Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #279: Mike Schofield-Sports Performance/Throws Coach (New Zealand)

Transcript

#279: Mike Schofield-Sports Performance/Throws Coach (New Zealand) · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:10
  Track and field world UNL tuned in to a humble servant, Mike
• 0:14
  Cunningham, for another extraordinary message for Guild
• 0:18
  athletics connections. All right, welcome back here to
• 0:25
  the Guild Athletics Connections podcast.
• 0:27
  I'm super happy you pressed play today.
• 0:29
  Maybe you, you know, there's always never a surprise to the
• 0:32
  guest, right? Because you're looking on the
• 0:34
  iPad or looking on the podcast. So you already see the name and
• 0:37
  the school and things like that. And maybe you're scratching your
• 0:40
  head a little bit, like, wait a minute, I'm not sure I know
• 0:43
  today's guy. I don't know that I've heard
• 0:45
  this name and those are exciting to me because that means I get
• 0:48
  to introduce you to other people, other coaches in this
• 0:51
  great, great sport of ours. And so I I threw the the the
• 0:56
  fishing rod far. I went all the way to New
• 0:58
  Zealand for this one. I'm so excited.
• 1:00
  Help me welcome. He's a throws coach, sports
• 1:02
  performance, sports performance from New Zealand.
• 1:04
  He's also coaches of Olympian. So that's always kind of cool.
• 1:08
  Help me welcome from the great country of New Zealand, the wise
• 1:11
  and wonderful Mr. Mike Schofield.
• 1:12
  Mike, how are you today, Sir? Yeah, good.
• 1:15
  Thanks. Thanks for having me all.
• 1:17
  I'm I'm so American centric, I almost said from the great state
• 1:20
  of New Zealand. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the state
• 1:24
  that you live in is bigger than New Zealand.
• 1:25
  So is. Is that right?
• 1:27
  How many people? Yeah, like 4 million.
• 1:31
  Yeah, I'm in Illinois, so Chicago, I think in Chicago
• 1:34
  land, I think has New Zealand beat.
• 1:36
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:36
  Yeah, I bet it's prettier New Zealand, though.
• 1:40
  Chicago has its places, but you know, it's all tall buildings,
• 1:43
  basically. I bet New Zealand's probably a
• 1:44
  little bit more prettier overall though, yeah?
• 1:48
  Yeah. That's it's likely, yeah.
• 1:50
  Well, Mike, first of all, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:54
  Mike and I got connected because there's another project coming
• 1:58
  up here on the podcast, Mr. David Burnett, and I'll explain
• 2:01
  more about that project when we actually publish it.
• 2:03
  He did like the coolest thing in the world.
• 2:05
  You know, me, I'm always trying to find who actually coaches
• 2:09
  these awesome athletes. You know, when, when it's the
• 2:12
  NCAA championships, it's fairly easy.
• 2:14
  I can Google, you know, who the coaches at USC or North Texas or
• 2:18
  what not. Is these the elites though?
• 2:21
  So when we're watching the Pre Classic or the Diamond League or
• 2:24
  the Olympics, they never talk about their coach.
• 2:28
  Some of them will shout out their coaches and I love that.
• 2:30
  I absolutely love that. So David Burnett went out and
• 2:33
  created this Excel sheet and his journey was to go find every
• 2:38
  medalist in every track event, 100 all the way through the
• 2:40
  marathon and who coaches them. And he was missing just a few.
• 2:44
  So first of all, I asked him for that list because I absolutely
• 2:47
  want to start uplifting and honoring those men and women.
• 2:50
  They're Olympic coaches and started.
• 2:53
  He had a couple of gaps. So I started filling in through
• 2:56
  Twitter, you know, you know me on Twitter.
• 2:58
  And one of the gaps was for the shot put, the silver medalist,
• 3:01
  Madison Lee. I knew I was going to mess that.
• 3:05
  Wishy. Help me wishy.
• 3:08
  Thank you. And someone said, hey, a guy
• 3:11
  named Mike Schofield coaches them.
