Latest / The Uplift- with Luke Pollock / #18 - Solo Pod - Reflections On My First Public Speaking Event
Transcript
- Luke Pollock: Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Uplift. I am your host Luke. And today's another solo episode. We're back with the solo episodes. Hopefully a little bit longer for you today. What we're gonna do is we're gonna listen to a talk I gave recently at my old university. I have been speaking about this talk on recent episodes. Hello and welcome back to another episode Hi everyone. Firstly, I'd like to thank you to Adam specifically for inviting me along to this. for, yeah, just so cool for me to be back here. I graduated three years ago as you're about to hear. So like to be back in the city and in this place where a lot of fun has happened in the past, it's so cool for me to back. So thanks for taking time out your day to come and listen to me ramble for the next 15 minutes. where I mentioned I've been prepping for it and I was nervous for it, et cetera. I recorded the talk for you people so you can listen to it in your ears and you can let me know what you think. But before we get into the talk, I'm gonna go over a few things that I've learned from what was essentially my first public speaking event, professional public speaking event, because I've obviously had to speak publicly. So yeah, like we said, my presentation is on the art of good rehab or what I believe to be good rehab. So a little bit about me. I graduated here just less than three years ago. I came to uni from the Ulster Academy, played back super rugby here and as Adam kindly mentioned was captain in my last year. And then went on to play semi-professionally for Cardiff RFC for the last 23 to 25. And then I moved clubs to Blackheath RFC in London. different university things, different rugby events, but I would say this is my first professional public speaking event where I was invited along as a keynote speaker to share my thoughts on ⁓ certain topics on rehab really more than anything ⁓ to students and to non-students who attended the event. So I really enjoyed it and I have definitely reflected on the event. Professionally and then ⁓ most notably as a student, I had a four week placement with Harlequin's Rugby. Just the year after they won the premiership, so that was like the peak of English rugby at that time, which was really cool. I then was a band five physiotherapist in Cardiff and Vale Health Board before getting my band six static position ⁓ in 25. Then I moved to London and was a rehab physio with a company called Six Physio. And now I'm self-employed. ⁓ reflected on my talk, what I thought went well, what I thought could have been better, what I'm going to do next time I attended public speaking event. And I think it's really good to reflect I made an episode, a solo pod on the importance of reflection and asking better questions. And I think it's really important to ask myself, what went well? What can I do better? Not just, yeah, okay, that happened. Move on. Never think about it again. I run in my own business, which I call Look Polygon Lanks. It's mostly online rehab. And I also work for these guys down at the bottom, Arite Performance, who work with professional and some professional athletes, mostly on their off season. So we're going to work with a lot of England rugby players, England footballers and stuff in the off season as they come along now, which is really, really cool. And I'm super grateful for that opportunity. I'm going to talk a little bit more about Arite at the end, ⁓ well, midway through. So. Because I want to give value to people who come to listen to me or just come to the event, didn't know I was coming. I want them to have some value from the time that I've taken from them when they're listening to me. You need to respect people's time, which I do. So I want to be as good as possible at making good use of their time. Did that make sense? Like I said, I've just graduated a few years ago, so I'm just a few steps ahead of most of you. So I want that to encourage you not to. I think some of the speakers today are consultants. Very impressive. I'm just a few steps ahead of you, but I find that's a good place to learn from. Yeah, and that's where I've learned the most. So like I mentioned with Harlequin's rugby, I came away from that four-week placement feeling pretty overwhelmed, to be honest, because it was high-level conversation, high-level stuff. I want them to gain as much value from me as possible during the time which they lend or which they give to me. Because time's all we have really. So ⁓ you want to be respected in people's time. Anyway, without getting into that too much, let's go into a few things I learned. So first lesson I learned was practice really does make perfect. Since starting this podcast and since speaking more on my social media, on my Instagram, I definitely feel that It was very stimulating but very tiring and I was thought I'm miles off this and I'm not going to be able go into sport for edges and edges. That wasn't the case and when I qualified I realised I knew a lot more than I thought I did at time. So