Latest / The Rugby Muscle Podcast / Jump, Throw, Lift - Simple Training for Rugby Athletes Old and Young w/ Matt Vickery
Transcript
- 0:00Yes, what's going on everybody.
- 0:02Welcome back to another brand new ropy muscle podcast.
- 0:06In today's episode, we are joined by Matt Vickery of the Instagram account jump doc throat dot lift.
- 0:14This is probably not an account that you might have seen before.
- 0:17Oh, you might have seen a few highlights, but he has a criminally small following for what great information he puts outside.
- 0:24I encourage all of you to go check out.
- 0:26His Instagram is in linked in the description below.
- 0:29If you want to check out NFN from Robin muscle, also linked in the description below, but today's episode is a discussion with him on all things, strength and conditioning.
- 0:36He's been in the sport for in strengthening condition, but well, over two decades.
- 0:41So here he's changed his mind on a lot of things.
- 0:44He's learned a lot of things.
- 0:45He is a true fountain of knowledge when it comes to sports, performance, athleticism and building real world physical performance.
- 0:54I was going to say strength and conditioning, but we already agreed on this episode.
- 0:57We don't like that term.
- 0:59Absolutely invaluable episode for both young guys and older athletes to listen, to, to really understand what it is you need to add or take away from your routine.
- 1:11As far as physical preparation, your gym stuff, your, your fitness stuff, whatever you need for rugby performance, we discuss it all on this episode and really give you some valuable insights that I hope you can take away.
- 1:23If you don't find this.
- 1:24At all useful, please do give us a five star review on apple podcasts on Spotify.
- 1:32Or if you're listening on YouTube, give it a thumbs up and let me know what you think in the comments below.
- 1:39All right, let's get into this episode with Matt Vickery.
- 1:42jump.dot Lyft.
- 1:54TJ Jankowski: Yeah, I've been following your Instagram account for a while.
- 1:58TJ Jankowski: Jump through dot Lyft.
- 2:01TJ Jankowski: How long have you been running that for?
- 2:02TJ Jankowski: Is it looks like it's like, you've got a good sort of ideology going down.
- 2:07Matt Vickery: Yeah, no long, but it feels like I've missed the boat with it.
- 2:10Matt Vickery: It wasn't until the lockdown.
- 2:11Matt Vickery: I started actually putting out content where I saw people actually benefit from before that was just me showing off doing, you know, players and lifting shit.
- 2:19Matt Vickery: But I never really I'm one of these guys and everybody thought online coaching was a thing.
- 2:25Matt Vickery: Online programming is, but I never really thought on my program.
- 2:28Matt Vickery: Coaching was a thing cause you know, I, I want to, I want to be there I'm a hands-on coach, but then I realized that when all the technology advances that I ignored over the last five years, there was actually a pretty decent area to help and to educate online as well as in-person, you know?
- 2:45TJ Jankowski: Yeah, definitely I've already hit record.
- 2:47TJ Jankowski: So we might as well go straight into like your intro and background and what you did before.
- 2:52TJ Jankowski: Career-wise ropy wise, athlete wise, what you did before you, you know, locked down and how you came to where you got to be.
- 3:00TJ Jankowski: Now, if that, if that works for.
- 3:02TJ Jankowski: Yeah, man.
- 3:02TJ Jankowski: Okay.
- 3:03TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 3:03TJ Jankowski: So,
- 3:03Matt Vickery: Yeah, so I've done nothing before and to be honest, there was, so I qualified as a, like a lifeguard track coach PT sort of variation when I was 18 and I've been doing it for like 25 years now.
- 3:16Matt Vickery: So in various guises, you know, so as the whole personal trainer thing, because remember strength conditioning, wasn't a thing 25 years ago, neither was the internet.
- 3:25Matt Vickery: So like dinosaurs, but if you want to dedicate, if you want to educate in any field, you had to go out and like actually meet people or ring them up or buy their books or their like their video cassettes and stuff.
- 3:38Matt Vickery: So my, my sort of I've always played rugby.
- 3:43Matt Vickery: So I'm obviously I'm from south Wales.
- 3:44Matt Vickery: So you kind of brought up playing rugby or nothing.
- 3:47Matt Vickery: And I've always been a keen track athlete.
- 3:49Matt Vickery: I kind of lost interest in rugby in my twenties.
- 3:51Matt Vickery: And what was interested in me was like I said, there was no real formal certifications in strength conditioning, or when you read that occasion in it.
- 3:58Matt Vickery: But what I found was people were like rugby athletes were training like bodybuilders and Rubik athletes.
- 4:05Matt Vickery: So we already doing staff needs combined with bodybuilders.
- 4:09Matt Vickery: And when I was in like rugby gyms, even I wasn't playing for anybody in particular that people would look at me doing play metrics.
- 4:14Matt Vickery: I go sort of like a retard, you know, I'm jumping around and doing, you know, Mack drills and acceleration stuff.
- 4:20Matt Vickery: And you're like professional about semiprofessional standard, rugby players and above and professional standard, actually looking at me like I'm crazy.
- 4:28Matt Vickery: They're like, what's the point of doing that?
- 4:29Matt Vickery: Rugby is about contact.
- 4:31Matt Vickery: I'm like, I've always kind of thought rugby is about avoiding conduct, but you know, you're in the minority then.
- 4:37TJ Jankowski: That's like a, that's a funny philosophy, even like, just as a, as a coach and thing.
- 4:41TJ Jankowski: Cause you know, you call rugby a collision sport, but it's also an evasion sport more than anything.
- 4:46TJ Jankowski: And I think, yeah, if you like, we did a rock practice training last night, I took the boys through some different rucks things, but you know, we went through a three on two drill beforehand and then we went back into three on two and I'm like, look, if you can avoid contact, that's, that's the best situation you don't even need to write.
- 5:01TJ Jankowski: You can go through and you can do the best stuff.
- 5:03TJ Jankowski: So definitely.
- 5:04TJ Jankowski: And obviously the agility stuff helps you take contact on your own terms as well, which is always going to be significantly better.
- 5:11TJ Jankowski: Yeah, probably like
- 5:12Matt Vickery: seed at the moment I'm already seeing for the last, maybe let's say 10 years, we've really sort of evolved a little bit more into a more, let's just say athletic endeavor rather than a.
- 5:22Matt Vickery: But solely physical anyway.
- 5:25Matt Vickery: And you got people like, you know, like recently Toby Farlito number eight, great feet.
- 5:30Matt Vickery: You got Don brown now in for Harlequins, you know, great athletes, some Siemens, great athlete, backroom athletes who are not just in temporary.
- 5:37Matt Vickery: All these guys are great athletes and not just rugby players.
- 5:40Matt Vickery: So they got great harms beat.
- 5:42Matt Vickery: Yes.
- 5:42Matt Vickery: They got the Bosch.
- 5:43Matt Vickery: So they can take a, obviously they can tackle hard, they have aggressive tacklers and Ruckers and counter Rutgers, but they've got skill sets which were more Islander or Maori type as it was 15 years ago.
- 5:56Matt Vickery: I know the entire world is a brunt.
- 5:57Matt Vickery: Right.
- 5:57Matt Vickery: Hopefully understanding that, you know, if you can take your city to avoid collision, that's not a
- 6:01TJ Jankowski: bad thing.
- 6:02TJ Jankowski: No, definitely not.
- 6:03TJ Jankowski: And so I guess back in the day that did the guys watching you doing all the jumps, did they eventually think, oh, maybe this is a good idea and give it a go or definitely not.
- 6:12Matt Vickery: Absolutely not.
- 6:14Matt Vickery: So I was, I was at.
- 6:18Matt Vickery: And you had a lot of players, there were like kind of a big deal, you know, back in sort of like 2000, 2001.
- 6:24Matt Vickery: Just after that, I think they had just gone bankrupt actually at that point, we've got international class players looking at me like, mate, you got it, you got it totally wrong.
- 6:32Matt Vickery: You should have been a track somewhere.
- 6:33Matt Vickery: So yeah, absolutely not London Scottish in Richmond.
- 6:36Matt Vickery: And I was in London Wellsford at the time she had a training ground and all it saw was just endless physicality, physicality, physicality, running around running.
- 6:45Matt Vickery: Remember not, I mean, the warmup for London Scottish was two laps of the, of the the pitch, you know, like that's not great.
- 6:55TJ Jankowski: No.
- 6:57TJ Jankowski: And what's funny is like, yeah, no, that's what I was going to say is like, you're still like I think like amateur level rugby now is just professional rugby.
- 7:07TJ Jankowski: Maybe like 10 or so years ago, things have trickled down.
- 7:10TJ Jankowski: And so we're still far behind and you get, and then you get the odd player that wants to make the best of themselves and we'll sort of go, but then they'll go to what the current guys are doing now.
- 7:21TJ Jankowski: And they'll sort of like skip a preparation phase and they'll go straight into it as well.
- 7:25TJ Jankowski: So there's a lot of like a layered approach to, to be able to do this sort of stuff, I think.
- 7:30TJ Jankowski: And the whole thing it's like, it is it's over extreme that people were trying to do exactly what the professionals are doing right now, or it's old school and they're not already doing much of anything.
- 7:40TJ Jankowski: Which is crazy, but to me, and it's always been crazy.
- 7:42TJ Jankowski: If you think Rabi's never.
- 7:44TJ Jankowski: Not a physical game.
- 7:47TJ Jankowski: Like it's always, it's a, it's a, it's one of the most physically demanding sports I think you can do.
- 7:51TJ Jankowski: And when you ask, especially if you ask about people that aren't completely familiar with our bill, they're not at least in the circle of ropy, they'll say, you know, they'll always admire rugby athletes because it's, it is an amalgamation of all these different things that you've got to do.
- 8:06TJ Jankowski: So, so then not do anything physically and just say, oh, I'm just a rugby player.
- 8:10TJ Jankowski: And just be in terrible shape is kind of doing yourself a disservice and maybe even a sport to disservice.
- 8:16Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 8:16Matt Vickery: But there's, there's a, there's another side of that as well.
- 8:18Matt Vickery: So I worked with a young prop on Saturday and he's going up to sort of semi-pro level.
- 8:23Matt Vickery: He wants to push his game on and he's a physical specimen.
- 8:26Matt Vickery: He's a big guy, tight head.
- 8:28Matt Vickery: He's not bodies.
- 8:29Matt Vickery: Nobody thought on the mind, you know, he's, he's lean.
- 8:31Matt Vickery: He isn't physically looking at you think, well, you're in a great condition.
- 8:36Matt Vickery: Because it actually built too much muscle mass.
- 8:39Matt Vickery: So he's gone the old bodybuilder route.
- 8:41Matt Vickery: And he can't run.
- 8:42Matt Vickery: So what I got and doing sprint mechanic drills, you know, his, his hip flexors, his glute Medes, his, his Achilles CARF complex were all just burning out so rapidly because his perceived exertion at that particular drill was so high that his body just went flat line.
- 8:59Matt Vickery: You know, he was pumped from doing ACE GEPs and not really common, man.
- 9:05Matt Vickery: You know, you see, I see an awful lot.
- 9:07Matt Vickery: The guys just want to get as strong as they, as strong as they strong as they can.
- 9:10Matt Vickery: And then they completely forget that the most important qualities you can give somebody is try and make them a bit faster.
- 9:16Matt Vickery: You're not going to come fast for a bit faster, a bit more robust, a bit more coordinative, a bit of it, you know, I, didn't not agility and change of direction component.