• 3:13
  Actually both throws is who who said that?
• 3:15
  Thank you. Both throws and and connected
• 3:18
  us. And Mike reached out and I was
• 3:19
  like, you know, we don't have enough.
• 3:22
  We don't have hardly any international coaches here.
• 3:24
  And I think it's interesting to see a different aspect, somebody
• 3:27
  who didn't grow up through our high school system, our youth
• 3:30
  club system, or even our NCAA system.
• 3:33
  This guy's going to have a unique journey here.
• 3:35
  So I'm super excited to kind of dive into it, learn.
• 3:39
  I know nothing. I literally, I know where New
• 3:41
  Zealand is. Boom, that's it.
• 3:43
  I can kind of spell it maybe, but I'm excited to learn your
• 3:47
  journey, Mike. So man, I'm just so excited.
• 3:48
  Thank you for for getting up early or maybe not, maybe you're
• 3:52
  a morning guy, but getting up it's 17, I think is what it what
• 3:55
  ended up being 17 hour time difference.
• 3:57
  So Mike, I'm just so grateful for you, man.
• 4:00
  Thank you, thank you, thank you. No problem.
• 4:02
  No problem at all. Well, let's get into it.
• 4:05
  I know, I know. Two, No, I, I know 1 1/2 things
• 4:09
  about you. One, I'm not sure there's a much
• 4:11
  of A track background and I'm excited about that.
• 4:13
  And two, that you coached Michelle to the I'm sorry,
• 4:15
  Madison to the silver medalist. So let's get in our way back
• 4:18
  machine here. Where does track and field start
• 4:22
  for you? Yeah, I mean, so I probably took
• 4:26
  a pretty non traditional path into coaching.
• 4:30
  I I can't I can't throw like literally shot put this hammer.
• 4:38
  It'll be painful for everyone to watch if you if you watch me
• 4:42
  throw. So yeah, I don't come from track
• 4:46
  and field at all. I actually originally come from
• 4:51
  golf and then as as per most people or some people failed
• 4:58
  athlete. I mean, wasn't going to wasn't
• 5:02
  going to make it as a as a professional golfer, which was
• 5:05
  my sort of which was my my dream up until I was about 18.
• 5:11
  And where I come from, parents relatively not, not poor, but
• 5:17
  certainly didn't have the money to fund a golfer from New
• 5:22
  Zealand to travel and try and make money.
• 5:25
  So sort of kicked out of home, go to university.
• 5:31
  And my, my sort of gripe was that I never hit it far enough
• 5:37
  as a golfer. So I sort of pursued how to hit
• 5:40
  it further, learn to hit it like quite far.
• 5:45
  And, and one of the avenues that I pursued was weight lifting,
• 5:49
  coaching Olympic weightlifting. So I became an Olympic
• 5:55
  weightlifter and for four to six years, as I did a, a degree in a
• 6:01
  master's and my, my master's was in golf performance.
• 6:05
  So through that journey, the, the weightlifting club was, was
• 6:10
  somewhat aligned to an athletics club where the athletics guys
• 6:14
  would, would come and train. And I I picked up a few athletes
• 6:21
  as or throwers for strength and conditioning.
• 6:27
  The work I was sort of doing in golf with rotational power, they
• 6:33
  were sort of curious about, and an Olympic weightlifting was
• 6:38
  traditionally quite a part of track and deal.
• 6:42
  So let, let's pause there. Let let's go back just a little
• 6:44
  bit. Let's let's see what
• 6:45
  commonalities there are or are not with American system.
• 6:49
  When you grew, you grew up a golfer.
• 6:54
  There's there's got to I'm assuming there's got to be some
• 6:56
  type of high school. So were you like on the high
• 6:57
  school team as a golfer or is this more club or?
• 7:02
  Yeah, so. So we actually don't really have
• 7:04
  a school sports system here. And so scholarships, sports
• 7:09
  scholarships, other than than some rugby and few netball
• 7:15
  scholarships exist, but certainly golf and track and
• 7:18
  deal, they're just non existent. So you're, you're largely
• 7:23
  privately funded parents back you, there's a governing body
• 7:31
  that sort of probably similar to kind of like the USGA here.
