Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay, yes, what is going on everybody? Welcome back to another brand new Rugby Muscle Podcast. I'm your host as always, tj and today I'm honored to be joined by another rugby strength coach, and this is Joel Harris of Strength Solution. Joel is as strong as an ox, and, rather than get into his whole bio, I think I'll let him introduce himself. So I will do once I get him on the call.

Speaker 1: 0:21

For now, though, I would like to just say, if you enjoy these specific interview episodes, they are a lot more, a little bit more arduous I say not a lot more, but they're a little bit more arduous to set up than the solo episodes.

Speaker 1: 0:33

I really do enjoy them, and if you really enjoy them, let me know by giving this one a thumbs up on YouTube and letting us know on the reviews on Spotify in the comments section, or just by giving us a five-star review. Wherever you listen to your podcast, we'll be getting a number of fellow rugby strength coaches, and it'll be interesting to see where we agree, where we disagree and where we can find common ground, and for you guys as the listeners, as rugby players, I think you're going to get a lot from it. So, without further ado, let's get into this one with joel harris. So, uh, tell me, like essentially, your background I know your background was obviously as a rugby player yourself. You said recently that you've now retired, or not recently. You just told me two seconds ago that you retired. But uh, I want to know, like your background, how you got into being like a specific rugby strength coach.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Um, and then we can just sort of riff from there yeah, yeah, sounds good, mate, and first of all, thanks for having me on. Um, it's always nice to come and chat about this shit. My missus doesn't have to listen to me then. But, um, yeah, sure, this will be on in the car, like I'm telling you. But uh, yeah, it's one of those ones.

Speaker 2: 1:44

I've played rugby pretty much growing up all my life and it was something that was such a big part of who I was. But I wasn't the most genetically gifted of individuals. I was five foot fat, growing up in the valleys and the only sport that I really lent into was playing rugby, and it got to a point where, you know, you're going through the motions. But I was lucky enough then, with my own, throwing myself into training and seeing what happens. I had the luxury of playing, uh, you know the worlds in the 20s level, stepped up into some of the academies and actually saw what goes on at the the highest level, and I think for me it made me realize that the stark contrast of what actually goes on at the professional game versus the grassroots game and I think that's what's intriguing to actually leaning in towards helping rugby players and really specializing in that aspect. Not only have I been there, done that and kind of worn the t-shirt myself.

Speaker 2: 2:41

I knew the disparity between what was going on at the grassroots, where they're just thinking points of smashing pies 24, 7 verse what goes on at the, the elite level, and I felt like there was a real gap that needed to be filled and it was being filled with pointless bodybuilding stuff, powerlifting things, and they were the things that I kind of grew up on and started to implement into my own training and they were the mistakes that I made that I want to kind of help others not make throughout their own journey, because it's a common thing and I can imagine you see it quite a lot with, uh, with people going through. So, yeah, that was like a little whistle stop tour of me and that your background mate.

Speaker 1: 3:19

That's interesting. So like got a few questions from that. Firstly, uh, give me a bit more of a timescale of this. So you said that you weren't overly genetically blessed. So when did you start playing rugby? Because at some point you must have realised actually, no, I'm all right if you ended up making. Well, it was in the 20s.

Speaker 2: 3:36

Yeah, so with that timeline-wise, I think from, I got pushed into rugby at the age of I think I was 12. I always wanted to play football but, like I said, I had two left feet as well. So it was a case of I was off the cards and there was a rugby team that I almost got forced into. It was something that I was always quite hesitant, being not genetically gifted. I was like you know what? I don't want to go play a sport where people are going to try and run and take my head off. So I got forced up there and coerced.

Speaker 2: 4:04

Did your dad play? So it wasn't my dad, it was my grandfather. My grandfather was always dubbed to be from people that I spoke to, one of the best Welsh players to never get a Welsh cap. They call him the Gentle Giant. He was six foot six and he played second row, played with the old Evervale RTBs and when they combined they were like boring squad. They played against the all blacks, played against uh, australia, south africa. So he had quite a good resume but he never got the welsh cap and it was only when I started playing and got kind of hooked on it that I was really interested in to learning his story and his upbringing and I think that's what triggered it for me.

Speaker 2: 4:44

I think that's what triggered the fact that when I started playing, I realised even though I wasn't the best athlete, I was always bigger than everyone and I think that gave me the vote of confidence that I needed to start off with. And then from there it kind of evolved. I think 14 was when I found the gym and realised that you know what I actually do need to start taking this serious. If I did want to step up as a good player and hopefully get that Welsh cap Because, yeah, it was something that, whatever my grandmother told stories about, my grandpa that was the first thing that would always come up would be the mantle piece photos and the touring photos that he had, and it was like, yeah, he always deserved that Welsh cap, so you can go do it as well, and I think that was a massive part in why I took to rugby as well.

Speaker 1: 5:30

I can imagine, because that's like, because I always think about this, like it's not for glory of anyone else, it's just the fact that you get to like tell these stories and that, and that's all. You think, that's all. Any of it is like, no matter what high level you play or professional you do, or whatever it's all about like your own experience and then how you would feel retelling that story to other people. So like, yeah, I like totally used my career to do that as well, so it's, it's. I never really thought about like, oh, could I earn a living doing this? Or can I, you know, reach the highest level for glory?

Speaker 1: 6:05

Because especially it's probably different in wales, but like in england or especially in the us, um, where I played the last of my rugby, you walk like, or you you go through to like you could take sia khalisi and walk him through like the, the busiest mall. No one's going to know who he is. And like owen, like owen farrell can, no one's going to know who he is. And like Owen, like Owen Farrell can just walk through the street and again he'll get a few like people going oh who's like, I recognize him, but you won't get him stopped.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Football players like they can't do that. So it's like no one really does care, even if you play at the absolute highest level that you can with rugby. So it's just about what story you can tell, and I think, like that's something that you say, there's a big disparity to like from professionals to amateurs. I think that's one where amateurs sort of sell themselves short because it's all about how much fun you can have in the stories that you can tell and I think like that's, if amateurs can experience that as well by playing their better rugby, then that's only going to enhance their own like life, you know yeah, 100, I think.

Speaker 2: 7:08

The stories that people try and tell themselves that they're the amateur level and the lower level games is there, the tall stories, the drinking, all this and that, but one of, uh, one of, like the most influential coaches on me, um, he always said you have more fun when you win, in winning anyway. So, like the beers that you taste after the game, the celebrations that you have, the songs that you sing, all mean that little bit more when you are winning and I think people can kind of cut themselves short, like you said, on the fact that, oh, you know what, I only play it for the social side of things.

Speaker 2: 7:40

I'm like, yeah, socially you'll have a much better time if you're beating teams and you're actually happy with your own performances and people if you're out of the booze and you've lost.

Speaker 1: 7:51

You still can have a great time, but every you know, like every few minutes or every half hour, a couple times an hour, you're just like, oh, fuck, if we'd have just won, you know what I mean. Like the amount of times I've I've done like sevens tournaments as well, where they've been great, and then we lost in the final. You're like, oh, that's a great memory. Fuck, we lost.

