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Yes, what's going on everybody. Welcome back to another brand new ropy muscle podcast. In today's episode, we are joined by Matt Vickery of the Instagram account jump doc throat dot lift. This is probably not an account that you might have seen before. Oh, you might have seen a few highlights, but he has a criminally small following for what great information he puts outside. I encourage all of you to go check out. His Instagram is in linked in the description below. If you want to check out NFN from Robin muscle, also linked in the description below, but today's episode is a discussion with him on all things, strength and conditioning. He's been in the sport for in strengthening condition, but well, over two decades. So here he's changed his mind on a lot of things. He's learned a lot of things. He is a true fountain of knowledge when it comes to sports, performance, athleticism and building real world physical performance. I was going to say strength and conditioning, but we already agreed on this episode. We don't like that term. Absolutely invaluable episode for both young guys and older athletes to listen, to, to really understand what it is you need to add or take away from your routine. As far as physical preparation, your gym stuff, your, your fitness stuff, whatever you need for rugby performance, we discuss it all on this episode and really give you some valuable insights that I hope you can take away. If you don't find this. At all useful, please do give us a five star review on apple podcasts on Spotify. Or if you're listening on YouTube, give it a thumbs up and let me know what you think in the comments below. All right, let's get into this episode with Matt Vickery. jump.dot Lyft.

TJ Jankowski 1:54

Yeah, I've been following your Instagram account for a while. Jump through dot Lyft. How long have you been running that for? Is it looks like it's like, you've got a good sort of ideology going down.

Matt Vickery 2:07

Yeah, no long, but it feels like I've missed the boat with it. It wasn't until the lockdown. I started actually putting out content where I saw people actually benefit from before that was just me showing off doing, you know, players and lifting shit. But I never really I'm one of these guys and everybody thought online coaching was a thing. Online programming is, but I never really thought on my program. Coaching was a thing cause you know, I, I want to, I want to be there I'm a hands-on coach, but then I realized that when all the technology advances that I ignored over the last five years, there was actually a pretty decent area to help and to educate online as well as in-person, you know?

TJ Jankowski 2:45

Yeah, definitely I've already hit record. So we might as well go straight into like your intro and background and what you did before. Career-wise ropy wise, athlete wise, what you did before you, you know, locked down and how you came to where you got to be. Now, if that, if that works for. Yeah, man. Okay. Yeah. So,

Matt Vickery 3:03

Yeah, so I've done nothing before and to be honest, there was, so I qualified as a, like a lifeguard track coach PT sort of variation when I was 18 and I've been doing it for like 25 years now. So in various guises, you know, so as the whole personal trainer thing, because remember strength conditioning, wasn't a thing 25 years ago, neither was the internet. So like dinosaurs, but if you want to dedicate, if you want to educate in any field, you had to go out and like actually meet people or ring them up or buy their books or their like their video cassettes and stuff. So my, my sort of I've always played rugby. So I'm obviously I'm from south Wales. So you kind of brought up playing rugby or nothing. And I've always been a keen track athlete. I kind of lost interest in rugby in my twenties. And what was interested in me was like I said, there was no real formal certifications in strength conditioning, or when you read that occasion in it. But what I found was people were like rugby athletes were training like bodybuilders and Rubik athletes. So we already doing staff needs combined with bodybuilders. And when I was in like rugby gyms, even I wasn't playing for anybody in particular that people would look at me doing play metrics. I go sort of like a retard, you know, I'm jumping around and doing, you know, Mack drills and acceleration stuff. And you're like professional about semiprofessional standard, rugby players and above and professional standard, actually looking at me like I'm crazy. They're like, what's the point of doing that? Rugby is about contact. I'm like, I've always kind of thought rugby is about avoiding conduct, but you know, you're in the minority then.

TJ Jankowski 4:37

That's like a, that's a funny philosophy, even like, just as a, as a coach and thing. Cause you know, you call rugby a collision sport, but it's also an evasion sport more than anything. And I think, yeah, if you like, we did a rock practice training last night, I took the boys through some different rucks things, but you know, we went through a three on two drill beforehand and then we went back into three on two and I'm like, look, if you can avoid contact, that's, that's the best situation you don't even need to write. You can go through and you can do the best stuff. So definitely. And obviously the agility stuff helps you take contact on your own terms as well, which is always going to be significantly better. Yeah, probably like

Matt Vickery 5:12

seed at the moment I'm already seeing for the last, maybe let's say 10 years, we've really sort of evolved a little bit more into a more, let's just say athletic endeavor rather than a. But solely physical anyway. And you got people like, you know, like recently Toby Farlito number eight, great feet. You got Don brown now in for Harlequins, you know, great athletes, some Siemens, great athlete, backroom athletes who are not just in temporary. All these guys are great athletes and not just rugby players. So they got great harms beat. Yes. They got the Bosch. So they can take a, obviously they can tackle hard, they have aggressive tacklers and Ruckers and counter Rutgers, but they've got skill sets which were more Islander or Maori type as it was 15 years ago. I know the entire world is a brunt. Right. Hopefully understanding that, you know, if you can take your city to avoid collision, that's not a

TJ Jankowski 6:01

bad thing. No, definitely not. And so I guess back in the day that did the guys watching you doing all the jumps, did they eventually think, oh, maybe this is a good idea and give it a go or definitely not.

Matt Vickery 6:12

Absolutely not. So I was, I was at. And you had a lot of players, there were like kind of a big deal, you know, back in sort of like 2000, 2001. Just after that, I think they had just gone bankrupt actually at that point, we've got international class players looking at me like, mate, you got it, you got it totally wrong. You should have been a track somewhere. So yeah, absolutely not London Scottish in Richmond. And I was in London Wellsford at the time she had a training ground and all it saw was just endless physicality, physicality, physicality, running around running. Remember not, I mean, the warmup for London Scottish was two laps of the, of the the pitch, you know, like that's not great.

TJ Jankowski 6:55

No. And what's funny is like, yeah, no, that's what I was going to say is like, you're still like I think like amateur level rugby now is just professional rugby. Maybe like 10 or so years ago, things have trickled down. And so we're still far behind and you get, and then you get the odd player that wants to make the best of themselves and we'll sort of go, but then they'll go to what the current guys are doing now. And they'll sort of like skip a preparation phase and they'll go straight into it as well. So there's a lot of like a layered approach to, to be able to do this sort of stuff, I think. And the whole thing it's like, it is it's over extreme that people were trying to do exactly what the professionals are doing right now, or it's old school and they're not already doing much of anything. Which is crazy, but to me, and it's always been crazy. If you think Rabi's never. Not a physical game. Like it's always, it's a, it's a, it's one of the most physically demanding sports I think you can do. And when you ask, especially if you ask about people that aren't completely familiar with our bill, they're not at least in the circle of ropy, they'll say, you know, they'll always admire rugby athletes because it's, it is an amalgamation of all these different things that you've got to do. So, so then not do anything physically and just say, oh, I'm just a rugby player. And just be in terrible shape is kind of doing yourself a disservice and maybe even a sport to disservice.

