 5: where they're trying to really project and produce really high forces,
Speaker 5: particularly in the first couple of steps.
Speaker 1: I think acceleration across we mentioned before me and Tomy
Speaker 1: discussing around court and field athletes. Field athletes obviously will
Speaker 1: have that max velocity component.
Speaker 3: They certainly do.
Speaker 1: Court athletes don't really reach that max velocity component. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about acceleration, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people agree that acceleration I say it a lot that
Speaker 1: acceleration something that is probably the most influence that we
Speaker 1: can have when we're talking gym setting again, I'm almost
Speaker 1: sick of the argument of people saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to sprint to get faster, Like, surely everyone knows
Speaker 1: that now. I feel like we probably don't need to
Speaker 1: keep harping on at about that. But when we talk
Speaker 1: about gym involvement and strength conditioning involvement. There's always been
Speaker 1: that mindset for me that I could influence acceleration the
Speaker 1: most in the gym those first couple of steps. And
Speaker 1: to your point you've just said that, realistically, when we
Speaker 1: look at a track athlete, it is off that stop,
Speaker 1: that block start, it's locking into a position and on
Speaker 1: that gun, just producing as much fucking force as you can.
Speaker 1: When we're talking field, as you said, often they are
Speaker 1: on the move, they're in different positions. What type of drilling,
Speaker 1: what type of things do you look at to use,
Speaker 1: whether it be in a team environment or in our
Speaker 1: environment that you feel influenced that the most.
Speaker 3: What sort of drills have you used or positional.
Speaker 1: Starts have you used that probably are most successful from
Speaker 1: a field sport athlete, You think, yeah, I quite like
Speaker 1: a couple of.
Speaker 5: Things I've been using recently, as like a disadvantage start,
Speaker 5: which is used quite common commonly in sort of acceleration
Speaker 5: type sessions, like for example, from a kneeling position or
Speaker 5: a push up position. I kind of like pairing that
Speaker 5: up with something like a dow acceleration. Why I like
Speaker 5: that is because taking the arms away from me the
Speaker 5: arms kind of counterbalance what's happening at the legs, and
Speaker 5: if you take that away, the athletes have to work
Speaker 5: much much harder to kind of use their legs like
Speaker 5: pistons to kind of apply force to the floor really
Speaker 5: really quickly. So I kind of like putting different drills
Speaker 5: together that really harness on the way an athlete should
Speaker 5: feel when they're accelerating, rather than necessarily saying this particular
Speaker 5: drill will make you faster. That's not how I kind
Speaker 5: of think about it. I kind of think about it
Speaker 5: in the sense that if I give an athlete a drill,
Speaker 5: or two drills, or three drills, how can I put
Speaker 5: those three different drills together so that they take one
Speaker 5: piece from each drill about how I want them to
Speaker 5: feel during a certain exercise or drill, And then can
Speaker 5: they put all those different elements together when I'm asking
Speaker 5: them to execute in an acceleration a pure acceleration type event,
Speaker 5: for example, like a disadvantage start or a push up start,
Speaker 5: or a falling start, or just a three point start
Speaker 5: or two point start. So that's how I kind of
Speaker 5: like to coach acceleration in particular. Some stuff that I
Speaker 5: think has been working really really well with the athletes,
Speaker 5: particularly at Athletes Authority. Lately in that off season we've
Speaker 5: been able to really hammer away at it because we
Speaker 5: don't have that kind of pressures of long, long weeks
Speaker 5: and high training and running loads whilst they're doing their
Speaker 5: pre season. So I think it's been pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then Toby, obviously the environment you're in. We
Speaker 1: had a good chat about this last week. Speed is great,
Speaker 1: but how the hell do you apply it into some
Speaker 1: massive group settings, in particular a pathways program where you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, also hundreds some clubs, thousands of kids, especially
Speaker 1: like an American college setup.
Speaker 3: The hell are you influencing things like this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question and probably something probably something
Speaker 2: that I'm not going to stand here and say have
Speaker 2: all the answers to it. Wouldn't say well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to stand up certain if you keep coming at me, Yeah,
Speaker 2: leagues yourself, man. I think I think for me, it's
Speaker 2: it's probably having a look and similar to what Bird
Speaker 2: was saying, they're probably not trying to think of like,
Speaker 2: all right, how are we going to get all of
Speaker 2: these athletes you know amazingly quicker? Like that's not going
Speaker 2: to happen in a pre season, particularly when you're teaching
Speaker 2: so many athletes.
Speaker 6: What I'm looking for is.
Speaker 2: When we're doing anything within this speed, and we will
Speaker 2: start with a technical block I'm going to call it.
Speaker 2: But what we do is choose a couple of very
Speaker 2: very simple drills that we would like to do that
Speaker 2: are going to resemble the positions that I would like
Speaker 2: to hit during our sort of accelerations or maximum velocity running.