Speaker 2: 8:10

It'll always taint that memory as well, and that's the thing. Whenever you go back to the big moments that you've had within your rugby career, I can imagine it's probably off the back of big wins where you were the underdog or you came from behind. You put in a stellar performance and they're the ones that you can remember and they're the beers that you can remember after as well. So it's weird that people just turn up to rugby on a Saturday. They can't be asked for training on a Tuesday, thursday. They just wing it. They pick up injuries all the time. They're really unfit.

Speaker 1: 8:48

They're 20 minutes from the park and they're glowing out their ass and they're like oh yeah, I love rugby and I'm like you just love getting pinched mate. You can do that. You can love it so much more. That's so true. You just want these mates to to get drunk with. But if you actually got in shape, you would enjoy it so much more. So let's talk about you getting into shape. So, uh, you said you hit the gym 14, 14. That's a decent age to start taking it somewhat seriously. What did that look like?

Speaker 2: 9:11

So probably the typical person getting into training. I had my heart broken at the age of 14, and I was like, no, you know what, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to change it. So the people that you see online. At the time I think social media wasn't as big as what it is now in terms of the availability of great information. So I just started learning from the typical men's health magazines. You know, you'd see Arnold on the cover. There'd be big social media influencers that were kind of Steve Cook, all those people and I just kind of took a liking to that because they were the people that were in good shape at the time and I thought that's what I needed to be. Because you look at athletes, they look a certain way and I thought, well, if I chase that, the performance on the pitch will come. And it just meant that I was turned up to the gym the typical pro sclare.

Speaker 1: 10:05

You know Arnoldnold I think it's arnold's eight week blueprint was the the program that I decided to run, and it's a common thing, the muscle farm one.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Yes, that was exactly it's iconic, my iconic, but I didn't have a clue. I just turned up to the gym and I just follow that to a tee and you know it got me making progress, which was the biggest thing. But I think only when you look back with the knowledge that you got now do you realize that the kind of holes and the flaws in it, but the big thing it was getting me to the gym three times a week alongside training. I brought one of my mates alongside and I think I realized the importance of having someone on the journey with you as well. So the two of us we turn up and that would be our days. And I think the first transformation was the biggest for me. I think I ended up losing 30 kilos and that was the catalyst where I thought, oh, you know what performance is increasing. Yeah, for me that was the early days of it.

Speaker 1: 10:58

But yeah, it was some of the shit thrown into that, Some of those early days's like you, you just grasp whatever you can, because I think the whole thing is kind of overwhelming and the reality is when you're just beginning, like everything works and if you can stick with it long enough, you, the biggest thing I think you take away is that, just that lesson, that if you stick with something long enough and you see that progress, like that's, that's one of the most uh, reaffirming things that you can actually get. And it's why you see so many people that are into fitness, like sort of expand into other business domains or whatever. Like you know, you look at someone like the rock and that's like not saying that most people that go to the gym are going to end up like him. But he's the perfect example of right. I've done this. Or Arnold himself I've done this, I've achieved this, I've set my goals and done whatever I've progressed to achieving in this area.

Speaker 1: 11:56

Now I'm going to progress to achieving in that area. Or I'm going to progress in this way and if you can just know that just putting in your efforts and that delayed gratification like it can be huge. And again, being a beginner, no matter what, like you, you know when you look at the science, people that just start running actually gain muscle on their legs. So it's like you can do anything and you're going to gain muscle and that's cool. You know, mine was the 300 workout from that, the, the Jim Jones stuff. That was like it was like early days CrossFit, before it was CrossFit and probably a little bit more extreme, but I don't know. It looked cool and uh, I felt cool whilst doing it and and yeah, it's just that ability to sort of see it in your physique as well, see how your body changes, and then like, actually feel good about it and then know that, okay, if I can put this action into a certain direction, I can get this output.

Speaker 2: 12:53

no, and I think that's I think that's a great point.

Speaker 2: 12:55

There is like it looked cool at the point as well, and I think you know, at that age, when you're just kind of getting into it, you you worry about splitting hairs, about all this other stuff, but, like you said, just running is the catalyst for gaining muscle for people that are complete beginners.

Speaker 2: 13:10

So if you could just do something whether you enjoy it, whether it looks cool, whether you know you've, whatever it is, as long as there's something that you can vibe with and I think for me that was one of the the easy things there was not a lot of overwhelm there, like it is now, because you go on social media and you know it's part of our job is to put the right information out there.

Speaker 2: 13:31

But every single man and their dog has an opinion on absolutely everything nowadays and it can leave people a little bit like where do I actually turn? Because you look at one thing, it says something. You look at something else, it says something else. But essentially, yeah, if you can just find the avenue that you enjoy, that you like the look of, and you can stick with it, that lesson of delay gratification will come at some point where that whether it's three months, six months, nine months down the line. If you keep doing up like doing the thing and showing up, you're going to get the results at some point when you're in that kind of early days yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:02

So social media just tends to be the algorithms always respond a little bit better to like negative stuff because we just as I don't know as humans, like sort of I guess feel a need to comment more often. That's why, like you get joel seidman's uh stuff gets so popular because people love to bash it and it just feeds the algorithm for the bloke and all he just has to do is put up. And I remember he did an interview with kia and or a debate with kia and he was like 90 of the stuff I do isn't posted on instagram. I'm like, yeah, so you know exactly what you're fucking doing, because that's the stuff that gets the results. But the quirky shit goes on instagram. People hate it. People need to tell everyone okay, this doesn't work. And then we end up and the problem with social media is that we then end up telling everyone and I'm guilty of this on my own social media I'm saying like don't do this because this doesn't work, because that's going to get more traction. But then eventually there's going to be people say don't do what I preach, like people say.

Speaker 1: 14:58

I know other rugby strength coaches will say, oh, you shouldn't do long, slow, slow runs, when in actual fact, I think the opposite. I think long, slow runs can be massively beneficial for rugby players. Now, I'm sure that they don't produce people just as fit as what I can produce, and that's fine. And again, what we're probably doing is splitting hairs. But for the untrained eye or for the inexperienced eye, you're like, oh, am I supposed to run? Am I not supposed to run? Okay, I'm supposed to do this, I'm supposed to do this. What the fuck do I do?

Speaker 1: 15:29

and it ends up yeah overwhelming is the word that you said. I think that's. That's a big problem with it, right?

Speaker 2: 15:35

yeah, 100, and, like you said, I think all roads lead all roads lead to room and every single person just has their own way of getting there. And I could imagine we could end up arguing about something in your system versus my system that you disagree with or I agree with, but then we'd have so many different common grounds that we agree on. And I think the problem is, like you said, that negative social media algorithm. There's a social media guy from, uh, from where I'm from, and his whole instagram is just calling out people that are wrong. Um, and he's like the only reason why I call people out all the time is because it builds that traction. It builds that um algorithm and people start commenting.

Speaker 2: 16:16

One of my best posts had over half a million views and it was people arguing in the comment section for me and that's the only thing that filled it. And I went to the gym yesterday and he was like someone was like oh, I saw, I saw the comments on that video. How'd you put up with it? And I'm just like well, at the end of the day, it feeds, feeds my page, and whether some people think it's right or wrong, if they want to argue with me, those ones where, yeah, at the end of the day, it's a sad reality of instagram and how people work nowadays.

Speaker 1: 16:49

But yeah, you've got to do what you've got to do. Yeah, I know it's it's because it is interesting to see, because I've only started like I took like a basically a couple years off of instagram. If you scroll far enough down my feed on on rugby muscle, you'll just see all of a sudden like jumps like a couple years or there's like a few spare posts within those years because all I did was this youtube and the podcast stuff. But the reality is this is instagram is where most people are. There's just still the volume of eyes on that is still different. I like these podcasts because they're just more searchable.