• 7:36
  We have New Zealand golf that, that runs events that you play
• 7:40
  in. And it's not until you make the
• 7:44
  national team that there's, there's some support there.
• 7:50
  So I was sort of 1/3 ranked under 19 in New Zealand, but but
• 7:57
  really wasn't good enough to make it as a professional.
• 8:01
  And, and at 18 years old, you, you either have to make money or
• 8:06
  you got to find a career and sort of especially where I was
• 8:10
  from. Yeah, that that's interesting
• 8:11
  because that would be the same in the US if we didn't have the
• 8:15
  NCAA system there. It's like, OK, well you still
• 8:17
  got four more years to give it a go for for air quotes free, You
• 8:21
  know, you got to pay for the education or scholarships.
• 8:23
  But before you're just out on your own as a, you know, 2223
• 8:27
  year old that then it's you got to figure out some stuff out.
• 8:30
  So with golf, I love that. So I am terrible at golf.
• 8:34
  Maybe I golf once a year and I haven't golfed in years.
• 8:37
  That tells you how much I golf. Now one of my team mates who
• 8:43
  this isn't, but these are, I don't know, OK, we'll just
• 8:45
  figure it out. One of my team mates here was
• 8:48
  one of the top 10 javelin throwers in the US and he now is
• 8:54
  big. He's always loved golf, but he
• 8:56
  loves the the, the long drive contest and and things like
• 9:01
  that. Did you grow up like a golf like
• 9:07
  were you a golf family? Is that why golf?
• 9:09
  Because you mentioned rugby. So I know there are other sports
• 9:12
  and athletics. Of course.
• 9:13
  It was a kind of the background of your family and that's how
• 9:15
  you got into golf. No, so, so interestingly, my my
• 9:21
  father hated golf when I was younger.
• 9:25
  We, we had a farm that we're farming country and we had a
• 9:30
  farm that went around the edge of a golf course.
• 9:32
  And so golfers used to jump the fence to try and find their
• 9:37
  ball. And dad, dad just hated them,
• 9:40
  absolutely hated it. So he used to stand on our lawn
• 9:43
  and yell at them. He didn't hate golf because he
• 9:46
  was no good at it. He hated the golfers that would.
• 9:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they get off my property type
• 9:52
  of yeah. And so, so we, we live where
• 9:58
  where I grew up was sort of 4550 minutes from the nearest town.
• 10:02
  And when I say town, I mean like like 100,000 people kind of
• 10:07
  town. So we were quite rural.
• 10:12
  And the school I went to had the, the first school I went to
• 10:18
  had kind of even students and the second school I went to had
• 10:23
  like 50 students, just local kind of farming students.
• 10:29
  And so when you got home from school, you needed something to
• 10:32
  do. I used to walk around the, the
• 10:36
  side of the golf course and pick up golf balls and sometimes sell
• 10:39
  them back to the golfers or something like that, you know,
• 10:42
  make a dollar as a young fella. And I just started picking up a,
• 10:46
  a Golf Club and there was a, a local who was kind of, he'd done
• 10:52
  sort of like a level 1 coaching certificate and he started to
• 10:57
  run these clinics. And because I lived across the
• 11:01
  road, I just walked over and started playing.
• 11:05
  And then, then. The local pro from from the the
• 11:10
  local town would come out well, I think once a month.
• 11:13
  And he'd run these kind of clinics on a weekend, same
• 11:17
  thing. I'd walk across the road and,
• 11:19
  and so he'd coach me. Golf was the axis was easy.
• 11:25
  I've I got my grandfather's golf clubs that were wood and just
• 11:31
  started whacking a golf ball around the golf course in my
• 11:33
  spare time. And, and the irony there is my
• 11:37
  my father actually now plays a lot of golf.
• 11:40
  So he he got right into golf because I got into golf and then
• 11:43
  I quit. So I quit golf.