Speaker 2: And so we're not trying to hammer them and do
Speaker 2: you know sixty four different drills and challenge them massively.
Speaker 2: I want to stay consistent. So we picked a few
Speaker 2: different key exercises, which is going to look at our
Speaker 2: sort of hip block position, We're going to have a
Speaker 2: look at a cycle position, and then we've got some
Speaker 2: for projection and that's it, and we've kept them consistent.
Speaker 6: With the kids.
Speaker 2: So literally, our technical component is sort of three or
Speaker 2: four drills which they will repeat each week, and we've
Speaker 2: split them up into so with our squad, we always
Speaker 2: get them in sort of three to four groups, so
Speaker 2: we only are dealing with ten to fifteen athletes at
Speaker 2: a time, and that's the big thing. We run a
Speaker 2: carousel style drill base, so the coaches will have them
Speaker 2: when they come to me for speed or to our
Speaker 2: conditioning coaches. With the other programs we only have ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen athletes, we'll pick those four drills that we
Speaker 2: think are going to influence the key positions that we want.
Speaker 6: We work hard on those.
Speaker 2: And then we try to encourage those athletes to then
Speaker 2: practice or think about those positions when we then let
Speaker 2: them run fast. Now, it'd be silly to think that
Speaker 2: off a couple of you know, exposures, are we going
Speaker 2: to change massively what their technique looks like in those longer,
Speaker 2: longer accelerations and max Lossit.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: But the theory behind that is if we keep consistent
Speaker 2: and keep the similar queuing and motor patterns going, that
Speaker 2: hopefully over the course of the preseason we can start
Speaker 2: to influence some of those key positions that are going
Speaker 2: to make us more efficient runners like bird set. So
Speaker 2: for me, that's where we do. We keep it really
Speaker 2: quite simple. And then the other part, you know we
Speaker 2: spoke about exposing them to speed, it's actually letting them
Speaker 2: and you know we've built up over the four weeks
Speaker 2: to start off within the preseason, but starting to let
Speaker 2: them run fast and feel what that feels like. You know,
Speaker 2: it is taxing. It's difficult to run fast. So getting
Speaker 2: them to do that over the sort of built up
Speaker 2: period of time and just allowing them to run fast,
Speaker 2: they're going to naturally start to pick and choose and
Speaker 2: feel better with what we're doing with them.
Speaker 1: Do you feel it's appropriate for you to get them
Speaker 1: to do that when you don't know what it feels
Speaker 1: like to run fast?
Speaker 3: Is it a bit about needing to practice what you preach?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: If you came down to Gore Hill, we might get
Speaker 2: Samsy's opinion on this. When LOCKX and I were doing
Speaker 2: some speed efforts and I was absolutely blowing him out
Speaker 2: of the water.
Speaker 4: So is that staff race still eyes?
Speaker 3: I think it should. I definitely think it should be.
Speaker 1: I keep putting my money where my mouth is every time,
Speaker 1: and everyone gets too scared to stand up, and I
Speaker 1: don't admit it. I reckon maybe someone here could beat me,
Speaker 1: but no one's gutsy enough to jump on.
Speaker 5: So Georgie, probably what do you say, Tommy? Two people
Speaker 5: that say to you, for example, I only get fifteen
Speaker 5: minutes with athletes in for example, one or two warm
Speaker 5: ups inverted commas a week and I'm not going to
Speaker 5: make a change in that in terms of speed or
Speaker 5: acceleration because it's so little time that why should I
Speaker 5: bother chasing a skips or so on and so forth
Speaker 5: in that little amount of time? Like, what's your answer
Speaker 5: to that? Because it's something that I come across a lot,
Speaker 5: and I know where I stand with that. I think
Speaker 5: it's important to kind of microdose and all that kind
Speaker 5: of stuff or what's your take on that kind of
Speaker 5: question or whatever?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I reckon two parts to that.
Speaker 2: Firstly, I think really really importantly is having a discussion
Speaker 2: with your coaching staff and trying to get them to
Speaker 2: see the value in speed. I think if a program
Speaker 2: doesn't value speed or doesn't put the time and effort
Speaker 2: into it, you get out what you put in. So like, ultimately,
Speaker 2: if a coach is only going to give you ten minutes, right,
Speaker 2: I'd be lying. If I said, oh, you can still
Speaker 2: do amazing work and you're going to get all your athletes.