- 9:24Matt Vickery: You know, that's the dusty game-changer right there.
- 9:26Matt Vickery: It's not the extra 20 kilograms in your back squat or
- 9:29TJ Jankowski: deadlift.
- 9:30TJ Jankowski: No.
- 9:31TJ Jankowski: I think, especially with young athletes, it does come from a, like, I always say, like, I have a sort of strength first approach.
- 9:39TJ Jankowski: I think I'd like to hear your, your thoughts on that afterwards, but it's like, I think, you know, when we're talking about power, even like, yeah, when we're talking about power, even speed, where there's, you know, force applications to the ground, there is a level of strength that you need.
- 9:54TJ Jankowski: And guys that listened to this podcast would have helped me almost say the exact same thing last week.
- 9:58TJ Jankowski: It's it's you have to get, you know, you have to get your strength level developed enough so that you've got a ticket, but that's it, you don't have to, you have to pay you your ticket to entry or cross the barrier to entry and be strong enough.
- 10:11TJ Jankowski: But once that's crossed, like pursuing all of your time in strength is kind of a fruitless endeavor, right?
- 10:19TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 10:19Matt Vickery: And that's your strength?
- 10:20Matt Vickery: Acetate.
- 10:20Matt Vickery: Dennis is pretty big.
- 10:22Matt Vickery: Now, if you're a powerlifter or strong man or Olympic weight lifting.
- 10:25Matt Vickery: Brilliant.
- 10:25Matt Vickery: If you're a barbell athlete or a straws, strength, competitor, strength is all it really matters.
- 10:31Matt Vickery: Now I had this really funny.
- 10:33Matt Vickery: So few weeks ago I was in a gym and this guy comes with his dad and he said, no, I could have a chat to you about coaching my son.
- 10:41Matt Vickery: And I said, well, okay, well, what's the deal?
- 10:42Matt Vickery: He said, well, he's an open side guy.
- 10:44Matt Vickery: He's not making the first team he's in the second still.
- 10:47Matt Vickery: And there's a pretty big club.
- 10:49Matt Vickery: And he said, I'm just a bit concerned.
- 10:51Matt Vickery: He's not strong enough.
- 10:52Matt Vickery: I said, okay, well, where is he?
- 10:54Matt Vickery: And he was in the corner and he's 18 years old.
- 10:56Matt Vickery: This kid, he's got 180 kilograms in his backpack squatting for 10 Jesus.
- 11:02Matt Vickery: I said, mate, whatever's wrong with your standard?
- 11:04Matt Vickery: Not against the leg.
- 11:05Matt Vickery: Firstly, there's a fucking strength.
- 11:09Matt Vickery: Look at 2 42 51 RM based on those pillows.
- 11:12Matt Vickery: So that's this it's probably, can he catch getting past?
- 11:17Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 11:19Matt Vickery: It we'll look at your skillset.
- 11:20TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 11:20TJ Jankowski: Especially with rugby where like, again, people think because of what they look at the top level and they just look at, it's very easy to look at these huge athletes and think, okay, that's, that's what I need.
- 11:30TJ Jankowski: But you, then you miss all the nuances of what goes on in a game it's you can even get it from a fitness standpoint.
- 11:36TJ Jankowski: I'll get people that will send me clips of their game.
- 11:38TJ Jankowski: And I don't know, or just inquiring and they'll say, oh, you know, I think that I'm really, I'm not fit for some reason.
- 11:43TJ Jankowski: I'm always gassed, you know, even like 30 minutes into a game.
- 11:47TJ Jankowski: And then I get back my second wind.
- 11:48TJ Jankowski: And then again, I get guys towards the end of the game, and then you watch that footage and they're running around like a headless chicken.
- 11:54TJ Jankowski: Like you look at Richie McCall back in the day or good efficient flankers Tom.
- 11:57TJ Jankowski: Curry's a perfect example.
- 11:58TJ Jankowski: Like he seems to be everywhere because he's really decisive about his actions and that's, that's ropy, RQ.
- 12:04TJ Jankowski: That's not, I mean, obviously there is a level of fitness to get there, but yeah, there is, there is something to be said and I think w w we've got.
- 12:13TJ Jankowski: I dunno if the pendulum swung too far towards, cause it was, you know, as you said at the beginning of your career, there was real, there was no real strength and conditioning for a sport like rugby, which is crazy.
- 12:22TJ Jankowski: Now we've gone full hog and, and where, you know, especially you see it in South Africa a lot where they're, they're picking guys for their provincial sides and the youth athletes literary based on their metrics in the gym.
- 12:35TJ Jankowski: And I think the pendulum is ready to sort of swing back, which I think, I think it
- 12:39Matt Vickery: is.
- 12:39Matt Vickery: I think it is.
- 12:40Matt Vickery: Cause if you look at guys, you've got Margaret Smith, you got, Jim was the name, George Ford, he got bored and you got, you got like, these are much smaller things than they were 10 to 15 years ago.
- 12:53Matt Vickery: You know, I'm a watch him.
- 12:54Matt Vickery: I, I played against like I played with Butch James in a charity game.
- 12:59Matt Vickery: And mum was huge and 10 box back in, and now I'm like, what?
- 13:06Matt Vickery: And now you've got to raise it up at the, at the top level.
- 13:09Matt Vickery: You know, we understand that this we're not talking about top level yet.
- 13:11Matt Vickery: You and I were talking about lads, young lads semi-pros weekend warriors, you know, amateur athletes, but they, they're not looking at the pro as much as they should do.
- 13:21Matt Vickery: Now.
- 13:21Matt Vickery: They look at the pro as it was 10 years ago, you know?
- 13:24Matt Vickery: And it's like, I think there's room for, for, for top clubs to be a bit more open about their training philosophies and their methodologies, you know, like looking to see more of these guys.
- 13:35Matt Vickery: So young athletes could just look at it.
- 13:37Matt Vickery: I know there's footage on YouTube uh, bits and bobs, but you know, if they're looking at big clunky, heavy, forwards, that's not the way the game is going.
- 13:46TJ Jankowski: No, I think I completely agree with clubs being more open because I think it is actually, maybe it's not intended to be misleading, but it is, I guess I'll see some of the, all blacks clips that they will do.
- 13:58TJ Jankowski: And they'll not, they'll never quite show how deep they go on the squat.
- 14:02TJ Jankowski: They'll never quite show the exact weight on the bar unless it's bragging about someone, you know, which doesn't do anyone.
- 14:09TJ Jankowski: Like, I mean, it's impressive, but it doesn't show for what is like the, the mean, and the average, like you go into a gym of any professional team and yeah, there'll be some really, really impressive numbers.
- 14:21TJ Jankowski: Cause there'll be some freaks, but you'll also see a lot of average as far as just if we're looking at raw strength numbers, but that's because they're not strength athletes, they're rugby athletes, same, same thing for sprint in technique.
- 14:33TJ Jankowski: Like Like w look at, you know, a lot of athletes that I think we learn as rugby from other sports.
- 14:38TJ Jankowski: So power lifting or for strength, we learned from power lifting for sprint, and we learn from track, but there's some just raw speed athletes out there that don't quite have the technique, but it's actually perfect for rugby because they need agility alongside the, you know, the, the straight level of speed.
- 14:55TJ Jankowski: And I think, I think that's, that's interesting that you have your background a lot in track as well.
- 15:00TJ Jankowski: So there are still things, cause I'm always trying to figure out where we can learn, you know, lots of little things to, to bolster out strength and conditioning.
- 15:10TJ Jankowski: And is there anything that we're missing at the minute still we're still far behind from athletics?
- 15:17Matt Vickery: I think at, you know, like elite level, you know, you're going to say no.
- 15:20Matt Vickery: I mean like Franz Bosch route, but the bus of union for, for a few years and you had some big results there and what I, what I take from sprinting and and working with track athletes and, and I did a qualification with Dan path, you know, with Altis qualification.
- 15:35Matt Vickery: So like each year, like a top of, on something different than a new, but that has been a consistency in my life for 25 years of being in this game.
- 15:42Matt Vickery: And one regional of that is that people do not run well.
- 15:47Matt Vickery: And the perceived exertion of your body, if every time all you're interested in is forced into the.
- 15:52Matt Vickery: Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
- 15:54Matt Vickery: That's great when you're 18, because you've got a naturally last density just right.
- 15:58Matt Vickery: Well, a lot of people have some people don't, but if you're just focusing on force into the ground, when you're sprint, then you're missing out on a hell of a lot.
- 16:06Matt Vickery: That flight time that forced you to the ground creating good positions to recycle that gate cycle and that gate mechanic to go again, you're going to get those repeat sprint qualities.
- 16:16Matt Vickery: And the perceived exertion is going to be like a 710 and I'll be sort of seven computer and RP 10.
- 16:23Matt Vickery: And therefore you're getting guys are going to get gas really quickly from running really badly.
- 16:27Matt Vickery: And it might look fine from the sidelines and think, oh fuck, he's really fast.
- 16:31Matt Vickery: And yet it could be fast, but you know, I'm more interested in a guy who who's 80% fast for 80 minutes of the match than a hundred percent fast for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever.
- 16:40Matt Vickery: And nobody's gonna know, we understand the game of rugby ebbs and flows and you get recovery, but just looking at a lot of athletes, running loose, look at someone like in Wales.
- 16:51Matt Vickery: There's a lot of Newcastle now for England, who's just got a mess on, yeah, man, let's just wrap it.
- 16:56Matt Vickery: Those guys, you know, the Barrett brothers or any Islander, you know, things for the all blacks, but you see the way they run and people always say the same thing to me.
- 17:04Matt Vickery: They always go, oh, it makes it look so easy in the same way.
- 17:07Matt Vickery: Rinaldo mix was soccer look easy.
- 17:09Matt Vickery: You know, it is easy for them because they've got a wonderful gate mechanic.
- 17:14Matt Vickery: They got an understanding of what's required or they're just genetic fucking freaks and they just get that from their parents.
- 17:21Matt Vickery: And then they endorse it by adding speed and power to the, to the intended output.
- 17:25Matt Vickery: Sam, I don't know.
- 17:27Matt Vickery: Amazing.
- 17:27Matt Vickery: And like I said, it was, they started read a perceived exertion, which I tend to sort of throw it on people's necks or not.
- 17:33TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 17:33TJ Jankowski: Definitely.
- 17:34TJ Jankowski: And I think it is funny to me that like I'll S I'll get regularly get questions from people that, that ask, you know, oh, It's either older athletes that are losing their speed or it's younger athletes that need to get speed.
- 17:47TJ Jankowski: And they're like, okay, now I go, I go to the gym three times a week.
- 17:51TJ Jankowski: What can I do to get faster?
- 17:52TJ Jankowski: And I'm like, well, how often are you sprint it?
- 17:55TJ Jankowski: And the answer is, oh, well, I mean, I do rugby, but I'm like, no, you need to practice this, this new skill.
- 18:00TJ Jankowski: And you don't just, you know, it's like passing you don't just go play a game of rugby and go, okay, now I'm going to practice my POS.
- 18:06TJ Jankowski: I know you develop the pass in, in drills.
- 18:08TJ Jankowski: The same thing that should be said for speed that unfortunately gets missed a lot.
- 18:12TJ Jankowski: And I think overall, like from chatting to you already, I can tell that, you know, you have a full understanding of what strength and conditioning is.
- 18:21TJ Jankowski: And probably I can imagine that maybe you don't even like that term because it doesn't really hold true to what it is.
