Okay. Yeah. So what is going on everybody? Welcome back to another rugby muscle podcast. I'm your host, as always TJ. And today I'm joined by Jake Colley Davis. Otherwise known as Caradoc conditioning on Instagram. Jake is another one of these new generation of rugby strength and conditioning coaches. The have been putting out great information on Instagram. And that is actually why I reached out to him, why I wanted him on the pod, because I've seen. Caridad conditioning, popping up more and more over the last couple of years. And the information that he shows is really top notch. Um, Jake has a background where he, he did a masters in strength and conditioning, but he's really got a good eye for like what the practicalities of. Coaching amateur rugby players, uh, really looks like as far as, you know, the strength and conditioning demands and all that stuff. And he's been in the game for a good few years now. So he's got a real good idea of how his practice has evolved. And that's what we talk about on this podcast today. So I think lots of lessons for you to potentially learn as a listener, as a rugby player. Of course, if you enjoy this. Uh, hit the five stars. I'd have to ask this at the beginning of the episode, because it does really. Uh, help the show. We're nearly a hundred, five star ratings on Spotify. And obviously we are well over 7,000 on YouTube as far as subscribers. So if you're watching on YouTube, Hit that subscribe button and follow us along on the podcast journey as well. And of course I will put all the links to everything for Caradoc conditioning in the show notes. And if you want to work with us here at Rugby muscle, I put the links to that below. One of the things that you can access is our free school group. So school is like Facebook groups for like people that don't want to be distracted by all of the other BS that you will find on Facebook. And it works really well because you'll have early access to any guests that we have on the podcast to ask them questions. You will have access to me to ask me questions. We do regular Q and A's every two weeks. I might start publishing those also on this platform, but to ask the questions that you have to be a member of the school group. And in that you'll also access the free rugby athlete blueprint, where I guide you through the main principles. In setting yourself up for a strength and conditioning plan in the long run. It's not a one-time, here's the plan. You're going to do this and then be the best player ever. No, it's a guidance on how to structure it. How to approach your overall. Uh, strength and conditioning journey from the ground up. And it's something that I really do think is the most valuable. Uh, piece of free information I could possibly put out and you'll find that on the school group. And you'll find that in the description below. Without further ado, let's get into this podcast now, then with Jake Colley Davis. I reckon, uh, Jake, if you want to just introduce yourself in like one or two sentences, who you are, what you do to potentially a brand new audience. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So thank you for having me on. I am Jake Colley Davis, otherwise known as Caradoc Conditioning. And, uh, I predominantly work with rugby players, getting them fitter, faster, and stronger. I'm basically a strength and conditioning coach. I work predominantly online, but I've also worked with some teams in person as well. And, uh, yeah, a big part of what I do is the content creation and just giving people as much free advice as possible. Awesome. So, um, before I get started in the Caradoc conditioning journey, I want to get into your rugby journey. So you still play. Am I right? Not, not really. I mean, I'm actually sporting this little sevens, uh, tank top, but, um, basically I, I stopped after, no, I stopped just before, just before COVID. I'm playing union. Uh, I turn up to sevens tournaments, have a bit of fun with my mates and stuff every year, but aside from that, I'm just sticking to the coaching. So just before, you know, everything kicked off, uh, with the COVID and, you know, we had all this lockdowns, you couldn't do contact. And then it was like all these weird rules just before that. I had like my fifth or sixth shoulder dislocation and I was like, You know, it's just, it's, it's, it's not ideal. Um, obviously with what I'm doing, I want to be able to demonstrate exercises and I want to be in decent shape. And when you're just having two shoulder dislocations a year, it just, everything takes such a step back. So, I made the decision to, to stop basically. And every time I watch it, Which is a lot because I'm coaching players. Um, I look at it and I'm like, I just want to get back in there. But, um, yeah, um, I haven't got it in me. I haven't got it in me. The union season is just so long, you know, you can play, you can play a couple of tournaments, you know, you can spend a couple of weeks recovering between them. And then you've got a six to nine month off season, you know, it's, it's brilliant. I'd rather it that way around than doing the union, you know, but respect everybody who does union. Yeah, for sure. There's some places in Europe that I've, I've worked with players and certain parts of us, Canada as well, where it's like a split season. I always think that's a much better way of doing things. Cause then you've got like two committed runs of like two to three months of like games every Saturday. And then you've got like a nice little off season. So that's a lot more of a, like a digestible, particularly I'm looking at this for like, like family players and whatever, like those who have a missus, like to say that you've got to give up every Saturday, it's such a commitment for Like UK based players where you say right from what's it now? Like August till April, every Saturday, basically apart from the old one, every few months, I'm expected to be at the rugby club, you know? I absolutely love the social side as well, but that takes a, a toll as well. Um, body, uh, and also just like the, the, the time as well. Um, you know, if you're. If you are going to give up that Saturday, there's a big chance that you're giving up your Saturday evening. There's a big chance that you're not doing much on the Sunday the next morning. And then you've also got your Tuesday and your Thursday consistently every single time, you know, throughout the weeks as well. So it's, it is a huge commitment and yeah, that's just kind of why I'm not at it at the moment, you know. Well, at least one of the better things I think they've done, and they've started to do it even more so in England, I've seen, is that they regionalize it a bit better, because when I was playing, and this is, I'm gonna start sounding old now, but like, 10 plus years ago, it would be, You know, North and South. And then like I was in Amtel and that was in the North league and you're like, how does that even make sense? And so then your, your Friday's also out of whack. Cause you've got to get up super early to get going on the Saturday. It's just, yeah, it does end up being too much. So shoulder dislocations. How many in total have you had then? Did you say? I mean, it. It depends if it's like, if you mean completely fully out or if I've like twinged it again, but like, I'd say five or six, luckily every single one, um, you know, came back in on its own accord, might've taken a few minutes a couple of times, but I never had to go in, get it put in, you know, cause that's a, that's a lot more damage and a lot more painful as well. So I got a little bit lucky with that. Um, but. Yeah, it's caused me issues for quite a while now. Um, I really want to be able to work on some of the overhead stuff, like cleans and jerks and really, really double down on some of the Olympic lifting, but been holding me back, but made some good progress over the past. six months with it. So who knows? Maybe that'll start coming back into my training. Has it, has it come out since you've like unofficially retired? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I mean last, so last, it hasn't since last summer, but last summer I was playing touch rugby with my mates, reached up in the air to grab the ball that went overhead and my arm just got stuck like this. So the shoulder popped out and I just got stuck in the air. And I was like, yeah, and then it got stuck down here, like halfway and then it came back down. But yeah, it's just, it's very loose, very loose. We're already here on this tangent. So I'm going to go down it even more. So, cause I want to explore this. Um, cause shoulder issues are a thing for like a lot of rugby players. Um, now what, and so is. In the fitness industry, like quote unquote bulletproofing, to what extent can you really prepare the shoulders for that? And what do you think about the differences between someone who's already, uh, experienced a few issues with their shoulder like yourself versus someone who potentially might want to future proof themselves from that? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say that there would be too much difference between the two, in my opinion, I think. In general, like for rugby players, just getting more padding, um, you know, generally guys are pretty lean in this kind of, you know, around their shoulders, around their upper chest and stuff. And if you want to add on padding, you just got to chuck on some more muscle there. So bodybuilding is going to help that kind of situation. Um, strength in general is just going to be good. You know, your main compound movements. I think one of the bigger things is, like, people are always, you know, worried about doing, like, just the external rotations or whatever, and it's like one, it's one piece of the pie, you know, it's one part of the puzzle, um, I think work doing external rotation is useful just because a lot of people lack that, they do a lot of more internally rotated stuff in their training, so it's just, you know, building things back up, um, and then, um, the proprioception or just your control in general with that arm, especially overhead, that might just be more for me now that I've, you know, had the injuries. So maybe that kind of answer that question. The people who are worrying about trying to bulletproof it, as opposed to the people who have already had the injuries and are trying to get it back, you know, so maybe it doesn't happen again, or maybe it just works better. I've had to do a lot of, like, not, not like balance or like proprioceptive or, you know, banded training to just get, get things to, and I know it doesn't, it kind of doesn't exist, but getting them to turn on, getting them actually to fire, getting them to do something, um, because there are little muscles in my shoulder that are just like, they're pretty much turned off. And it's, it's been, it's been hard to get them to feel, to feel like they're working again, you know? So that's been to like, Because they're switched off rather than what they should do, keep the shoulder in