• 11:46
  And so now he's the golfer in the family, which is, and like,
• 11:50
  I still play a little bit, but yeah, my, my old man's into it.
• 11:54
  That's but you said an important word there and I was thinking
• 11:57
  about it as you're talking about it was literally right across
• 11:59
  the street and you said the word access.
• 12:01
  And and I do think about that at times with whether it's athletes
• 12:05
  or people who want to get into coaching and things like that.
• 12:08
  Like there's probably some amazing athletes in a lot of
• 12:10
  different sports, but you know, specifically here with track and
• 12:13
  field who may have got would go on to set the world record in
• 12:17
  the javelin or the shot or whatever, but have no access to
• 12:21
  it, whether it's monetarily location.
• 12:23
  Why? I mean, again, there's a little
• 12:25
  bit of serendipity that you lived right on the edge of a
• 12:28
  golf course and the instructor was across the street.
• 12:31
  It's really it's and I just think about that at times.
• 12:33
  I, I, I said this before on the podcast that I think everybody
• 12:38
  is put on this earth to do one thing like super, super, like
• 12:42
  Picasso esque type. Well, right.
• 12:45
  But 99.99% of us never find it. That doesn't mean we go on, we
• 12:50
  don't do amazing things, but like maybe, maybe Mike, you're
• 12:53
  supposed to be like the world's best sculptor, but you know,
• 12:56
  there was no sculpting class or aptitude to even introduce you
• 13:00
  to it. And so you become a golfer and
• 13:02
  then, you know, a track, you know, it's, it's just
• 13:04
  interesting to me about access. I thought that was a, an
• 13:08
  important word. So when you, you grow up, you
• 13:11
  learn golfing and, and golf and get pretty good at it.
• 13:14
  When you go to university, what did you think about?
• 13:19
  Like what as you're going in, we, we call it freshman year.
• 13:21
  I don't know what you'd necessarily call it there.
• 13:24
  What were you thinking about? Like I'm going to become a, I
• 13:28
  know you probably wanted to be a professional golfer, but you
• 13:30
  know, I'm going to become a doctor, a business owner.
• 13:32
  I'm going to, I'm going to get my degree and come back and, and
• 13:34
  help with the farm. What were you thinking at first
• 13:36
  when you go into university for a career?
• 13:39
  Yeah, I mean, I was still thinking golf.
• 13:41
  So. So I sort of thought if if I
• 13:44
  went and and got into strength and conditioning or personal
• 13:48
  training or something like that, and I figured out how to hit it
• 13:52
  far enough, I could kind of fill a gap in my golf game.
• 13:57
  And and then as. As I kind of went through
• 14:01
  university, I did figure out how to hit it quite far and, and
• 14:07
  sort of pursued long drive for casually for a period of time,
• 14:11
  did some events here in New Zealand and Australia.
• 14:15
  And then sort of people started coming to me for like to, to try
• 14:21
  and figure out how to hit it quite far or, or throw things
• 14:24
  hard or because, because they're all kind of synonymous with one
• 14:27
  another. And my, my golf career took a
• 14:31
  bit of a backseat because I started kind of enjoying the
• 14:33
  puzzle of performance for other people.
• 14:37
  And, and I suppose I mean, it flows through to my motivation
• 14:40
  now is that as I reflect on like why I do what I do now, I, I
• 14:50
  probably received some, some poor advice now, but it was
• 14:54
  probably the only advice at the time is here in New Zealand,
• 14:58
  there was a belief that you were born hitting it far or born
• 15:01
  hitting it straight. And it was like these natural
• 15:04
  gift type things. And, and I didn't buy it.
• 15:07
  And I just sort of thought surely you can figure this out.
• 15:12
  And and so I sort of like I'm at peace with it now, but I sort of
• 15:17
  felt for a while like I was knit down by the coaching staff that
• 15:21
  around me that were around me because they weren't curion
• 15:24
  curious enough to to pursue avenues.
• 15:28
  You just said one of my favorite words, by the way.
• 15:30
  Curious. Yeah.