yeah, just a little word to start, I'm just a few steps ahead of you. I'm going to be speaking about a case study. Jamie, who came to me a year and a half ago now. Fortunately, Jamie's back playing now. He played in last week's varsity, which we won. Happy days. more confident speaking in public with fewer pauses, with fewer as, and et cetera. But speaking publicly completely changed that. And you'll notice as soon as we go on to midway through this episode, when it changes to the talk, you'll notice I'm nervous. So I add a lot more filler words and I speak a lot more quickly. It was a full ACL rehab Jimmy came to me having just had his op and he asked Could I rehab him because he knew how to rugby background. He knew I was into ACLs in the least weird way possible and Yeah, give him to me and I was like, I don't really think I'm on for this because I knew I was moving to London I was like listen Jimmy. I'm not sure this is this is for me, but he was pretty persistent so we went with it and I said a lot of this is gonna have to be online which it was and No, this is probably because like I said, it was my first time doing this sort of thing publicly. And there was people there, I was nervous to speak in front of in terms of consulting surgeons, etc. And I maybe got my own head a little bit better. But I think it's just because I haven't had loads of practice doing this. And it made me reflect on since starting the podcast, I've got so much more comfortable sitting down in front of camera in front of a mic, just speaking to people. And yeah, it really does help. And ⁓ I felt some of the skills I've learned from the podcast coming through. Nine months later after that first conversation, actually just before the nine month mark, he had his first 30 minutes off the bench and he returned to training during that eight month spell, which is pretty good going. A lot of credit goes to him and not to me. But yeah, 90 % of that rehab, which was online, which was really cool, sort of changed the way I thought about rehab in general as well. So we're gonna be revisiting Jamie time and time again throughout the next 10 to 15 minutes. during that event, I was really pleased with. And yeah, I got asked, have I ever done public speaking events before? And I laughed and said, no, definitely not. But any confidence I had really came from doing this here. And it has been less than 20 episodes, but I found it really beneficial just to speak, to ask questions, to listen to responses. yeah, practice does make perfect. And there is no exception. And with public speaking, I've listened to a lot of a guy called The title, The Art and Science of Rehab, I picked this title because it's a little bit different, to be honest, and it sounds pretty cool and fancy, but I also believe in it. So I believe there's a lot of science in what we do, and you've heard a lot of that today probably as well. And in rehab, it can be very science and very data driven, but I think there's also an art in what we're doing. So yeah, what does this mean? The science. Michael smoke or higher up wellness recently since discovering them on Chris Williamson and he's really big on public speaking and it's making me really big on publish public speaking and Being able to convey a message clearly and I think that's really important if you're a coach a physio if you're a student if you Are a lecture no matter what you do in your life. It's really important that you're able to convey messages Well, and then the way you want them to This leads me nicely onto my second point It talks to timelines, protocols, data numbers, buzzwords like inflammation, pain, and suitable progression. And you like type A people that you all are probably love this sort of stuff, yeah? And I do too. I love it as well. But the art is reading athlete in front of you or the patient or the client, knowing something's off before the data necessarily shows you it is, noticing when that person's a bit quiet in the warmup of your session, and understanding why that person might not be engaging, and then actually which is it matters more how you say something than what you're actually saying. So for example, I just butchered that with my second point. I said it is and then slowly put it in. I should have said my second point. It matters more how you say something than what you're actually saying. See, it's a lot more convicting when I say it like that. having the confidence to act on it as well. So I don't think the science or the art is necessarily more important than the other. I think they marry up nicely. But it's just very, very important that we don't neglect one of these as we move forward. So if we put that as like a broad brushstroke, the science and the art, let's nail it down so you can take something away from today. If you're a physio, if you're interested in this sort of stuff, or yeah, if you're just interested in rehab, I want you to able to take something away today. I'm a big believer in this. So the guy who spoke before me was one of the best surgeons in Wales. And the guy who spoke after me was a professional football doctor. So they've got a lot more experience