Matt Vickery 8:16

Yeah. But there's, there's a, there's another side of that as well. So I worked with a young prop on Saturday and he's going up to sort of semi-pro level. He wants to push his game on and he's a physical specimen. He's a big guy, tight head. He's not bodies. Nobody thought on the mind, you know, he's, he's lean. He isn't physically looking at you think, well, you're in a great condition. Because it actually built too much muscle mass. So he's gone the old bodybuilder route. And he can't run. So what I got and doing sprint mechanic drills, you know, his, his hip flexors, his glute Medes, his, his Achilles CARF complex were all just burning out so rapidly because his perceived exertion at that particular drill was so high that his body just went flat line. You know, he was pumped from doing ACE GEPs and not really common, man. You know, you see, I see an awful lot. The guys just want to get as strong as they, as strong as they strong as they can. And then they completely forget that the most important qualities you can give somebody is try and make them a bit faster. You're not going to come fast for a bit faster, a bit more robust, a bit more coordinative, a bit of it, you know, I, didn't not agility and change of direction component. You know, that's the dusty game-changer right there. It's not the extra 20 kilograms in your back squat or

TJ Jankowski 9:29

deadlift. No. I think, especially with young athletes, it does come from a, like, I always say, like, I have a sort of strength first approach. I think I'd like to hear your, your thoughts on that afterwards, but it's like, I think, you know, when we're talking about power, even like, yeah, when we're talking about power, even speed, where there's, you know, force applications to the ground, there is a level of strength that you need. And guys that listened to this podcast would have helped me almost say the exact same thing last week. It's it's you have to get, you know, you have to get your strength level developed enough so that you've got a ticket, but that's it, you don't have to, you have to pay you your ticket to entry or cross the barrier to entry and be strong enough. But once that's crossed, like pursuing all of your time in strength is kind of a fruitless endeavor, right? Yeah.

Matt Vickery 10:19

And that's your strength? Acetate. Dennis is pretty big. Now, if you're a powerlifter or strong man or Olympic weight lifting. Brilliant. If you're a barbell athlete or a straws, strength, competitor, strength is all it really matters. Now I had this really funny. So few weeks ago I was in a gym and this guy comes with his dad and he said, no, I could have a chat to you about coaching my son. And I said, well, okay, well, what's the deal? He said, well, he's an open side guy. He's not making the first team he's in the second still. And there's a pretty big club. And he said, I'm just a bit concerned. He's not strong enough. I said, okay, well, where is he? And he was in the corner and he's 18 years old. This kid, he's got 180 kilograms in his backpack squatting for 10 Jesus. I said, mate, whatever's wrong with your standard? Not against the leg. Firstly, there's a fucking strength. Look at 2 42 51 RM based on those pillows. So that's this it's probably, can he catch getting past? Yeah. It we'll look at your skillset.

TJ Jankowski 11:20

Yeah. Especially with rugby where like, again, people think because of what they look at the top level and they just look at, it's very easy to look at these huge athletes and think, okay, that's, that's what I need. But you, then you miss all the nuances of what goes on in a game it's you can even get it from a fitness standpoint. I'll get people that will send me clips of their game. And I don't know, or just inquiring and they'll say, oh, you know, I think that I'm really, I'm not fit for some reason. I'm always gassed, you know, even like 30 minutes into a game. And then I get back my second wind. And then again, I get guys towards the end of the game, and then you watch that footage and they're running around like a headless chicken. Like you look at Richie McCall back in the day or good efficient flankers Tom. Curry's a perfect example. Like he seems to be everywhere because he's really decisive about his actions and that's, that's ropy, RQ. That's not, I mean, obviously there is a level of fitness to get there, but yeah, there is, there is something to be said and I think w w we've got. I dunno if the pendulum swung too far towards, cause it was, you know, as you said at the beginning of your career, there was real, there was no real strength and conditioning for a sport like rugby, which is crazy. Now we've gone full hog and, and where, you know, especially you see it in South Africa a lot where they're, they're picking guys for their provincial sides and the youth athletes literary based on their metrics in the gym. And I think the pendulum is ready to sort of swing back, which I think, I think it

Matt Vickery 12:39

is. I think it is. Cause if you look at guys, you've got Margaret Smith, you got, Jim was the name, George Ford, he got bored and you got, you got like, these are much smaller things than they were 10 to 15 years ago. You know, I'm a watch him. I, I played against like I played with Butch James in a charity game. And mum was huge and 10 box back in, and now I'm like, what? And now you've got to raise it up at the, at the top level. You know, we understand that this we're not talking about top level yet. You and I were talking about lads, young lads semi-pros weekend warriors, you know, amateur athletes, but they, they're not looking at the pro as much as they should do. Now. They look at the pro as it was 10 years ago, you know? And it's like, I think there's room for, for, for top clubs to be a bit more open about their training philosophies and their methodologies, you know, like looking to see more of these guys. So young athletes could just look at it. I know there's footage on YouTube uh, bits and bobs, but you know, if they're looking at big clunky, heavy, forwards, that's not the way the game is going.

TJ Jankowski 13:46

No, I think I completely agree with clubs being more open because I think it is actually, maybe it's not intended to be misleading, but it is, I guess I'll see some of the, all blacks clips that they will do. And they'll not, they'll never quite show how deep they go on the squat. They'll never quite show the exact weight on the bar unless it's bragging about someone, you know, which doesn't do anyone. Like, I mean, it's impressive, but it doesn't show for what is like the, the mean, and the average, like you go into a gym of any professional team and yeah, there'll be some really, really impressive numbers. Cause there'll be some freaks, but you'll also see a lot of average as far as just if we're looking at raw strength numbers, but that's because they're not strength athletes, they're rugby athletes, same, same thing for sprint in technique. Like Like w look at, you know, a lot of athletes that I think we learn as rugby from other sports. So power lifting or for strength, we learned from power lifting for sprint, and we learn from track, but there's some just raw speed athletes out there that don't quite have the technique, but it's actually perfect for rugby because they need agility alongside the, you know, the, the straight level of speed. And I think, I think that's, that's interesting that you have your background a lot in track as well. So there are still things, cause I'm always trying to figure out where we can learn, you know, lots of little things to, to bolster out strength and conditioning. And is there anything that we're missing at the minute still we're still far behind from athletics?

Matt Vickery 15:17

I think at, you know, like elite level, you know, you're going to say no. I mean like Franz Bosch route, but the bus of union for, for a few years and you had some big results there and what I, what I take from sprinting and and working with track athletes and, and I did a qualification with Dan path, you know, with Altis qualification. So like each year, like a top of, on something different than a new, but that has been a consistency in my life for 25 years of being in this game. And one regional of that is that people do not run well. And the perceived exertion of your body, if every time all you're interested in is forced into the. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. That's great when you're 18, because you've got a naturally last density just right. Well, a lot of people have some people don't, but if you're just focusing on force into the ground, when you're sprint, then you're missing out on a hell of a lot. That flight time that forced you to the ground creating good positions to recycle that gate cycle and that gate mechanic to go again, you're going to get those repeat sprint qualities. And the perceived exertion is going to be like a 710 and I'll be sort of seven computer and RP 10. And therefore you're getting guys are going to get gas really quickly from running really badly. And it might look fine from the sidelines and think, oh fuck, he's really fast. And yet it could be fast, but you know, I'm more interested in a guy who who's 80% fast for 80 minutes of the match than a hundred percent fast for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever. And nobody's gonna know, we understand the game of rugby ebbs and flows and you get recovery, but just looking at a lot of athletes, running loose, look at someone like in Wales. There's a lot of Newcastle now for England, who's just got a mess on, yeah, man, let's just wrap it. Those guys, you know, the Barrett brothers or any Islander, you know, things for the all blacks, but you see the way they run and people always say the same thing to me. They always go, oh, it makes it look so easy in the same way. Rinaldo mix was soccer look easy. You know, it is easy for them because they've got a wonderful gate mechanic. They got an understanding of what's required or they're just genetic fucking freaks and they just get that from their parents. And then they endorse it by adding speed and power to the, to the intended output. Sam, I don't know. Amazing. And like I said, it was, they started read a perceived exertion, which I tend to sort of throw it on people's necks or not.