Speaker 6: Heaps faster, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: But I would then argue or look at what is
Speaker 2: the minimum effective dose so we don't go backwards? Probably
Speaker 2: in if you have that ten to fifteen minutes in
Speaker 2: terms of the technical drilling, if I only had ten
Speaker 2: or fifteen minutes once a week, I would actually probably
Speaker 2: remove the technical drilling from that component, and I would
Speaker 2: look at the gym session and where I could start
Speaker 2: to hit similar position and strengthen the athlete in key
Speaker 2: positions in the gym. I would then utilize that ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen minutes for actually running fast, and that would
Speaker 2: be how I would go if I only had ten
Speaker 2: or fifteen minutes. Luckily, I think, and the biggest sort
Speaker 2: of message I can say to coaches out there is
Speaker 2: if you think it's important and you value it. Something
Speaker 2: I got told very young is the moments that matter
Speaker 2: happen at speed. So speed is what matters. And I
Speaker 2: think if you look at all sports, right, or team
Speaker 2: based sports that we're talking about largely here, all of
Speaker 2: the important moments in the game or the game breaking
Speaker 2: moments happen at speed. If you show to that to
Speaker 2: a coach, no coach has ever said to you, oh shit,
Speaker 2: slow down, you made them too fast, right, No one's
Speaker 2: ever said that, right, So I think if we can
Speaker 2: communicate that effectively to the coaches, why it's important have
Speaker 2: examples of how speed has helped your team or what
Speaker 2: that will influence. I think you can get them on side,
Speaker 2: but if ultimately you can't get them on side, then
Speaker 2: I think think save the ten to fifteen minutes for
Speaker 2: running fast and look at in the gym what can
Speaker 2: we do to influence key positions.
Speaker 1: Also, I mean that's worked quite well historically and I've
Speaker 1: seen work well as well as being involved in it
Speaker 1: is speed doesn't necessarily need to be done with the team,
Speaker 1: and it'd be handy if everyone got to be quicker.
Speaker 1: But there's some positions in a lot of sports that
Speaker 1: really doesn't need to be much more speedier. I if
Speaker 1: we're talking NRL, a big forward, if they don't get quicker.
Speaker 3: It's probably not the end of the world. Be great,
Speaker 3: but not the end of the world.
Speaker 1: Wingers, centers, fullbacks obviously absolute game changes. So when you're working,
Speaker 1: especially in a professional setting where you have positional coaches,
Speaker 1: you have grouping of coaches that will work with specific
Speaker 1: wingers orthoughll in AFL, there's a midfield coach, a back coach, whatever.
Speaker 1: There will be a lot of moments in training where
Speaker 1: they will break and do positional work. So there's no
Speaker 1: reason why you as an SEC coach if you can't
Speaker 1: get the time I'm in the prep warm up within
Speaker 1: training that you can't start to expose the positional coach
Speaker 1: to saying, because I can guarantee you if you're a
Speaker 1: midfield coach in the AFL, you want your boys faster
Speaker 1: or your girls faster. So what can you do where
Speaker 1: there might be some skill element, but you can open
Speaker 1: them up to expose them to max velocity. I think
Speaker 1: probably too many SMC coaches get embreded in this like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be a conditioning block, that's my time.
Speaker 1: I'm in the gym working with coaches to find opportunities
Speaker 1: to mold this type of speed exposure into positional training
Speaker 1: is game changing. I probably don't see it enough, but
Speaker 1: I've seen it work really well when it's done well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I agree one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And looking probably the key demands of what those positions
Speaker 2: do exactly as you said.
Speaker 6: You know, for your middles.
Speaker 2: In rugby league, a lot of their work is accelerative work,
Speaker 2: So trying to do some more resisted acceleration work or
Speaker 2: stuff like that where we can and that can be
Speaker 2: done during the gym session, right, Like that kind of
Speaker 2: stuff can be utilized in a gym session where you
Speaker 2: could do a five or ten meter resistant accel and
Speaker 2: that is going to influence what they do on the
Speaker 2: field massively. But as you said, then if you've got
Speaker 2: the wingers or fullbacks, you know it can be as
Speaker 2: simple as doing like their big sweeping pendulum shape. If
Speaker 2: we have something similar where we can involve a skills
Speaker 2: coach but get them to get through at speed and
Speaker 2: accelerate and open up on those big C runs or
Speaker 2: J lines as we'd probably call them, then you tick
Speaker 2: him sort of both boxes, which I think then coaches,
Speaker 2: you're not taken away from their time, but you're also
Speaker 2: showing how you can influence and.
Speaker 3: Add value there exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think, as a bit of a segue to
Speaker 1: our next point that I wanted to cover off, I
Speaker 1: had a great coach back at the Giants, Mark Chocko Williams.
Speaker 3: For those that are in AFL probably know him.
Speaker 1: He is the type of guy that he's never wrong,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't always say it in the best way,
Speaker 1: and he used to have a pretty strong philosophy that
Speaker 1: he used to preach every time we used to do
Speaker 1: speed stuff as he walked past and would abuse us
Speaker 1: about doing speed stuff. Is the fastest an AFL player
Speaker 1: ever is when they're draft, because that's when they're fast.