place, pull it back to where it's got to be within that like ball and socket. It just lets it pop out. Right? So your job is to, yeah. Yeah. And like when, and what people don't get is like doing lateral raises, doing overhead press, doing your general bodybuilding movements. Like they still, the rotator cuff still has to do a lot of work. Like, but. In a situation kind of like mine, it's not doing that job. And so stripping it back, building it back up, um, getting it stronger and just giving myself confidence. So I was talking to one of my athletes the other day. I think that last stage of rehab is, is. A big part about the psychological point of view, you've got to get over that last hurdle of thinking, well, this isn't going to happen again. Like I've done everything that I need to, um, and just being at one with it. Okay. If it does happen again, I've done everything that I need to, but I'm not going to go into every single session or every single game thinking about the shoulder. Otherwise you're, you're never going to break through from that last stage of rehab. So that's, that's, that's been a tough thing as well. 100%. Um, I've got a few thoughts on that actually. So, the first one is, uh, with your, like, the prehabby rotational rotator cuff stuff, like, I think they're good, but they're only, if, if anything, their best thing about that sort of stuff is that then, it then allows you to, like, Take advantage of the stuff that would put on mass. So you, you know, your overhead presses, your lateral raises, your bigger compound movements. I think the more that you can do to get stronger in the bigger compound movements, just the better off you're going to be in the inevitable collisions that happen in rugby. And I think, as you said, size is. It's padding, but it's also force. So the more you can dominate a collision, the less likely you are to have a negative, you know, uh, outcome from that as far as an injury goes. So I do think that they have their place, but I think their places is sort of misconstrued. So if you just only ever did the rotational stuff and you never did any heavy compound work on the upper body. Like, I think you're, you're essentially could be like wasting your time because you're, you're, you're starting up, you're doing the thing that can help, but you're not actually then progressing it to get it to where it needs to be. For sure. You'd get hurt if, if that's, if those, if you're only doing those like little weighted or banded exercises and you run into a player who's doing combat movements more than your shoulder's going to get, you know? So, yeah, absolutely. There are aggression at the end of the day, it's making it, you know, built stripping it back, not. Not doing, you know, not necessarily adding that much. So yeah, definitely a regression. And then with the, like, but actually building confidence, I think there's a, there's a layer thing with that as well, is that like, if you're someone that has on more than one occasion, like had a collision, that's damaged your shoulder. Um, there's also potential there that there's either something physiologically or even like skill wise. Inefficient with the way you're doing something. So like that can be like, maybe you're tackling a little bit too wide and therefore you're tackling, you know, maybe at the crook of the elbow or in the forearm, therefore the force going through the shoulders much bigger. And like, there is a confidence with that, but, and then the more you hesitate, like the more that's going to happen as well. So I think you've just got to also accept the fact that like with rugby, you're going to get collisions. So the better you can do. Um, you know, technically with those collisions, the better you're going to perform, but then even then, right, people will still pop their shoulders out at the highest level. Um, I mean, I guess that's because again, there's more force, but then there's also more force coming back at them. So it's just, I wonder if there is, I haven't seen it, but it might be something I might look into after this, but like the data on like amateurs versus professionals, as far as I know, it's quite good with some other injuries, but like contact injuries, it's probably like, It's probably like a really even because you're less, less, there's less force going in, but you're less prepared for it. Whereas at the top level, you're more prepared, but then you've just got bigger people. And it's just an unfortunate, uh, reality of collision sports. Cause it doesn't, doesn't seem like, All the work that, you know, you see the top level at Springboks, top international teams put into their strength and conditioning. They're not not getting injured. You know, no, definitely. And that's the thing. Like bringing it back to the whole bulletproofing thing. Like you can't, you can't fully bulletproof anything. Injuries are going to happen. Um, the majority of players will get multiple injuries over, you know, Their entire, their entire rugby career and, uh, yeah, you, you, you got to kind of embrace that, I guess, or leave. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, but then that also makes like the preparing for it even more fun, right? Because it's like the consequences are, well not necessarily do this or you get injured, but it's such a, an interesting challenge to sort of overcome as far as like from a physical preparation standpoint, because you've got to do it, do everything. So let's touch on that then. How did you get into Caradoc conditioning? How did you create it? Um, let's also, Explain the name. Cool. Yeah. So Caradoc is, is my middle name or one of my middle names. So, uh, that's where that came from. Um, the, basically alongside my final year of my master's. so I went to Cardiff Met. I did an undergraduate degree in sports conditioning, rehabilitation, and massage. And then I started my master's, which was an 18 a month course. Um, and that was a master's in. Strength and conditioning. So during like my final year or, you know, the last kind of half of that, I created the account. So that was in, I think, 2021 kind of time. Um, or 20, early 20, yeah, around that time, made the account, just started posting things. It wasn't actually completely rugby specific at this point. It was just in general, you know, strength, hypertrophy, power, um, not really that much conditioning or fitness itself. That kind of came afterwards. And, uh, Whilst I was doing, you know, the course, I would coach a lot of my friends for free, gain some experience, and then had a couple of people reach out to me. Um, and you know, it was super, super cheap. I mean, I was doing one to one coaching for, you know, like 30 a month, giving them, you know, a ridiculous amount of hours throughout the week and throughout the month. But that's just to gain that experience. And, you know, before I just jumped straight into it, like some people do seem to be doing and just start, you know, Charging people loads of money, essentially for, for the fact they don't have any experience, um, progressed it from there. And then it was just a bit of a. Gradually, you know, cons consistently posting on the Instagram and on Tik TOK, um, the followers kind of grew. As the followers grew, the amount of athletes I was working with grew, the amount of experience that I got grew. And, uh, eventually kind of at the start of this year, um, or kind of end of last year, really started doubling down on the rugby side of things. So, yeah, as you're well aware at the end of the day, what makes it, what makes an athlete. What makes an athlete fitter makes an athlete fitter doesn't matter kind of where they are. These like general adaptations that we're getting that, you know, the methods of. doing them well and make big and making the biggest improvements. They work pretty university across the board for different athletes. So, um, really I just started doubling down on like the rugby stuff that I was showing in my videos, a bit of the language using rugby and the things I was saying. And then I said, you know what? All of my clients are rugby players. Well, like 90 percent of them, pretty much all my housemates, all my friends are rugby players. I love rugby. It's all, it's all I'm kind of doing. It's all the only really other hobby that I have outside of, you know, the stuff that I was doing for work. I'm just going to make everything rugby specific. And now we're, uh, I do specific, you know, rugby specific, showing the conditioning. And, uh, that's kind of how it's grown. And it was a bit long winded, but it was a bit of a journey. That's cool. Yeah. That's a cool journey. Um, what other sports did you, uh, coach or what other athletes did you coach, uh, whilst you were like during your masters, I guess. Cause you have to get some experience with that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, when I did, anytime I ever did anything to do with the, the masters or the undergrad, um, I'd like to get my experience to do my placements. That was with the rugby team at Cardiff Met. So I did like some rehabilitation play, uh, placements. Cause I wasn't actually a hundred percent set on doing strength conditioning until I basically got my, you know, my dissertation results, um, at the end of my undergraduate degree. And then I was like, cool. I'm just going to go with it. I'm going to go strength and conditioning. Why were you hesitant? I just didn't, I didn't know which route I was going to go, um, within like sport and sports performance. Um, with the first degree I did, it was a combination of massage, rehabilitation and sports conditioning or strength and conditioning. I dropped the massage real quick, um, and was focusing on those two. And I just found the, I don't know, all the physios are going to hate me for this, but I just found like the physiotherapy and rehab was just a regression from strength conditioning. It's just, it's the same principles, the same tissues just targeted in, a way that they can tolerate, which is much regressed. I don't, I've never heard anyone really say that before. It's like strength and conditioning, but like a little bit more scared or a little bit more cautious. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and, you know, there's a big link between the two. There's a huge link. For sure. I find myself doing a lot of rehabilitation with my athletes, but especially, you know, rugby players just get injured all the time and we have to change things. I can't just always be like, Oh, okay. That's happened. Cool. I'm not going to change anything. You just go and talk to your physio. Here's the exact same program. Of course, I've got to change those things around. So, um, yeah, I just, I like the performance side of things. I think being able to help somebody through an injury, it was really rewarding because you know, it's an important thing to them, but seeing the performance increases and, uh, seeing somebody's physique change, seeing somebody's, you know, physicality. Stats change in a match, the level that they play going up, um, that, that was what I wanted to focus on and, uh, yeah, that's why I did that, you know. Yeah, for sure. So before you went to uni, were you already into like lifting and stuff? I'm assuming so. So was there anything when you went to even before your undergrad, was there something it could be both your undergrad or your master's program. Was there anything that you went into it where you thought like one specific thing and then once you actually learned the science, like you completely changed your mind upon? Oh, yeah. Loads of stuff. Loads of stuff. Um, I wouldn't even know where, I wouldn't even know where to start with that. I mean, little things, like I think a lot of it you get the right idea about, but I think a huge part of the coaching and the journey that you go on is how much you, the weighting that you give to certain things, right? So I would, when I first started that, that, that anabolic window, that post workout protein shake was. As important as my workout, if not more important, I would miss, I would miss gym sessions. If I didn't have the time to, like, if I couldn't, I had teammates, sorry to interrupt, but I had teammates that would go to the gym and then they go straight from the gym to lectures. And I'd be like, why would you do that? You're not going to get your protein shake in after that. It doesn't make like, what are you thinking that you're just going to waste away. I remember one time I had to like go straight from the gym to a lecture and I literally. in my head was feeling my muscles wasting away because I was like, Oh, what a waste of a session. I've lost the point. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I'm not going to say that it's not important. It is important, you know, getting stuff in post workout is very important. And it's something that I've absolutely emphasized, but it doesn't outweigh the, you know, the training itself. So little things like that for sure have been, uh, yeah, I've been, I've been humbling, I guess on the, on the journey. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things where I guess when you come from like the bodybuilding world, you see, you learn so many rules that aren't necessarily rules. They're just tools. They're just ideas. You can see even with the science, how they came about, like coming to fruition. Then you realize that I mean, that's why it's called bro science, right? Like, so like, like fasted cardio, like that's such a popular thing, but really like usually when you wake up, that's just the easiest time to go and do stuff. So go do your cardio in the morning. First thing we've got, you don't really need, it's not usually like that intensive that you need a big feed beforehand. You've probably still got a bunch of glycogen in your system from the night before you're fine. But to to say that you it's any uniquely or any way that is uniquely better than doing cardio any other time of the day Like from a physiological standpoint, it's just, that's not how it works. The idea, I'm not going to say don't do it. I'm not going to say it's not a good idea, but not for what you think. Right. Yeah. And there's a lot of things that work or I thought, well, they do work. Um, but the reason why I thought they work is, is way off. Like it's so many steps away from it, but at the end of the day, it still works. You know? Yeah. Is there anything else from the academic side of strength and conditioning that you learned, um, during your time at university that like sort of surprised you? Um, anything, I think just the, yeah, I think you're talking about bro sciences. It's, it, it, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of one step ahead. Like everything, like I was saying, it is It does work, it is right, the physiology and the theories behind it all might be a little bit off, but people have worked it out from trial and error, you know, we've had millions and millions of, of gym bros and gym rats, essentially doing, you know, unofficial research and going, well, I tried this and this happened and they tried this and this happened and this, so I tried that and now this is working and you get to a point, even without the, the research coming together of it being, you know, Crocs, um, of it being, of it being right and it, when it working out and little tweaks here and there. So it's kind of always one step ahead. Um, but in, in the same way, the research is always one step behind. So the, the research will, you know, be like, this could be a good idea, but you still have to find out how to apply it, you know, the practical application of that. So, um, and this kind of, I know. Things, things go. Um, yeah, you, you have to then apply it and it's not always going to work like it does in theory on the paper. So you could say, well, this is the best way to do this. Um, and then you take it outside of that Petri dish environment. And you apply it to somebody in a completely different environment. Uh, there's no, you don't know if it's going to work. And, uh, so you've got to, you've got to have that combination of the two, you know? Yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about the experience in a sec, but I want to touch on that as well because it is, it's like so true with like science being one step behind and it's always going to be one step behind because you like getting scientific, like if anything, I don't know if you'd agree on this, but like going to university and learning how to read journals is probably Actually learning how to read journals is the most important thing that you pick up from university, because then you understand, like, how, how it all works, really. So, like, the scientific process is great, like, having to do academic journals, having to find, like, statistically significant findings is great, having to, like, getting strong stats is great with, like, big populations, etc. But at the end of the day, like people are very individual. So to find statistically significant findings with very individual people and very individual processes is like basically never going to happen. So why the science often like argues like, like, like when we talk about like hypertrophy research and advanced hypertrophy research, like you're not going to get that done and it's not really going to apply it. So most hypertrophy research is done on untrained people and those that are like, none of them are like. I don't know, for any figure 80 to 90 percent of their muscular potential. So it's like, how, how do we read into this? And it's so difficult to isolate the variables that why don't we just take on what these really experienced people are saying and give that a go and rather than dismiss it and trying to be the most science based, I often feel like science can end up tripping over itself because it, or trying to. Base everything through science. You can end up tripping over yourself because at the end of the day, that's, that's not how it works, but it's also really awesome for your branding. If you, if you say you're science based, then people think that you're an authority figure or something. Yeah, for sure. And you, you have to, yeah, you got to take it where you got to take it with a pinch of salt. You, I think, and this is a going off on a tangent a little bit, um, this is kind of with the experience thing, but you, in a way, you have to fake some confidence, I think, with, with strength conditioning in, in, and let me elaborate a little bit, because at the end of the day, we don't, we don't know everything. If you were to go just, if you were just research based. The amount of times that, like, you'd have to, you know, prescribe somebody something, and basically be like, but it might not work, or this isn't work, or we don't know, or we don't know for sure. You kind of, you know, as the coach, you've got to be like, you know, this is what you're doing. You know, this is going to work and this is right. And you've got to have that level of, uh, you've got to, you've got to have that kind of level of fake confidence in a way from the experience that you've gained, um, even if it doesn't necessarily match up with some of the research. So I'd much rather be on that, that side of the, of, uh, of the people than be on that, on that specific research part, but the research informs it. And then you've got to decide, do you want to listen to it or not? That's what I think. I think, okay, here's the research. Like you said, do I know how to read it? Yes. Do I think it's going to apply in this situation? No, I can acknowledge it, but kind of disregard it at the same time. You know? Yeah. And there's nothing at this stage, there's not too much revolutionary that's going to come out like. And change your mind or something like that. It's going to be like a build up over time. Um, I'm trying to think like things like, like Maya reps, or I think something's going to come out in the next few years. And this might just be because recently by us, cause I chatted with, um, uh, on the, on the most recent podcast with Fraser about it, but with, um, the, the flywheel type training. Oh yeah, I've never used that and I'd love to, I'd really want to get my hands on some of that stuff because that looks good. Um, velocity based training will probably be something that as it gets more accurate, more available for everybody. And as the research starts coming out, I think prescribing loads based on that is, is going to be really useful. That's already building, right? Yeah. And if I was in person, I'd be, I would be using, utilizing that a lot more because I think there's still a bit too many. Well, I mean, uh, last time I researched into it, so there's probably been some development since then. But at the moment I don't use any velocity based training. I, you do a lot of RB, RPE handling that. Cause it's almost the same, you know? Um, so that is definitely, definitely something that would be that I'd want to use soon. That's actually a good point as well. So it's like, um, With the velocity based training, you can now use apps and stuff on the phones. Now, whether they're really accurate enough to make a difference over just RPE is a question, but then that goes to the same thing with like whoop bands and all of the, the, the, like the wearable tech, where does that. Like, where does the insights come from that over versus what you already feel? And it's not, it's not too much, you know, it's, it's a little handy thing. And I think that's how we'll use velocity based training. I imagine in the future as well, it's like, Oh, I thought I was going to be better today, but actually I'm, I'm a little bit more tired than I thought. And then you realize it and then you dial it back a little bit. Yeah. It's a, I'm not going to, I was going to go off on a tangent about in the week, but basically, yeah. Okay. The, you know, I. I've got it. As soon as my, my year runs out, I will be swapping. Um, just because we're going to swap for probably one of the new garments. Something that actually tells the time would be nice on my