TJ Jankowski 17:33

Yeah. Definitely. And I think it is funny to me that like I'll S I'll get regularly get questions from people that, that ask, you know, oh, It's either older athletes that are losing their speed or it's younger athletes that need to get speed. And they're like, okay, now I go, I go to the gym three times a week. What can I do to get faster? And I'm like, well, how often are you sprint it? And the answer is, oh, well, I mean, I do rugby, but I'm like, no, you need to practice this, this new skill. And you don't just, you know, it's like passing you don't just go play a game of rugby and go, okay, now I'm going to practice my POS. I know you develop the pass in, in drills. The same thing that should be said for speed that unfortunately gets missed a lot. And I think overall, like from chatting to you already, I can tell that, you know, you have a full understanding of what strength and conditioning is. And probably I can imagine that maybe you don't even like that term because it doesn't really hold true to what it is. It's physical preparation rather than strength and conditioning.

Matt Vickery 18:32

Yeah. And with, I worked with quite a lot of older athletes because they were an old bastard, but I worked with young lads. I worked with older ones as well because. The online guys are all sort of my age and above or roughly, you know, sort of late thirties, let's say it's up to 52. We're going to allow you to play a masters, I guys, to masters. And they've all, they all came to me for the same reason because he got, I love jumping. I love throwing shit around on a sprint in, and I don't ever want to not do that. So I'm 43 now. I'm still quicker than a lot of the guys that I coach in the youth and in the seconds. And I know I'm proud of that. If I go with 30 meters, I'm dead, but it will time and I'm on it. And the thing I see with these older athletes is that they almost, they almost take it as a given, they're going to lose their speed. So they say, they often say to me online, I run a consultation. They say, I know, I know I'm not as fast as I was. I said, well, what are you doing about that? Oh, well, you know, it's just one of those things you get older. I said, no, it's not. You're choosing to be less efficient. To be less elastic, to be less fast and less powerful. And the reason you do in those, because you think now you've got to go full retard and go full strengths and you never go full retard. You've got to keep the bits in there that are actually game-changing for the sport of rugby. You know, your bench press is not a game changer. You 10 meter acceleration of the line can be a game changer in offense and in defense. So why would you not share, train our quality? And the other thing you say to me, TJ, is that I haven't got access to a field on weekdays, just on the weekends. What? It doesn't matter what a street I've got. I've got guys that I call John Lane doing. The one guy had abandoned overhead primetime drill, sprint, and done a close in Birmingham. Delivery man. And scaffolders watching him. I'm like you said, w what do I do is gives a fuck what they think, just get it done. You're going to get faster. Now, when you've got a field, use the streets and in the gym, there's so many things you can do. Acceleration positions, you know, over five to 10 meters, you know, fake throws, banded, acceleration, resistant accelerations. I applied my extensive players, intensive plays. There's so many things you can do to get faster, but people would rather choose something more conditioning based or more strengths-based place in Europe. So you, right. I don't really like the term strength conditioning, but people don't understand anything else. If you say coach power, speed, and strength. I caught a bit of conditioning, but mainly that's on. You know, and I manage your stress levels, so that's not a job title. And he was going to remember ever, you know?

TJ Jankowski 21:20

Yeah, yeah. I hate it. Well, like conditioning is, it's like, it's like the funniest word as well. Cause like what does, what does that even mean? Like, like strength is part of conditioning. Cause you need to get stronger to be, if you're conditioning yourself to be a rugby player, then you know that it all goes in it's, it's a stupid term, but we're stuck with it now. And we have to, that's what we have to go with. You mentioned about I guess we'll see if we can piece this out a little bit more that, but the importance of speed and power particularly for older athletes. So you're saying that younger athletes are generally quite more responsive just to being naturally faster. And we'll see this with people that don't, you know, go to the gym, but they don't really work their speed over. They don't take themselves as a serious with that sort of stuff. No. And so. Did I saucer with technical improvements as opposed to like, you know, rural physical improvements, or is it that we're maintaining those raw physical attributes that they can still maintain that or even gain their speed?

Matt Vickery 22:18

I think what I'd like to do is anyway quarterly, but there's like three going to two pots. Right. And I say like, we're going to cook. We're going to focus on. And it can be two aspects to speed and to play metrics when I've run under the same banner. And I see that we're going to work on two qualities to physical qualities, elasticity. I'm going to work on power, which obviously force time to speed. Right? First time philosophy and people understand power. They totally understand power, but then you say and they don't understand what that is. And I still, okay. We're going to work on ankle stiffness and they don't understand without anything. It's a tight muscle. So you've got a word in a very particular way where people actually buy into it. You see, like, you know, we're trying to build robustness around potentially the most important fucking thing in your body for your athlete, your Achilles. We're trying to keep that as robust as possible for as long as possible and as responsive as possible for as long as possible. So you can distribute the force you've created in the gym, into the ground with a nice elastic bouncy response, rather than a flat pancake slab. Every damn time you hit the ground. You know, that's the way I like to explain it to people

TJ Jankowski 23:27

that makes sense. I use it as more of a, like a, instead of dropping a soft spongy ball on the ground. Like, you know, it doesn't matter how strong, I don't know how strong a sponge can be, but if you drop a spongy ball on the ground versus dropping a real solid rubber ball on the ground, like which one bounces up much higher than your training, that quality. And so obviously the strength comes into it because the more dense that ball is, the better it's going to be at bouncing. But at the same time, you have to work both. At the same time, I think that works as well for a lot of other athletes that they're scared of putting on mass and then slowing down as well. I'm thinking, well, if you're not even trained in this stuff in the first place, there's a good chance. You'll, you'll get strong. I mean, you'll get faster. Right?

Matt Vickery 24:09

Yeah. And the thing is like, like, you know, with, with youth athletes, everything works, you know, there's no skill in making someone stronger when they're 18, you know, cause that's just like a Charlie Francis and as difficult as full of a board in a mortar, you know, not complicated at all. There's not much, there's not much, much harder making someone faster at 18 either because they've got the elasticity cause their tendons are young and useful. But they don't have the technical ability perhaps, or they don't have the strength, you know? Cause it goes, we I, I don't play strengths, but I love training. You know, I love, I love training strengths. And there's, you know, there's, there's limited gains for certain levels or on guaranteed, but with a youth athlete. If he's got a, a decent deadlift for a, for a rugby athlete, you know, we see really whenever he gets to like odd numbers, strength, standards, I don't like that. I don't care too much about, you know, if someone's got 150 kilogram deadlift, but they got an 11 foot broad jump, you know, I'm happy with that. Or, you know, or I just started at 1.5, four to second, like 10 meter acceleration past the powerful, this strong probably enough, but we can add a bit of body armor on top of them.

TJ Jankowski 25:19

Yeah. I go back and forth on strength standards. I'm actually going to put something out in the next coming weeks on the, on YouTube about shank Sanders for rugby players. And it's going to be layered and complex because that's just the way it has to be. Cause you can't like, and I'm still going to preface it with like, I'm not really happy with doing this, but this is what people want to see because we like to do with numbers. And I think that's why we like. That's why we like strength training in general, as opposed to the power stuff, because it's a lot easier to measure. You can see, you know, the 1.2, five key kg plates being added to the bar each week, or you can see the extra reps going in the log book, whereas with power up and, you know, even medicine balls and stuff like you can't quite see efficiency as obvious or, you know, the, the, the slight increase in speed is obvious, which is annoying, but that's just the way it is. And I think you still got to make it fun. And just because you can't see an obvious progression doesn't mean that, that progression isn't there. And I think you've just got to have faith in the system.