- 18:28TJ Jankowski: It's physical preparation rather than strength and conditioning.
- 18:32Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 18:32Matt Vickery: And with, I worked with quite a lot of older athletes because they were an old bastard, but I worked with young lads.
- 18:38Matt Vickery: I worked with older ones as well because.
- 18:41Matt Vickery: The online guys are all sort of my age and above or roughly, you know, sort of late thirties, let's say it's up to 52.
- 18:48Matt Vickery: We're going to allow you to play a masters, I guys, to masters.
- 18:51Matt Vickery: And they've all, they all came to me for the same reason because he got, I love jumping.
- 18:56Matt Vickery: I love throwing shit around on a sprint in, and I don't ever want to not do that.
- 19:01Matt Vickery: So I'm 43 now.
- 19:02Matt Vickery: I'm still quicker than a lot of the guys that I coach in the youth and in the seconds.
- 19:07Matt Vickery: And I know I'm proud of that.
- 19:10Matt Vickery: If I go with 30 meters, I'm dead, but it will time and I'm on it.
- 19:15Matt Vickery: And the thing I see with these older athletes is that they almost, they almost take it as a given, they're going to lose their speed.
- 19:24Matt Vickery: So they say, they often say to me online, I run a consultation.
- 19:27Matt Vickery: They say, I know, I know I'm not as fast as I was.
- 19:30Matt Vickery: I said, well, what are you doing about that?
- 19:32Matt Vickery: Oh, well, you know, it's just one of those things you get older.
- 19:34Matt Vickery: I said, no, it's not.
- 19:36Matt Vickery: You're choosing to be less efficient.
- 19:39Matt Vickery: To be less elastic, to be less fast and less powerful.
- 19:44Matt Vickery: And the reason you do in those, because you think now you've got to go full retard and go full strengths and you never go full retard.
- 19:52Matt Vickery: You've got to keep the bits in there that are actually game-changing for the sport of rugby.
- 19:59Matt Vickery: You know, your bench press is not a game changer.
- 20:02Matt Vickery: You 10 meter acceleration of the line can be a game changer in offense and in defense.
- 20:09Matt Vickery: So why would you not share, train our quality?
- 20:10Matt Vickery: And the other thing you say to me, TJ, is that I haven't got access to a field on weekdays, just on the weekends.
- 20:18Matt Vickery: What?
- 20:18Matt Vickery: It doesn't matter what a street I've got.
- 20:22Matt Vickery: I've got guys that I call John Lane doing.
- 20:24Matt Vickery: The one guy had abandoned overhead primetime drill, sprint, and done a close in Birmingham.
- 20:32Matt Vickery: Delivery man.
- 20:33Matt Vickery: And scaffolders watching him.
- 20:35Matt Vickery: I'm like you said, w what do I do is gives a fuck what they think, just get it done.
- 20:39Matt Vickery: You're going to get faster.
- 20:40Matt Vickery: Now, when you've got a field, use the streets and in the gym, there's so many things you can do.
- 20:44Matt Vickery: Acceleration positions, you know, over five to 10 meters, you know, fake throws, banded, acceleration, resistant accelerations.
- 20:52Matt Vickery: I applied my extensive players, intensive plays.
- 20:55Matt Vickery: There's so many things you can do to get faster, but people would rather choose something more conditioning based or more strengths-based place in Europe.
- 21:03Matt Vickery: So you, right.
- 21:03Matt Vickery: I don't really like the term strength conditioning, but people don't understand anything else.
- 21:09Matt Vickery: If you say coach power, speed, and strength.
- 21:12Matt Vickery: I caught a bit of conditioning, but mainly that's on.
- 21:15Matt Vickery: You know, and I manage your stress levels, so that's not a job title.
- 21:17Matt Vickery: And he was going to remember ever, you know?
- 21:20TJ Jankowski: Yeah, yeah.
- 21:20TJ Jankowski: I hate it.
- 21:21TJ Jankowski: Well, like conditioning is, it's like, it's like the funniest word as well.
- 21:25TJ Jankowski: Cause like what does, what does that even mean?
- 21:27TJ Jankowski: Like, like strength is part of conditioning.
- 21:29TJ Jankowski: Cause you need to get stronger to be, if you're conditioning yourself to be a rugby player, then you know that it all goes in it's, it's a stupid term, but we're stuck with it now.
- 21:38TJ Jankowski: And we have to, that's what we have to go with.
- 21:39TJ Jankowski: You mentioned about I guess we'll see if we can piece this out a little bit more that, but the importance of speed and power particularly for older athletes.
- 21:47TJ Jankowski: So you're saying that younger athletes are generally quite more responsive just to being naturally faster.
- 21:54TJ Jankowski: And we'll see this with people that don't, you know, go to the gym, but they don't really work their speed over.
- 22:00TJ Jankowski: They don't take themselves as a serious with that sort of stuff.
- 22:03TJ Jankowski: No.
- 22:03TJ Jankowski: And so.
- 22:05TJ Jankowski: Did I saucer with technical improvements as opposed to like, you know, rural physical improvements, or is it that we're maintaining those raw physical attributes that they can still maintain that or even gain their speed?
- 22:18Matt Vickery: I think what I'd like to do is anyway quarterly, but there's like three going to two pots.
- 22:23Matt Vickery: Right.
- 22:23Matt Vickery: And I say like, we're going to cook.
- 22:24Matt Vickery: We're going to focus on.
- 22:25Matt Vickery: And it can be two aspects to speed and to play metrics when I've run under the same banner.
- 22:30Matt Vickery: And I see that we're going to work on two qualities to physical qualities, elasticity.
- 22:34Matt Vickery: I'm going to work on power, which obviously force time to speed.
- 22:38Matt Vickery: Right?
- 22:38Matt Vickery: First time philosophy and people understand power.
- 22:41Matt Vickery: They totally understand power, but then you say and they don't understand what that is.
- 22:47Matt Vickery: And I still, okay.
- 22:47Matt Vickery: We're going to work on ankle stiffness and they don't understand without anything.
- 22:50Matt Vickery: It's a tight muscle.
- 22:52Matt Vickery: So you've got a word in a very particular way where people actually buy into it.
- 22:56Matt Vickery: You see, like, you know, we're trying to build robustness around potentially the most important fucking thing in your body for your athlete, your Achilles.
- 23:04Matt Vickery: We're trying to keep that as robust as possible for as long as possible and as responsive as possible for as long as possible.
- 23:11Matt Vickery: So you can distribute the force you've created in the gym, into the ground with a nice elastic bouncy response, rather than a flat pancake slab.
- 23:21Matt Vickery: Every damn time you hit the ground.
- 23:23Matt Vickery: You know, that's the way I like to explain it to people
- 23:27TJ Jankowski: that makes sense.
- 23:28TJ Jankowski: I use it as more of a, like a, instead of dropping a soft spongy ball on the ground.
- 23:33TJ Jankowski: Like, you know, it doesn't matter how strong, I don't know how strong a sponge can be, but if you drop a spongy ball on the ground versus dropping a real solid rubber ball on the ground, like which one bounces up much higher than your training, that quality.
- 23:47TJ Jankowski: And so obviously the strength comes into it because the more dense that ball is, the better it's going to be at bouncing.
- 23:52TJ Jankowski: But at the same time, you have to work both.
- 23:54TJ Jankowski: At the same time, I think that works as well for a lot of other athletes that they're scared of putting on mass and then slowing down as well.
- 24:03TJ Jankowski: I'm thinking, well, if you're not even trained in this stuff in the first place, there's a good chance.
- 24:06TJ Jankowski: You'll, you'll get strong.
- 24:07TJ Jankowski: I mean, you'll get faster.
- 24:08TJ Jankowski: Right?
- 24:09Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 24:10Matt Vickery: And the thing is like, like, you know, with, with youth athletes, everything works, you know, there's no skill in making someone stronger when they're 18, you know, cause that's just like a Charlie Francis and as difficult as full of a board in a mortar, you know, not complicated at all.
- 24:25Matt Vickery: There's not much, there's not much, much harder making someone faster at 18 either because they've got the elasticity cause their tendons are young and useful.
- 24:32Matt Vickery: But they don't have the technical ability perhaps, or they don't have the strength, you know?
- 24:35Matt Vickery: Cause it goes, we I, I don't play strengths, but I love training.
- 24:39Matt Vickery: You know, I love, I love training strengths.
- 24:40Matt Vickery: And there's, you know, there's, there's limited gains for certain levels or on guaranteed, but with a youth athlete.
- 24:47Matt Vickery: If he's got a, a decent deadlift for a, for a rugby athlete, you know, we see really whenever he gets to like odd numbers, strength, standards, I don't like that.
- 24:57Matt Vickery: I don't care too much about, you know, if someone's got 150 kilogram deadlift, but they got an 11 foot broad jump, you know, I'm happy with that.
- 25:06Matt Vickery: Or, you know, or I just started at 1.5, four to second, like 10 meter acceleration past the powerful, this strong probably enough, but we can add a bit of body armor on top of them.
- 25:19TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 25:19TJ Jankowski: I go back and forth on strength standards.
- 25:21TJ Jankowski: I'm actually going to put something out in the next coming weeks on the, on YouTube about shank Sanders for rugby players.
- 25:26TJ Jankowski: And it's going to be layered and complex because that's just the way it has to be.
- 25:31TJ Jankowski: Cause you can't like, and I'm still going to preface it with like, I'm not really happy with doing this, but this is what people want to see because we like to do with numbers.
- 25:39TJ Jankowski: And I think that's why we like.
- 25:41TJ Jankowski: That's why we like strength training in general, as opposed to the power stuff, because it's a lot easier to measure.
- 25:46TJ Jankowski: You can see, you know, the 1.2, five key kg plates being added to the bar each week, or you can see the extra reps going in the log book, whereas with power up and, you know, even medicine balls and stuff like you can't quite see efficiency as obvious or, you know, the, the, the slight increase in speed is obvious, which is annoying, but that's just the way it is.
- 26:08TJ Jankowski: And I think you still got to make it fun.
- 26:10TJ Jankowski: And just because you can't see an obvious progression doesn't mean that, that progression isn't there.
- 26:16TJ Jankowski: And I think you've just got to have faith in the system.
- 26:19Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 26:19Matt Vickery: I mean, I, I like to metric everything to be honest there.
- 26:21Matt Vickery: So it goes from a 10 or 20 or 30 or 40, and it's more for my interest and for their competitive nature and fun more than a care in too much about the actual metric med ball throws the same.
- 26:34Matt Vickery: I got a tray lane to 22 meters, six kilogram med ball challenge, you know, If you could throw it over your head backwards and hit the 22, you're pretty bloody powerful.
- 26:43Matt Vickery: You know, that's, that's a decent, thrilled beyond data.
- 26:45Matt Vickery: We measure them, we record it.
- 26:47Matt Vickery: I know I'm not.
- 26:47Matt Vickery: I remember I did a course with Paula Quinn when I was like 22.
- 26:51Matt Vickery: And he was like, if you're not assessing, you're only guessing I had like tattooed on my forehead for years.
- 26:57Matt Vickery: No, that's not overly important for certain things, but I still like to see if my program is working.
- 27:04Matt Vickery: And certainly if there was some of those physical qualities start to go the other way.
- 27:08Matt Vickery: And if their med ball goes from overhead, throw goes from 22 minutes to 19, I'm going to be a bit concerned about that with my programming.
- 27:15Matt Vickery: You know, if, if, if they've gained or lost weight, we'll take that into account.