wrist. Are you in the Apple ecosystem? Yeah, I am, but only for my phone. So I don't use the max. I don't use the Apple watches or anything. Uh, The watch is accurate. If you, I don't ever use any of it for messages or anything else. It's just, it's just because I just use it for my sleep. Um, I do awake in HRV, which tells me how I already know I feel basically. And then I will, I will use it to track my runs. It's actually really good with that. Um, and then if I track it, if I'm tracking my heart rate in grappling, I'll put on a chest strap. And then I'll just see how hard I go, but I want to, I want to grab a chest strap for sure. Garmin are good at that actually. Yeah. Um, but again, it's nothing that you haven't chucked my, I'm going to have to chuck my dog downstairs. Go for it. It's all good. Go do it now. It's all good. Pairing Actually, you know what? Whilst we're paused, let me just give a quick request from you guys listening. If you enjoy this episode, if you enjoy the podcast, you enjoy me interviewing, uh, some cool guests from all over the rugby world, please give us a five star review on Spotify. It really does help out. We're, we're verging on 100 five star reviews on Spotify. We're well over that on Apple. If you can just give us a quick five star review, it makes all the difference. Just tap the three dots. Or tap, whatever you've got to do on Apple podcast, leave us a five star review and it will mean the world. Cheers. We'll move on from bands because that could be, I think, a good few hours discussion from the both of us about like wearable tech and how it stresses people out and whatever. So let's move on from that. Let's just go into, actually, it could still come up with like common issues that you've found from your experience. So you mentioned that once you left uni, you started coaching. just to build the experience, which is a really smart move because then you're, you're going at it from the aspect of, or from the mindset of, I want to do this to learn. So I guess, what did you learn along the way of your, you know, your first few years of coaching that you didn't see coming potentially from university? So I'm going to take this from the guys of. online, just online coaching. Um, and there's a lot of things in the same with, with a lot of education is that there's a lot of theory and there's not too much practical application, you know, and there is, you do have to just have experience in general. Um, there was a lot that was taught to me about all of these advanced methods and the majority of my time was spent Not learning how, not, not learning how to do the basics really, really well, you know, with, with the, um, with, with the things that I deem to be basic, but really important where you get like 80 to 90 percent of, of your gains. But there was a massive focus on the, the really extreme methods, you know, the, uh, the, the super maximal eccentrics, right. The, um, Uh, you know, the. accommodating resistance where you'd like have a more weight on the way down and then the levers would, it would hit the floor and the weight would drop off and then you've got an explosion on the way up. It's like, not the kind of things that I've, that I've, that I've used for any of my athletes online because there has to be a level of simplicity. Um, uh, But in my opinion for them to really adhere to the program and get really good results from it. Um, there is a difference with the kind of things that I do, would do in person. Um, when you've got that ability to tell somebody within the rep or within the set, my little adjustments that can make a huge amount of progress. You know, you've got. Five opportunities within a set potentially to tell them. Whereas, um, with some of the online coaching, there are drawbacks, right? You've, they send you through a video and you can analyze it and you give them some feedback, but then they've got to apply it that next week. So a lot of the things that I learned were basically unlearned or not used. They're there in the back. There are toolbox that I've got, but. Um, that, that was something that, that, that definitely changed a lot. And the, um, The things that differed was just like we spoke about before. It's the lack of application to some of these methods. So, I mean, one thing that's really pointing out to me now that, that I. She kind of changed my mind on, um, was, so I use a lot of cluster sets. I really like cluster sets. So, um, instead for anybody who's not as sure about the cluster sets, basically allows you to use a little inter set, um, intraset rest. So let's say that you pick a six rep max for your weight. You do three reps with it. You rest 30 seconds, you do another two reps, you rest 30 seconds, you do another two reps, you rest 30 seconds, you do another two reps. You've enabled yourself to get, you know, like nine, I don't know, quick maths. know what that was. Let's say nine reps, um, with that six rep max and you've done it quicker and probably with better technique. Um, so, so that can be really useful, but what it doesn't really work with is something like a squat. I found where I thought in theory, beautiful, this would work really, really well, but you spend so much time racking and unracking and all of that energy that you use to do that. You're not really getting what you want out of it. Um, you're nodding your head. It sounds like something you've maybe even experienced or thought about before, but almost the exact same thing. Yeah, it doesn't work. It's knackering. Holding that weight on your back is just like, what ends up being the thing that gives way is either your core. Or your traps just from holding that like big weight on your back. So, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Little things like that, basically, where you think it's good and until you basically try it and you realize it isn't, or maybe like I was saying about the waiting, you gave, you gave it too much credit and now it isn't really something you focus on. Yeah. I've done some things like, uh, also like paired sets with like sprints. And then I found out that the client has to leave the gym, go like outside the car park, around the car park to find any like, that's just isn't going to work. Like that's like, so then you realize that you've really got to, and even with like organizing training, even like, like, so splits will take like splits that on paper don't really work as efficiently as possible. But if that's the only time, you know, a person can get into the gym, well, we're not going to no, don't go to the gym because then that's the same as. Not going to the gym because of the lack of a protein shake. We're still going to take what we can. Maybe it's not optimal, but it's better than the alternative, which is to not do it. And there isn't an alternative where we can make it optimal. So that's, that's fine. That's so for our circumstances, this is actually optimal. It's the best that we can do within our given circumstances. Absolutely. I get, I get, I get people, you probably get the same. I get people that are talking to me about this all the time, or I'll get comments on my, my videos and I'll be like, isn't doing. Isn't doing, you know, this after this bad, I'm like, well, not doing it at all is worse. You know? Um, yes, it's not ideal. If you've had a full body session on the, on your, on your Monday and you have to go and do some sprints on Tuesday, you just got to do what you can. There are things we can do within that full body session. Like I'm not going to get you doing, you know, five sets of five RDLs and then three sets of Nordics and like absolutely, you know, destroy yourself. You still gotta get that in somewhere. So, my, um, actually, this stuck with me as well. My, uh, the, the head of, um, of, of my Master's Strength Conditioning, Jeremy Moody, he said something, I don't wanna quote him wrong, but he said something like, in, in the practical application, it's not about what's the best or the most optimal, it's about what is the least shit. Mm hmm. Yeah. That, that kind of stuck with me. I was like, yeah, actually that, that is, it's like, actually, you'd probably find the answer quicker by working with what is the least shit than trying to find what actually works optimal. And then when you see what people actually do when they come up with it from themselves without your background, you realize that there's a lot of downwards to go from, like, least shit to really, really shit to, oh, you're still making, like, and they still make progress, like, which is always interesting to see, because you say, oh, you know, the main goal is just to keep making progress and getting better. And they do that with a terribly designed program that they've done themselves, which is because they don't know any better. But because they're still working hard, the body's pretty good at adapting. You know, you like, I always say you can, you can ride to work every single day with flat tires on your bike. You know, you, that's absolutely fine. You can absolutely do that. Eventually your bike's going to break down or whatever. You can go for a really long time and do that. Does that, that doesn't, that's not telling me that that's the best way to do it. It's just saying that it can be done, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I had something from the practical standpoint as well that you were saying. So from your strength and conditioning, I'm assuming, and this is, Something I think me and you will agree upon as well is like there is, because we both work, do you have any semi professional or professional clients that you work with? Not, not professional, but semi professional. Yeah. I have a couple of semi professional, um, and yeah, ironically all strength and conditioning almost in university is geared towards like professional athletes, which I think is like a miss site because what, what percentage of. I mean, that's not even removing the fact that we're all athletes in a way, if you have a body, you're an athlete, but what percentage of rugby players are professional, like less than 1%. There's so many rugby players that aren't professional. So why are we only dealing with what stuff that they're doing and what works for them? Like when it's really, that's again, that's something that you only get from experience where. From amateur's perspective, they've got, not only have they got different needs as far as like on the strength in, in the gym, whenever their own strength condition work, but they've got different needs as far as, all right, they're working from eight to five in the city every day, and then they're training, you know, two times a week from seven to nine 30, like, how are we going to square this circle of being able to still get them prepared? It's tough, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think that is, that is something that a lot of, um, players and coaches, strength conditioning coaches included, um, absolutely like really need to get, get their heads, get their heads around because, um, yeah, like