Matt Vickery 26:19

Yeah. I mean, I, I like to metric everything to be honest there. So it goes from a 10 or 20 or 30 or 40, and it's more for my interest and for their competitive nature and fun more than a care in too much about the actual metric med ball throws the same. I got a tray lane to 22 meters, six kilogram med ball challenge, you know, If you could throw it over your head backwards and hit the 22, you're pretty bloody powerful. You know, that's, that's a decent, thrilled beyond data. We measure them, we record it. I know I'm not. I remember I did a course with Paula Quinn when I was like 22. And he was like, if you're not assessing, you're only guessing I had like tattooed on my forehead for years. No, that's not overly important for certain things, but I still like to see if my program is working. And certainly if there was some of those physical qualities start to go the other way. And if their med ball goes from overhead, throw goes from 22 minutes to 19, I'm going to be a bit concerned about that with my programming. You know, if, if, if they've gained or lost weight, we'll take that into account. But yeah, I mean, I like med ball throws from the chest and overhead. I like to stand in the same place when someone's doing a vertical, so I can monitor exactly how high it was against the rugby post and things like that. So they send me metrics, they're not a hundred percent, but they they're good enough, you know, and it's fun as well. Yeah.

TJ Jankowski 27:37

And, and they're good enough to see some sort of progression. I even think like if you get a video of, of, of medicine ball throws against the wall or whatever just make sure it's not drywall because that's, that's been a mistake a few times with people. But if you throw, if you, if you can just, you can actually, like I said, you can't really see it. I'm like saying you can't see it on a log book, but if you actually compare sets of videos, you see like the naked, I can see a little a much more efficient mover, particularly when you compare them side-by-side or one after the other. Or like how much faster the reps are going, how much faster you're recoiling, that sort of thing works really. I want to change or want to keep going along this line of, of what you're doing with speed and power and stuff. But I want to understand a little bit more about how you differentiate from, cause you said you worked with like younger athletes that are trying to make it and seeing if they can get to a semi-professional professional. And you also said you worked with old bastards, so I'm assuming there's, there's a deal of differentiation with how you train those guys. You want to touch on that a little bit for me?

Matt Vickery 28:35

Yeah. So th th the main, okay, so the main difference, let's just take two sort of avatars. We've got an 18 year old rugby lad who wants to get up to the semipro level in his club. And we've got 45 year old masters player. Yeah. The template of my program is exactly the same for everybody. Whether they fight that rugby athlete, a lacrosse player, The tablet runs the same. He goes static, warmup, dynamic, warmup. It goes Mack drill. So, you know, sprint mechanic drills, he goes to the plasticity light pole goes, et cetera. He goes power to go strength. It goes to hypertrophy. It goes conditioning. You know, the school with that, I sort of see the differences is that I think volume priority and stress. And so if I've got a 45 year old rugby masters athlete, who's got three kids, a mortgage and a shitty job. He doesn't like anymore. His emotional stress is going to be very, very high. So his session is going to be low volume. The lowest I can get away with perhaps even multiple sessions of a half an hour through the week, rather than like two sessions with the 18 year old, his stress levels are, is going to get laid this weekend. I mean, you can drink four spew in, you know, and I know this is just taking the piece of it, that one's got this stress and look at their shit, but you got to manage the stress. And volume and duration of, of sessions and frequency of sessions. That's, that's why that's the way change between those

TJ Jankowski 30:03

age groups. I think we sat there as well as is, and we've spoken about it already kind of with the older athletes and what they tend to do is they tend just to keep training the same and do everything the same. And they'll see their numbers go down because these other things in their life are changing. So they're not able to cope with the same volume or, you know, get away with the same shit that they did when they were younger. And then they just get, they either just give up or they just, they, they don't understand what's happening. And a lot of times it is, they just give up. And I said, well, I guess I'm old now. I guess I have to be either injured or I guess I have to get, like, I'm not going to be the athlete that I was, whereas like, actually you have no choice, but to do less, even though it's a tricky game, because you want to, you want to stay at a level where you're still competing.

Matt Vickery 30:50

Well I think. And he's not a rugby guy. He's a BJJ razor ruler, right? So he's got six days a week BJJ. Right? He's got he's a fireman as a job. He's got wife and kids. He's got famous fitness challenges. He takes on all the time, like crazy fucking endurance events, almost like CrossFit on crack. You know, then he's got she's comes to me and says, I want to train like five days a week

TJ Jankowski 31:20

to pause here. I have no idea where this paused. Apparently the recording pause on 30 minutes. That's annoying. We'll figure it out. Let's go back to w can we, can we resume from what I just said about agility? So you said, you know, your background is more in athletic. And so obviously in athletics, we're dealing with a lot more straight line speed. That's not what you see as much in rugby. Rugby is, as you said, already acceleration, but it's acceleration in different directions, which are also known as agility. So how do you go about programming for that? I'm sorry for the pause.

Matt Vickery 31:53

Yeah, so, like I said, I think terminology matters. You know, it's changed direction, agility to different things. Yep. Low level change of direction when you're first learning it with kids, for example, is strength training. So the D accelerate DeSales. So in re accelerate, your mass requires a fair bit of strength. So that's a constraint beach based approach and we give them, you know, constraint based drills to go touch cones and whatever drills and there's a million drills. But the main thing is to not coach the drill, but to coach the skill as Lee Taft says, and I really loved that explanation of it. You know, it's like, well, what are we after from this. Well, it's changing direction with different strategies, different movement patterns, different body angles, different shin angles, producing force maximally in different positions. Agility then of course it is random in nature. So then it's like, you'd get cone based drills. Are you constrained Mr. Or, sorry, I just running the colors. Right? We've enhanced verbal cues. Getting them to, to react quickly with no predetermined preordain plan and that's agility. Now what we'd like to do, what I like to do is with people is like, do I have what called compromise position starts? So they could be on a knee. They could be laying down and from street on site onsite on, and then you jump to a sprint, you know, and you, you organize your body as efficiently as possible on that push up position. You push them off the floor. You see. You accelerate in the sort of angles and the trajectory you would do from a three or two point start. So it all comes back to the linear speed. It has organized your pelvis first. So if I'm lateral, then I pop and it gets given those strategies. So they can appreciate that. And like you said, that, I mean, if you think about sidestepping, if you want a great a doctor strengthening it, strengthening exercise, a sidestep is a brilliant exercise, you know? So there's all, it all comes back down to strength and linear speed. As we mentioned earlier, it's just

TJ Jankowski 33:51

strategies. Yeah. I'm combined with like rugby IQ, because I mean, as you say, agility is chaotic. So what you're doing is you're reacting to what your opponent's given you. You could have the most agile guy in the world, but if he's not, you know, if he has no idea what defenders are tend to do or how to spot gaps as he's running it, then that, that agility or that changes direction, skill is, is useless.

Matt Vickery 34:18

Yeah. And that's when your strengths comes in just to smash in the middle of yesterday. Yeah.

TJ Jankowski 34:22

But, and that's, but that's why, you know, you start with the basic stuff. Like people, people love and, you know, we're in the trap of social media already now. And I don't know if it's ever going away, but like that's the stuff that gets views or like cool different interactive things that partner drills where they're working on. And that stuff like is a good development, a tool to use, to build in from the basic skills to get to the other stuff. But if you don't have the basic skills, which, you know, kneeling starts and stuff like that really do help the body understand. And if you don't have the basic technique as we've already said, the stiffening of the ankles, that sort of stuff, then you kind of wasting your time because you're just kind of still doing the same thing. You're going to chaotic environment. You're never going to learn in a chaotic environment. So you have to. Keep it simple first. Yeah, exactly. That. Cool. Speaking of keeping it simple you're a strong guy. You're as you said, you're, you're outpacing a lot of the youngsters. And I think you would consider yourself a very advanced athlete, but what I don't see in your training, or what I do see in your training is a lot of simplicity and not a lot of, you know, advanced training techniques. Young guys particularly are attracted to advanced stuff, but I think older guys as well, once they get older, they think, okay, now, instead of, you know, I've already skipped that part, but I need to understand recovery. They've gone straight into. Okay. Now I'm advanced. I need to do advanced stuff to get Vaughn's results. Do you think that's the case? Do you think athletes need advanced training techniques or do you see the beauty and simplicity?