- 27:20Matt Vickery: But yeah, I mean, I like med ball throws from the chest and overhead.
- 27:23Matt Vickery: I like to stand in the same place when someone's doing a vertical, so I can monitor exactly how high it was against the rugby post and things like that.
- 27:31Matt Vickery: So they send me metrics, they're not a hundred percent, but they they're good enough, you know, and it's fun as well.
- 27:37Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 27:37TJ Jankowski: And, and they're good enough to see some sort of progression.
- 27:40TJ Jankowski: I even think like if you get a video of, of, of medicine ball throws against the wall or whatever just make sure it's not drywall because that's, that's been a mistake a few times with people.
- 27:51TJ Jankowski: But if you throw, if you, if you can just, you can actually, like I said, you can't really see it.
- 27:55TJ Jankowski: I'm like saying you can't see it on a log book, but if you actually compare sets of videos, you see like the naked, I can see a little a much more efficient mover, particularly when you compare them side-by-side or one after the other.
- 28:07TJ Jankowski: Or like how much faster the reps are going, how much faster you're recoiling, that sort of thing works really.
- 28:12TJ Jankowski: I want to change or want to keep going along this line of, of what you're doing with speed and power and stuff.
- 28:17TJ Jankowski: But I want to understand a little bit more about how you differentiate from, cause you said you worked with like younger athletes that are trying to make it and seeing if they can get to a semi-professional professional.
- 28:26TJ Jankowski: And you also said you worked with old bastards, so I'm assuming there's, there's a deal of differentiation with how you train those guys.
- 28:32TJ Jankowski: You want to touch on that a little bit for me?
- 28:35Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 28:35Matt Vickery: So th th the main, okay, so the main difference, let's just take two sort of avatars.
- 28:41Matt Vickery: We've got an 18 year old rugby lad who wants to get up to the semipro level in his club.
- 28:45Matt Vickery: And we've got 45 year old masters player.
- 28:49Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 28:49Matt Vickery: The template of my program is exactly the same for everybody.
- 28:52Matt Vickery: Whether they fight that rugby athlete, a lacrosse player, The tablet runs the same.
- 28:58Matt Vickery: He goes static, warmup, dynamic, warmup.
- 29:00Matt Vickery: It goes Mack drill.
- 29:01Matt Vickery: So, you know, sprint mechanic drills, he goes to the plasticity light pole goes, et cetera.
- 29:04Matt Vickery: He goes power to go strength.
- 29:06Matt Vickery: It goes to hypertrophy.
- 29:06Matt Vickery: It goes conditioning.
- 29:07Matt Vickery: You know, the school with that, I sort of see the differences is that I think volume priority and stress.
- 29:16Matt Vickery: And so if I've got a 45 year old rugby masters athlete, who's got three kids, a mortgage and a shitty job.
- 29:24Matt Vickery: He doesn't like anymore.
- 29:26Matt Vickery: His emotional stress is going to be very, very high.
- 29:31Matt Vickery: So his session is going to be low volume.
- 29:34Matt Vickery: The lowest I can get away with perhaps even multiple sessions of a half an hour through the week, rather than like two sessions with the 18 year old, his stress levels are, is going to get laid this weekend.
- 29:46Matt Vickery: I mean, you can drink four spew in, you know, and I know this is just taking the piece of it, that one's got this stress and look at their shit, but you got to manage the stress.
- 29:54Matt Vickery: And volume and duration of, of sessions and frequency of sessions.
- 30:00Matt Vickery: That's, that's why that's the way change between those
- 30:03TJ Jankowski: age groups.
- 30:05TJ Jankowski: I think we sat there as well as is, and we've spoken about it already kind of with the older athletes and what they tend to do is they tend just to keep training the same and do everything the same.
- 30:16TJ Jankowski: And they'll see their numbers go down because these other things in their life are changing.
- 30:21TJ Jankowski: So they're not able to cope with the same volume or, you know, get away with the same shit that they did when they were younger.
- 30:26TJ Jankowski: And then they just get, they either just give up or they just, they, they don't understand what's happening.
- 30:31TJ Jankowski: And a lot of times it is, they just give up.
- 30:33TJ Jankowski: And I said, well, I guess I'm old now.
- 30:34TJ Jankowski: I guess I have to be either injured or I guess I have to get, like, I'm not going to be the athlete that I was, whereas like, actually you have no choice, but to do less, even though it's a tricky game, because you want to, you want to stay at a level where you're still competing.
- 30:50Matt Vickery: Well I think.
- 30:51Matt Vickery: And he's not a rugby guy.
- 30:52Matt Vickery: He's a BJJ razor ruler, right?
- 30:54Matt Vickery: So he's got six days a week BJJ.
- 30:58Matt Vickery: Right?
- 30:58Matt Vickery: He's got he's a fireman as a job.
- 31:02Matt Vickery: He's got wife and kids.
- 31:04Matt Vickery: He's got famous fitness challenges.
- 31:07Matt Vickery: He takes on all the time, like crazy fucking endurance events, almost like CrossFit on crack.
- 31:13Matt Vickery: You know, then he's got she's comes to me and says, I want to train like five days a week
- 31:20TJ Jankowski: to pause here.
- 31:20TJ Jankowski: I have no idea where this paused.
- 31:24TJ Jankowski: Apparently the recording pause on 30 minutes.
- 31:27TJ Jankowski: That's annoying.
- 31:28TJ Jankowski: We'll figure it out.
- 31:28TJ Jankowski: Let's go back to w can we, can we resume from what I just said about agility?
- 31:34TJ Jankowski: So you said, you know, your background is more in athletic.
- 31:37TJ Jankowski: And so obviously in athletics, we're dealing with a lot more straight line speed.
- 31:41TJ Jankowski: That's not what you see as much in rugby.
- 31:43TJ Jankowski: Rugby is, as you said, already acceleration, but it's acceleration in different directions, which are also known as agility.
- 31:50TJ Jankowski: So how do you go about programming for that?
- 31:52TJ Jankowski: I'm sorry for the pause.
- 31:53Matt Vickery: Yeah, so, like I said, I think terminology matters.
- 31:57Matt Vickery: You know, it's changed direction, agility to different things.
- 31:59Matt Vickery: Yep.
- 32:00Matt Vickery: Low level change of direction when you're first learning it with kids, for example, is strength training.
- 32:05Matt Vickery: So the D accelerate DeSales.
- 32:08Matt Vickery: So in re accelerate, your mass requires a fair bit of strength.
- 32:10Matt Vickery: So that's a constraint beach based approach and we give them, you know, constraint based drills to go touch cones and whatever drills and there's a million drills.
- 32:19Matt Vickery: But the main thing is to not coach the drill, but to coach the skill as Lee Taft says, and I really loved that explanation of it.
- 32:26Matt Vickery: You know, it's like, well, what are we after from this.
- 32:29Matt Vickery: Well, it's changing direction with different strategies, different movement patterns, different body angles, different shin angles, producing force maximally in different positions.
- 32:37Matt Vickery: Agility then of course it is random in nature.
- 32:39Matt Vickery: So then it's like, you'd get cone based drills.
- 32:43Matt Vickery: Are you constrained Mr.
- 32:44Matt Vickery: Or, sorry, I just running the colors.
- 32:47Matt Vickery: Right?
- 32:47Matt Vickery: We've enhanced verbal cues.
- 32:49Matt Vickery: Getting them to, to react quickly with no predetermined preordain plan and that's agility.
- 32:56Matt Vickery: Now what we'd like to do, what I like to do is with people is like, do I have what called compromise position starts?
- 33:01Matt Vickery: So they could be on a knee.
- 33:03Matt Vickery: They could be laying down and from street on site onsite on, and then you jump to a sprint, you know, and you, you organize your body as efficiently as possible on that push up position.
- 33:17Matt Vickery: You push them off the floor.
- 33:18Matt Vickery: You see.
- 33:20Matt Vickery: You accelerate in the sort of angles and the trajectory you would do from a three or two point start.
- 33:25Matt Vickery: So it all comes back to the linear speed.
- 33:27Matt Vickery: It has organized your pelvis first.
- 33:30Matt Vickery: So if I'm lateral, then I pop and it gets given those strategies.
- 33:33Matt Vickery: So they can appreciate that.
- 33:35Matt Vickery: And like you said, that, I mean, if you think about sidestepping, if you want a great a doctor strengthening it, strengthening exercise, a sidestep is a brilliant exercise, you know?
- 33:47Matt Vickery: So there's all, it all comes back down to strength and linear speed.
- 33:49Matt Vickery: As we mentioned earlier, it's just
- 33:51TJ Jankowski: strategies.
- 33:52TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 33:52TJ Jankowski: I'm combined with like rugby IQ, because I mean, as you say, agility is chaotic.
- 33:59TJ Jankowski: So what you're doing is you're reacting to what your opponent's given you.
- 34:03TJ Jankowski: You could have the most agile guy in the world, but if he's not, you know, if he has no idea what defenders are tend to do or how to spot gaps as he's running it, then that, that agility or that changes direction, skill is, is useless.
- 34:18Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 34:18Matt Vickery: And that's when your strengths comes in just to smash in the middle of yesterday.
- 34:21Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 34:22TJ Jankowski: But, and that's, but that's why, you know, you start with the basic stuff.
- 34:25TJ Jankowski: Like people, people love and, you know, we're in the trap of social media already now.
- 34:31TJ Jankowski: And I don't know if it's ever going away, but like that's the stuff that gets views or like cool different interactive things that partner drills where they're working on.
- 34:41TJ Jankowski: And that stuff like is a good development, a tool to use, to build in from the basic skills to get to the other stuff.
- 34:47TJ Jankowski: But if you don't have the basic skills, which, you know, kneeling starts and stuff like that really do help the body understand.
- 34:54TJ Jankowski: And if you don't have the basic technique as we've already said, the stiffening of the ankles, that sort of stuff, then you kind of wasting your time because you're just kind of still doing the same thing.
- 35:03TJ Jankowski: You're going to chaotic environment.
- 35:04TJ Jankowski: You're never going to learn in a chaotic environment.
- 35:06TJ Jankowski: So you have to.
- 35:07TJ Jankowski: Keep it simple first.
- 35:09TJ Jankowski: Yeah, exactly.
- 35:10TJ Jankowski: That.
- 35:10TJ Jankowski: Cool.
- 35:11TJ Jankowski: Speaking of keeping it simple you're a strong guy.
- 35:13TJ Jankowski: You're as you said, you're, you're outpacing a lot of the youngsters.
- 35:16TJ Jankowski: And I think you would consider yourself a very advanced athlete, but what I don't see in your training, or what I do see in your training is a lot of simplicity and not a lot of, you know, advanced training techniques.
- 35:30TJ Jankowski: Young guys particularly are attracted to advanced stuff, but I think older guys as well, once they get older, they think, okay, now, instead of, you know, I've already skipped that part, but I need to understand recovery.
- 35:41TJ Jankowski: They've gone straight into.
- 35:42TJ Jankowski: Okay.
- 35:42TJ Jankowski: Now I'm advanced.
- 35:43TJ Jankowski: I need to do advanced stuff to get Vaughn's results.
- 35:46TJ Jankowski: Do you think that's the case?
- 35:47TJ Jankowski: Do you think athletes need advanced training techniques or do you see the beauty and simplicity?
- 35:52Matt Vickery: A bit of both.