if you're trying to train somebody, if you give somebody a program that a, that a professional prop has compared to, you know, A grassroots or maybe even like a 15 year old grad, you play a grassroots prop. You know, they'll think, cool, I need to train like a professional prop because I want to be a professional prop. Um, but training is, uh, I say it's this journey, right? You need to know your start point and you need to know the end point. That, that's like, that's three things you've got, you know, the start, the middle and the end and all that people focus on is the end. It's, you know, where, what they're doing at that last part and what they're doing at that last part is not what got them there. It's probably not even close. It's like the last 2 percent at the end here. Um, and the thing is, is, So let's say, you know, you've got like, let's make it really specific to the prop stuff. You've got all of, all of that really advanced network, the proprioceptive stuff, the, the banded stuff where you're wobbling it around and doing all kinds of stuff, um, that they put hours of work into a week. Um, That if a, if a, if a youth prop comes in and tries to do all of that, and they've only got a certain amount of time or, you know, energy or the mental side to put towards it and do it well, they are not going to get as much, they're not going to make a huge amount of progress by spending time doing that. They need to focus on the more basic fundamental things. And the good news is, is. You can make more progress. These guys are already really far at their potential, you know, they're, they're, they're trying all of these advanced techniques and the advanced techniques don't make you more progress. They make you less progress than, you know, the foundational, bigger range of motion, more, you know, more fundamental movements. It's just that they have to do that to squeeze a tiny bit more progress out of it. It's not that it's better. It is, it's worse in my opinion. I mean, I don't know if you agree. No, I completely agree. It's inefficient is more than anything. It's like wringing a sponge, right? It makes sense. Once you've dried that, that sponge is like 95 percent dry, like you, but you've got to put a lot of effort in and you don't get much in return. You've got a nice full sponge. You just, you just have to squeeze it a little bit. And all of a sudden you've got, you got a lot of, you got your, your water coming out and that, that holds true for all rugby players and all gym goers. In fact, like the advanced stuff. I don't even know. So to me, you could even in theory, potentially, if you've got this 90 percent dried sponge, you could still get a little bit more if you just squeeze really tight, but it's just a lot more effort. So then we go to an advanced technique because that might be the way to do it with a little bit less effort, right? So like, you know, your, your advanced world class props is adding 10 kilos to their squat actually going to help their ability to, to prop potentially not, but if you're. If you're coming at it and you're only squatting, you know, 80 kilos, that's going to make a hell of a difference. Um, and that's the thing people don't see. Go on. Yeah. Just, just on that, like adding the 10 kilos, it, it, it might be beneficial. I don't think that's like the, the, the, the 10 kilos versus that for them versus the 10 kilos. Them. I don't think that's too, too much of the issue, but the amount of time and energy and resources and fatigue and everything that, that they have to squeeze for that extra 10%, it's like. it's just, it's not going to be doable, you know? Um, and I think that's the big difference. I see the same thing for like bodybuilders that train six times a week to gain an extra one pound or, or two pounds of muscle through a year, you know? And it's like, that's, that's cool for them, but I, it's just not for, for most people. And I think, but it's unfortunate because those are the people that, you know, Uh, I've seen the most in, you know, social media and fitness, because like you say, the bro science usually comes first. So that's, that's where a lot of information comes from. Um, I wanted to touch on that journey thing as well, because you said that like, you know, what got them there isn't what they're doing now. And that's one huge thing. But I also would mention that like, We haven't even spoke touched on it yet, but genetics, that's another thing that plays a huge part. And it's not to say, Oh, you've got shit genetics. That means you shouldn't even bother playing rugby. It just means that where they're starting point, you might not ever be, you know, like there are some people who first ever time in the gym, a bench in over a hundred kilos, like that wasn't me, like, that's just, it's just, it's not 95 percent of people. There are some people that are seven foot. You know, it's just how it is. Genetics are a thing. And so again, copying what other people do make sense on paper because you're looking at them and like, oh, that's what I want to be, but you it's, it's rather than starting the journey from your own journey, it's, it's trying to work backwards, which is. A good way to solve an issue, but you've gotta, you've gotta work all the way back to the start, you know? Yeah, definitely. And you've gotta, with a lot, you know, like you said, the, the biggest, best looking, uh, or maybe the highest performing people are probably gonna get the most people to listen to them on social media and the things that they've done. They might not even know why it's worked. They might not even understand the methods behind it. And you gotta be careful to, to, to the advice that you know, that the people are listening to, because. there's a, you know, there's a, there's, I'm not going to say any specific names, but there are, there are professional athletes out there, um, in all kinds of sports, not, not just rugby and stuff that, uh, you know, trying to give information on, on what they've done. And it's just way out of there because the genetics play a huge part to it. There's a, there's other lessons that you can learn from those, from those players, but it might not be, you know, your program design and the weighting you should give to certain things, you know? Yeah, for sure. Uh, I guess like you wouldn't let Lewis Hamilton give your car an MOT, you know? No, that's true. It's true. Uh, I'm running out of analogies. Yeah. Um, all right. So are there any other sort of overlooked parts for rugby S and C for like the vast majority of players that will be listening that again, maybe you either only learned by experience or you saw that in uni and you're like, Oh, that's. That's not really touched on. I assume it's from experience more than anything. Yeah. Um, I mean, I mean, you'll love this. The slow easy work is something that's overlooked at the end of the day. The majority of people's training is anaerobic for rugby players, whether it is the, um, You know, in their training sessions where they're doing high intensity efforts and then recovering, um, or the training that they're doing is, um, in the gym, lifting weights, you know, predominantly anaerobic. Um, they're doing a lot of anaerobic training and adding significantly more is probably not the way to improve your fitness. Um, regardless of the benefits that that, that, that slow stuff has, right? Like it's, we, we, we. A lot of the time we're trying to fill in the gaps as coaches, fill in the gaps so that, you know, we're not giving them the exact same stimulus or thing that they're already doing in their training. We need to, you know, give them something else. And, uh, as you know, the slow and steady, um, the, the, the zone two stuff, the, the improvements in aerobic endurance and VO two max them, you know, the mitochondrial biogenesis, all of that good stuff that happens, um, is really important because. It's. Helps you recover quicker, you know, so you do your anaerobic, you do your sprints and the time it takes for you to recover, to resynthesize that ATP. Um, all of that stuff is improved. And because it's not the main output, people don't really focus on it, but it allows you to do those repeated efforts again and again and again, and it's not very fatiguing. So get it in, you know? Yeah. And as we discussed before the podcast, the only issue holding you back with that stuff is time. You know, it does take time. Um, and maybe it's a little, people will see it as boring, but the more you do it, I think it will go in waves, you know, like I don't, so there will be, I'm not gonna say there's never going to be times where you can't be offered to go out the door, but the more you do it, the more enthused you are. And especially once you see. Your performance increases. One of the best things about being like aerobically fit, not just on the pitch, as far as like thinking clearly and being able to perform another high effort on the pitch, like back to back to back because your aerobic system is so good, but also just the amount of training that you can get through. And I think. Like you hear the term robustness thrown a lot about about a lot with rugby now and I think like with that I think one of the best we spoke about injury is one of the best things that you can do to benefit you like as far as prepping you from not getting injured is be ridiculously aerobically fit because then you're just all of a sudden you can handle stuff so much better rather than your hamstring still being sore the next day like you can just get through so much work. Um, and then Like, wait the next day, or wait another two days, and all of a sudden you, you, you, it's like nothing happened. Or even wait a couple hours and it's like, you've done nothing and you're all good to go again. You know? Yeah. And it opens up opportunities for you to do other things, you know? It's, it's kind of like the glue that sticks everything together in a way. Mm-Hmm., um, let's say that, you know, you, uh, some people are not fit enough to like. You know, a high, high repetition load of squats or something. So having like a level of fitness that helps you do that recover within, you know, the two to three minutes and not need to take six or seven minutes. Your total volume that you can accumulate in like an hour, 90 minutes or whatever goes through the roof. Um, so, so, so that's something that's really useful. And yeah, I mean, it, you're, you're. And if we're looking at the stress as like, you know, how you're resting heart rate, and we were talking about those watches, if your resting heart rate is lower, if your heart rate variability is higher, if your body's just day to day, if it's. live in its life and it's pretty happy and chill because you've got such a high level of fitness and aerobic fitness that the things that you're doing day to day don't stress you at all. You've just got more, more recovery points in the bank, um, just by, just by being better. So I think it's really good. Um, the other thing that I wanted to mention, um, about the things I