than me and they're probably more interesting to listen to than me. So I had to go in with a mindset of how I'm going to say my talk is going to hopefully be more exciting and more captivating because ultimately I might not have anything more interesting to say than them because they've got So I have sort of three principles that's really helped me in the early stage of my career through rehab. Because it's such a minefield that can feel very overwhelming, I find these three principles to work time and time again, no matter the scenario, no matter the case study, no matter what's presented in front of me. Principle one is specificity. I need to be very careful with this one, but anyway. So my own ankle injury when I was playing for Cardiff RFC, I had a grade two ATFL. loads more experience. actually think what I said was more interesting ⁓ to maybe some of the students there, not everyone. I really enjoyed their talks. They're super experienced guys. And yeah, anyone there probably really enjoyed them too. So it's nothing on them. But I've just said I couldn't really compete with them. So I had to go at it from a different angle. Injury and I did not rehab which is ironic because I was qualified physio and I was getting paid to play right so It was in my best interest to get me back straight away But I did not rehab at the time and I didn't really know why I didn't rehab at the time I just couldn't really be bothered to be honest It was disinteresting to me until I put my boots on and then everything lit up for me I listened so closely to what the physio said imaging who's here right now. It's rehabbing me ⁓ And I was so engaged with the S &C Bringing energy can be underestimated. Never underestimate what just bringing some energy to a room can do. If the crowd that you're speaking to feels your passion about something, then they are more likely to get behind that thing. If you're excited about it, then people will get excited about it too. I find this all the time in personal life and also in my work. When I'm talking to a patient and and the physio in that later stage. So I came away with two questions really. First question was, what makes the late stage stuff the good stuff and the more exciting stuff? Why was I so engaged with that stuff? And then how can we make the early stage stuff more exciting? How can we make that more engaging for our athletes so they actually do it? Or patients so they actually do it? Time and time again, and especially in the NHS, I would come and the first question would be like, did you do your exercises? I'm getting to know them, maybe it's like the second or third appointment and they let slip a little bit about their passion and it's nearly like, it's nearly like a guilty, they let slip, whether it's cars or football or just something really random. I mean, cars and football are probably the least two random things I could have picked, but yeah, something, a random hobby or interest they have. and it would be like, oh no, I haven't really had time. But we need to make this stuff more exciting so people find the time. They want to do it, so we can avoid surgery, we can avoid going down that path if possible. The answer to this question I find is specificity. So if we go back to Jamie, as an athlete, we broke down exactly what Jamie had to do within his game of rugby. So he had to accelerate, decelerate, had to par through contact, he had to throw in a line out, he had to pass off both hands, he had to be able to... I love asking more questions about those niche things that I don't know much about. Um, and just hearing the passion come through. So if it's a sport, I don't know much about it. think it's why I like Jiu-Jitsu so much because the people are so passionate about it or football fans in England are so passionate about their teams. I love asking them like the deeper questions. Like, what do you think of the, what do think of the manager you've got? I have no idea who it is. Um, just, just to try and get them excited about it. And before pick and go close to the line and he had to do all this under fatigue. Now when I outlined that to Jimmy and we talked through this together and then we included it in his rehab, he instantly found that more engaging and this is real feedback I got from him at the time. So when we got specific about where we were going, Jimmy bought on a little bit more. I hope this video is gonna work. But this is a week six of his rehab which is often like. Before I know it, I'll be excited about it. I'll be wanting to go to a football game. So yeah, be that person for the audience you're speaking to. Be excited, be passionate. Even if it's not relevant to them, they're probably going to get excited about it because of your excitement. Thirdly then, create your own feedback. And I mentioned this a little bit at the start, but it would have been very easy for me because the event wasn't videoed or... can be straight leg raise territory. We just did simple aim arches and we did loads of different sprint mechanics stuff in the early stage. Like I talked about before, Jimmy was gonna have to go and accelerate and decelerate