Matt Vickery 35:52

A bit of both. If you're talking about advanced techniques as being like French contrast training, which is my favorite modality for increase in power, because they shunned for a lot of guys with semipro got jobs, we've got wives and kids, it gives the biggest bang for your buck, you know, cause you can, you can go and you go warm up. You're gonna hit your French contrast model and you can leave. And you're probably going to be a, maybe a half an hour in the gym. So I love the simplicity of that, but of course it's actually a very complex modality and you've got to get to that point to use a French contrast model by getting, you know, just go into a complex train in contrast treating then going to French contrast. And I could take, you know, a couple of months, a couple of years depends where you are. So the answer I would say is if you're talking about advanced techniques as being that sort of the example, then yes, if you're talking about advanced techniques, Some balance laying on a bench with a dumbbell in one hand balance on a Bosu ball and the other fuck. Then the answer is 100%. No, cause that's not advanced track tech techniques. That's just a lack of training, knowledge and efficiency. And it's just clickbait. Do you

TJ Jankowski 37:00

think like a lot of this comes about from bodybuilding being such a meat and potato sport, right. Like getting out in mass is just you know, correct me if you, if you disagree, but it's just a case of getting in enough volume and enough calories for the body to, to, to grow Korean at some level of animalism and whatever. Right. So that's really, really, really easy to do. So I think it can get boring. So what the bodybuilding culture has sort of done is create things like, you know, triple drop sets or, or giant sets and all this stuff. They're all tools that you could use to actually probably just be more efficient. But they've used them all as, as to create them as like advanced techniques that w you know, same thing for strength, right. You just said, you know, going out jumping out of a boat and hit, and water is the same as about as difficult as it is to get a young athlete stronger. So do you think that, like, a lot of this has just come about because it just, just to make this stuff more entertaining?

Matt Vickery 37:59

Yeah, it was simple as that. Yeah. Yes. I remember. I remember going on a course and it was a it was Pollock when again, and he was with Paul Chek and they had Swiss balls and that footage, video, grainy video footage of remember Christian Cullen to the all blacks. He's a full back in the day, super strong guy, you know, questionable all the guys, the all blacks would like questionably big compete. Nobody else. They're all stood on Swiss balls with 20 kilogram dumbbells in each hand, squatting stood on a Swiss ball, scoring 40 kilos, and I'm watching this video in the gym and I'm like, this is the shit. This is amazing. This stay stable. Look it up at all that all the all the sort of connective tissue and the stabilization muscles are switched on. And there's this old Hungarian powerlifter looking at it with me. And he was like, this is bullshit. They lift in 40 milligrams. I'm like, not at all. They're on a ball. Is that there's 40 kilograms. You don't play sport on a ball. I, my rule beliefs shattered in one sentence. I'm like half horse. It does this so stupid. So that's one side of it. The other side of it, then you've got the real patterns and I've been both through my career and I've changed my view on a lot of things. But one of the things that I was told when I was younger was, you know, that Virgo Schonski quote of you can't do plyometrics until you've got a two times body weight back. And I was like, oh, that's so unfair because I want to, I want to do jumps, but I can't apparently, but of course there's context. What Vertica Shanxi meant was that you can't use the shock method because it doesn't work really well when you've got a one times body weight back spot, but it works really well when you got a two times body weight. So just save it until you've exhausted all the other modalities and techniques. And you get to that point where it's really useful and you're, so you've stressed your system so much that nothing else works quite as well as this winter. And that's where we get confused. Again. It's like that whole pedantry of all, you can't use chains on your squad because you don't squat 200, that's bullshit. You know, it's changed a fun youth change. Bands are fun, you know? So there's, there's two sides of that.

TJ Jankowski 40:07

I think it's also a case of like to me it all comes down to efficiency, right? If you're looking at all these advanced techniques and you're you, you just don't need to do Y like white, or if you're looking at some sort of crazy programming thing where you're going to get collect more data, if you can get foster sprint, you know, when you're a younger athlete, quite just increasing it and then going out and running back, like, why would you not just do that? And then you can take the time over time to adjust your technique, or do have a sewer, especially techniques or exercises and stuff to progressive because with

Matt Vickery 40:49

audio, DJ loose, this rustling going on, there you go.

TJ Jankowski 40:58

And what we're going to do is plug that back in. Oh, okay. It's bloody. We still good?

Matt Vickery 41:06

Yeah. I spent

TJ Jankowski 41:07

much better, man. Okay, sweet. Yeah, I think what a lot of people tend, I think it's just all comes down to efficiency and a lot of people tend to look at extra special techniques or different techniques and they think, okay, that's the missing thing in my training. And that's going to get me better. Whereas actually like just getting better is already sets you ahead. Of most people, most people were going in the gym and they're doing the same old, same old, or they're not even in the gym and they're slowly getting worse. The fact that you can make improvement. It is a really good thing. So keep doing things that keep improving you and slowly over, you know, over the months, over the years, add in extra things to keep that you know, to keep that graph going up in the, in the direction that you want it to go to keep you improving. Because at the end of the day, if, if you can get better just doing a few lifts, just do those few lifts and then, you know, save your other, you've got then extra time for recovery or extra time to work on your skills. Like there's no point pumping up already pumped up tires. There's no point doing anything more than that. So then focus on the engine or focus on whatever it is that you or the chassis or whatever it else is can improve your performance. That's not to say that you shouldn't like you should go out and fat flat tires, like make sure that they're pumped before you go. But at the same time, you don't have to get anything here. You don't have to look at the advanced stuff just because it looks.

Matt Vickery 42:27

I don't a hundred percent agree.

TJ Jankowski 42:28

A hundred percent. I think it's, it's more, again, a lot of it comes back to efficiency. Like I liked, I really liked to use you know myo reps. Yeah. So I use those a ton because it's just an easy way to get in a lot of volume. Sometimes it can be extra fatiguing, but it's an easy way to get in a lot of volume in just a few minutes, as opposed to like, you know, 10, 20 minutes for three different exercises, you can get that done in five to 10 minutes easily.

Matt Vickery 42:56

And also like. It doesn't even have to be as complicated as people make out either. So trading efficiency for me is okay. I mean, do I have a body today? Right. So I want something powerful. So, I mean, I say less or do a, I see a med ball throw against the wall. Right. And I want to pair that with a core exercise because that's where I like to do. And it's you give people cool. Wrecks says at the end of their workouts or on our backs says, we want to call them. They won't do them because they'd rather go home. So you put, you pair them with the power X, as long as it's not, you know, the strength, speed stimulus, and it's a legitimate speed strength or power stimulus, which won't be affected by the core fatigue. So let's just say we've thrown the med ball in the war. And then we do a long lever stir the pot with the med ball. We've used the med ball again. So that's efficiency. Right? So then you go, right. Okay. My main lift, today's gonna be the bench. I've got to do four sets of five. Let's see at 80%, right. If you're a percent six or seven, whatever is. You do your sets, you finish up, what do you do? You don't need to walk to the other side of the gym and gone to a lat pull down, you know, you pay them. So, I mean like a floor press with a chin up, cause it's right there. You don't do a deal with the bar. You don't have to, don't just take a couple of weeks off and then you walk across to the dumbbell rack and you do like some vertical pressing and you do some horizontal pulling with like a bench room. So again, you're being efficient. You're pairing exercises that are really quick. Back-to-back BOSH, BOSH, you know, walking from one end of the gym, we're upstairs, downstairs, you just doing the stuff right there. And that's where program design fails when it's so complicated. And I've got a rule of thumb. If I, if, you know, if, if, if I look at your program and it's more than depend on goal, obviously, but more than eight exercises and I'm being generous there. Cause my usually about six, I'm pretty sure you've done a week. And this, this adds to that as well, you know, a bit of different, different modalities of, you know, mobilizations or whatever it is, but the, the, the meat and potatoes of the workout, if it's 10 to 12 exercises, I'm not sure about that.