think people don't focus enough on, and this again brings us back to what we were talking about with the shortened ranges of motion and all of the elite. Specialist strength and conditioning techniques that the elite level athletes use is that athletes need to focus on the full range of motion stuff because it will get you better strength. It'll get you strength through those end ranges. That's important. Um, it will build you more muscle. You know, stretch mediated hypertrophy. So you build more, you build more muscle that muscle can, the more muscle that you've built can then lead to improved strength over time because there's, you know, more muscle fiber to recruit. You've got, uh, improved injury production, uh, reduction. So if you're strong in end ranges, there's going to be a reduced amount of injuries that you're going to get in those end ranges. And it's going to improve your mobility and or flexibility. So all of these things come from the shortened ranges of motion. Whereas, uh, sorry, the length, the longer ranges of motion, and players are immediately just trying to load up, do as much weight as possible and do shorten ranges of motion. When really the only thing that it has going for it is that there's more weight there. And I know that has a whole load of other benefits to come with it, but there's a whole list of benefits that come from the full range of motion stuff. And I think that it's going to give you the most progress overall. Yeah, I think there's two ways people end up not doing full range of motion. It is what you said is true with like the specific, like people like doing like quarter squats or half squats for sprinting. Um, like, cause it comes from that sort of realm, um, or even like box squats and stuff. But for me, it's still, and this is something I haven't questioned someone that really believes in it well enough, but I do think there's still less of like a resistance moment arm and like less. There's overall sort of tension and torque placed on the muscles. So therefore I don't see how you would get a more beneficial outcome as far as sprint goes. Like, and. I also think that like what you're doing in the gym should be separate. It's not, it's not specific training. So if you want to get faster, go do sprints, go do your specific sprint drills, which don't involve putting a barbell on your back. Um, and if you want to get stronger, go get stronger and do full range of motion weight training because of all the other benefits anyway. I don't think anyone's getting, not getting like, and then this, this probably goes back to the amount of looping back that we're doing. This conversation is scary, but it goes back to what you were saying about like the academic papers and stuff where there's some scientific studies that show, oh, this improves sprint speed, you know, by doing the quarter squats versus full range of motion squats. But that's in one, you know, a specific study where they're not doing. Like specific sprint training, or if they're not, it's not, you know, the, you know, we're not assessing the quality of that sprint session. We're not experiencing, um, you know, I think those protocols, because they really want to nail it down, they're not going to compare full range of motion squats along with quality sprint training, specific sprint training. They're going to do only squats and only counter movement jumps or whatever, you know what I mean? And then therefore. That science gets lost, and what actually works gets lost, doesn't it? Yeah, for sure. I think that with such an isolated sport, like a 40m dash or like a 100m sprint, because you can Yeah, like it is very one dimensional in terms of this is what we're measuring. I can see it being way, way, way more justifiable and useful in, in, in a case like that, but the amount of stuff that goes on in rugby and the fact that you want players to be heavy and have big legs, um, harder to wrap your arms around going into contact, uh, all the benefits of having extra muscle has. We've got, it's just, there's so many things that go on and the majority of these things that go on in rugby benefit from you being as big as, you know, as big as you can manage with all of the other qualities not being diminished and being strong in as many ranges of motion and directions as possible. Because it just is. Everything happens in all kinds of planes of movement. We can't just be like, you're only going to move this many steps in this direction forwards, and that's all we need to need to worry about in your training. You never have to step to the side. You never have to go backwards. You know, you're never going into these deeper ranges of motion. And that's just my biggest argument for rugby. Players and especially at the lower level and earlier in that journey, just doing the big compound movements over a load of range of motion, um, challenging as many muscles as possible through lots of range of motion. I think that I think that's just the way to go. The more specific it gets to this sprinting stuff. I think it kind of misses the point for rugby players, even for your wingers and your fullbacks or whatever. They've still just got to have all of these, they've still got to have everything else. So you can't just train like a sprinter when you want them to get faster, you know? I'm in 100 percent agreement with you. I'm just even pushing my pedanticness even one step further because I think even if you're in that isolated environment, I'm, I'm still, I'm still not hedging my bets on quarter squats actually being any sort of specifically more beneficial than full range motion squats anyway. But, uh, we, we yet to, we yet to really like ice, like pinpoint. An argument that I have a way for that, or maybe people would argue that there is arguments, but I like not to the degree of my pedanticness anyways. So you need something really longitudinal, don't you need something that like follows somebody over the course of two years or three years or four years or like an Olympic kind of cycle over that four year period. Because what you can do in eight weeks or 16 weeks is very different. And I think with the whole building more muscle. Um, getting more, um, myofibular hypertrophy from the deeper ranges of motion that the strength that you're going to see in the higher ranges of motion. Like that might take a bit more time as opposed to something that you might be able to get those immediate results in over like an eight week period. So that's where some of that might be skewed. And yeah, I'd love to see that over a longer time period. And I'm seeing more, you know, a lot more bits of research come out about rugby players, which is great, you know, following amateur versus pros and comparing different movements. I think I even saw one like, I don't know, it might've been squat versus leg press or something like that. That's what I want to see. Cause that's, Going to be, uh, that's going to be really useful. I think anyway, for information, but also what you said there is also touching on the other reason why we see these half squats and box squats and loaded up weight is people don't like, it sucks to tell people, and I feel bad every time I tell a client this where like, they'll send me the squat through and they're like, I feel like, you know, tight in this position or I can't get any lower and I'm like, yeah, take. 40 kilos off of that bar, show me how low you can get. And then all of a sudden your problems are solved and it's like, it's going to be a big hit to the ego, but take it from someone that thought that they were squatting 200 kilos when they're 18. When that was like, fuck, it must've been the, I wish I had a video of it. It must've been the worst squat like in the world. Cause I can't even do like anywhere close to that now. So it's, it's, it's insane. So like. With rugby players, you're also, like, there's ego involved. There's also, like, competitiveness. I've seen this so much. Yeah, go ahead. No, yeah. Hugely, hugely. Yeah. Um, like, there's, like, you see, you know, your rival flanker that's, or you're, you know, in your position, that's squatting 30 kilos more than you. Well, you think, well, fuck off. I've got to, I've got to get to that number. And you rush that process when that's only going to cut what you're, the benefit that you're going to get out of it. And what's to say that you can't just be a better flanker with a 20 kilo lighter squat, you know, like, yeah, it's, you're not, you're not competing in the gym. You're using the gym for your own journey to get better. And I think that's, that's. It's a tough nut to take, you know, because rugby players are competitive people. So they want to, and numbers are really easy to compare. So much easier than comparing rugby performance to rugby performance when there's 30 other people on the pitch doing so much other like chaotic stuff, as we've discussed as well. It's just, it's easy to just push those numbers, but you cannot do it at the expense of form. So I'm glad you mentioned full range of motion stuff because that's a big one for me. And I don't want to completely shit on, you know. Anderson squats, box squats. I, I use them a lot. Um, I think like the, the shortened range of motion stuff, if you're doing it on a normal squat, like if you're, you know, If you're not basically scoring as low as you can or to the parallel or whatever it is, then you've got it. I don't ever want my athletes to shorten the range of motion without there being something to standardize it. So if I do want you to do like just above parallel, then we've got the box there and everybody does the same or you do the same every single set, every single rep. And we can track that, you know, you're not just dipping down until you feel like you've gone to a certain amount and then coming back up. I think if you're doing that. You want to, you want to go as low as you can. Right. Um, cause that's where you're going to get a lot of those benefits, but, um, squatting or pressing off of pins or squatting, um, off of, uh, off, off of a box or like, I'm, I'm, I'm okay with that, um, in certain situations, but the majority of their training will still be. You know, the full range of motion squats, um, even in season, uh, if we've got very specific competitions coming up, maybe you start shortening things, but that's more to reduce the fatigue, um, compared to actually making more progress. Yep. I mean, and even then there are times where you want to sort of coax out some ballistic tendencies. So then we go for like the quarter squats and that's, that's absolutely fine. But it's a, then we're looking at a different movement, a completely different movement for a different purpose, right? Like the jumps and the, you know, squat jumps or stuff like that. If you want to do that, You don't have to go all the way down to the full range of motion, but comparing apples, apples to pears there for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I like what you said about standardizing the movement as well. Like same thing for the