Speaker 1: 17:18

So I think for me, especially with the reels now it's I debate how much I think the idea of instagram is great to get some information, to get to know someone. But then the work you're not. I don't know many people. Maybe we can disagree on this. I don't know many people that would follow someone on instagram and get enough tangible information that they could actually implement. That would really get them massively different results than if they just didn't see that person, if that makes sense no 100.

Speaker 2: 17:51

I think that's the the landscape of me for, for instagram is it's like one of the fastest growing platforms, apart from tiktok, in terms of like eyes on people. And yeah, like you said, how much information can you get across in a 30 to 60 second reel? Probably not a lot if you're going one point. There's some people that I follow that you know repeatedly hit home certain points that I vibed with and then I've dabbled in longer form content and it is that top of funnel stuff, the whole funnel, all this way. You know, social media and instagram is right there, and like youtube, podcast stuff is where, ultimately, I think people need to start to get to. But I think you get found out when you uh set up a podcast for 45 hours, however long it is I do a longer youtube video and it's not clickbaity and it is the the harder platform to grow. I can imagine, based on the numbers and stuff that you've done and the time that it's taken to build, that it's one of the most rewarding ones, though in the long run.

Speaker 1: 18:54

I just always try and value putting out the best information, and I just don't. I think it's also creatively. I just don't like the short form content as much. It's just it's hard for me. I don't, probably because I tend to ramble, but I want to make sure that everything is perfectly covered off, but maybe I'm just not good at it, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 19:16

I think you make a good point, though, like in the more experienced people, where I do end up getting found out like I like this as well, because sometimes I'll flush my own ideas out and then even then I'll I'll go back and I'll be like ah, maybe I was wrong with that and we're, we're Instagram, that's what. That's gone. People completely forgotten about that. You can. You can always just repo post posts from like six months ago and everyone no one remembers it as as a as a repost. Everyone just thinks it's new. So, let's, let's see if we can find you out, mate. So, uh, I want to know what sort of shaped your own um influences on being a rugby strength coach, like I know the disparity between amateurs. Well, actually, let's, let's touch on that first. So what were the biggest disparities between amateurs and professionals that you thought? Okay, this is where I can fill this gap.

Speaker 2: 20:08

So I think, when it comes to the differences between the top level and, I'd say, the amateur I think it's the standards that I realized was like whenever it came to you know, gym sessions. It would be a case of if you're late, you know you've got a fine to do, or you know if you weren't on time you couldn't miss a day.

Speaker 2: 20:32

It was more like a contractual thing you had to be at the gym and that's all well and good for for someone, that's kind of being paid to be there and work. But I think even when people strip things back to fit their schedule from an amateur level, they let the standards set, they let the barriers, like the barrier to high performance. They kind of drop that slightly. So when you are being held accountable in a performance setting, you'd have people with a program there, you'd have people tracking your numbers. You make sure that you want to be it, you wouldn't want to be late, you wouldn't want to miss a session. All those things. I think they're the big foundational rocks that like build that consistency and they build that long-term habit. And I think that's just purely missing from most people, just from the get-go, regardless of whether they're doing the wrong program or anything. They just don't have that backbone structure and they don't actually understand what goes into actually performing at a higher standard. Because the way that Instagram's gone, it's always kind of quick fixes, things like that, and they think that's the route to it. So I think the first thing is just the understanding of what actually goes in from a mindset standpoint. And I think once you can start to get at different individuals, whatever program they're running I think that's why there's so many coaches doing different things out there is, if you can get that buy-in early on and start to actually track the data for people, get them being accountable, turn it up on time, actually doing the right things, then from the basic habits they're going to start to make progress, regardless of whether they're going in like right or wrong direction in terms of the rugby stuff.

Speaker 2: 22:08

But then once they do get that structure in place, most amateur people uh, they just follow the kind of power lifting bodybuilding, the general five by five, three by twelve, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2: 22:21

You know they've seen someone do drop sets that implement that and that's as far as their essence equals and I think unanimously across country to wherever bodybuilding dominates the kind of fitness space at the minute. So I think that's where everyone pulls their information from and I think, yeah, it's a part of training S&C for rugby is getting a good muscle pace in place. But if that's where you stop, I think you've shot yourself in the foot and I think that's what I realised was the difference maker was that it goes beyond hypertrophy, it goes beyond strength and there's this kind of like whole we call it the core four that takes to being a good rugby player Strength, speed, power conditioning. They're the. We call it the core four that takes to being a good rugby player strength, beat, power, conditioning, like they're the. They're the kind of main fundamental aspects and only one of those tends to really get tipped off by most amateur rugby players yeah, massive.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Um, the accountability is probably is huge as well. I think it's like I've spoken to a few people about this recently because we were talking about like motivations and whatnot and it's like if you're if you're a professional and you stop going to the gym as much, even if you like, well, first, if you're not going to your team sessions, like that puts you all the way down. You stop performing. You like your coaches can see that and know why. Even if you're like having your own individual sessions, your performance is going to inevitably slowly go down and there's so many people that are in that space that are so hungry for that, especially now. All the youngsters that have been starting since a young age bodies are primed, hungry for that contract. There's less and less money in outside of france there's there's less money for more playing positions than probably ever and so like. If you don't do it, you like.

Speaker 1: 24:12

What sort of accountability is your job? It's a massive. Like people don't not show up to their job because they're hungover or because they don't feel like it. They, they do their job no matter what. They always show up and that's that's what the gym is for a professional, for an amateur. It's not for amateur, unless you're nicely. If you've got everything organized, it's much easier. If you don't, it's much harder. It's so much harder because that's the first thing to go. You're not again. You're going to show up to work, no matter what. So that's already I don't know what. What do normal people work? Eight hours, nine hours a day. Eight hours, nine hours a day like that's already off your schedule. Sleep you can't just not sleep, especially when you're not going to. People do sacrifice sleep for the gym. I don't think that's a winning battle either. So you end up being somewhat inconsistent. Because it's not there. You have to make it a priority as part of your schedule and again, because it's part of your job as a professional, you're going to do it.

Speaker 2: 25:14

If it's part of your job as a professional, you're going to do it. If it's not, you have to treat it the same way, right? No? And I always remember driving to to training and you'd be stuck on the m4. You'd be driving somewhere and you'd be stuck in traffic and the anxiety about being late. You, you'd like, have to text across being like I'm running late, I'm stuck in traffic. You'd have to show proof that you know you, you're there and people like that.