TJ Jankowski 45:03

Yeah. I think that comes from the same psyche that gives people, or that makes people do advanced techniques because they feel like they're missing out on something. And so I'll always see that with people when they'll send me their program or we'll do a consultation and I'll say like, no, you don't need this much. And that they're completely scared of. I noticed I have the same. I completely understand the mindset cause I was the same, you know, you think, oh, if I, if I am only do two sets of bench, there's no way I'm going to get stronger. I'm going to get weaker. My chest is going to shrivel up. I used to be petrified. Yeah, that's just the way the fitness industry is because it's all so ingrained it with these top notch athletes promoting all this nonsense and there'd be a break

Matt Vickery 45:48

for rugby, and he's got a one 40 bed, one 50 bench press, and he weighs like a hundred kilograms. Let's just see us 150 kilogram bench press. Well, I'm happy with that. Yeah. So the next few weeks he can come into the gym and work up to a heavy signal, which is around about that weight. And he's maintaining the strength and when his restraining starts to deteriorate, then we can add a few reps to that. So that, that particular accident it's really fucking simple. And it's not, it's nowhere near as complex as people like to make out.

TJ Jankowski 46:17

I think people get also get wrapped into their own results emotionally, and they don't like, they don't like the idea of what do you mean? I only have to do two sets of bench. Like no way I, I, you know, cause they like, cause we like what we're already good at. And so therefore we're going to keep doing what we're already good at. Well, if that's, if that's like already good enough and you're putting, you're investing time into that. Is much better spent elsewhere than you're actually wasting your time?

Matt Vickery 46:42

Well, look, I might, my mindset changed on direct TAF training a few years ago. So I never believe in direct calf training. I was sort, if you were doing enough sprint work and Mack drills and Pogo enough stimulus and you didn't need it, then I sort of like looking at Alex work and I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe there's some valid validity to this. Then I started utilizing those techniques in my own training. And I realized, I feel like my uncle's difference has gone through the roof. It was actually, it deteriorated quite a lot. I just hadn't felt it. And I videoed myself doing three point starts. And the first step, you know, the car, the ambulance is stiff is holding the keyless, holding it sight, whereas before it wasn't. So, you know, my mind, my mind has changed a lot on different training modalities over the years, you just got to keep on challenging yourself and not like I said, leaning towards your biases.

TJ Jankowski 47:34

Yeah. And, and continuing. I think in the, if they make sense to you, like, if you can, if you can think you can see a progression and then go for it, like, but you're doing it out of like a positive mindset rather than a fearful one. I've got to add this in, because this is the thing that I've been missing this whole time.

Matt Vickery 47:54

On the flip side of that as well, what was said to people, if you can't explain why a particular exercise or drill isn't yet in your program, it shouldn't fucking be in there. You've got to justify every single thing that you're going to spend time on in the gym. Wonderful. Making you better. And if you can't justify it, it shouldn't be that.

TJ Jankowski 48:10

Yeah. Which goes, it goes back to that efficiency that we were talking about already. Like people just do stuff. I think it's people do stuff just cause, cause they copy what other trainers have done and they don't really think about it. And I think too many people don't even have like actual goals, you know? Like they don't state take the time to think they just go to the gym because they say, oh, Jim's good for rugby, strong rugby. That's it. They don't think, oh actually speed might help a lot more or power might help a lot more or getting aerobically in shape or get my condition up to scratch will help a lot more. They just think they just copy what they see other people do. And as we already mentioned, like there's not, it's not overly open what professional rugby players are really doing.

Matt Vickery 48:52

No. And I've, I've pulled I've, I've been a powerlifter. I've been a strong man compared to, and you know, I'd been a sprinter. So I got a decent lens. If I'm going to pick one physical quality, give me speed every day. You know, cause like I said, the speed work. If your sprint infrequently enough, accelerate and change direction work max velocity, you're getting enough strength work for the lower limb. You know, you can top up with a bits and bobs around when we mentioned, but give me speed everyday over strength because their strength is so easy to hold on to it. So he's a game, genuine speed. And you're not going to make people fast if you can make them faster. But that deteriorates after the age of 28, 29, they're all starting to go downhill. But the speed, the strength on conversely tends to go up because of course we start to favor the things that we think will get us better.

TJ Jankowski 49:43

I think on top of that, it's also like, speed is so good because actually makes you, it makes you fitter because when we're looking at repeat speed ability, I think I said this on last week's podcast, they look at, you look at the studies and you see the people that actually have the best repeat speed ability. They're just already really slow. So they're going from, you know, they're doing going from six to six to six to six and they maintain in six. Whereas you've got one guy that's a 10 and he drops down to a 9.5 and then a nine that's seen as a, you know, it was a less fit person, but actually, because they're so fast that they're running rings around the people that are six. Anyway, you have to put less effort in and you're becoming more efficient, a hundred percent. I could speak to a lot of what you've, you've spoken about two hour. I'm really enjoying this. I guess I want to go back to you say you've learned. In your, in your career and change your mind? A lot of things. I always think that's, that's a good sign rather than a bad sign because quote from Dan cultural who stole it from someone else was that, you know, you get a lot of coaches that say they've got 10 years of experience, but actually they've just got one year of experience 10 times because they never learned them. And I think that's so true. So just to, to know that, and I'm always fascinated thinking about like, what am I doing right now that I've, I think in five years, time is absolute bullshit or something that I think, ah, maybe I've done this wrong because more than ever now. And I'm sure you're probably the same, you're more and more confident in what we're actually getting people to do and really happy with. The rationale behind it, but there's going to be stuff that we're going to have to change our mind on. So, but what are some of the, oh, if you can just name one of the, the most important things or the biggest thing that you've changed your mind on throughout your career?

Matt Vickery 51:28

The one thing you mentioned, it was a calf training. That's one thing, the other thing is everyone's got a bias, right? So you, even, if you don't know you've got a bias, you've got a bias, but I always believed, you know, that powerlifting was the basis of a good athlete. So the big three lifts. No, that's not to say I don't use them still. Of course I do. But now I'm, I'm just as happy with using like dynamic effort method instead of cleans, I can dynamic as a dead lift, right? If you've got somebody put in 1 43, et cetera, I'm okay with them, not doing power cleans and will key with them not doing heavy deadlifts. I think that's the, if I used to say I've changed one thing, it's my ability to let go of biases and say, you know, like I don't particularly like Olympic weight weightlifting. I was taught badly as a kid. I've re ruptured both biceps off the board. And I can't take a, a cash position right now from a, from a clothesline, from one from the lift, from the other, and actually the third one. And finally there was 10 pin bowling with my kid. So that's not the coolest story. But, but I used to have real biases towards like powerlifting towards back squad towards power Queens. Cause even though I didn't really badly, I was still adamant that that was the thing you had to do. And then I was like, wait a minute, I got a bonded one 30 kilogram deadlift here, which I'm ripping off the ground at. It's exactly the same. I'm just keeping an old, I'm not catching it. So as long as my numbers, my speed, my VBT is up. Well, I don't care about that. And then I go, okay, well, what if I don't like doing deadlifts? We're going to use a trap bar and just do some loaded trap out jumps, same stimulus. There's no difference. So anybody who says different, come back and tell, talk about me in 15 years time. Now, if you say that Olympic weightlifting is the thing you have to do is create strength, speed. Stimulus of somebody else says something the opposite somewhere in between. If someone's good at Olympic weight lifting, let them do it. If someone doesn't like it, then don't, it doesn't fucking matter. It drives me crazy. These arguments that we have, but that's the difference. I think the difference, I wouldn't name an exercise or a modality or a technique. I'd say my ability to not have quite as many biases as I used to do. And if someone's comes to me, so I love only lifting. I'm really good at that fight program. If someone comes to me and says, I know I'm not good at all, you lifted and I'll say, well, it's a sport. You're not playing a sport. Let's get the stimulus and the outputs from something