on the pitch, which is really high level difficult stuff. So how can we break that down and put it into the early stage to make it slightly more engaging? See if this plays. It's not gonna play, is it? Yeah, recorded. would have been very easy for me just to tuck this away in a little corner and be like, I'll do this one time and not think about it again. But instead I brought my I brought my wireless mics. I set my camera up on the side of the stage and recorded the whole thing. So, yes, I could put on the podcast maybe later on, but also so I could watch it back, listen to it back. I've really listened to it back twice. And then the third time is when I made these notes as well. It's not gonna play, but you can just see the video here. This is a crawling drill I did with Jamie late on in his rehab, as it was actually getting pretty boring, because we were doing so much lower body gym and so much on-pitch lower body sprinting, I had to find a different way to stimulate him. I got really specific with some scram positioning stuff, and just challenged him in a different way, and he was a lot more engaged because of that, I found. And I think this is probably the thing I'm most proud about when actually recording there. ⁓ I think this is the thing I'm most proud about over the whole day is actually just having the courage to mic myself up and video myself. Because I wanted to create my own feedback. I wasn't going to wait for other people to come up and give me their feedback, although that's really valuable. I know the harshest critic will be myself. So the principle two, so if principle one is specificity, principle two I find is graded exposure or gradual exposure, whatever you want to call it. And the next two graphs I find quite interesting. So I stole this from my colleagues at a retail performance. ⁓ But if we look at the middle here, the English Premier League, ⁓ this is an injury count by season, this graph, over the last sort of four seasons. We see the English Premier League is dipped down, which is really, positive. And it's kind what we'd expect as the leading And when I listened to it back, that's the feedback I really care about deeply. So it was lovely to hear people say I did well, or my family, when I sent it to them, listened to me, and they said it was really, good. But I wouldn't believe them until I listened to it a few times. And yes, we can be harsh on ourselves when we're not needed to be, but I actually think I've got the point where I can be quite honest with myself in that, yeah, it wasn't perfect, but it will get a little bit better each time. leading club or leading league in the world in But if we look at the second graph, the sum of the days missed by any player in that season actually increased in the English Premier League. And it's really practical. Like I just note down the points where maybe I could have done a little bit better, maybe where I could have paused less. I could have definitely answered the final question better. I've cut out of this ⁓ podcast episode. So you won't hear it just because the person asking the question, like I didn't get the permission to put online. So, ⁓ I just cut that out, my answer to it was pretty rubbish and pretty naff. And I thought, ⁓ I over-answered. like kept over-explaining myself. Now, why did they increase? And you can see that the title of this graph is injury severity, which very well may be the case. The injuries are just getting more severe as athletes become fitter, faster, stronger, have to play more games, cetera. But another way of looking at it is it wasn't that the injuries got more severe, but actually they spent more time off the field through per rehab or per rehab processes. So this tells us despite having more data, rather than just being confident in my first answer. So yeah, create your own feedback. Don't wait for others to give you feedback. despite having more money thrown at it, it's not necessarily solving the problem of getting our players back on the pitch for longer periods as quickly as possible. And my colleague at Arita, Tom Farrow, talks about the invisible metric, which I love. And this might sound a little bit warfully to some of you, but take it how you want it. But I really enjoy this quote. So the idea of the invisible metric respects the fact that despite the wealth of that available to us, Okay, point four then. This isn't really like a critique or a reflection as such. It just made me really excited and fired up to just keep doing the podcast, keep practicing my public speaking, like I said, and also keep conveying my message, whatever that message is. If it's rehab towards athletes, then perfect. If it's something else, if it's about books, if it's about public speaking, be passionate about it and be confident in sharing that as well. we still have very limited insight into what is occurring at the system or tissue level within regards to the body. The body is far more complex than we are fully able to appreciate and its response to novel stimuli is impacted by a myriad of factors that we can only partly understand. And I think that's so true and it's been what I've