Speaker 1: They're light when they're in the AFL. I've never seen
Speaker 1: anyone get faster. All you guys try to show these
Speaker 1: speed results and anything, but they never get faster. The
Speaker 1: fastest they ever ass when they join. Now, as an
Speaker 1: overarching premise, probably not accurate, but as a anecdotal and
Speaker 1: probably raw account of team sport athletes, he's probably not wrong.
Speaker 1: And funnily enough, Nathan Keeley actually threw up on his
Speaker 1: Instagram this exact comment around this speed momentum concept. And
Speaker 1: it's something that I've always really pushed with coaches that
Speaker 1: and players to be honest that if I'm putting eight
Speaker 1: kilos on you over three or four years, if you
Speaker 1: come to us in your top speed's nine point five
Speaker 1: meters a second, your best instantaneous speed, and then we
Speaker 1: put nine kilos on you and you still have that speed,
Speaker 1: have we gotten you faster or have we increased your
Speaker 1: ability to move the mass that you currently have that
Speaker 1: speed momentum increase.
Speaker 3: I don't want to completely.
Speaker 1: Agree with Jock, But to be honest, it's hard because
Speaker 1: when you see in a team environment, like we just said,
Speaker 1: often we don't have huge amounts of time to create
Speaker 1: these absolute speed beast. If they're not arriving to us
Speaker 1: fast already, then it's very hard to make them faster.
Speaker 1: Can we make them more resilient to their speeds? I
Speaker 1: certainly think so. Can we maintain their instantaneous velocities we
Speaker 1: add mass, in which case we've made a big difference.
Speaker 3: I definitely think we can.
Speaker 1: The question I have for you is do you think
Speaker 1: in a team environment Let's use Australian sport because we're
Speaker 1: probably the most and net with that, we know it.
Speaker 1: They get drafted into NRL AFL in the soccer world,
Speaker 1: they start there.
Speaker 3: How much faster do you actually make someone?
Speaker 5: I think in the soccer world, I think you really can,
Speaker 5: because I think it's something that's really really neglected. I
Speaker 5: was having this conversation with someone the other day and
Speaker 5: talking about what their preseason looked like and how they felt.
Speaker 5: And we've actually got an athlete here that Wedden did
Speaker 5: a half marathon with no training. So he's a pretty
Speaker 5: fit guy and he did it in a relatively decent time,
Speaker 5: and I sort of asked him, you know, what was
Speaker 5: your preseason like? And his preseasons typically looked like, well,
Speaker 5: I did a six k run and then I did
Speaker 5: some interval running, and long story short, a lot of running,
Speaker 5: a lot of junk running. Since he's come here, we
Speaker 5: kind of flipped that on its head and focused on strength,
Speaker 5: speed exposure with us a couple of times a week,
Speaker 5: working more explosively with some of his lists. His kind
Speaker 5: of movement jumps gone up six centimeters, his RSI has
Speaker 5: gone up fifty centimeters.
Speaker 4: So can I make that guy faster?
Speaker 5: And can that have a positive impact on his ability
Speaker 5: on the field as a soccer player?
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: I think it's something that football is massively, massively behind
Speaker 5: AFL rugby, rugby union. I think the paradigm is that
Speaker 5: we have as a soccer player, we have a running sport.
Speaker 5: So let's run around, let's jog around, and so let's
Speaker 5: do endless fitness, endless conditioning, And all we've really done
Speaker 5: is made made our players more tired before the season
Speaker 5: even arrives. Have we put them in positions whether they're
Speaker 5: exposed to higher forces and high velocities, in their sprinting.
Speaker 5: Have we increased their strength, increased how explosive they are
Speaker 5: with a typical preseason Probably not so obviously unbiased with
Speaker 5: the whole soccer thing, but I think can we make
Speaker 5: soccer players better faster? Yes, because where it's such a
Speaker 5: low hanging fruit already. In general, I think are we
Speaker 5: always making athletes faster? Not overall, I think we're creating
Speaker 5: better shapes, maybe helping them interact with the ground a
Speaker 5: little bit better. And maybe their top speed before was
Speaker 5: thirty thirty kilometers an hour for argument's sake, and the
Speaker 5: top speed is still around that mark, but now they
Speaker 5: can hit that much more efficiently, so I think they're
Speaker 5: getting to that mark a lot easier. So I think
Speaker 5: that's also has a really positive flow on effect to
Speaker 5: their actual sport. Whether we increase that actual top number
Speaker 5: or not, I think it's it's still really valuable.
Speaker 2: Going back to the probably the positional chat there as well.
Speaker 2: Lock you and I have had this chat before, but
Speaker 2: around protecting someone's superpower, and I think you know, if
Speaker 2: you players are going to come into a team or
Speaker 2: are selected in a team for a specific reason, right,
Speaker 2: and so you know if they've been selected because they're
Speaker 2: fast right well as a strength and conditioning coach or as.
Speaker 6: A team you know, coaches included in that.