TJ Jankowski 54:01

else. Yeah. As a rule of thumb, like I've competed in Olympic weight lifting. I do enjoy it. I've come away from it just because it's just, it's quite brutal. And it's the more I travel around. It's difficult to do in commercial gyms, but I still, I still enjoy it. But for the module, for the vast majority of my athletes, I don't even, it's not even a conversation we have to bring up because they, the learning curve, particularly if we're just doing it online or if they're going to it. There's just too much risk of us not getting the benefits, versus if we're doing, you know, demo deadlifts, if we're doing different jumps, different jumps, squats, different movements, whatever it is, like I know they're getting the benefit from those. I'm not always sure, unless I'm seeing crisp technique. If they're getting the benefits from unless it's a power snatch where it's just a real quick palace that I, I do enjoy those, but again, then they're only thrown in fairly infrequently, but I agree that the arguing that you absolutely need it, or you should never do it is kind of redundant at this

Matt Vickery 54:59

point. Do you know what the most stupid comment I've I've listened to? Which was from a pretty high level SNC coach? I wasn't speaking to him, but I was in the room at the time and he was arguing the case for Olympic weightlifting for rugby. And I overheard the comment and he said, well, one of the best things that people don't appreciate is that fact, if you're hitting a, like a one 50 power clean, you're catching a one 50 kilograms, so you're absorbing enough force. And then of course that's a great thing for robotics. It teaches you to absorb force. I'm like a Tonga and full tilt will teach you and absorb force. You don't fucking barbell the teacher to do that, mate, you know, the impact you're going to get on the field. You trying to negate those impacts in the gym. Not trying to add more stress to the system. So stupid.

TJ Jankowski 55:44

It's funny. That's that's, I've heard the same sort of thing, but it's like. And I, I understood it like probably incorrectly from what they were trying to say. I think they were trying to say, you know, you're catching it and you're using your whole body, but I understand it was like, oh, okay. Maybe. So that means I could just do like a demo dead lift and then like a, a depth drop of some point. Cause that's the absorption of the forest, probably more efficiently and more likely what you're going to find in Rupt. But you know, you don't need 150 kilos to do that. If you're just stepping off a step high, high enough step and absorbing the force into the ground, that's, that's a lot more like the step, the absorbing of force. You're going to find in a interrupted manage.

Matt Vickery 56:22

You want to talk me of force absorption, you know, then altitude London's again, that step of the box. Stick the landing. No, I don't like I don't. And again, there's big arguments about, you know, like a tool to short landings or snap landings. We went to Columbia or they're not, they're not specific to adapt development. They don't teach you how to allow. Well, I normally don't, but maybe you're not doing them for that reason. Maybe you're doing it just to add a little bit of hamstring, robustness. This, this is a ribbon tool for that, you know, you don't have to do it, but I'll do land read way to get those hamstrings to fire up.

TJ Jankowski 56:54

Yeah, definitely. I think as you said, that it goes to the whole approach of like, everything can work if you justify it. And it's the same, as you said, if you're assessing someone else's program, it's, you know, why are you doing a squat? Well, cause I've got to do a squat on a bench in a deadlift. Why you're not doing, you know, why you're not doing a rear foot elevated split squat because maybe you've only got access to dumbbells or maybe you haven't got access to as much weight or maybe you've got one leg that's significantly smaller or weaker than the other, so many tools. And I think you mentioned it right at the beginning it's movement patterns. You need a push, a pool, a hinge, a score. Whether that's a specific bench, press squat. Deadlift only really matters if you're a powerlifter. Otherwise, if you're a rugby player, like you've just got to use those movement patterns. Right.

Matt Vickery 57:43

You know what, like I like to get, he's actually got pushed. He got poked and he got vertical, horizontal. You got hinge, quality got lunge. You got rotation. You got get no, those the seven ones I run with. Right. I might be able to say me, I train gates. What do you do? Lunch walks. Nope. I do. Farmers carries. And that they don't get, what did you forget? You sprint or no, to do Mac drills? No. No. So what are you doing for gate? Nothing. You know, so people love to talk about squatting and you know, there's a real, I think one of the things you've got at the moment is there's a lot of people out there and they are given solutions to problems that don't really exist. You know, when you're talking about you grab a squat. Okay. Yeah. But you've got to have this squat, this got this score, this squad, it's got to be the squad list of squats or the hinges of squats. Pick one, mate, you know, keep this squat squad, keep your head. Shinji no, but if you want to do box squats, that's a very NG squat and that's going to benefit. And if you want to do a heels elevated split squat, goblet, squat, or friends flag as a very quad dominant Squatty squad. That's fine too. But we really, at the moment, picking them a new share of things whereby you know, a squat is going to be any type of squat is going to be better than a Squatty. Don't do. Yeah.

TJ Jankowski 59:05

A hundred percent. I think, and technically as well, again, probably from this bodybuilding background where we, where we're trying to over complicate things or make things a little bit more entertaining, or even with a strength background, like you've got squat university and that's not. Aaron Horshack but like, there's, there's like, it's, it's one movement pattern. Y Y Y I think we need a university to go to, to really delve into it. And especially not people that aren't powerlifters or aren't getting paid to squat, it just doesn't make sense to me.

Matt Vickery 59:38

There's two sides to that as well. Like I said he's, he'll correct. A two millimeter hip shift and see that's really important. And that's exactly what you've just read my mind kind of thing there, because those are the problems that we don't need solutions for 2 million is neither here nor there for athletes, you know? And then, but then you've got the other side of things then you've got you got guys like Adam Meakins, and I really like him, but he's like lift or you want it doesn't matter. Just build, build tolerance, tissue tolerance, and that's great advice, but the peer of them are doing things. If it just gives some context to it. Now I agree with me again. I used to do bent back lifting. So there's lift Atlas stones. I've specifically did bend back, lifting for a while to try and get my lumbar erector stronger. That's not to say that's the most efficient way to lift weight off the ground, but they don't see that. Or they just say do this. You know, it doesn't matter about technique. And then the other side, it's like, it's all about technique. And again, the unhappy and unpopular middle ground is where the truth actually lies. He doesn't have to be world-class steady Colin kind of technique, but equally it shouldn't be cat's back chit show, you know, cause you're not gonna live much weight with that particular type of technique.