experienced as an athlete ⁓ as well as a physio. It's so easy for my physio to tell me, yeah, do some calf races. And that's hopefully what the podcast is going to be a little bit more of going forward. It's not going to be as much as just rehab, athletes, performance, nutrition. It's going to be this is actually what I've discovered recently. And this is what I'm quite enjoying learning or reading about. I'm reading a book at the minute, the art, the the Zen. I'm reading a book at the minute, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's a really weird book. And I'm only and do some light jogs and then jump back into team training. But what I'm actually experiencing as an athlete is things flying at me from multiple different directions. My nervous system's spiking, I'm on high alert, and I can't think about what I'm doing rehab-wise anymore. It just happens, stuff unfolds. And that's very hard to calculate, it's very hard to put a number on, and data won't tell us that. So it's just worth having that in the back of your head whenever you're talking to an athlete, whenever you're considering about a return to play. probably 50 pages in, but so far I've gained that the idea behind the book is to be still and enjoy the art and the craft that you do. If you don't enjoy it, then there's no point in it and to give it time and attention. So I'm enjoying that book in a minute is a bit weird at the start and it's quite slow. I'm enjoying that book and I want to do more. I want to do more of this. I want to do more of talking to my books. want to do more of. ⁓ Look. So we have to account for the invisible cost just to round that up. The data will only tell us so much, the scans will only tell us so much, there's always an invisible cost. And that's whether they're going back to full game, whether they're going back to team training, or whether we're just taking them out of the gym and onto the pitch. You have to account, there's an invisible cost that we can't really measure there. It's new stimulus, it's a new environment for that athlete. Tom's such a big fan of this because this is where most of the injuries happen, right? look as a person rather than just look as the physio if that makes sense because you know there's loads of physios out there there's loads of good rehab people out there and I think I'm up there with them and I think I can go toe to toe with them but I also have other illness and I have other things going on and I think it would be a disservice to people who listen if I just if I hid those things away and I didn't shout them so I'm going to continue to try and be as open It's not in the gym doing the same thing that you did yesterday. It's when we introduce them to something new, normally. When we introduce an athlete to something new, that's when the injury risk skyrockets, okay? as possible on this podcast. And it's easy right now because not many people listen. So ⁓ it's much easier. But yeah, that is a work on for me definitely just to be more transparent, open and talk about what I actually care about. ⁓ Not that I haven't done that so far, but I've definitely been leaning towards what would work better for me business wise rather than what do I actually just care about what my passionate about the minute. Yeah, but that being said, Just to round that off, the invisible cost part, my solution to this is to constantly have dialogue with that individual. How did that feel? How did that look to you? Did that feel normal? Did that feel how it did before you got injured? Those type of questions are really helpful to know, is this normal for the athlete? Are they coping the way we want them to cope? Principle three, then, ⁓ which really helps me, is variability in my rehab. So week 10 with Jamie, we were going really well. was probably the most progress I had, well, definitely the most progress I had seen in ACL go through in my short three year career. ⁓ And I knew it was going well, but week 10 he turned up, he was really quiet and we were getting on pretty well. ⁓ We were still in person at this stage, so could really tell something was off. And I said, are you all right? And he went a bit rad and he said, I've really enjoyed the last few weeks and months and I'm super grateful for Cardiff Uni for inviting me back to speak at their event. I do mention that at the start of the talk. I'm super grateful for the listeners. My first month being fully self-employed in April was way, way better than I expected. It was challenging in loads of different ways and I'm gonna make an episode about that, about the challenges I found the first sort of. I should probably not have done this, but I'm gonna tell you anyway, I went for a run on the treadmill at week 10. And initially I'm like, heart sinks, I'm like, are you all right? Why did you do that? Exactly, we have a bit of an open discussion. But inside I'm angry, right? Because we discussed the plan. You didn't stick to the plan, and we discussed the plan. I thought you bought into this, but I didn't let him know that. So yeah, this is the problem I find with no variability. On the drive home I stopped. two months being