Speaker 2: But we want to make sure they stay fast, right
Speaker 2: because otherwise they lose that superpower for why they were recruited. Now,
Speaker 2: of course along the way, we want to eliminate or
Speaker 2: reduce some of their deficits, but not at the detriment
Speaker 2: of taking away their superpower.
Speaker 6: So if we had.
Speaker 2: Someone I'll use rugby league as an example that's playing
Speaker 2: on the on the wing or in the centers who
Speaker 2: is very very good on their feet, very quick, you know,
Speaker 2: an elusive right, and then we go and put team
Speaker 2: on him. Are they still going to be as good
Speaker 2: as what they were before we put that weight on them?
Speaker 2: So by doing that, yeah, they might be better in
Speaker 2: the contact, but now they're just like any other player
Speaker 2: that's pretty.
Speaker 6: Good on their feet.
Speaker 2: And yeah they might be a little bit better in
Speaker 2: the contact, but before they were a weapon on their feet.
Speaker 6: So have we made them better? Have we just molded
Speaker 6: them to something else?
Speaker 2: So I think identifying what people are brought in for
Speaker 2: on the contrary or the flip side, your big power.
Speaker 2: You know, middles that need to withstand lots of contact,
Speaker 2: so or use big junior Paulo that you had there right, Like, yes,
Speaker 2: we want to make him a little bit more explosive
Speaker 2: as we spoke about. But if we strip nine or
Speaker 2: ten KOs because we get another you know, half a
Speaker 2: kilometer or a kilometer of max velocity, we've probably not
Speaker 2: made him a better football player.
Speaker 6: Yeah, probably taken away super bad.
Speaker 1: Well, that speed momentum changes, doesn't Like now he's he's
Speaker 1: very marginally quicker, but he's now not having nine kilos
Speaker 1: of mass behind him when maybe he was one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty comes down one hundred and fifteen.
Speaker 3: Which I've seen those changes in big forwards.
Speaker 1: And now you've got one hundred and thirty kilo blokes
Speaker 1: running at you, and now you're only one hundred and fifteen. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't get how strong you are. Sometimes physics wins
Speaker 1: out and it is And I've always said that like
Speaker 1: a homogeneous group is not a team. Like a team
Speaker 1: is designed to have specially it's a group of specialists
Speaker 1: that come together.
Speaker 3: You've got to have your fast players, you've got to have.
Speaker 1: Your big players, tall, strong, whatever it might be, it's
Speaker 1: got to be positionally demanding, and you've got to set
Speaker 1: it for that.
Speaker 3: And I've seen it plenty of times.
Speaker 1: In one particular reason, we had a winger that we
Speaker 1: just had so many hamstring injuries. Super fast, super fast,
Speaker 1: but you see it even in the developmental stage where
Speaker 1: he's already fast, so we don't need to do speed
Speaker 1: work with him. What needs to happen he needs to
Speaker 1: do extra weights. And what is a majority of extra
Speaker 1: weights upper body? So you get these over developed upper
Speaker 1: bodies on these skinny legs that are fast and tenderness,
Speaker 1: and you just get all these hammis because what are
Speaker 1: they do in the game. They go back to their strength,
Speaker 1: which is running fast. But in training you know they
Speaker 1: try and get exposed to it, but they're never doing
Speaker 1: the full max velocity work because they're always doing extra
Speaker 1: weights or something like that, because they don't need more
Speaker 1: speed work they're already fast. Any spot on, I think
Speaker 1: when it's the old adage.
Speaker 3: Of sharpening the sword is exactly what you need to
Speaker 3: do with them.
Speaker 1: You need to bring weaknesses up where you can, but
Speaker 1: I personally feel that you also need to really focus
Speaker 1: on their strengths because you need to maintain it, especially
Speaker 1: as they get older, because that becomes even.
Speaker 3: More their superpower.
Speaker 1: Where in a general overview, there's always going to be
Speaker 1: athletes that coming to teams that you can make fast.
Speaker 1: I do believe that, but I think as a whole
Speaker 1: often what a general approach is going to be is
Speaker 1: you're going to recruit someone who's fast, you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that they get exposed to speed as much
Speaker 1: as possible, and positions to help them be resilient to
Speaker 1: their speed. Sometimes their own strength can be the thing
Speaker 1: that damages them. All you need to then do is
Speaker 1: make sure one they can perform like that on game
Speaker 1: day two, they can repeat it on game day and
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter the last ten minutes they're still
Speaker 1: hitting those max velocities. That's a huge win in itself.
Speaker 1: And finally they can do that for as long as
Speaker 1: they get in their career. So it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they start to die at twenty five twenty six because
Speaker 1: they're starting to lose their spark because they're being either
Speaker 1: having too much body mass put on them, they're training
Speaker 1: demands a way too volume driven where they're just starting
Speaker 1: to fatigue and they're not be able to tolerate it.