biggest one. I see that on is like bent over rows where people, uh, like they want to add more and more weight. And then over the course of six weeks, it's, it's a different, you've added 20 kilos, but you've, you've changed the movement completely. So it's hard to gauge and what we want to do. We want the numbers. The numbers are really useful, gauging progress, nothing else, not for judging you as a person or as a rugby player, you know. Yeah, for sure. Do you know what it, it, it is a struggle with the pen, the bent over row or the penley row. I will be honest, if you, if you can't have a chest support there to, to really just allow you to, to pull as hard as you can. Mm-Hmm, your body just works against you, doesn't it? It goes, yeah, I've got my big legs and you know, the glutes and everything that are gonna do a lot of the work here. You, you, you know, you're not gonna be able to force me to, to turn them off. And it is really hard. And I know, I know that is a struggle for a lot of players, but if you need to do that. like getting some kind of prone row or, um, like a, uh, something like that. It's just awesome. I know not every gym has it, but if it does, that's fantastic. And this is one of the main reasons why, um, I actually love weighted, weighted pull ups and, or, and, or if you can't do the weighted pull ups going really heavy on your lap pull down. So, I mean, people might look at me weird or even my athletes, but you know, I've got no problem people doing three to five reps with, with a lap pull down when people, um, I'm absolutely fine doing that with a pull up. You know, just because it's a machine, it doesn't mean you can't utilize it in a similar way. But the best thing about the pull ups or pulling from that direction is, it completely takes your legs and your erectors out of it and it allows you to get the lats and the back in general just super, super strong. So, it's It, and it's standardized, right? You start from a dead hang, you get your chin above, and that's what I use for when I do my testing for the upper body. It's always a pull, a vertical pull, as opposed to getting them to do like a bent over row or something because of the standardization you were talking about. Yeah, pros, yeah, pros will often use that prono, but I think, um, a weighted pull up or a pull up is, is a better overall movement anyway, and, and, you know, as you lose weight, you can get better at it as well, and that's also an indication, it's not necessarily even an indication of gained strength, but that could, that's still an indication of potential improved performance because you've lost, you know, your body composition is going the right direction, but pull ups, 100%, best Best like sort of contact, uh, preparation movement, even more so probably than bench. I'd wait, if it was, if you could do one upper body movement, which is a full stock on me, I would still, I think that's still my favorite weighted pull ups, so. Interesting. We're on the same, we're on the same page about that. You know what, I might, I might have to say An overhead press, just because of how hard it is and like having that weight balanced all the way over, um, but an overhead press. That's your, that's your dislocated shoulder, uh, rehab talk in there everybody. Yes, maybe, maybe. All 40 kilos I can hold. Nah, it's a, it's a, it's an absolute full stock on me anyway. You got one push, one pull, like. You're going to be good. And I absolutely agree. It's easy to standardize. It's easy to load up heavy as well. It's cool to load up heavy. Um, even if you don't have like a weight, uh, you know, one of those chained belts or whatever, you can just chuck a dumbbell between your legs. Or you can use a band. So it's easily done. I love them. That's cool. All right. Um, last question as we wrap up, um, if you could change one thing about the sport of rugby, what would it be? Good. So I wrote a couple of things down this cause you prepped me with this. It's not going to be about the sport itself. I'd rather talk about the, the coaching, if that's all right. Yeah. Cool. So, um, a bit more about the coaches, the coaches mindsets, um, not necessarily strength and conditioning coaches, but maybe the, the, the rugby coaches themselves, anybody who tells the, tells the athletes, the kids what to do. Um, I actually had an athlete this morning. um, talking to me about this, this very specific thing. So I'll use him as an example, but you know, he was like, well, the coaches want me to be 88 kilos by the start of the season. Will gaining six kilos in four and a half weeks impact my speed? I went, yeah, of course it is like, absolutely. Um, and then I followed up with, however, It doesn't sound like you've got a choice, mate. If the coaches are going to select you based on the fact that you're hitting that weight target, then you go and hit that weight target. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're not going to do it, but I am going to preface it by saying it will make you slower and it will probably make you less fit. The number that I like to go for is, you know, a quarter or a half of a kilo a week at the kind of, at the kind of max and that just allows you to keep those qualities. But that's the, the, what I would change is one of those things is The, uh, the ideas that a lot of coaches have about weight, you know, you have to be this, you have to be that. And instead of looking at like their relative strength or their actual performance in the scrums or out on the pitch, it's, you need to be this weight and carry an extra 15 kilos of lard because that's just what I think. Like there's no, There's a little bit of justification there about momentum and contact and stuff, but you know what I'm getting at that? That's a, that's a peeve for me. You know, there's, there's not though. Cause like, what's weird is this is classic old school coaching as well. Like the, I don't know how you still think like this in the modern game where you've got like, look at Ben O he's by far not the biggest back row. Yeah. He's been England's absolute revelation for England at number eight. Look at, yeah. Even Quagga Smith, like, they thought he wasn't big enough for 15s. He's dominating. You can look at, like, players in any position, pretty much. Like, Bevan Rod's not big, and he's propping for England. Like, there are people in all positions, outside of being a tall flanker, I mean, tall second row, like, You can basically make whatever position your own, however you want to play it in a way, you know? Mm-Hmm., um, look at the South African both wingers now they've got, uh, both the little guys dominating. Like I, I don't see Marcus Smith dominating at 10. Richie Moga is not necessarily huge. Like, um, who's the, there's a, the new seven and even the old seven for Australia. So you've got McWright and you've got, um, Hooper, never the biggest units, but just dogs, you know? And I think if they were all judged on their size, they wouldn't be playing international rugby because there's plenty of better specimens that could play that, you know, that would close enough to that level, but they're better because they're better players. Definitely, definitely. And, uh, you don't want to, a lot of people worry about bringing up their, bringing up their weaknesses, um, you know, like to make them strengths or whatever, but then they end up making their strengths, not their strengths anymore. So like, they're, they're the fittest and fastest player on the team, but they're the lightest. All of a sudden you take you, you take them away from being the lightest and they're no longer the fittest and the fastest and they kind of lose that. And, um, it's important to obviously have, you know, rugby's lucky and like there's. There's a lot of similarities between the positions, but, you know, they're not as hyper specialized for each position as like American football or whatever. So there are some similarities, but you are lucky enough that, you know, you really can double down on one of your, one of your attributes, especially, especially in grassroots, you know? Um, and if you take that away from yourself, you're no longer going to have the same play style, you're not going to have the same strengths. Um, and yeah, it's just gonna. mess up a whole host of things. So take it slow with the, with the weight gain. If the coaches are forcing you to, um, then, you know, they're forcing you to at the end of the day, but I can still sit here and tell you that it's probably the wrong thing to do. Right. And then yeah. Go on. How, how is that coach forcing them as well? Like, can you not just tell, like, can you not just tell him, take a picture of your scale, holding like a dumbbell or holding, like wearing five sets of clothes. Yeah, that's true. How are you, and how is that going to have more of an effect than if he just dominates, like, in training anyway, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't, like, I, like, I, last four years, uh, before this year, was still, like, coaching grassroots, like, as a coach. Like, I would put, the emphasis I'd put on fitness, bearing in mind that this has been my job for, like, 10 years, the emphasis that I put on fitness is, how well do you do your job? Does fitness stop you from being able to do your job right? You need to get fitter. Uh, or, you know, does being big. Or whatever, stop you from being able to do your job, then you've got to address that, right, as a player. Now, you know, obviously, I'm, I'm gonna know that there's solutions to that. But I'm judging them on the pitch for how they perform on the pitch. I couldn't care less what they look like, uh, you know, what their weight is. Any of that stuff that like how they perform, even in, we didn't really ever do fitness work in training because we have rugby to do, but when there was some extra fitness stuff thrown in there, I wouldn't place heavily the weighting of their, their scores on that. I would never place heavily the scores of, of, of any Bronco test that they told me whatever time they got. doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is how well you play rugby, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And my next answer was actually going to be about the Bronco being the only measurement of fitness. Um, like if you can't beat them, join them because a lot of my content is about Broncos getting a faster Bronco score. Um, I actually use the Bronco when I test my athletes, um, because it's just almost standardized across, you know, the whole community at this point, not because it's the best, the best measure of their, of their fitness. I'd probably in like, I would make, if I could flick a switch and this would be something that I, that I'd change in the sport. I'd, I'd have a think about it. I'd spend a day thinking about it, but I'd come up with some, you know, random movement direction thing over the course of like, I don't know. Five, 10, 10 minutes that includes some kind of rest or something. I dunno, but you know, the Bronco is trying to