Speaker 2: 25:30

That's been driven into me now and that's the standard that I hold myself by. It's like well, I want to make sure that I'm on time for things. I want to make sure that I don't actually second guess and just kind of let the excuses Because I think it is a negative cycle loop either way. So you carry on doing the right thing. It's a positive loop where you're reinforcing that good decision. You show up, you get the results and it breeds more of that. But when you let the excuses win, it's a case of you skip one gym session, what's the next? So you're running late for this, you're half-assed, this, and then it's that, that negative feedback loop the other way. So I think you've got to be really, really strict on that kind of accountability, those boundaries and actually setting yourself that structure, because I think as soon as that starts to go, as like you said, it becomes a losing battle for most people yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 26:14

And then once you do get that motivation, or you get that, uh, I don't, even I don't like using motivation. You just get consistency right. No, whether you're disciplined because you enjoy it, which then are you really disciplined, or you motivate whatever, you show up to the gym consistently, again, it's still we're doing our best as we can, but you're right Like, because, especially I think it's even worse with social media because fitness, you can't see fitness, right, you can get phenomenal runners that look like nothing. You can get phenomenal athletes, rugby players even, that don't look like. You put them in a normal, in a hoodie, and no one will notice that they're even a rugby player outside of, like ebonette to beth and people like that. So then it's like what does performance look like? We don't know. So then social media leans into okay, it looks like this shredded physique, massive bulging pecs, popping quads or or just someone really lean, whatever, like, and it becomes a visual thing and really, for most people that aren't athletes, that are just looking to get in shape, yeah, 90 of the reason they want to do it. You even said because your missus broke up with you, right, you're going to show her, I'm going to look better. Yeah, there's like and and me. I watched the three of the movie 300. Oh, those guys are ripped. That's cool. I want to look like that, right, so it the same thing. We're so visual. So then that's what gets traction. So then that's the training that we end up looking for. And it's funny.

Speaker 1: 27:33

You said, uh, your core force, strength, uh, speed conditioning and power, right, yes, hypertrophy is is a part of a couple of those things, maybe, but it's, it's not actually a goal, it's a byproduct of training for other things. Even then, when you understand that, okay, you then follow what? Okay, how, I don't care about how I look, I just want to get really strong. Who are the strongest people? I've got to follow these power lifters, oh, that means I've got a squat bench and deadlift, but that's just because of the rules of power lifting, but those, that's just how you do it. And uh, the third, the third road, uh, stop in. That road is is usually end up being like some sort of crossfit, because, uh, actually I don't want to just get strong, I want to get strong and fit. What do I gotta do? I gotta do crossfit.

Speaker 1: 28:16

And again, it's a different sport with its own specific, like uh, conditions that you've got to get good at. And so with crossfit it's different, like certain wards and certain aspects which use different energy systems than what rugby does. So again it's it's about and I think people listen to this podcast now know there's a big difference with that yet still there ends up being a little bit of a bit of a discrepancy in the way that they train, because it's just simple. Again, we've, we've done this. It's hard because we've also I don't know what that camera's doing now Come back down here it's hard because the we, we also want things to be simple.

Speaker 1: 28:57

Right, we, it's, it's we don't want to overcomplicate stuff. It's because of fitness ended up being overwhelming, but at the same time, simple doesn't mean training like a power lifter or like a bodybuilder or like someone that has different goals to you, because, well, it's not going to get you to your goals yeah, and I think that the problem is that the landscape of social media is always people want their the hardest result in the easiest way possible and the least hassle.

Speaker 2: 29:29

And the thing is getting in shape, being a great rugby player isn't easy, but it's not complicated. That's the problem. People, I think, mix up the terms easy and hard and simple and complicated. It's not easy to get in the best shape for rugby, but it's quite simple. It's just hard. And when people see that word hard, they're like they immediately bounce into complex, fancy things because they feel like that constitutes hard. But it's just mentally stimulating rather than actually making you better. And, like you said, you bounce from that.

Speaker 2: 30:05

You go into bodybuilding, you try the powerlifting route, you try the crossfit route and then you end up at a point well, these are the people in best shape, these are the strongest people, these are the fittest people. How come I'm neither of these and it's like well, that's where then people start to I must be this, it must be this, it must be that, it must be that. One thing that I'm not doing, and the problem is when you're kind of putting out social media content, that's, that's the, the hooks and the things that actually get people listening to your content? Is that one thing that you're not doing? And then people are like, well, what is it? And it's the the landscape of social media. But, like you said, it's not complicated. It's actually quite straightforward and quite simple when you break it down into a simplest part.

Speaker 1: 30:48

But yeah, is that because a lot more than most it's also like there is the complication is more on the back end, right, it's like assessing what you need to work on. Oh, okay, like you, you know. You can say, oh just, you know, I just lift because that's, it's simple. But if you're really unfit, okay, like that. There's a level of complication to establish that and then to say, okay, it doesn't need to be complicated, go do some basic aerobic work or whatever. Or the opposite end of the spectrum, where you've got someone that's really fit but really weak, but they say I just run and do my basic bodyweight workouts because I want to keep it simple, but again, if you're weak, you've got to address that issue.

Speaker 1: 31:30

I think you're so right though, where because it is difficult and because, like we bias again on social media as well, right, who gets the most traction? It's the people with the best results, the really strong people, the freakishly big people or powerful people or whatever. The worst one, and I think you might be the only one. If you're not guilty of this, every rugby page will repost Joshua to us over, because the man is the most jacked person ever. I don't think he even lifts weights, he's just a freak. So you can't follow his advice.

Speaker 1: 32:09

Yet you could lift weights perfectly for years on end and do everything right and not look a fraction of this guy. And that doesn't mean that you haven't done everything right. It doesn't mean that you've missed the one trick, but human nature is to look for those tricks. And yeah, you're right, you can give like the perfectly most well-balanced uh uh, uh real and put that out there. Or do the best video and and and like really be perfectly balanced with you and give the best advice. People ain't gonna click it because they want to know the secret still, and you have to sort of shoehorn the basics in via different levels of entertainment or hooks that again keep them interested yeah, and it's the.

Speaker 2: 32:50

It's the nature of the beast, quite sadly, but it is one of those ones that you look back and like every rugby page does. Yeah, I've posted the, the mammoth that he is on my page as well as like, but it's genetics, kind of uh does play a big factor into some of this, and they are built differently over that side of the world as well yeah, it's um.

Speaker 1: 33:13

The other complication I think and I think this is one of our first posts that we got chatted on is is training splits. Because people love to talk about training splits because they always ask what's the best split for a flanker? I don't know, like that's not a question, that's not really like, and I guess that is because people look again, it's looking for that perfect solution. If I just get the perfect split, then I'm going to be able to like massive, make massive gains in my squat, but also get really fair and fast and do all of these different things, whereas actually, I think again, it's a, it's a more complicated analysis that's required to come up with the best training split for you. I want to know. I guess we can sort of touch on that.

Speaker 1: 33:53

Then You've posted a few different splits. So how would you look at managing the difference of your core four? I have five pillars, so I add movement and I call it athleticism. It's just different movement capacities in there. So I add movement and I call it athleticism. It's just different movement capacities in there. So I add that as a fifth, but that can easily be worked into the other four, however you would define it. So your four. How do you go about working those four different elements at the same time, or do you even work them at the same time?

Speaker 2: 34:24

So I think this is where are there going to be better and worse splits for rugby? Yes, 100 like there are going to be ways that I feel that you know, if you consider like consolidating stresses, and that's why I think hybrid has become so, so popular at the minute. Like you said, it's a case of people want that new fancy thing and hybrid is that thing where it's like combining strength and endurance. Now, do the two coexist? And is there something called the interference effect? Yeah, there is, but how important is that for you when you're not an elite level marathon runner trying to go sub two hours versus a, you know, world-class powerlifter that's trying to break the heaviest total ever? If you lie on that spectrum? Probably it's not so much. So whenever it comes to to kind of designing that, we'll add your fifth pillar in there, because I really and I really like the.