Speaker 1: That at twenty nine point thirty, their specialty is still
Speaker 1: their specialty because unfortunately, and we see it all the time,
Speaker 1: the ones that have a key specialty of speed are
Speaker 1: usually the ones that lose their spark the earliest. The grinding, tough,
Speaker 1: kind of just you know, homogeneous, white bloke that is
Speaker 1: kind of average at everything is the one that probably
Speaker 1: lasts the longest because there's not the same decriment as
Speaker 1: they get older, you're just absolute ferrari that's lightning quick.
Speaker 1: Are usually the ones that you see fall off the
Speaker 1: cliff quite quickly as they get older if they're not
Speaker 1: done properly. And to be honest, it is very hard
Speaker 1: to maintain that type of speed up until your thirties.
Speaker 3: If you're doing it, you're doing a bloody good job.
Speaker 2: And I think with that as well, and something that
Speaker 2: is obvious but we probably haven't touched on. You know,
Speaker 2: you talk about track and how we're building towards a
Speaker 2: single event. You know, they will run fast, or need
Speaker 2: to require to run fast in competition once every couple
Speaker 2: of months, or in major competitions, it might be once
Speaker 2: every couple of weeks. At lesser competitions, but they often
Speaker 2: won't put out their mac speed. What you spoke about
Speaker 2: there before Locke as well, is in season, we will
Speaker 2: require these guys to be able to produce high intensity
Speaker 2: or maximal efforts every single week. But also then throw
Speaker 2: in that, you know, if you call it junk running
Speaker 2: or volume underneath it that an effort in And that's
Speaker 2: why even when we do speed training at the start
Speaker 2: of training, and that's probably another topic in itself, where
Speaker 2: you do speed exposure at the start of training when
Speaker 2: athletes are fresh, yet often in the seventy fifth minute
Speaker 2: or this the eightieth minute of a game, athletes are
Speaker 2: going to have to produce a maximal velocity or maximal effort.
Speaker 2: So are we doing them an injustice? Yes, it's probably safer.
Speaker 2: But are we doing them in justice by not having
Speaker 2: speed exposure or training.
Speaker 6: At the end of sessions?
Speaker 1: Yeah as well, And to be honest, it probably highlights
Speaker 1: that the vast difference when we talk about sport specific
Speaker 1: speed because like a team sport athlete doesn't need three
Speaker 1: weeks to recover from one hundred meters sprint that they
Speaker 1: do a training.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I can.
Speaker 1: Guarantee you right now, all those Olympians that ran in
Speaker 1: the final, they took a long time recover. Its only
Speaker 1: one hundred meters, but the speeds at which they read
Speaker 1: are so close to their maximum ability humanly possible.
Speaker 3: It takes a lot to recover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you look at multiple Well, ye had the little
Speaker 1: comment for people at home.
Speaker 3: He sort of warmed up for a bit of a
Speaker 3: comment there. What was it, mate, I was.
Speaker 6: Just going to say, is that why you take four
Speaker 6: weeks off every time?
Speaker 3: It is?
Speaker 6: Mate?
Speaker 3: When I beat people like you, I got to celebrate that.
Speaker 3: I blame the kids for the kids of that.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you look at the demand of
Speaker 1: say a pure track sprinter, is not just that one effort.
Speaker 1: It's the heats, the semis, the final Some of them
Speaker 1: back up in a two hundred the next day. So
Speaker 1: some of those competitions where they're running it, where they
Speaker 1: are like the recovery profile is very different to a
Speaker 1: team sport athlete. But nonetheless it's they're all demanding regardless
Speaker 1: of what you're doing.
Speaker 5: Sorry, go on, how would you incorporate something like you
Speaker 5: mentioned before, Like you were talking about doing sort of
Speaker 5: max exposures or close to max exposures, perhaps towards the
Speaker 5: end of training, when there is a kind of element
Speaker 5: of fatigue. How would you kind of incorporate that. Is
Speaker 5: that something that you think about incorporating like a lot.
Speaker 5: Is it something that you kind of microcycle every couple
Speaker 5: of weeks, or.
Speaker 4: Like, how would you kind of incorporate something like that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would.
Speaker 2: I would probably differentiate between having speed exposure at the
Speaker 2: back end of training and then full out max velocity
Speaker 2: let's crack the whips. We do a lot of and
Speaker 2: getting further down the preseason, probably not as much right
Speaker 2: this second, but we do a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: live game or live play in training, whether that's thirteen
Speaker 2: on thirteen in rugby egg or small sided games where
Speaker 2: they are going to get far similar to game profile stuff,
Speaker 2: and that's at the back end of training. Often you'll
Speaker 2: do your you know, your small technical stuff and that's
Speaker 2: both from a coaching standpoint as well as the speeds
Speaker 2: at the start. But then you let the boys roll
Speaker 2: into They might do you know, two ten minute blocks
Speaker 2: or two fifteen minute blocks of opposed live play, and
Speaker 2: so in that you allow essentially the live play to unfold.