be really specific to rugby, but it's not really, um, it's got a bit of. Turning and different movements. It's got a different speeds. It's continual. It's not really, it's like a middle ground between your speed because it's not really anaerobic. It's not really truly aerobic, you know it, but it's standardized and I use it for my, for my athletes and I, and I do track it, but a lot of coaches will go. If you are not at 5 minutes, 15, then you're not being selected into this team, even though they're at five minutes, 16, and they have the most tackles, the most turnovers, the most tries. I mean, that's probably an extreme example. They would probably get the pass, but you know, you know what I mean? They're not focusing on the things that are important. Um, and, uh, and again, a lot, a lot of the content I've put out has been about. In a way cheating the Bronco, because you can get good at doing the Bronco. You can get really specific at the turns. You can get really specific at the distance and very specific at pacing yourself, and that will give you potentially 30 seconds faster than somebody who's actually significantly more match fit than you. And it's, you know, when the test becomes the test. It kind of defeats the, I can't remember what the saying is, but it's something about, and a measure becomes a test. It stops being a good measure. There you go. There we go. Cause then people go out and start doing the Bronco again and again and again, and get good at the Bronco, but their match fitness, their aerobic endurance that underpins that recovery, it's not really there. Um, they might be really slow as well as sprinting, you know, but you've done them on a, anyway. Yeah. So that was the other thing. The last thing on this exact topic was the same with the old school coaches. They think that quantity is better than quality. And as a coach, um, like I'm coaching a couple of teams at the moment in person. And my focus has been massively on the quantity over the quality, because they can do more and more. You can shout with the kids to, to keep running. You know, you can tell an athlete to go do more laps or do this or do that. But. What the real value is the strength conditioning coaches. Can we improve their technique and can we improve their maximal outputs? Both of those things are going to be maximized when they've got a lot of rest and they can spend the time to focus on it and, and do it well. Um, and that's something that needs to be focused on a lot of, a lot of coaches will absolutely beast the players when they come into preseason, um, and they've got two hours, uh, two hours a week, let's say, and they spend the majority of that just doing. rubbish fitness drills where you could just do actually quality, actual quality stuff and tell them to go and run a 5k on the weekend and they'd probably get more benefit. Yeah, it's weird because um, I know World Rugby do Like a strength and conditioning, like tack on for, uh, I think it's like once you get to level 300 or whatever it's called, like the, the certification. Oh, obviously you're not going to get all the community coaches doing that, but for a sport that is so like about the physicality, you know, for us to have jobs that we have to even exist, like a lot of coaches, as far as playing the game goes. Are so clueless about the physical preparation, but don't stick to their lane as far as like just focusing on the rugby. If they just focus on the rugby, like that's fine. But then again, a lot of rugby teams, like biggest issues that hold them back is going to be, So then they think, okay, if I'm going to make this team better, I've got to get them fitter, but they don't know how to get them fitted. They just know what they've done before that kind of hasn't worked. Like, yeah, what you said is so spot on about like the preseason. Like I mentioned earlier, I never did any. Fitness basically with my, with my team, that's including in preseason because we're trying to get better at rugby. What's going to make us better at rugby doing rugby stuff. Um, like you, you should really, if you're wanting to be a rugby player, it should be a non negotiable that you should be in decent enough shape. And if you're not, then like, you're just not going to perform as well. Uh, but I don't think that's the, the Tuesday and the Thursday, the coach has a responsibility to run fitness. For you and I don't think also This idea of using a pre season to get fit is really it's it's not thought through It's something that everyone does But you can't get fit in six weeks and have that then and then you don't do any fitness work for the rest of the season You just go back to Doing your rugby and you're not really prepared for your rugby because you've been doing too much fitness in pre season Anyway, so it's like it it's kind of wrong from both lenses in in my mind But then that's I mean I could be biased because I think Everyone should be doing, you know, the S and C work, the minimal cost at least, um, to play the game now. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's hard though, because people are also convinced that they need to train like a professional, like that, you know, I haven't got four extra hours a week to dedicate, you might not even need that, you know, absolutely. But that's what, that's what we're here for at the end of the day. I think that's a big part of my kind of message and what I want to do with this, you know, is. Like at the grassroots level, the amateur level is like educate those coaches, not just the players and the players can go and do the stuff by themselves, which is fantastic. Um, I've spoken to plenty of coaches that take some of the things and now use that in their sessions. Um, and a lot of it is, is splitting it apart. There's benefits, uh, to combining things. There's huge benefit, I think, with, um, Bit like conditioning drills that are that are done with a, you know. With a ball, with attackers, with defenders, because you're getting, you are actually getting game scenarios and you're getting two birds with one stone, but when you try and mix the other things, you do just tend to do, uh, a bit of a worse job at it, you know, of both. Yeah, and I'm more lenient. I get the idea of doing fitness training. It's just, um, you know, it shouldn't be like we shouldn't be having, uh, it's two weeks before we're even going to touch up all this preseason. Like that doesn't make sense to me. Um, you, you're going to have to get better at rugby to get better. You have to do rugby at some point to get better at it. But yeah, it's, it's that mindset and I think it just comes from that mindset of trying to squeeze, as you said, like quantity rather than quality, like they're trying to get the most out of their fitness for the two weeks so that they can then not have to worry about it and then just go and do like focus on their rugby when actually you've got to be worried about your fitness the whole year. We're not worried about it, but it's got to be something that you are addressing, you know? You can't fault, you can't fault the The coach's logic in a way with what they're, what they're being presented and what they know, right? Because that would probably be what I would do and I would have done, you know, years ago would be like the team are lacking because of the fitness. Let's beast them because I know, or I think that I know that making somebody throw up is a good way to get them fitter because they're. doing the thing that they need to be better at. And it's not far off. And like we spoke about before, it will work to a certain extent. You know, you can do a lot of stuff that is not optimal and it work up to a point into that intermediate phase, you know, like with the strength training or the bodybuilding or whatever it's after those first couple of years. And when you're not really doing things in the right order with the right amounts and not just doing it right in general, you'll start to just stagnate. And, uh, that's, that's what will probably happen. And it's holding a lot of the players, um, holding a lot of them from being an amateur player to semi pro, um, and probably even, I've spoken to a lot of semi pro players who, Uh, of course, so much potential in their training. It just makes you wonder what their potential is as a player as well. So that would be great to see if they can sort that out. Yeah, for sure. And this isn't, yeah, I don't want to bag on coaches because like the game doesn't exist without them. It's an impossible problem to solve as well. There's, they've got what, like two sessions a week to deal with all of the complications. We, we only spoke about like the physical problems that you get presented with rugby, like let alone the, you've got your line outs. We're not going to get into all the problems that rugby presents, you know, it's, it's crazy. And so, you Credit to a lot of them, actually, because, yeah, I get quite a number of coaches that reach out and they look for information just because they want to help them get their team fit, and I, I really think, the more I think about it, the more I think it's utilizing, like, you, you know, utilizing, like, going out and getting coaches, or even just getting information so that you, you're putting your own foot forward, but you can't, like, a rugby coach cannot be expected to manage the fitness and the strength and conditioning of, you know, You know a squad of 30 40 people. It's just not gonna happen Especially on two days a week of which is spent should be spent focusing on rugby as well, you know Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool, man. It's been great. Um, I've We're going on well over an hour and 15 minutes, I think at this point. So, uh, I've enjoyed this chat. Um, if anyone is listening, hasn't seen your stuff before, um, shoot your, shoot your links and whatnot, and I'll put them in the description below. Um, where can they find you? Yeah, it's just at Caradoc conditioning or at Caradoc underscore conditioning. Just search up Caradoc conditioning. Uh, probably be in the title of the podcast or something. It will be, and it will be in the links. You can click it. No worries. Um, and you're doing YouTube. Do you do YouTube as well? Nah, nah. I mean, I try, I set myself a target of doing a video every month for this year. And I've done one so far, so we're not really doing too well with that. Um, no, I'm not doing YouTube. Focusing on the short form for now. If I am lucky enough and I get the opportunity to have somebody who can follow me around and edit my videos for me whilst I do the actual coaching. Brilliant. I'll do that because that doesn't take too much away from the coaching and the business itself. But until that point, I think the long form and the YouTube stuff will have to take a backseat. No, mate, your short film stuff is quality. So you're a good follow for anyone that isn't already following you on there. So all good, mate. I'll put the links in the description below. And, uh, thanks for joining me, mate. Absolute pleasure.