Speaker 2: 35:13

The movement slash athletics is something, because that underpins everything, I think. Um, so you've always got to kind of take into consideration the athlete that's coming in and you've got to look at what they can do. Now, whenever we're in the gym, there's a skill element and there's a skill component to the weights that we do. So, for example, a back squat is a very, very great quad exercise for people to try and build muscle, but if you can't back squat it's a very shit exercise, whereas a leg extension is very, very good quad exercise and really hard to fuck up as well like. If you fuck up a leg extension, you've got to be doing something drastic, like satin it backwards or something. So whenever we're kind of picking a training split, I think the first thing that's going to look is what are you competently able to do and where is your kind of baseline level of athleticism? And then that will determine a lot of the movements that go in. Because, like I said, if you are picking a back squat exercise for lower body strength and power but you can't actually load it, you're not going to be getting that designated stimulus from that movement. You're just going to be working on the skill acquisition of that.

Speaker 2: 36:22

So once you've understood what you're actually able to complete, tick off and actually get the right stimulus, I think it's then about doing a little bit of an evaluation, I think. Are you someone like you said that runs all the time, does bodyweight workouts but a week is best, there's zero conditioning and doesn't really focus anything other than squatting below three reps, dead lifting below three reps and benching one rep max because it looks good. So like, where do you lie on that spectrum? And I think that's then the baseline foundation of your split, because there is no perfect split for a flanker, there's no perfect split for rugby.

Speaker 2: 37:04

There's no perfect split for um getting stronger there's a perfect split for rugby. There's no perfect split for um getting stronger. There's a perfect split for you and your athlete profile. And then it's just kind of making sure that in season, depending on whether you're someone that needs maybe two, three strength stimuluses because you're a little bit weak, you're relatively untrained and you just need to build that strength base, or whether you're someone that's very, very aerobically poor and you need to be able to last 80 minutes, so you do two, three, four conditioning pieces, wherever you place those in the training week is ultimately dependent on what allows you to perform on that given Saturday, sunday, whenever you play.

Speaker 2: 37:41

And I think strength, you're normally going to take 72 hours to fully recover, so you probably want that done, game day minus three, whereas like anything before that, you're quite competent to be able to say you know what, come saturday I'll recover. When it comes to conditioning stuff, you can do that a little bit later. Maybe thursday you can get a good conditioning blast in and actually still feel good for a saturday. So in a long roundabout way there, there is no perfect split. There's no perfect kind of thing that we look at. It's all about assessing the athlete in front of you, understanding their wants, needs and what they're actually capable of doing, and then building the split and consolidating the stresses around that. For performance on a on a Saturday, we can dive in a little bit more. If you know, there was things that you wanted to cover on that.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Let's dive in a little bit more. If, uh, you know there was things that you wanted to cover on that, let's, uh, let's do that as well. So we'll, we'll touch on in season just a bit. I know a lot of people listeners are just about to finish their season, I think. So we'll, we'll touch on off-season strategies as well. But we'll go in season now and we'll say, um, how do you and I'll tell you mine after, if, if we don't in, we're not in complete agreement, but who knows um you say about consolidation of stresses. So how much of a how much is rugby training factor into that?

Speaker 2: 39:00

it depends on what the level people play at, and I think rugby training looks very different for a lot of my athletes. Some people turn up to train on a Tuesday and they've got broncos, they've got hard conditioning sessions, they've got a strength conditioning coach that loves to challenge the mental toughness aspect of conditioning regardless of the thoughts on that and that then plays a massive role in how we're actually going to structure training, because I like to follow kind of like a high low model, so on high days you keep your high days high. So if you're kind of training on a tuesday and you've got those broncos, you've got high volume running, you've got a big, big on feet coverage day. Well, I wouldn't really place a strength session for lower body on a wednesday or I wouldn't probably place it on a monday. I try and get all those things together on the same day. So it's like, would you rather be shot once or twice? And it's like, well, just shoot me once, get it over with. If it's two bullets, just shoot me once, rather than kind of leave me recover a little bit, go through the surgery, then shoot me again, right, but the way that I look at that, that's just kind of along in that period. Um, is like get the double barrel straight now take it, and then you've got that period of time to recover.

Speaker 2: 40:18

So we've got some athletes, though, that they turn up, turn up train on a tuesday. They are, I'm gonna give a touch. They're a little bit of a runabout. Maybe they're short on numbers. Eight, nine, ten people turning up, they can't really get into drills. Whatever it is at that point, does it really matter too much? I'll beg to differ. And then it's more about where they can perform in training, because I know that that's going to be the biggest base of adaptation that that we're going to look at and that will be the priority for us then, because, yeah, depending on who and what they do can drastically change.

Speaker 1: 40:55

Actually, if we'd had a discussion a couple of years ago, I probably would have disagreed with you, because I was very adamant with the high-low, like you know. Place all your stresses together. Do as best you can to do that. The reality is that training actually for a lot of people, as you said, is really different. You can actually also challenge some of the athletes to okay, you're only going to play touch or you're only going to do whatever drills. You're going to do team run through. I challenge you to keep this as aerobic as possible. I have some of my guys that wear the whoop straps. I'm like, okay, great, you're going to do team run through. I challenge you to keep this as aerobic as possible. So I have some of my guys that wear the whoop straps. I'm like, okay, great, you're going to try and keep it over under 150 and if it goes above 150, your challenge is to get it down as fast as possible after that. So now we're staying aerobic, we're not letting it get too high.

Speaker 1: 41:39

Um, so I think then you can manage your stresses a little bit easier. You know, then you're not getting your highs, so you're not really getting shot, you're just getting kind of like stabbed. I guess maybe, maybe it's not as deep, you know. So you're taking a few more stabs, but none of them are really that deep that are actually going to get you and you're making that conscious effort. So that's when you can do a bit more. You know consecutive days of training and have them be all right. I would still like, because I think of the nature of rugby, the nature of strength work and whatnot. You still do want one real hard stimulus in there, but you've got a little bit more room to play with that. And there's the other area where it's just practicality. If some people cannot go to the gym on their on their rugby days, does that mean we just never train lower body? Probably not, right.

Speaker 2: 42:32

So we have to figure that out yeah, and that's where I think you can kind of get caught in the weeds of like the perfect periodization strategy. But, um, I read a lot of the the agile period model, which is kind of a way of managing threats, and that's the biggest thing that they look at is like, what's going to be the biggest detriment here? Is it going to be training a heavy leg session on a Monday before training on a Tuesday, or is it not getting any heavy strength stimulus regardless throughout the course of the week because of a perfect split? And it's like, well, you know what? I think, if you'd never train lower body strength across the course of a rugby season, you'd have a pretty poor time at trying to manage your performance, because just handling a little bit more stress in two days, maybe having two high days back to back and then two low days to recover, and you can easily just make those high days not quite as high.

Speaker 1: 43:24

So, instead of maybe doing three sets maybe it's just one top set and then you get out, or maybe it's not above 90, maybe we just hit that 85 we keep a rep in the tank. Uh, you know you, so many people would be so surprised at how much or how little volume they really need to continually progress, not just stay as strong, but actually get stronger. It's nowhere near as much volume or intensity as as you're led to believe. And again, that's because who do we like rely on for our strength information? People that only care about strength stuff. They're not like. If they could do five sets or if they could do a hundred sets and get stronger, they would do those hundred sets. It's just not an option for most people, particularly if you're doing all these other, if you've got all these other stresses, uh, in your week.