Speaker 2: We don't pull things back unless you're in a period
Speaker 2: of unloading, but you know, general speaking, we'll let them
Speaker 2: run fast. If they make a line break, let them
Speaker 2: play through. If they need to do a recovery chase like,
Speaker 2: let them do that. So we are getting exposure to
Speaker 2: that sort of profile or style of.
Speaker 6: Running at training at the back end.
Speaker 2: Then have played around with a little bit of I'm
Speaker 2: going to say, repeat speed, but it's not maximum velocity
Speaker 2: but holding tempo speed and stuff that we have done
Speaker 2: at the back end of training before, which just seem
Speaker 2: to work really well where you kind of do like,
Speaker 2: you know, we might set it up so they have
Speaker 2: a sort of ten minute meter lead in, then a
Speaker 2: hold for twenty meters, then ten meter drop off, and
Speaker 2: they then turn around and repeat that back the other way,
Speaker 2: and we might do eight to ten efforts of something
Speaker 2: like that where they're trying to get themselves up and hold.
Speaker 2: And we haven't played around with that at the end
Speaker 2: of training in seasons before, and that seemed to work
Speaker 2: quite well. Are they running one hundred percent maximally, No,
Speaker 2: But are we getting some sort of exposure to what
Speaker 2: I'm going to define as high speed running. Yes, But
Speaker 2: I think that live game sim stuff really is where
Speaker 2: you can get a lot of exposure in game like
Speaker 2: situations which is going to best resemble. It's not going
Speaker 2: to be exact, but best resemble game day.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to set a structured speed session at
Speaker 1: the end of a of a full training session. I've
Speaker 1: always liked the practically set up a small side of game,
Speaker 1: or even if you want to call it a larger
Speaker 1: side of game, to be able to expose them. You've
Speaker 1: just got to a little bit more accountable then because
Speaker 1: people can hide. And before we wrap it up, because
Speaker 1: we've got five more bits or so left, I wanted
Speaker 1: to touch base on court based sports. We've obviously had
Speaker 1: a lot of field chat. It's very easy to show
Speaker 1: when athletes hit max velocity in field based.
Speaker 3: Sports, we can see it's very obvious.
Speaker 1: Court based sports they do not, they do not have
Speaker 1: the space to be able to do it. But we
Speaker 1: still Again, some people argue there's no point. Other people
Speaker 1: argue there's a lot of point. Burge will start with you, mate,
Speaker 1: what's your opinion around court sport athletes that for a
Speaker 1: major part of their game their ax selling d selling
Speaker 1: without ever reaching that max velocity.
Speaker 3: Do you believe in max velocity work for them?
Speaker 1: If so, why, how does it bleed into it or
Speaker 1: do you just say not screw it with focus on acceleration.
Speaker 5: No, I think it can be really really powerful. I
Speaker 5: think the way I think about it is the same
Speaker 5: sort of way of really really heavy lifting. At some
Speaker 5: point in the gym, you know, we're exposing the body
Speaker 5: to really really high forces, asking the nervous system to
Speaker 5: recruit a really heavy high amount of sort of muscle
Speaker 5: fibers and all that kind of stuff. So I think
Speaker 5: from a standpoint of let's expose these athletes to the
Speaker 5: highest forces we possibly can, and that everything under that
Speaker 5: should be in theory, much much more tolerable on the body.
Speaker 5: So from a max velocity standpoint, obviously, Hami's going to
Speaker 5: go through a lot of demand as we kind of
Speaker 5: build into that acceleration phase. Kalf going through a hell
Speaker 5: of a lot of demand. So from my standpoint, if
Speaker 5: we can get the body used to kind of those
Speaker 5: forces and used to those sort of high forces and
Speaker 5: high demands, then everything as a result that is under
Speaker 5: that then should be really really tolerable, so as well
Speaker 5: as being able to kind of reproduce it, because it
Speaker 5: doesn't cost you so much to kind of produce those efforts.