- 35:53Matt Vickery: If you're talking about advanced techniques as being like French contrast training, which is my favorite modality for increase in power, because they shunned for a lot of guys with semipro got jobs, we've got wives and kids, it gives the biggest bang for your buck, you know, cause you can, you can go and you go warm up.
- 36:10Matt Vickery: You're gonna hit your French contrast model and you can leave.
- 36:12Matt Vickery: And you're probably going to be a, maybe a half an hour in the gym.
- 36:15Matt Vickery: So I love the simplicity of that, but of course it's actually a very complex modality and you've got to get to that point to use a French contrast model by getting, you know, just go into a complex train in contrast treating then going to French contrast.
- 36:30Matt Vickery: And I could take, you know, a couple of months, a couple of years depends where you are.
- 36:33Matt Vickery: So the answer I would say is if you're talking about advanced techniques as being that sort of the example, then yes, if you're talking about advanced techniques, Some balance laying on a bench with a dumbbell in one hand balance on a Bosu ball and the other fuck.
- 36:49Matt Vickery: Then the answer is 100%.
- 36:51Matt Vickery: No, cause that's not advanced track tech techniques.
- 36:54Matt Vickery: That's just a lack of training, knowledge and efficiency.
- 36:57Matt Vickery: And it's just clickbait.
- 36:59Matt Vickery: Do you
- 37:00TJ Jankowski: think like a lot of this comes about from bodybuilding being such a meat and potato sport, right.
- 37:07TJ Jankowski: Like getting out in mass is just you know, correct me if you, if you disagree, but it's just a case of getting in enough volume and enough calories for the body to, to, to grow Korean at some level of animalism and whatever.
- 37:19TJ Jankowski: Right.
- 37:19TJ Jankowski: So that's really, really, really easy to do.
- 37:24TJ Jankowski: So I think it can get boring.
- 37:27TJ Jankowski: So what the bodybuilding culture has sort of done is create things like, you know, triple drop sets or, or giant sets and all this stuff.
- 37:35TJ Jankowski: They're all tools that you could use to actually probably just be more efficient.
- 37:40TJ Jankowski: But they've used them all as, as to create them as like advanced techniques that w you know, same thing for strength, right.
- 37:45TJ Jankowski: You just said, you know, going out jumping out of a boat and hit, and water is the same as about as difficult as it is to get a young athlete stronger.
- 37:52TJ Jankowski: So do you think that, like, a lot of this has just come about because it just, just to make this stuff more entertaining?
- 37:59Matt Vickery: Yeah, it was simple as that.
- 38:01Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 38:02Matt Vickery: Yes.
- 38:03Matt Vickery: I remember.
- 38:03Matt Vickery: I remember going on a course and it was a it was Pollock when again, and he was with Paul Chek and they had Swiss balls and that footage, video, grainy video footage of remember Christian Cullen to the all blacks.
- 38:17Matt Vickery: He's a full back in the day, super strong guy, you know, questionable all the guys, the all blacks would like questionably big compete.
- 38:25Matt Vickery: Nobody else.
- 38:25Matt Vickery: They're all stood on Swiss balls with 20 kilogram dumbbells in each hand, squatting stood on a Swiss ball, scoring 40 kilos, and I'm watching this video in the gym and I'm like, this is the shit.
- 38:37Matt Vickery: This is amazing.
- 38:38Matt Vickery: This stay stable.
- 38:40Matt Vickery: Look it up at all that all the all the sort of connective tissue and the stabilization muscles are switched on.
- 38:45Matt Vickery: And there's this old Hungarian powerlifter looking at it with me.
- 38:48Matt Vickery: And he was like, this is bullshit.
- 38:50Matt Vickery: They lift in 40 milligrams.
- 38:51Matt Vickery: I'm like, not at all.
- 38:52Matt Vickery: They're on a ball.
- 38:53Matt Vickery: Is that there's 40 kilograms.
- 38:55Matt Vickery: You don't play sport on a ball.
- 38:57Matt Vickery: I, my rule beliefs shattered in one sentence.
- 39:00Matt Vickery: I'm like half horse.
- 39:01Matt Vickery: It does this so stupid.
- 39:03Matt Vickery: So that's one side of it.
- 39:05Matt Vickery: The other side of it, then you've got the real patterns and I've been both through my career and I've changed my view on a lot of things.
- 39:12Matt Vickery: But one of the things that I was told when I was younger was, you know, that Virgo Schonski quote of you can't do plyometrics until you've got a two times body weight back.
- 39:21Matt Vickery: And I was like, oh, that's so unfair because I want to, I want to do jumps, but I can't apparently, but of course there's context.
- 39:28Matt Vickery: What Vertica Shanxi meant was that you can't use the shock method because it doesn't work really well when you've got a one times body weight back spot, but it works really well when you got a two times body weight.
- 39:38Matt Vickery: So just save it until you've exhausted all the other modalities and techniques.
- 39:43Matt Vickery: And you get to that point where it's really useful and you're, so you've stressed your system so much that nothing else works quite as well as this winter.
- 39:53Matt Vickery: And that's where we get confused.
- 39:55Matt Vickery: Again.
- 39:55Matt Vickery: It's like that whole pedantry of all, you can't use chains on your squad because you don't squat 200, that's bullshit.
- 40:01Matt Vickery: You know, it's changed a fun youth change.
- 40:02Matt Vickery: Bands are fun, you know?
- 40:05Matt Vickery: So there's, there's two sides of that.
- 40:07TJ Jankowski: I think it's also a case of like to me it all comes down to efficiency, right?
- 40:12TJ Jankowski: If you're looking at all these advanced techniques and you're you, you just don't need to do Y like white, or if you're looking at some sort of crazy programming thing where you're going to get collect more data, if you can get foster sprint, you know, when you're a younger athlete, quite just increasing it and then going out and running back, like, why would you not just do that?
- 40:34TJ Jankowski: And then you can take the time over time to adjust your technique, or do have a sewer, especially techniques or exercises and stuff to progressive because with
- 40:49Matt Vickery: audio, DJ loose, this rustling going on, there you go.
- 40:58TJ Jankowski: And what we're going to do is plug that back in.
- 41:01TJ Jankowski: Oh, okay.
- 41:02TJ Jankowski: It's bloody.
- 41:04TJ Jankowski: We still good?
- 41:06Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 41:06Matt Vickery: I spent
- 41:07TJ Jankowski: much better, man.
- 41:07TJ Jankowski: Okay, sweet.
- 41:08TJ Jankowski: Yeah, I think what a lot of people tend, I think it's just all comes down to efficiency and a lot of people tend to look at extra special techniques or different techniques and they think, okay, that's the missing thing in my training.
- 41:22TJ Jankowski: And that's going to get me better.
- 41:23TJ Jankowski: Whereas actually like just getting better is already sets you ahead.
- 41:27TJ Jankowski: Of most people, most people were going in the gym and they're doing the same old, same old, or they're not even in the gym and they're slowly getting worse.
- 41:34TJ Jankowski: The fact that you can make improvement.
- 41:36TJ Jankowski: It is a really good thing.
- 41:37TJ Jankowski: So keep doing things that keep improving you and slowly over, you know, over the months, over the years, add in extra things to keep that you know, to keep that graph going up in the, in the direction that you want it to go to keep you improving.
- 41:49TJ Jankowski: Because at the end of the day, if, if you can get better just doing a few lifts, just do those few lifts and then, you know, save your other, you've got then extra time for recovery or extra time to work on your skills.
- 42:01TJ Jankowski: Like there's no point pumping up already pumped up tires.
- 42:05TJ Jankowski: There's no point doing anything more than that.
- 42:06TJ Jankowski: So then focus on the engine or focus on whatever it is that you or the chassis or whatever it else is can improve your performance.
- 42:14TJ Jankowski: That's not to say that you shouldn't like you should go out and fat flat tires, like make sure that they're pumped before you go.
- 42:19TJ Jankowski: But at the same time, you don't have to get anything here.
- 42:22TJ Jankowski: You don't have to look at the advanced stuff just because it looks.
- 42:27Matt Vickery: I don't a hundred percent agree.
- 42:28TJ Jankowski: A hundred percent.
- 42:29TJ Jankowski: I think it's, it's more, again, a lot of it comes back to efficiency.
- 42:33TJ Jankowski: Like I liked, I really liked to use you know myo reps.
- 42:38TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 42:38TJ Jankowski: So I use those a ton because it's just an easy way to get in a lot of volume.
- 42:43TJ Jankowski: Sometimes it can be extra fatiguing, but it's an easy way to get in a lot of volume in just a few minutes, as opposed to like, you know, 10, 20 minutes for three different exercises, you can get that done in five to 10 minutes easily.
- 42:56Matt Vickery: And also like.
- 42:58Matt Vickery: It doesn't even have to be as complicated as people make out either.
- 43:01Matt Vickery: So trading efficiency for me is okay.
- 43:04Matt Vickery: I mean, do I have a body today?
- 43:05Matt Vickery: Right.
- 43:06Matt Vickery: So I want something powerful.
- 43:08Matt Vickery: So, I mean, I say less or do a, I see a med ball throw against the wall.
- 43:12Matt Vickery: Right.
- 43:12Matt Vickery: And I want to pair that with a core exercise because that's where I like to do.
- 43:17Matt Vickery: And it's you give people cool.
- 43:19Matt Vickery: Wrecks says at the end of their workouts or on our backs says, we want to call them.
- 43:23Matt Vickery: They won't do them because they'd rather go home.
- 43:25Matt Vickery: So you put, you pair them with the power X, as long as it's not, you know, the strength, speed stimulus, and it's a legitimate speed strength or power stimulus, which won't be affected by the core fatigue.
- 43:34Matt Vickery: So let's just say we've thrown the med ball in the war.
- 43:37Matt Vickery: And then we do a long lever stir the pot with the med ball.
- 43:40Matt Vickery: We've used the med ball again.
- 43:41Matt Vickery: So that's efficiency.
- 43:42Matt Vickery: Right?
- 43:43Matt Vickery: So then you go, right.
- 43:44Matt Vickery: Okay.
- 43:44Matt Vickery: My main lift, today's gonna be the bench.
- 43:46Matt Vickery: I've got to do four sets of five.
- 43:48Matt Vickery: Let's see at 80%, right.
- 43:51Matt Vickery: If you're a percent six or seven, whatever is.
- 43:55Matt Vickery: You do your sets, you finish up, what do you do?
- 43:58Matt Vickery: You don't need to walk to the other side of the gym and gone to a lat pull down, you know, you pay them.
- 44:04Matt Vickery: So, I mean like a floor press with a chin up, cause it's right there.
- 44:08Matt Vickery: You don't do a deal with the bar.
- 44:09Matt Vickery: You don't have to, don't just take a couple of weeks off and then you walk across to the dumbbell rack and you do like some vertical pressing and you do some horizontal pulling with like a bench room.
- 44:20Matt Vickery: So again, you're being efficient.
- 44:21Matt Vickery: You're pairing exercises that are really quick.
- 44:24Matt Vickery: Back-to-back BOSH, BOSH, you know, walking from one end of the gym, we're upstairs, downstairs, you just doing the stuff right there.
- 44:31Matt Vickery: And that's where program design fails when it's so complicated.
- 44:35Matt Vickery: And I've got a rule of thumb.
- 44:36Matt Vickery: If I, if, you know, if, if, if I look at your program and it's more than depend on goal, obviously, but more than eight exercises and I'm being generous there.
- 44:43Matt Vickery: Cause my usually about six, I'm pretty sure you've done a week.