Speaker 2: 44:10

Um so let's go into off season real quick sorry, uh no, no, I was just saying. That's the beauty of the hybrid trend. I think a lot more people now are starting to tap into the fact that you need a little bit less than what you actually think to actually make progress. It's gonna hopefully lead into the rugby world at some point.

Speaker 1: 44:31

I think it's getting there. I hear more people talking to me that come into my realm and already know what Zone 2 is and know what aerobic effort is. I'm like, oh, brilliant. And then so that makes my job a lot easier I was going to switch over to off-season, so how does that differ to in-season as far as, let's say, for what you want to work on and then how you'd go about working on it?

Speaker 2: 44:57

So I think the biggest difference maker for me and the way that I flip it to my athletes when we're off-season is it goes from performance to progress. And I think in in season is all about how can we maximize performance, not progress, and in the off season is how can we maximize the amount of progress that we're going to make in this period of time? And that is where you have a lot more free reign over athlete schedules. You have a lot more free reign of managing the total stresses and you have a lot more free reign about how much volume that they can actually do and, depending on the athlete in front of you, a lot of the time it's about building that kind of strength hypertrophy base and optimizing body comp throughout that time, just because you know if they need to get into a deficit. You don't have to worry about performance on the on the pitch like struggling if they need to get strong because you know they've got a one times bodyweight back squat but they want to go play back row at a high level. Well, you can squat two, three times a week if you need to and there's not going to be any detriment.

Speaker 2: 46:08

I think this is where the habit really goes from more of a I was going to say like a vertical integration approach, where it's like that, trying to juggle everything at once. But you still do that in the off season. But you can put, you can make the priority a lot more of a priority. You don't have to spend as much time and effort into, you know, managing the core four that you've got. You can really put a lot of your eggs in one basket and let one tick over very, very, very slowly as long as it's still big, and that that's the difference and that's the shift.

Speaker 1: 46:43

Yeah, that's massive, and I almost set you up for like poorly with the question, because I get told, you know, I get asked in fact, I got asked yesterday what do I need to work on in the off season? My mate, fuck, if I know, I don't know you. It's hard, you know, because it's just one of those things where your training goals don't change right. If you're still slow, you're still slow. Or if you're still weak as shit, you're still weak as shit. Or if you're still really unfit. People don't want to know this because people don't like to do cardio, just in their heads. If you're unfit, you should prioritize your fitness in the off season. Just because you're not playing a game doesn't mean that you don't need to be fit anymore. Like, actually, this is great time to build some fitness.

Speaker 1: 47:29

Where it differs, as you said, is how hard you can push that stimulus. So the fatigue still needs to be managed in order to progress. I like the way you phrase that, though. Performance versus progress. So, when you're order to progress, I like the way you phrase that, though performance versus progress.

Speaker 1: 47:43

So when you're trying to progress, you can dig a hole and know that, like, eventually, when that all fatigue all dissipates, you're then going to come out the other side so much better for it and whether that be, you know, through longer runs or harder conditioning sessions or through uh, more, just more volume of weights, whatever the case may be, you're still working the full spectrum or the areas of the spectrum that you need to emphasize as well, but you're just emphasizing that much more and you're able to do much like a little bit more because you haven't got that lingering saturday game potential tuesday where you have to still perform at your best because you know you're still vying for your positions. It is a lot more about okay, what are we working towards? We can have a lot more of a I say a singular focus. You can have a couple of different focuses, but you can.

Speaker 2: 48:35

You can not have to worry about the, the rugby on the on the weekend, as as an athlete no and I think that the way that I look at it is, whenever it comes to development stuff, you've got your pie right and you know the. The circle of the pie is set to the amount of volume that you can actually recover from, and in season a big chunk of that is taken up by tuesday, thursday training game on a saturday. I think coming into the off season that pie is just so much bigger and there's actually more training energy that you can allocate it. It's just that. What divisions of that pie do you need to dedicate? The strength, speed, power, um, and conditioning like where do you like?

Speaker 2: 49:18

And that's where then that sets you up for what I find the most interesting part as a strength coach is like our job is doing strength coaching. It's like right, how can we actually get you coming to a point now where pre-season comes? You've ironed out all the weaknesses that you've had and you get to show your coach that you have come back a better athlete, because you're not a better rugby player at that point, because you probably haven't touched a ball for six, eight, ten weeks, but you are a much better athlete, and then you can take on your training at a better rate, you can progress. You can recover from more scrums, you can. You know that game of touch where you turn and burn, you can actually run back the other way. And those are the things, then, that really excite me as a strength coach is coming into this off season, because I believe it's that the most vital time for rugby players if they do actually want to make some solid progress as an athlete yeah, uh, the the only different.

Speaker 1: 50:09

The biggest difficulty I find with offseason is that you don't get that validation as you've got to wait, like till pre-season. So I remember the worst time I had with this was with covid. So it's like you. Actually, we had to wait months and months and months to fucking get to a training session. You're like, oh, holy shit, I'm so much fitter and like, and also comparing to people that have done nothing, and that's the other thing.

Speaker 1: 50:32

Like day one of preseason is a big eye opener for a lot of people, right, cause some people don't haven't had that gratification in every training session, knowing that they're getting better. They can see it on their stats, but still, is that really going to transfer? And then they see it transfer and then you've got the people that have kind of dropped the ball in the off season. Whilst we're on that, we'll touch on stats real quick, because I know you're quite strong with this, so you have goals per body weight to hit. I've seen you implement those a lot on your Instagram, which means obviously you implement them with your training. Specific key lifts Do you want to touch on those and why you think those are really valuable?

Speaker 2: 51:16

Yeah, 100%. I think it bleeds on quite nicely because the influences that I've had and the people that I've mentored from their whole catchphrase is like, if you're not assessing, you're guessing. And I think a lot of the times people come into the off-season, like you said, and it is that delayed gratification of you don't actually get to reap the rewards of the hard work that you put in until pre-season comes and more often than not that's a deterrent for most people to actually fall off the ball, slack off things and not actually progress and carry on pushing. But that is exactly why we track so many different key avenues, because if you have clear, hard-cut data of targets that you need to work to, based on some of the historical data out there from pro rugby players and people that have, you know, walked the walk that you've got to go down, and then you have your data to back up exactly where you fall short, where your strengths, your weaknesses are, it just simply means then that you know you have these clear cut targets and this framework to work from.

Speaker 2: 52:20

So, when it comes to strength work, we track eight key lifts. We track the front squat, the back squat and the deadlift as like the, the three main kpi lifts, but then we've also got kind of like the trap bar, branching off that. We've got some rdl stuff as well and some split squat, good mornings as like the full base of exercises. And then for the upper body we've got a chin up, a overhead press, an incline press, a bench press and a strict dip. And those big eight key lifts, for us from like a lower body primary perspective, indicate where our strengths are and where our weaknesses are, because most people may come in with very, very poor mobility. They can't get into the right positions and their back squat way outweighs their front squat, and then it's a case of well, you can look at why the difference is there and then you can plug the weak links in the chain.

Speaker 2: 53:10

It may be a case of the front row forward, they'd be battered, their shoulders can't actually get into the right position, they're beaten up and it's like, well, okay, that is a test lift.