Speaker 5: So I think it can be really really valuable. I
Speaker 5: think it's just about where you put it. Perhaps within
Speaker 5: say a court athlete season. Are you doing it all
Speaker 5: the time in the middle of the season when they're
Speaker 5: playing two games a season, maybe not. Are you doing
Speaker 5: it in an off season block where they can really
Speaker 5: hone in on some of these physical attributes. Yeah, one
Speaker 5: hundred percent beautiful, Tommy.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the last point there that Bird said is
Speaker 2: really important, and that's probably where my head goes, not
Speaker 2: having worked specifically like in a team environment, in a
Speaker 2: court setting. But I think for me, when I think
Speaker 2: about it, I don't mind the idea of exposing them
Speaker 2: to max velocity and agree with what Burgers said there,
Speaker 2: but I think it's really important where we put that,
Speaker 2: And so I think in the season or in a
Speaker 2: pre season where we can, in that more general prep
Speaker 2: phase expose them to lots of different things, which is
Speaker 2: going to make them better generally. But I would be
Speaker 2: probably mindful that in season, when you know there is
Speaker 2: significant demands you to recover when you're playing on a
Speaker 2: hard surface rather than grass, you know, ankles, knees hips,
Speaker 2: from that game, to then open them up in a
Speaker 2: max velocity I think I would be mindful in season,
Speaker 2: but I think the accelerative work or lots of acceleration
Speaker 2: based stuff probably needs to be filtered the whole way
Speaker 2: through because we need to keep a consistent load of that.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's something you know massively if
Speaker 2: you're looking at GPS numbers and what you're looking at
Speaker 2: from an indoor setting is that how many accelerations they've
Speaker 2: done in a session and d cells because of the
Speaker 2: obviously the ecentric demand there and how taxing that is,
Speaker 2: I think you've got to keep that theme through, So
Speaker 2: that would be the idea. But actual maximal velocity exposure
Speaker 2: I think general prep phase and then maybe touching it
Speaker 2: occasionally when you've got longer turnarounds. But it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: something for me that every week I would feel like
Speaker 2: I need these you know, these athletes to run super fast.
Speaker 2: But obviously Lock, you're the only one here that's worked
Speaker 2: in ten sports.
Speaker 6: Would be good to hear what you think.
Speaker 1: I think the court based acceleration is obviously the key
Speaker 1: component of things like netball and basketball. I massively value
Speaker 1: high velocity running or max velocity running, but I think
Speaker 1: for me, the part that I value is the intent
Speaker 1: of accelerating to max velocity is very different. You have
Speaker 1: ten meters and you say we're going to accelerate for
Speaker 1: ten meters and then you pull up the way they accelerate,
Speaker 1: the intensity, the force output that they use for that
Speaker 1: acceleration is very different compared to when you were saying
Speaker 1: we're going for forty meters and you're accelerating up to
Speaker 1: max velocity. Because again, for people out there that have
Speaker 1: sprinted or work with sprinters, like you know, if you
Speaker 1: do short what sprints, whether consciously or unconsciously, they do it,
Speaker 1: it's a different intent. They know they've only got ten meters,
Speaker 1: they know that we got fifteen whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: And as much as they think they're really pushing it,
Speaker 1: it's very different to that when you compare it to actually, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm accelerating up to a max velocity here and then
Speaker 1: I'm trying to hold. I think the force dynamics, the
Speaker 1: impulse change that you get with that intent is very
Speaker 1: different and very valuable. And then I think that bleeds
Speaker 1: across into those shorter, sharper accelerations and d cells that
Speaker 1: we start to see. So I'm a massive fan of
Speaker 1: a bit your spot on like the appropriate time to
Speaker 1: do it, because also then just practical like to do it,
Speaker 1: especially in say, you know the setting that I've previously
Speaker 1: been with netball, like there's nowhere in the facility that
Speaker 1: we can do it, so we need to go elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And for those who worked with hard court sport athletes
Speaker 1: where they're on hard services, it's the inverse of say
Speaker 1: a turf based sport where they feel better on hard
Speaker 1: service when you take make them onto soft surfaces, then
Speaker 1: they pull up with calf sowness, all this type of
Speaker 1: stuff because suddenly this sponge your surface means they don't
Speaker 1: have the same stiffness across joints, the same tenderness response,
Speaker 1: and they actually find it harder versus say a team
Speaker 1: sport athlete in in field and stuff like that, where
Speaker 1: you put their mind if it's been raining and you
Speaker 1: know we had it in the AFL when it's pissing
Speaker 1: down with rain and something gets shut or you have
Speaker 1: to go indoors because you just can't execute the skills
Speaker 1: you need. You've got your list of players that just
Speaker 1: can't train on a court because their shins pull up
Speaker 1: too sore, their their tendon's pull up too sore, so
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you get used to
Speaker 1: what you play on.
Speaker 3: But I think I think.
Speaker 1: Max velocity for court sport is almost I don't know,
Speaker 1: I might be shot for saying this, but.
Speaker 3: It's like general physical prep. It fits into that component.
Speaker 1: It may not be highly specific to the sport, but
Speaker 1: I think the general prep of it bleeds into the
Speaker 1: specifics of any court sports very effectively. Awesome team, love it,
Speaker 1: Thank you for chatting. Hopefully there was a few takeaways
Speaker 1: for people at home. But we'll see if we can
Speaker 1: get Bergs back on for a part two and maybe
Speaker 1: we talk about some change of direction specifics.
Speaker 3: But it's been fun. Thank you Tommy, Thank you Burge.
Speaker 4: We'll speak souving me no.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having us on. Burge were done on the
Speaker 6: debut Mate Kick five on de