- 44:48Matt Vickery: And this, this adds to that as well, you know, a bit of different, different modalities of, you know, mobilizations or whatever it is, but the, the, the meat and potatoes of the workout, if it's 10 to 12 exercises, I'm not sure about that.
- 45:03TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 45:03TJ Jankowski: I think that comes from the same psyche that gives people, or that makes people do advanced techniques because they feel like they're missing out on something.
- 45:12TJ Jankowski: And so I'll always see that with people when they'll send me their program or we'll do a consultation and I'll say like, no, you don't need this much.
- 45:21TJ Jankowski: And that they're completely scared of.
- 45:24TJ Jankowski: I noticed I have the same.
- 45:26TJ Jankowski: I completely understand the mindset cause I was the same, you know, you think, oh, if I, if I am only do two sets of bench, there's no way I'm going to get stronger.
- 45:33TJ Jankowski: I'm going to get weaker.
- 45:34TJ Jankowski: My chest is going to shrivel up.
- 45:35TJ Jankowski: I used to be petrified.
- 45:38TJ Jankowski: Yeah, that's just the way the fitness industry is because it's all so ingrained it with these top notch athletes promoting all this nonsense and there'd be a break
- 45:48Matt Vickery: for rugby, and he's got a one 40 bed, one 50 bench press, and he weighs like a hundred kilograms.
- 45:54Matt Vickery: Let's just see us 150 kilogram bench press.
- 45:57Matt Vickery: Well, I'm happy with that.
- 45:59Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 46:00Matt Vickery: So the next few weeks he can come into the gym and work up to a heavy signal, which is around about that weight.
- 46:05Matt Vickery: And he's maintaining the strength and when his restraining starts to deteriorate, then we can add a few reps to that.
- 46:10Matt Vickery: So that, that particular accident it's really fucking simple.
- 46:14Matt Vickery: And it's not, it's nowhere near as complex as people like to make out.
- 46:17TJ Jankowski: I think people get also get wrapped into their own results emotionally, and they don't like, they don't like the idea of what do you mean?
- 46:23TJ Jankowski: I only have to do two sets of bench.
- 46:25TJ Jankowski: Like no way I, I, you know, cause they like, cause we like what we're already good at.
- 46:29TJ Jankowski: And so therefore we're going to keep doing what we're already good at.
- 46:32TJ Jankowski: Well, if that's, if that's like already good enough and you're putting, you're investing time into that.
- 46:38TJ Jankowski: Is much better spent elsewhere than you're actually wasting your time?
- 46:42Matt Vickery: Well, look, I might, my mindset changed on direct TAF training a few years ago.
- 46:47Matt Vickery: So I never believe in direct calf training.
- 46:49Matt Vickery: I was sort, if you were doing enough sprint work and Mack drills and Pogo enough stimulus and you didn't need it, then I sort of like looking at Alex work and I'm like, oh, okay.
- 46:59Matt Vickery: Maybe there's some valid validity to this.
- 47:01Matt Vickery: Then I started utilizing those techniques in my own training.
- 47:04Matt Vickery: And I realized, I feel like my uncle's difference has gone through the roof.
- 47:08Matt Vickery: It was actually, it deteriorated quite a lot.
- 47:10Matt Vickery: I just hadn't felt it.
- 47:10Matt Vickery: And I videoed myself doing three point starts.
- 47:15Matt Vickery: And the first step, you know, the car, the ambulance is stiff is holding the keyless, holding it sight, whereas before it wasn't.
- 47:23Matt Vickery: So, you know, my mind, my mind has changed a lot on different training modalities over the years, you just got to keep on challenging yourself and not like I said, leaning towards your biases.
- 47:34TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 47:35TJ Jankowski: And, and continuing.
- 47:37TJ Jankowski: I think in the, if they make sense to you, like, if you can, if you can think you can see a progression and then go for it, like, but you're doing it out of like a positive mindset rather than a fearful one.
- 47:51TJ Jankowski: I've got to add this in, because this is the thing that I've been missing this whole time.
- 47:54Matt Vickery: On the flip side of that as well, what was said to people, if you can't explain why a particular exercise or drill isn't yet in your program, it shouldn't fucking be in there.
- 48:01Matt Vickery: You've got to justify every single thing that you're going to spend time on in the gym.
- 48:05Matt Vickery: Wonderful.
- 48:06Matt Vickery: Making you better.
- 48:07Matt Vickery: And if you can't justify it, it shouldn't be that.
- 48:10TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 48:10TJ Jankowski: Which goes, it goes back to that efficiency that we were talking about already.
- 48:13TJ Jankowski: Like people just do stuff.
- 48:15TJ Jankowski: I think it's people do stuff just cause, cause they copy what other trainers have done and they don't really think about it.
- 48:21TJ Jankowski: And I think too many people don't even have like actual goals, you know?
- 48:26TJ Jankowski: Like they don't state take the time to think they just go to the gym because they say, oh, Jim's good for rugby, strong rugby.
- 48:32TJ Jankowski: That's it.
- 48:33TJ Jankowski: They don't think, oh actually speed might help a lot more or power might help a lot more or getting aerobically in shape or get my condition up to scratch will help a lot more.
- 48:42TJ Jankowski: They just think they just copy what they see other people do.
- 48:45TJ Jankowski: And as we already mentioned, like there's not, it's not overly open what professional rugby players are really doing.
- 48:52Matt Vickery: No.
- 48:53Matt Vickery: And I've, I've pulled I've, I've been a powerlifter.
- 48:56Matt Vickery: I've been a strong man compared to, and you know, I'd been a sprinter.
- 48:59Matt Vickery: So I got a decent lens.
- 49:01Matt Vickery: If I'm going to pick one physical quality, give me speed every day.
- 49:04Matt Vickery: You know, cause like I said, the speed work.
- 49:07Matt Vickery: If your sprint infrequently enough, accelerate and change direction work max velocity, you're getting enough strength work for the lower limb.
- 49:15Matt Vickery: You know, you can top up with a bits and bobs around when we mentioned, but give me speed everyday over strength because their strength is so easy to hold on to it.
- 49:22Matt Vickery: So he's a game, genuine speed.
- 49:25Matt Vickery: And you're not going to make people fast if you can make them faster.
- 49:28Matt Vickery: But that deteriorates after the age of 28, 29, they're all starting to go downhill.
- 49:33Matt Vickery: But the speed, the strength on conversely tends to go up because of course we start to favor the things that we think will get us better.
- 49:43TJ Jankowski: I think on top of that, it's also like, speed is so good because actually makes you, it makes you fitter because when we're looking at repeat speed ability, I think I said this on last week's podcast, they look at, you look at the studies and you see the people that actually have the best repeat speed ability.
- 50:03TJ Jankowski: They're just already really slow.
- 50:04TJ Jankowski: So they're going from, you know, they're doing going from six to six to six to six and they maintain in six.
- 50:09TJ Jankowski: Whereas you've got one guy that's a 10 and he drops down to a 9.5 and then a nine that's seen as a, you know, it was a less fit person, but actually, because they're so fast that they're running rings around the people that are six.
- 50:20TJ Jankowski: Anyway, you have to put less effort in and you're becoming more efficient, a hundred percent.
- 50:25TJ Jankowski: I could speak to a lot of what you've, you've spoken about two hour.
- 50:28TJ Jankowski: I'm really enjoying this.
- 50:29TJ Jankowski: I guess I want to go back to you say you've learned.
- 50:32TJ Jankowski: In your, in your career and change your mind?
- 50:34TJ Jankowski: A lot of things.
- 50:35TJ Jankowski: I always think that's, that's a good sign rather than a bad sign because quote from Dan cultural who stole it from someone else was that, you know, you get a lot of coaches that say they've got 10 years of experience, but actually they've just got one year of experience 10 times because they never learned them.
- 50:52TJ Jankowski: And I think that's so true.
- 50:54TJ Jankowski: So just to, to know that, and I'm always fascinated thinking about like, what am I doing right now that I've, I think in five years, time is absolute bullshit or something that I think, ah, maybe I've done this wrong because more than ever now.
- 51:09TJ Jankowski: And I'm sure you're probably the same, you're more and more confident in what we're actually getting people to do and really happy with.
- 51:16TJ Jankowski: The rationale behind it, but there's going to be stuff that we're going to have to change our mind on.
- 51:21TJ Jankowski: So, but what are some of the, oh, if you can just name one of the, the most important things or the biggest thing that you've changed your mind on throughout your career?
- 51:28Matt Vickery: The one thing you mentioned, it was a calf training.
- 51:30Matt Vickery: That's one thing, the other thing is everyone's got a bias, right?
- 51:35Matt Vickery: So you, even, if you don't know you've got a bias, you've got a bias, but I always believed, you know, that powerlifting was the basis of a good athlete.
- 51:47Matt Vickery: So the big three lifts.
- 51:48Matt Vickery: No, that's not to say I don't use them still.
- 51:50Matt Vickery: Of course I do.
- 51:51Matt Vickery: But now I'm, I'm just as happy with using like dynamic effort method instead of cleans, I can dynamic as a dead lift, right?
- 52:02Matt Vickery: If you've got somebody put in 1 43, et cetera, I'm okay with them, not doing power cleans and will key with them not doing heavy deadlifts.
- 52:10Matt Vickery: I think that's the, if I used to say I've changed one thing, it's my ability to let go of biases and say, you know, like I don't particularly like Olympic weight weightlifting.
- 52:20Matt Vickery: I was taught badly as a kid.
- 52:22Matt Vickery: I've re ruptured both biceps off the board.
- 52:25Matt Vickery: And I can't take a, a cash position right now from a, from a clothesline, from one from the lift, from the other, and actually the third one.
- 52:35Matt Vickery: And finally there was 10 pin bowling with my kid.
- 52:37Matt Vickery: So that's not the coolest story.
- 52:39Matt Vickery: But, but I used to have real biases towards like powerlifting towards back squad towards power Queens.
- 52:46Matt Vickery: Cause even though I didn't really badly, I was still adamant that that was the thing you had to do.
- 52:51Matt Vickery: And then I was like, wait a minute, I got a bonded one 30 kilogram deadlift here, which I'm ripping off the ground at.
- 52:59Matt Vickery: It's exactly the same.
- 53:00Matt Vickery: I'm just keeping an old, I'm not catching it.
- 53:02Matt Vickery: So as long as my numbers, my speed, my VBT is up.
- 53:06Matt Vickery: Well, I don't care about that.
- 53:08Matt Vickery: And then I go, okay, well, what if I don't like doing deadlifts?
- 53:11Matt Vickery: We're going to use a trap bar and just do some loaded trap out jumps, same stimulus.
- 53:15Matt Vickery: There's no difference.
- 53:17Matt Vickery: So anybody who says different, come back and tell, talk about me in 15 years time.
- 53:21Matt Vickery: Now, if you say that Olympic weightlifting is the thing you have to do is create strength, speed.
- 53:25Matt Vickery: Stimulus of somebody else says something the opposite somewhere in between.
- 53:30Matt Vickery: If someone's good at Olympic weight lifting, let them do it.
- 53:33Matt Vickery: If someone doesn't like it, then don't, it doesn't fucking matter.
- 53:36Matt Vickery: It drives me crazy.
- 53:37Matt Vickery: These arguments that we have, but that's the difference.
- 53:40Matt Vickery: I think the difference, I wouldn't name an exercise or a modality or a technique.
- 53:44Matt Vickery: I'd say my ability to not have quite as many biases as I used to do.