Speaker 2: 53:20

We've got the information then to go and build your program to work on, because we know that you know, based on the ratios that that are out there, this should be this compared to to this lift, and it's the same for the upper body then, and I think the reason why we track these is it just gives people an objective metric to work to, and people love progress if they know they're progressing. That's the thing that's going to keep them bought in for that off season, for that long pre-season or even better yet. That's going to be the thing that helps them keep like something in their program year-round, which I think should be the goal for every single rugby player is to be able to dominate a good off-season, a good pre-season and a good in-season, because there's not many elite athletes that slack off at any single one of those phases, uh, and still make a very, very great season.

Speaker 1: 54:07

Yeah I think having those lifts as motivation is is huge, especially when you can compare, because again, yeah, when we were coming up that day, it wasn't anywhere. I I saw I think I saw byron kelleher once do like I think he had three plates, but this video is so fucking pixelated you have no idea what's going on. It's it's not even like the. I feel like the all blacks right now do like intentional dodgy camera work just so you can't see how deep their squats are and stuff it's. It's funny the way that they do it. But, or, uh, england social media seems to be pretty good. Wales is getting better and scotland's pretty decent, where they're just lifting good tin because they know that's going to get reactions and then every every uh genius in the comments criticizes why it's terrible. But you can see the uh, you can see the lifts and you can actually go.

Speaker 1: 54:53

Okay, this is what this person has done and I actually think it's valuable on the opposite side of the spectrum as well, where, oh, okay, I'm already like front rows will love this, because the front rows will be oh, I'm more like when they get shocked at how little quote-unquote ellis genj lifts and you're like, oh, I can already, I'm already as strong as ellis genj. Do you think you really need to spend five of your all five of your sessions that you've got available on then continually growing strength, or do you think something else is missing in your, in your arsenal that could be further developed to help you play rugby? I think it helps on that end of the spectrum as well. Um, I don't know whether you use it as much for that, but I think that that can be one. And then the motivator, of course, again, all these little tools. As we've already said we said it right at the start right, we love to see ourselves progress and if we can, if we've got the key lifts to help us actually eye our own progress and see that week to week, or even sometimes it has to take like month to month for you to see, and it's not in just, oh, I squatted this exact one RM more than the other one RM More of the case ends up being like, oh, this was a little bit easier, or this felt so much smoother, or my total volume was significantly higher and I didn't realize it. And I think that's something I also try and lean on.

Speaker 1: 56:13

People is, or tell to people to lean on is. It's not just about your good days. Your good days are great, but there's also your. If you can still perform decent enough on your good days are great, but there's also your if you can still perform decent enough on your crap days. Compare that to your crap days when you weren't doing this and you'll see a huge difference. But the fact is most people don't. They compare their, their crap days to two months ago's best day. Well, that's that's not.

Speaker 2: 56:37

That's not how it works no, no, and that's the thing they say.

Speaker 2: 56:43

You want to try and compare apples to apples rather than apples to oranges.

Speaker 2: 56:47

Whenever you kind of compare lifts, whenever you compare your best to your worst, you're not comparing apples to apples, because readiness can fluctuate 18% on any given day, which means that your 1RM could be 18% higher, 18% lower, depending on kind of how the day's gone. And most people don't have the ability to optimize their structure for perfect recovery, for kind of that timed performance peak where you know, kind of, if you was going into a pro setup on a monday, you're going to do your heavy lower body lift, which means that on a tuesday you can kind of relax off a little bit. But when people are in work like we've got some guys that work 12 hour shifts, that kind of you know, manually handle things all day Well, you're not going to be able to perform at your best if you've done that all day. Or it could be one of those freak days where you come in and it's just like you know he needs off hangovers and it's like, well, it's just a good day for you.

Speaker 1: 57:41

I know so many people that have had a hangover and then they end up hitting. That it's fucking. I think it's just like the the. Your inhibitions are just completely gone because you're like, fuck it I don't know, like whereas if you've, if you've like, taken a two-week taper and you're perfectly trying to get build yourself up for this different, maybe you just overthink it yeah, I don't know what it is, man, that is 100.

Speaker 2: 58:03

Maybe we're preaching the wrong stuff, maybe just get pissed every single day. Maybe the amateurs have got it right, they've got it spot on. But yeah, it's like like you said, you, the more data that you can collect on stuff and it's why I'm like big on tracking things for our athletes is because most people slack off this stuff. I'm guilty of it myself is why I've got a coach. My coach looks after all my training for me, because I'm rubbish at crossing t's and dotting the i's.

Speaker 2: 58:28

And if you can get someone that can help you kind of store that data, look through the data, read that data and actually realize that you are progressing, you are doing the right things, you are pushing things on from the whole core four, like that's where you'll start to get that buy into that program and that's where you'll start to want to train harder because you are making progress.

Speaker 2: 58:48

So the people that step on the the weighing scale, they see the the scale go up and then all of a sudden they're like, oh this, you know what, I'm just gonna go bury my head in the domino's pizza, feel sorry for myself, nothing's working. Whereas if you step on that scale, you feel good because that number's come down. You're like, yeah, I'm motivated to work, I want to put in a little bit more. I'm already seeing that result. I think the more you can leverage that with your own training because it is one of those tasks that emotions play a big role in how you perceive the training process if you can kind of structure all that well, fix the debt to win almost in that aspect, you're going to be a lot better off yeah, data is.

Speaker 1: 59:27

It's just the biggest thing because it always is objective, right? So, like, um, I think so many people we like to get so many different pieces of data, just so because I think we like to find that win.

Speaker 1: 59:43

Right, you said you stand on a scale and you're like yes but you know, you could have just taken a giant shit and you actually fatter than yesterday or whatever. You know where. You're not going to be far in a day. But you have a point right, you've done nothing better and you, you still feel better and that still ends up like giving you some level of motivation, whereas you could have done everything right. Just happen to retain a little bit more water with your nutrition and you're two kilos heavier and you're just like, uh, what's the fucking point? You know, because we, we have such an emotional sort of reaction to that data, so we want to, rather than say, uh, sack that off. What you want to do instead is why don't you weigh? Like? Perfect example, if we just continue using the scale, if you just weigh yourself every day, it reaffirms that it's actually just data, right. So then that big two kilo jump actually gets taken away and you lose three kilos the next day because you then piss out all that water. You feel good. All of a sudden you're like, oh, I haven't completely messed up because I've got data, or you. You then have a bad reaction and that way it goes up and up and up and up. Still data, right. Same thing for your lifts, so it helps you. You're always going to continually find yourself trending in a certain direction, so it helps you. Then compare your apples to apples and know and not base your decisions on emotion, but actually that base them on what the physical body is producing. The flip side to that is I'm always giving it a flip side because it's the whoop.

Speaker 1: 1:01:10

Right, I just said it before people love to use the whoop and then we love to track as many pieces of data through the whoop. And now, all of a sudden, our whoop is telling us that, even though we're waking up and we're feeling good, right, we see, our whoop is telling us that, even though we're waking up and we're feeling good, right, we see, our whoop score is like, our score is 40. I don't know what that means, but you know, maybe that's a bad score on whoop. All of a sudden, we're like crap, I'm tired. That means I'm not going to be able to push myself in the gym today. That means like this, this and this and this, and also we start telling ourselves the story and again it's just another emotional reaction to data being given to us. So I think that's the biggest challenge.