self-employed, but I'm still working through those challenges. So I don't want to make that episode just yet because I'm still discovering what all the challenges are and how to actually overcome them. But yeah, I'm just making this now after I have been to the sauna and cold plunge. It was one of those saunas and cold plunge is we're thinking the sauna might not be that warm and the cold plunge might not be that cold because it wasn't like a very professional setup per se. looking at the athlete and looked at myself and the key question was why? Why did he do this? Why did he feel it was okay to push on without without saying to me with like doing it in secret and then not wanting to tell me? And I came to if an athlete feels sufficiently challenged they don't go looking for things in their own okay if they're knackered if they're stimulated after a workout they won't want to do more but Jimmy wasn't being reckless he was just bored okay he wasn't stimulated in his rehab she went and did his own stuff okay that's skyrockets injury risk as well yeah I walk in and I couldn't have been more wrong. It was like a four degree cold plunge. And to be honest, I couldn't, I couldn't do more than a minute. I was like, properly, properly struggling in there. So yeah, the sauna was like 85 degrees as well. It was great. went for 45 minutes just by myself. And I feel so much better after it. Thoughts are clearer, speaking better, feeling better. So yeah, conserve your energy, not just your time. when athletes take it back into their own hands, they go off the advice they're given. Yeah, and they just do their own thing. They're not sticking to any process or program. And I'm not saying my program is perfect, but we all know that running at week 10 for an ACL is probably not advised outside of an elite environment. So it's really changed, from that moment, it really changed the way I looked at my rehab process, and I changed it from being a step by step to actually let's get this a little bit more exciting. That's lesson from my sauna trip. ⁓ but yeah, I hope you enjoy this talk. Let me know what you think about it. Let me know what you think about it. Send me a DM. I look public online on Instagram and yeah, enjoy your evening. Enjoy day. Enjoy your run or whatever way we can. So can we introduce ⁓ something new every week? Crawling, for example, if we go back to here, I did so much crawling with Jimmy. He hated it at the start, but at he loved it, okay? And we came up so many different ways to crawl, and you think that's so random for an ACL, but it's just a different way to challenge and stimulate him, when at the time, he couldn't really do much with his lower body. your drive, wherever you are right now, enjoy it. it in. See you later. This to me is a core of good rehab and these three things I find have really helped guide my early career. When someone's come in, they can't afford a scan, it's on the NHS and they're not getting a scan, I find these things really, really helpful. Initially, specificity, what do they need to get back to? Where are they now? Can I bridge that gap? That's good rehab, okay? Greed and exposure, let me expose them to their goal gradually, okay? If they wanna run a marathon and they can't run 2K today, we need to just... Gradually expose them to more and more. Okay, and then variability keep it exciting. Keep it fun. This should be a creative process It should be fun for us as physios as Orthopedic surgeons, it should be fun. We get an insight into people's lives and don't take that for granted So yeah, this these these three things I also lay it between all the time. So I don't follow it like a step-by-step process I also like between is this specific am I doing this in a controlled graded way? And is there variability here that will keep the athlete engaged? And there might be some of you that are slightly overwhelmed in this room today, but are really ambitious. And I'd like you to read these three things. So you don't need 20 years of experience to do well. I find that I get really good results. I've just left uni. But I've just had really, really fortunate experiences and reached out to certain people. Like Tom Farrow from Arita, for example, has 20 years in pro sport. And I get to work with him most days. It's awesome. OK? You don't need to cut. ⁓ You just need to care about the person in front of you and ask why and genuinely care about the answer. All right, especially in NHS environments when you're more time-struck, you're more time-focused, you can be very quickly just like, let's just get through it next, next, next, next, but ask why and care about the answer. I learned that in the NHS and I'll never forget it. Okay? So if we go back to the art and the science, if you're a student, if you haven't graduated yet, the science will continue to develop, but the art starts now. So your creativity, your approach to these sort of things. start now, start today, ⁓ whether that's on placement or whether that's when you graduate as a student. I think that's me, thank you very much. If anyone got any questions, just shout them out. Happy days, thank you so much.