• 15:32
  I, I truly think that's like the Super hack of life is curiosity.
• 15:38
  It's funny that people said that about golf because I don't know
• 15:40
  if they do this in New Zealand, but here in the States this is
• 15:43
  still very good. To your point, we're talking
• 15:45
  about 2024. Shouldn't we know a lot of
• 15:47
  things at this point? And there is still a contingent
• 15:51
  of coaches, and I know some of you are listening right now that
• 15:54
  think you can't coach speed, you're just born with it.
• 15:57
  So for golf, I didn't know that that was kind of a a prevailing
• 16:01
  thought. With golf, it's like, yeah, off
• 16:02
  the tee, you're either born with it or not.
• 16:05
  There's nothing you can really do to improve upon it, which is
• 16:07
  crazy. Yeah, totally crazy.
• 16:13
  Yeah. So, so sort of sort of lead me
• 16:15
  down this path of like, well, I don't want to let other other
• 16:20
  kids or athletes that have a dream down by by poor advice.
• 16:26
  And so I mean, if you sort of look around my office, there's
• 16:30
  research papers and all sorts of stuff.
• 16:33
  So, so yeah, I, I exited, exited a degree with sort of
• 16:41
  weightlifting coaching and then I started a masters and, and on
• 16:46
  the back of my masters I picked up a lot of a lot of golfers.
• 16:52
  They started doing reasonably well.
• 16:55
  Few sort of local tour professional wins, long driver
• 17:00
  that qualified for world champs. And there was a local throws
• 17:05
  coach here in Auckland when I was in Auckland.
• 17:10
  And he thought that hammer throwing was like golf, the sort
• 17:15
  of release was similar to golf. And so he sort of said, he
• 17:20
  started referring people to me. And one of them was, was a girl
• 17:24
  called Nicole Bradley who who I actually lived with as an
• 17:29
  athlete. So I was a weight lifter and she
• 17:31
  was a thrower or trying to be a thrower.
• 17:36
  And, and so I keep saying like she was, she was kind of a 56
• 17:42
  meter thrower, 24 years old, 26 years old maybe.
• 17:48
  And she should sort of come home and, and tell me these stories
• 17:52
  about training, about some of the advice that she was getting.
• 17:56
  And, and it was kind of this what I, what I sort of what
• 18:00
  academically we call NC theorists and an NC theorist
• 18:05
  believes that you're good because you are.
• 18:09
  And so the coach was sort of saying.
• 18:11
  What? What?
• 18:11
  What's it called again? NC.
• 18:14
  Entity. Entity Entity.
• 18:16
  Yeah, it. Is it's kind of that you're
• 18:19
  either born fast or not. You either know how to swing the
• 18:21
  OK all right entity. And and then there's an
• 18:24
  adaptation theorist, which is the the adjunct to that, also
• 18:28
  the the opposite to that. So an adaptation theorist
• 18:31
  believes that you can you can become.
• 18:36
  And. So, so I was sort of kind of get
• 18:40
  an area because I was, I was kind of this adaptation theorist
• 18:43
  coming from not hitting a golf ball far to hitting a golf ball
• 18:45
  far. Like surely you're capable of
• 18:47
  more like, and I would sort of look at the gym side of it and,
• 18:55
  and some of some of it, I was like, I just sort of said, this
• 18:59
  doesn't make sense to me. And so, so Nicole was like,
• 19:03
  well, can you do my eastern seaside?
• 19:06
  And and within. Kind of six or eight weeks we we
• 19:11
  got her to over 60 meters. Me and this coach all.
• 19:15
  Right pause there. We we were going to pick right
• 19:16
  back up here. There there's two questions I
• 19:19
  had. One is this is totally
• 19:20
  unrelated, but it's just my own little quirk.
• 19:23
  What was the name of your college?
• 19:25
  I love college names. So I went to AUT university.
• 19:29
  AUT. And you guys are the the
• 19:32
  fighting mountaintops. What what's your do you
• 19:34
  actually, I don't even know. Do you guys have mascots or
• 19:36
  logos or no? No.