Speaker 1: 1:01:45

I think it's a difficult challenge for us as coaches to face, let alone if you're that person that's given that emotional reaction to that data. Again, I've already gone through the examples of how we tend to judge our reactions very poorly because of the emotions, whereas that's the beauty of coaches they're not. They're not having those emotions. They don't think you're a failure because you weigh two kilos heavier. They don't think you're weak as piss because your your squat session didn't go as you'd think it planned. Us, on the other hand, even us as coaches, right when we react to it, we we're like, ah crap, like what's the point of me even squatting? Maybe I shouldn't just bother squatting. Maybe I should do something else. Or maybe I should just do front squats or completely sack off squatting. Maybe my femurs are too long. Instead, I'm just going to do Zurcher reverse lunges for a year instead.

Speaker 2: 1:02:43

I'll help my squat out somehow. You know it's so, so true, and I think it's that flip side of the whole when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And I think a lot of people kind of we set almost measures of physical strength, we set measures of uh, power, speed, whatever it may be, and then people base their whole kind of outcome of success on that certain thing and it's like, well, no, your goal is to be better at rugby, it's not to, you know, hit numbers. It may be. If your goal is to hit these numbers, then great, you know what, we'll kind of work towards those and if you feel good doing it, it's fine.

Speaker 2: 1:03:18

But it's always making sure that whatever decisions that you do make, is that the whole cliche of whatever makes the ball go faster, and I think that's that kind of whole non-emotional view to it as well. And that's why a coach is important, is they can pull you to the things that actually matter, rather than you know your group score. We had a lad like I've told him to take his group off on a Thursday night, because as soon as Friday comes he's like I can see my score dipping, I can see my score dipping. And then on a Saturday he wakes up and he's like, oh, my recovery score's down and we tried so many different things and it was a case of we tried moving, took his primer session away. We ended up, you know, moving his strength stuff very early in the week, tried all these things apart from just being like does he fucking whoops go matter that much, just take it off.

Speaker 2: 1:04:05

Yeah, how do you actually feel? Yeah, and he was like yeah, you know what? I do feel a little bit sluggish on these days, but since we've been doing this, I feel a lot better. So I think it was just a story that he was telling himself as well, because it's like the data was reaffirming that thing.

Speaker 1: 1:04:16

I had a lad sean, like literally last week, uh, to sack off his whoop, shout out to Sean, he, uh, he, he said I've not renewed my membership anymore, I'm done with it because he would the same thing, right, but but the worst one with him was during pre-season. He's like, oh, my recovery scores all the way down. I'm like, mate, you're in week one of pre-season, you've just come from a holiday where you've traveled to this to New Zealand, right, it's about as far away as you can travel. Of course, your score's low, mate, that's the point. And he's like, oh, yeah, you're right. And he's like, fuck, but I'm trying to do all this work and my score's low. I'm like, if you're doing all this work, you're not going to have a good whoop score. It's just how it is. And then, yeah, you wake up that you've had a bad sleep and so, yeah, he ended up just sacking off as well it's. And, yeah, you should still get a good night's sleep, but maybe, instead of and and still somehow find a measure of tracking that.

Speaker 1: 1:05:11

But maybe your measure, instead of having this, uh, whoop score, that algorithm, algorithmically is actually shown in the science not to be the best, maybe you just say okay, how many hours can I be in bed? Because I've been saying this for a long time because of a book, not the Matthew Walker one, it was like the OG, I can't remember, I think it was just called Sleep. I've had the guy on the podcast, I forget his name. But most people's biggest problem is just it's not the perfect bedtime setup or the perfect like, getting your perfect temperature or whatever it is. It's actually just being in bed long enough and then winding down before bed. Most people don't do that, so why don't you just track okay, how many hours am I in bed? And if you get that to enough, you you're. You'll probably find that like tell me if I'm wrong, call me out if I'm wrong.

Speaker 2: 1:05:59

You, but most 99 of people are going to find that all of a sudden, their sleep is fine and they recover much better 100%, but I think it's that social media landscape, yet again, that feeds the perfect morning routine, the perfect bedtime routine, wanking off in a nice bath, having this perfect recovery thing. The whole problem is, if you're training hard, you're pushing yourself, you're purposely overreaching and doing a little bit more than your body's capable of recovering from in a short time frame, your recovery score is going to go down like just except.

Speaker 1: 1:06:36

you want that that's a good thing. It means you're going to get better.

Speaker 2: 1:06:39

That is, that's the. The byproduct of actually having a good S&C program is having days where your recovery is going to dip, like today. On a Monday Tuesday, I do back-to-back conditioning strength work as well, so I've had four sessions in two days. I know for a fact today my recovery score would be down if I actually cared for that. My body weight is up because of inflammation, things like that of just pushing myself, but I know towards the tail end of the week my body weight is going to start to drop, I'm going to feel better and naturally, I'm going to be able to have another hard session, probably on Friday, which is the way that I've structured my training. So yeah, it's the problem with the silver bullet yet again.

Speaker 1: 1:07:27

People are like well, what the silver bullet? Yet again, people like what's the missing piece of my recovery? Okay, so now I'm going to ask people if they want to find them the missing, the silver bullet, the missing piece, the, the secret source, the solution to all their problems. They want to find it by following you on social media, I think, because I think you present it on the daily right. So how can they go about following you on instagram? Is it? Is it on the instagram you use now?

Speaker 2: 1:07:42

uh, yeah, it is on the instagram. I'm trying to build into getting more of a youtube presence as well. That's my next adventure, so I'll probably try and pick your brains on that, because I know you've been there, done that and they're currently wearing the t-shirt. Yeah, but yeah, if you want to find me on instagram, it's joel harry's dot strength solution, um, and that is pretty much the only place you'll find me. You may see a tiktok with under that as well, but for the time being, that's. That's literally uh, the main hub of uh where you'll find this man, hopefully dropping knowledge bombs daily yeah, I'll.

Speaker 1: 1:08:15

Uh, I'll obviously put it in the show notes. Um, when you get your youtube up and running, I'll put it in the show notes if you already got it. Like the channel started and you're just gonna start to put it on no, no, yeah, I'm uh.

Speaker 2: 1:08:27

I'm in the pre-contemplation phase where I'm just like you know what I want to try and make this work. So I'll uh definitely drop you a message to see how you get things started do it, mate.

Speaker 1: 1:08:36

Um, I've enjoyed chatting anyway, so I think you're good, you'll be fine for it. Um, I think you've clearly got enough knowledge well thought out with this stuff. Uh, isn't and it's not just like book knowledge, it's clearly like practicality knowledge as well, which only comes from doing the thing. So I've really enjoyed having this, having you on, mate. I've enjoyed having this chat. Um, I'm sure I'll get you back on again. We We'll have another chat in the future. Listeners, go ahead and go follow him on Instagram. It's not. Your videos are really good as well, man. I enjoy them, but it's not just the spammy stuff. In fact, it's never spammy stuff. I don't think I've ever seen a post of yours where I've gone. No, that's wrong so far. There will be a day and I'll call you back.

Speaker 2: 1:09:22

I look forward to that day. But no, I appreciate you having me on Tom. Anyway, thank you very much, mate. No-transcript.