- 53:48Matt Vickery: And if someone's comes to me, so I love only lifting.
- 53:50Matt Vickery: I'm really good at that fight program.
- 53:53Matt Vickery: If someone comes to me and says, I know I'm not good at all, you lifted and I'll say, well, it's a sport.
- 53:57Matt Vickery: You're not playing a sport.
- 53:59Matt Vickery: Let's get the stimulus and the outputs from something
- 54:01TJ Jankowski: else.
- 54:02TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 54:02TJ Jankowski: As a rule of thumb, like I've competed in Olympic weight lifting.
- 54:05TJ Jankowski: I do enjoy it.
- 54:07TJ Jankowski: I've come away from it just because it's just, it's quite brutal.
- 54:11TJ Jankowski: And it's the more I travel around.
- 54:12TJ Jankowski: It's difficult to do in commercial gyms, but I still, I still enjoy it.
- 54:16TJ Jankowski: But for the module, for the vast majority of my athletes, I don't even, it's not even a conversation we have to bring up because they, the learning curve, particularly if we're just doing it online or if they're going to it.
- 54:27TJ Jankowski: There's just too much risk of us not getting the benefits, versus if we're doing, you know, demo deadlifts, if we're doing different jumps, different jumps, squats, different movements, whatever it is, like I know they're getting the benefit from those.
- 54:39TJ Jankowski: I'm not always sure, unless I'm seeing crisp technique.
- 54:42TJ Jankowski: If they're getting the benefits from unless it's a power snatch where it's just a real quick palace that I, I do enjoy those, but again, then they're only thrown in fairly infrequently, but I agree that the arguing that you absolutely need it, or you should never do it is kind of redundant at this
- 54:59Matt Vickery: point.
- 55:00Matt Vickery: Do you know what the most stupid comment I've I've listened to?
- 55:03Matt Vickery: Which was from a pretty high level SNC coach?
- 55:07Matt Vickery: I wasn't speaking to him, but I was in the room at the time and he was arguing the case for Olympic weightlifting for rugby.
- 55:13Matt Vickery: And I overheard the comment and he said, well, one of the best things that people don't appreciate is that fact, if you're hitting a, like a one 50 power clean, you're catching a one 50 kilograms, so you're absorbing enough force.
- 55:25Matt Vickery: And then of course that's a great thing for robotics.
- 55:27Matt Vickery: It teaches you to absorb force.
- 55:29Matt Vickery: I'm like a Tonga and full tilt will teach you and absorb force.
- 55:33Matt Vickery: You don't fucking barbell the teacher to do that, mate, you know, the impact you're going to get on the field.
- 55:38Matt Vickery: You trying to negate those impacts in the gym.
- 55:40Matt Vickery: Not trying to add more stress to the system.
- 55:42Matt Vickery: So stupid.
- 55:44TJ Jankowski: It's funny.
- 55:45TJ Jankowski: That's that's, I've heard the same sort of thing, but it's like.
- 55:49TJ Jankowski: And I, I understood it like probably incorrectly from what they were trying to say.
- 55:54TJ Jankowski: I think they were trying to say, you know, you're catching it and you're using your whole body, but I understand it was like, oh, okay.
- 55:59TJ Jankowski: Maybe.
- 55:59TJ Jankowski: So that means I could just do like a demo dead lift and then like a, a depth drop of some point.
- 56:05TJ Jankowski: Cause that's the absorption of the forest, probably more efficiently and more likely what you're going to find in Rupt.
- 56:10TJ Jankowski: But you know, you don't need 150 kilos to do that.
- 56:12TJ Jankowski: If you're just stepping off a step high, high enough step and absorbing the force into the ground, that's, that's a lot more like the step, the absorbing of force.
- 56:20TJ Jankowski: You're going to find in a interrupted manage.
- 56:22Matt Vickery: You want to talk me of force absorption, you know, then altitude London's again, that step of the box.
- 56:29Matt Vickery: Stick the landing.
- 56:29Matt Vickery: No, I don't like I don't.
- 56:31Matt Vickery: And again, there's big arguments about, you know, like a tool to short landings or snap landings.
- 56:35Matt Vickery: We went to Columbia or they're not, they're not specific to adapt development.
- 56:38Matt Vickery: They don't teach you how to allow.
- 56:40Matt Vickery: Well, I normally don't, but maybe you're not doing them for that reason.
- 56:42Matt Vickery: Maybe you're doing it just to add a little bit of hamstring, robustness.
- 56:46Matt Vickery: This, this is a ribbon tool for that, you know, you don't have to do it, but I'll do land read way to get those hamstrings to fire up.
- 56:54TJ Jankowski: Yeah, definitely.
- 56:55TJ Jankowski: I think as you said, that it goes to the whole approach of like, everything can work if you justify it.
- 57:01TJ Jankowski: And it's the same, as you said, if you're assessing someone else's program, it's, you know, why are you doing a squat?
- 57:05TJ Jankowski: Well, cause I've got to do a squat on a bench in a deadlift.
- 57:08TJ Jankowski: Why you're not doing, you know, why you're not doing a rear foot elevated split squat because maybe you've only got access to dumbbells or maybe you haven't got access to as much weight or maybe you've got one leg that's significantly smaller or weaker than the other, so many tools.
- 57:22TJ Jankowski: And I think you mentioned it right at the beginning it's movement patterns.
- 57:27TJ Jankowski: You need a push, a pool, a hinge, a score.
- 57:30TJ Jankowski: Whether that's a specific bench, press squat.
- 57:35TJ Jankowski: Deadlift only really matters if you're a powerlifter.
- 57:38TJ Jankowski: Otherwise, if you're a rugby player, like you've just got to use those movement patterns.
- 57:42TJ Jankowski: Right.
- 57:43Matt Vickery: You know what, like I like to get, he's actually got pushed.
- 57:47Matt Vickery: He got poked and he got vertical, horizontal.
- 57:49Matt Vickery: You got hinge, quality got lunge.
- 57:51Matt Vickery: You got rotation.
- 57:52Matt Vickery: You got get no, those the seven ones I run with.
- 57:56Matt Vickery: Right.
- 57:57Matt Vickery: I might be able to say me, I train gates.
- 57:58Matt Vickery: What do you do?
- 57:59Matt Vickery: Lunch walks.
- 58:00Matt Vickery: Nope.
- 58:02Matt Vickery: I do.
- 58:02Matt Vickery: Farmers carries.
- 58:03Matt Vickery: And that they don't get, what did you forget?
- 58:06Matt Vickery: You sprint or no, to do Mac drills?
- 58:09Matt Vickery: No.
- 58:10Matt Vickery: No.
- 58:11Matt Vickery: So what are you doing for gate?
- 58:12Matt Vickery: Nothing.
- 58:13Matt Vickery: You know, so people love to talk about squatting and you know, there's a real, I think one of the things you've got at the moment is there's a lot of people out there and they are given solutions to problems that don't really exist.
- 58:25Matt Vickery: You know, when you're talking about you grab a squat.
- 58:28Matt Vickery: Okay.
- 58:28Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 58:28Matt Vickery: But you've got to have this squat, this got this score, this squad, it's got to be the squad list of squats or the hinges of squats.
- 58:37Matt Vickery: Pick one, mate, you know, keep this squat squad, keep your head.
- 58:40Matt Vickery: Shinji no, but if you want to do box squats, that's a very NG squat and that's going to benefit.
- 58:45Matt Vickery: And if you want to do a heels elevated split squat, goblet, squat, or friends flag as a very quad dominant Squatty squad.
- 58:53Matt Vickery: That's fine too.
- 58:54Matt Vickery: But we really, at the moment, picking them a new share of things whereby you know, a squat is going to be any type of squat is going to be better than a Squatty.
- 59:03Matt Vickery: Don't do.
- 59:04Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 59:05TJ Jankowski: A hundred percent.
- 59:06TJ Jankowski: I think, and technically as well, again, probably from this bodybuilding background where we, where we're trying to over complicate things or make things a little bit more entertaining, or even with a strength background, like you've got squat university and that's not.
- 59:21TJ Jankowski: Aaron Horshack but like, there's, there's like, it's, it's one movement pattern.
- 59:26TJ Jankowski: Y Y Y I think we need a university to go to, to really delve into it.
- 59:32TJ Jankowski: And especially not people that aren't powerlifters or aren't getting paid to squat, it just doesn't make sense to me.
- 59:38Matt Vickery: There's two sides to that as well.
- 59:39Matt Vickery: Like I said he's, he'll correct.
- 59:42Matt Vickery: A two millimeter hip shift and see that's really important.
- 59:45Matt Vickery: And that's exactly what you've just read my mind kind of thing there, because those are the problems that we don't need solutions for 2 million is neither here nor there for athletes, you know?
- 59:53Matt Vickery: And then, but then you've got the other side of things then you've got you got guys like Adam Meakins, and I really like him, but he's like lift or you want it doesn't matter.
- 1:00:00Matt Vickery: Just build, build tolerance, tissue tolerance, and that's great advice, but the peer of them are doing things.
- 1:00:07Matt Vickery: If it just gives some context to it.
- 1:00:08Matt Vickery: Now I agree with me again.
- 1:00:10Matt Vickery: I used to do bent back lifting.
- 1:00:11Matt Vickery: So there's lift Atlas stones.
- 1:00:14Matt Vickery: I've specifically did bend back, lifting for a while to try and get my lumbar erector stronger.
- 1:00:19Matt Vickery: That's not to say that's the most efficient way to lift weight off the ground, but they don't see that.
- 1:00:24Matt Vickery: Or they just say do this.
- 1:00:26Matt Vickery: You know, it doesn't matter about technique.
- 1:00:28Matt Vickery: And then the other side, it's like, it's all about technique.
- 1:00:29Matt Vickery: And again, the unhappy and unpopular middle ground is where the truth actually lies.
- 1:00:37Matt Vickery: He doesn't have to be world-class steady Colin kind of technique, but equally it shouldn't be cat's back chit show, you know, cause you're not gonna live much weight with that particular type of technique.
- 1:00:47TJ Jankowski: No, it's, I mean, it's the same like politics, right?
- 1:00:49TJ Jankowski: If it's stuff is in the middle, it doesn't get any traction.
- 1:00:52TJ Jankowski: Doesn't get any likes or clicks.
- 1:00:53TJ Jankowski: That's why the popular stuff is always on the crazy ends of the spectrum.
- 1:00:57TJ Jankowski: For technique, I always, my rule of thumb is if I am looking from across the room and it looks good enough, then that's good enough.
- 1:01:05TJ Jankowski: Like that's, that's it really, you can always make slightly technical.
- 1:01:07TJ Jankowski: If you, if I can see a technical adjustment, I'm actually looking across the room.
- 1:01:11TJ Jankowski: If I can make an, a technical adjustment from across the room, or I can see something that might need to be adjusted, that's what we do.
- 1:01:16TJ Jankowski: But otherwise, like there is no.
- 1:01:19TJ Jankowski: Point in picking out in the minutia, it's just getting more efficient, getting stronger, and the body will figure that out as well.
- 1:01:24TJ Jankowski: Most for the most, the differences
- 1:01:26Matt Vickery: when you're working with kids, you know, again, the, the, the MTA Olympic weightlifting argument is it takes too long to coach.
- 1:01:33Matt Vickery: Fuck, I can call just snatching for your kid in five to 10 minutes.
- 1:01:37Matt Vickery: That's not an argument.
- 1:01:38Matt Vickery: That's just bullshit.