TJ Jankowski 1:00:47

No, it's, I mean, it's the same like politics, right? If it's stuff is in the middle, it doesn't get any traction. Doesn't get any likes or clicks. That's why the popular stuff is always on the crazy ends of the spectrum. For technique, I always, my rule of thumb is if I am looking from across the room and it looks good enough, then that's good enough. Like that's, that's it really, you can always make slightly technical. If you, if I can see a technical adjustment, I'm actually looking across the room. If I can make an, a technical adjustment from across the room, or I can see something that might need to be adjusted, that's what we do. But otherwise, like there is no. Point in picking out in the minutia, it's just getting more efficient, getting stronger, and the body will figure that out as well. Most for the most, the differences

Matt Vickery 1:01:26

when you're working with kids, you know, again, the, the, the MTA Olympic weightlifting argument is it takes too long to coach. Fuck, I can call just snatching for your kid in five to 10 minutes. That's not an argument. That's just bullshit. That's a lazy approach for someone who perhaps doesn't know what to do it, or doesn't become, be asked. But with kids, when you're working with young athletes, it's really important to give them an idea like down path talks about shapes. You know, I love, I love that. What's your starting ship. What's your finishing ship and in everything in the middle of the sort of self out usually. But so we've acceleration with the squat, with the deadlift. If kids have an appreciation of what it should look like in their minds, the kids now film every bloody thing. Anyway. So they'll, they'll record this and they'll go, ah, that doesn't look great. We need to change that. And he changed it to, like I said, to to a degree where it's acceptable, there's, we're not formed police, you know, we're not. Technique we're coaching the amount of weight you can lift off the ground or all the time or the speed of which you can lift it.

TJ Jankowski 1:02:23

Yeah. We were given a lot of these extra techniques. Again, I think it's just a case of trying to make things that are quite simple, sound, more complicated to create a level of learned helplessness, like, which we don't need. Like, you know, if anything you need to be doing less need to worry about less, but as long as you're doing it efficiently, like you you're covering your bases, your what, you know, what you need to work on. And that's it really? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. I don't wanna take up too much more of your time, Matt. So last two questions and they're not, they're not quick fire. I put them here and I always ask them, but they're not quick fire at all. What's a one-off change. The most effective, one of change that you think an athlete and this is we can't be specific. So it just general athletes can make that will have the best payoff. So universe.

Matt Vickery 1:03:10

So if I'm going to say, oh, okay, I'm going to see recovery. And it's totally like, oh, you're on your own bullshit, bullshit. But again, the recovery thing, we got this camp over here, some 21 year old telling me he ended up nine hours sleep and drink five liters of water and make sure that everything is home grown. All my food is grown in my back garden and my, my, all my foods organic. And he goes the other side, then, you know, just sleep five hours a night and drink one liter of water in 20 coffees. You know, I've got a very simple approach to recovery. You get as much sleep as you possibly can, you know, without external influences. If you want some, if you've got three kids, you never, you're not getting nine hours sleep. If you got a job and a mortgage, you're not doing that. Don't talk to me about that. If you're a kid, you should definitely do that. I agree that hydration, nutrition and sleep hygiene. It's a, it's a much overdone point, but it is the most important single change you'd want to call out one single change would be recovery that you can make to people. So like my, my evening routine runs the same. I'm a routine. I like routine everything's done on a dome. So like they see, even now I will read to my kids and I'll give them 10 pages of Harry Potter. And then I will come down and have my dinner and it'll, it'll always be good for me. I don't eat crap. Cause food is fail and you know, it, last order is there's no emotional attachments required to food, just fucking fuel your body that sort of matters. And then I'll sit down and my misses or watch some crappy TV and I'll do some static stretching, some full rolling and some, some lacrosse ball work, which again is horribly unpopular with people because you don't need that shit. Come back and tell me when you're 45 7, if you need that. 1% is when you're 45, you get 10 or 12 of those. You got 12% different. That's a big difference.

TJ Jankowski 1:05:00

Yeah. What, what book of Harry Potter are you on?

Matt Vickery 1:05:02

Prison. That was

TJ Jankowski 1:05:04

nice. Now, now we're getting into the real meaty stuff. Yeah, I'm definitely one that's guilty of that. Like saying, you know, you don't need the lacrosse balls and stuff, because again, these are people that aren't taking the big rocks of their recovery. Seriously. You've clearly got everything else as, as efficient as you can. You've got your routine down. You asked most people that, you know, that do anything on the foam roller, what their pre sleep routine is. They don't have one, they don't have a bedtime. They don't have a wake up time. It's ad hoc that that's, that's not going to help you, but some place,

Matt Vickery 1:05:36

yeah, nine o'clock is bad time. And I read, read 10 pages of a textbook, and I read a couple of pages of a novel to fall asleep with. And I'd asked the routine, they have six days. Is that a night to let it go. you know, but you know, there's no room for that, but yeah, that's the, that's the thing that the recovery stuff is, is well-documented everyone talks about it, but give me a routine, which you can feasibly conduct six nights a week and stick to, and, and all these little, little, 1% doesn't actually mean something, but if you're getting no sleep, no sleep, then it doesn't matter.

TJ Jankowski 1:06:15

Yeah. And then finally, what's one sentence that you could define your overall coaching philosophy.

Matt Vickery 1:06:25

I think philosophy is, is one of those words where when you're a young coach, everyone tells you, you need a philosophy, you've got to have a philosophy, you've got to treat it. You got to buy into something. And I remember saying to somebody on a seminar a few months ago, and I said, look, you know, if you're young coach, you haven't got a philosophy, just follow somebody who you respect. And Nick there's for me, he was like Paula went to start with, and I did, I went away from that. That was Mike bottle and went from that. But I took bits and bobs from everybody. My training templates, the same for everybody. It does. I mentioned earlier that an ethos or a philosophy, I'd say if every, I don't see if every general public. Jim Goro athletes train like a professional rugby rugby athlete. They'd be much better off for it because every physical quantity you could possibly need as a human for longevity is in rugby. You've got, you know, you've got aerobic capacity, you've got anaerobic, you've got power, strengths, elastic, sprint qualities. You've got there's if there's no other sport, for me that encompasses all the physical qualities that you were, you required to be a really good, robust, strong, powerful from fast athlete, then rugby or union or league, maybe AFL conversation for that. But you know, there's no other sport where you, it gives you that really a nice well-rounded balance.

TJ Jankowski 1:07:47

Couldn't agree more. Actually, I think that's one of the biggest things. I've got a few athletes that are in their forties, and I think that, you know, Part of the reason they still play rugby is to do this sort of training because they know it's important for life. And I think that's absolutely a lot of people get that wrong, where they go, okay, I'll do rugby because that's what I need to do for my fitness and, and to keep my body in shape. And I'm like, okay, but that's a, that's a strange approach to do a really aggressive collision sport. You know,

Matt Vickery 1:08:14

and I want my kid to play rugby to toughen him up.

TJ Jankowski 1:08:19

So it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. It really doesn't. I actually thought, I thought for the, your overall coaching philosophy, you were going to say your Instagram handle, which will apply one more time at the end here. So jump the grow lift.

Matt Vickery 1:08:34

Yeah, they were okay. Yeah. Yeah. Which kind of encompasses the whole thing anyway, but yeah, I was, you know, at sprint on top of that, but like, it didn't really roll off the tongue, like jumps off the list is okay. So lifts, sprints.

TJ Jankowski 1:08:47

Yeah. It doesn't, it takes, it takes a lot away from the name actually, doesn't it. But yeah. Cool. Is there anywhere else people can go and find out more about your, your training and your coaching, that stuff? Or is the Instagram the best place

Matt Vickery 1:08:59

to go? Yeah, I'm just to Instagram. I, you know, I, I, I put a bit of content out there as much drops I stood, but yeah, play.

TJ Jankowski 1:09:08

Yeah. It's really good quality stuff. And you can see all of what we've spoken about today. Inaction. I appreciate you post something really good. I'm so yeah, everyone listened to, I absolutely encourage you to go check out jump dock, throw dock lift. Correct. You got to be in the description below. Thanks for joining us, Matt. This has been great.

Matt Vickery 1:09:29

Actually, my TJ man, pretty good.