- 1:01:38Matt Vickery: That's a lazy approach for someone who perhaps doesn't know what to do it, or doesn't become, be asked.
- 1:01:43Matt Vickery: But with kids, when you're working with young athletes, it's really important to give them an idea like down path talks about shapes.
- 1:01:48Matt Vickery: You know, I love, I love that.
- 1:01:50Matt Vickery: What's your starting ship.
- 1:01:51Matt Vickery: What's your finishing ship and in everything in the middle of the sort of self out usually.
- 1:01:55Matt Vickery: But so we've acceleration with the squat, with the deadlift.
- 1:01:59Matt Vickery: If kids have an appreciation of what it should look like in their minds, the kids now film every bloody thing.
- 1:02:04Matt Vickery: Anyway.
- 1:02:04Matt Vickery: So they'll, they'll record this and they'll go, ah, that doesn't look great.
- 1:02:08Matt Vickery: We need to change that.
- 1:02:09Matt Vickery: And he changed it to, like I said, to to a degree where it's acceptable, there's, we're not formed police, you know, we're not.
- 1:02:16Matt Vickery: Technique we're coaching the amount of weight you can lift off the ground or all the time or the speed of which you can lift it.
- 1:02:23TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 1:02:23TJ Jankowski: We were given a lot of these extra techniques.
- 1:02:26TJ Jankowski: Again, I think it's just a case of trying to make things that are quite simple, sound, more complicated to create a level of learned helplessness, like, which we don't need.
- 1:02:36TJ Jankowski: Like, you know, if anything you need to be doing less need to worry about less, but as long as you're doing it efficiently, like you you're covering your bases, your what, you know, what you need to work on.
- 1:02:44TJ Jankowski: And that's it really?
- 1:02:45TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 1:02:46TJ Jankowski: Yeah, for sure.
- 1:02:46TJ Jankowski: Okay.
- 1:02:47TJ Jankowski: I don't wanna take up too much more of your time, Matt.
- 1:02:49TJ Jankowski: So last two questions and they're not, they're not quick fire.
- 1:02:53TJ Jankowski: I put them here and I always ask them, but they're not quick fire at all.
- 1:02:56TJ Jankowski: What's a one-off change.
- 1:02:58TJ Jankowski: The most effective, one of change that you think an athlete and this is we can't be specific.
- 1:03:02TJ Jankowski: So it just general athletes can make that will have the best payoff.
- 1:03:05TJ Jankowski: So universe.
- 1:03:10Matt Vickery: So if I'm going to say, oh, okay, I'm going to see recovery.
- 1:03:14Matt Vickery: And it's totally like, oh, you're on your own bullshit, bullshit.
- 1:03:17Matt Vickery: But again, the recovery thing, we got this camp over here, some 21 year old telling me he ended up nine hours sleep and drink five liters of water and make sure that everything is home grown.
- 1:03:28Matt Vickery: All my food is grown in my back garden and my, my, all my foods organic.
- 1:03:32Matt Vickery: And he goes the other side, then, you know, just sleep five hours a night and drink one liter of water in 20 coffees.
- 1:03:39Matt Vickery: You know, I've got a very simple approach to recovery.
- 1:03:43Matt Vickery: You get as much sleep as you possibly can, you know, without external influences.
- 1:03:48Matt Vickery: If you want some, if you've got three kids, you never, you're not getting nine hours sleep.
- 1:03:52Matt Vickery: If you got a job and a mortgage, you're not doing that.
- 1:03:54Matt Vickery: Don't talk to me about that.
- 1:03:56Matt Vickery: If you're a kid, you should definitely do that.
- 1:03:58Matt Vickery: I agree that hydration, nutrition and sleep hygiene.
- 1:04:04Matt Vickery: It's a, it's a much overdone point, but it is the most important single change you'd want to call out one single change would be recovery that you can make to people.
- 1:04:12Matt Vickery: So like my, my evening routine runs the same.
- 1:04:15Matt Vickery: I'm a routine.
- 1:04:16Matt Vickery: I like routine everything's done on a dome.
- 1:04:19Matt Vickery: So like they see, even now I will read to my kids and I'll give them 10 pages of Harry Potter.
- 1:04:24Matt Vickery: And then I will come down and have my dinner and it'll, it'll always be good for me.
- 1:04:28Matt Vickery: I don't eat crap.
- 1:04:29Matt Vickery: Cause food is fail and you know, it, last order is there's no emotional attachments required to food, just fucking fuel your body that sort of matters.
- 1:04:38Matt Vickery: And then I'll sit down and my misses or watch some crappy TV and I'll do some static stretching, some full rolling and some, some lacrosse ball work, which again is horribly unpopular with people because you don't need that shit.
- 1:04:49Matt Vickery: Come back and tell me when you're 45 7, if you need that.
- 1:04:53Matt Vickery: 1% is when you're 45, you get 10 or 12 of those.
- 1:04:57Matt Vickery: You got 12% different.
- 1:04:58Matt Vickery: That's a big difference.
- 1:05:00TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 1:05:01TJ Jankowski: What, what book of Harry Potter are you on?
- 1:05:02Matt Vickery: Prison.
- 1:05:04Matt Vickery: That was
- 1:05:04TJ Jankowski: nice.
- 1:05:05TJ Jankowski: Now, now we're getting into the real meaty stuff.
- 1:05:07TJ Jankowski: Yeah, I'm definitely one that's guilty of that.
- 1:05:10TJ Jankowski: Like saying, you know, you don't need the lacrosse balls and stuff, because again, these are people that aren't taking the big rocks of their recovery.
- 1:05:16TJ Jankowski: Seriously.
- 1:05:17TJ Jankowski: You've clearly got everything else as, as efficient as you can.
- 1:05:20TJ Jankowski: You've got your routine down.
- 1:05:22TJ Jankowski: You asked most people that, you know, that do anything on the foam roller, what their pre sleep routine is.
- 1:05:28TJ Jankowski: They don't have one, they don't have a bedtime.
- 1:05:30TJ Jankowski: They don't have a wake up time.
- 1:05:31TJ Jankowski: It's ad hoc that that's, that's not going to help you, but some place,
- 1:05:36Matt Vickery: yeah, nine o'clock is bad time.
- 1:05:39Matt Vickery: And I read, read 10 pages of a textbook, and I read a couple of pages of a novel to fall asleep with.
- 1:05:43Matt Vickery: And I'd asked the routine, they have six days.
- 1:05:46Matt Vickery: Is that a night to let it go.
- 1:05:48Matt Vickery: you know, but you know, there's no room for that, but yeah, that's the, that's the thing that the recovery stuff is, is well-documented everyone talks about it, but give me a routine, which you can feasibly conduct six nights a week and stick to, and, and all these little, little, 1% doesn't actually mean something, but if you're getting no sleep, no sleep, then it doesn't matter.
- 1:06:15TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 1:06:15TJ Jankowski: And then finally, what's one sentence that you could define your overall coaching philosophy.
- 1:06:25Matt Vickery: I think philosophy is, is one of those words where when you're a young coach, everyone tells you, you need a philosophy, you've got to have a philosophy, you've got to treat it.
- 1:06:33Matt Vickery: You got to buy into something.
- 1:06:34Matt Vickery: And I remember saying to somebody on a seminar a few months ago, and I said, look, you know, if you're young coach, you haven't got a philosophy, just follow somebody who you respect.
- 1:06:43Matt Vickery: And Nick there's for me, he was like Paula went to start with, and I did, I went away from that.
- 1:06:47Matt Vickery: That was Mike bottle and went from that.
- 1:06:49Matt Vickery: But I took bits and bobs from everybody.
- 1:06:51Matt Vickery: My training templates, the same for everybody.
- 1:06:53Matt Vickery: It does.
- 1:06:53Matt Vickery: I mentioned earlier that an ethos or a philosophy, I'd say if every, I don't see if every general public.
- 1:07:05Matt Vickery: Jim Goro athletes train like a professional rugby rugby athlete.
- 1:07:09Matt Vickery: They'd be much better off for it because every physical quantity you could possibly need as a human for longevity is in rugby.
- 1:07:17Matt Vickery: You've got, you know, you've got aerobic capacity, you've got anaerobic, you've got power, strengths, elastic, sprint qualities.
- 1:07:25Matt Vickery: You've got there's if there's no other sport, for me that encompasses all the physical qualities that you were, you required to be a really good, robust, strong, powerful from fast athlete, then rugby or union or league, maybe AFL conversation for that.
- 1:07:41Matt Vickery: But you know, there's no other sport where you, it gives you that really a nice well-rounded balance.
- 1:07:47TJ Jankowski: Couldn't agree more.
- 1:07:47TJ Jankowski: Actually, I think that's one of the biggest things.
- 1:07:50TJ Jankowski: I've got a few athletes that are in their forties, and I think that, you know, Part of the reason they still play rugby is to do this sort of training because they know it's important for life.
- 1:08:00TJ Jankowski: And I think that's absolutely a lot of people get that wrong, where they go, okay, I'll do rugby because that's what I need to do for my fitness and, and to keep my body in shape.
- 1:08:08TJ Jankowski: And I'm like, okay, but that's a, that's a strange approach to do a really aggressive collision sport.
- 1:08:13TJ Jankowski: You know,
- 1:08:14Matt Vickery: and I want my kid to play rugby to toughen him up.
- 1:08:19TJ Jankowski: So it doesn't, it doesn't work like that.
- 1:08:21TJ Jankowski: It really doesn't.
- 1:08:22TJ Jankowski: I actually thought, I thought for the, your overall coaching philosophy, you were going to say your Instagram handle, which will apply one more time at the end here.
- 1:08:30TJ Jankowski: So jump the grow lift.
- 1:08:34Matt Vickery: Yeah, they were okay.
- 1:08:35Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 1:08:35Matt Vickery: Yeah.
- 1:08:37Matt Vickery: Which kind of encompasses the whole thing anyway, but yeah, I was, you know, at sprint on top of that, but like, it didn't really roll off the tongue, like jumps off the list is okay.
- 1:08:46Matt Vickery: So lifts, sprints.
- 1:08:47TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 1:08:47TJ Jankowski: It doesn't, it takes, it takes a lot away from the name actually, doesn't it.
- 1:08:52TJ Jankowski: But yeah.
- 1:08:53TJ Jankowski: Cool.
- 1:08:54TJ Jankowski: Is there anywhere else people can go and find out more about your, your training and your coaching, that stuff?
- 1:08:58TJ Jankowski: Or is the Instagram the best place
- 1:08:59Matt Vickery: to go?
- 1:09:01Matt Vickery: Yeah, I'm just to Instagram.
- 1:09:02Matt Vickery: I, you know, I, I, I put a bit of content out there as much drops I stood, but yeah, play.
- 1:09:08TJ Jankowski: Yeah.
- 1:09:09TJ Jankowski: It's really good quality stuff.
- 1:09:10TJ Jankowski: And you can see all of what we've spoken about today.
- 1:09:14TJ Jankowski: Inaction.
- 1:09:14TJ Jankowski: I appreciate you post something really good.
- 1:09:17TJ Jankowski: I'm so yeah, everyone listened to, I absolutely encourage you to go check out jump dock, throw dock lift.
- 1:09:23TJ Jankowski: Correct.
- 1:09:25TJ Jankowski: You got to be in the description below.
- 1:09:27TJ Jankowski: Thanks for joining us, Matt.
- 1:09:28TJ Jankowski: This has been great.
- 1:09:29Matt Vickery: Actually, my TJ man, pretty good.