• 19:38
  No, nothing. No.
• 19:40
  So we we have like AUT University, Auckland University,
• 19:44
  Waikato University, kind of province based, but names.
• 19:48
  No mascot because there's no teams, because it's all.
• 19:54
  No teams, no no college sport that makes sense or university
• 19:58
  sports. So there's really a lack of
• 20:01
  culture. Yeah, that makes sense because
• 20:02
  the mascot and logo is all about the athletics more than is the
• 20:06
  university education. OK, Yeah, perfect, perfect.
• 20:08
  Up to is my second question before we get back to doing a
• 20:12
  little bit little bit of tweaking and you you move her to
• 20:14
  60 meters. That's amazing on its own.
• 20:16
  A lot of coaches eyebrows raised up there.
• 20:19
  Before you met Nicole, where was track in your life?
• 20:24
  And what I mean by that, obviously you didn't do track,
• 20:27
  you didn't do athletics. But did you when the Olympics
• 20:30
  came on, did you, you know, did you watch track?
• 20:32
  Like, oh, that's kind of cool. Or, you know, was a good friend
• 20:36
  of yours. Where what, what, where are you
• 20:38
  at in track in your life up to that point, though?
• 20:40
  Yeah. So, so I suppose it's probably
• 20:42
  quite, quite important to put a time on this.
• 20:46
  So I was sort of 20. I would have been 26 at the
• 20:50
  time. And, and so like I knew the 100
• 20:54
  meters. Everyone knows the 100 meters.
• 20:56
  But when Nicole originally said like, like I threw a hammer, I'm
• 21:02
  like, what's that? No clue.
• 21:05
  Like, like I like here in New Zealand, I knew who Val Val
• 21:09
  Adams was. Sure.
• 21:10
  Yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 21:11
  But but I didn't really know what shop it was.
• 21:14
  Wow. And discus throwing.
• 21:18
  Like I'd sort of seen the Greek statues, but but yeah, so no
• 21:24
  idea. What about Javelin?
• 21:27
  No. Not.
• 21:28
  Not at all like. Yeah.
• 21:30
  Wow. So yeah, I mean, at 26 years of
• 21:33
  age and you're not that old, my friend.
• 21:34
  So that's not this long. Ago.
• 21:36
  It's 10 years ago. You're a babe, you're a pup in
• 21:39
  regards to athletics, you know, I hate to say you know nothing
• 21:42
  that sounds the. No, I know.
• 21:44
  I genuinely knew nothing. Like, yeah.
• 21:49
  So what did you think then? When this coach comes up to me
• 21:52
  and says, hey, I got this athlete Nicole, you know, she
• 21:55
  throws the discus. Would you mind, you know,
• 21:57
  working with her doing some SNC stuff?
• 21:59
  Like was there a little bit of like, I should say it this way?
• 22:01
  Was there any of like, bro, I don't even know, like I'm a golf
• 22:05
  guy. What are you talking about?
• 22:06
  Or or was or was there curiosity of like, OK, let me see what's
• 22:11
  on that other side there? So it's sort of known Nicole,
• 22:14
  for some time. And.
• 22:17
  A lot of her Jim Bay stuff was kind of power cleaning, power
• 22:19
  snatching and and done like sort of relatively poorly at the
• 22:23
  time. I was like, well, surely I can
• 22:26
  help you there. And and she showed me a video of
• 22:30
  Hammer and I was like, OK, you just like at the time I was
• 22:35
  like, you're just spinning around and throwing stuff like
• 22:37
  it's, it's kind of like 4G swings in a row, right?
• 22:40
  Like that's, that was kind of my thinking like and I was like, so
• 22:45
  I've got a rotational power throw some stuff.
• 22:48
  Because you're you're steeped in rotational because you're doing
• 22:51
  golf right. That's a lot.
• 22:52
  I don't know enough about golf, but I yours rotate that's a lot
• 22:55
  of twisting, not just maybe linear I guess, or whatever the
• 22:58
  term would be. Yeah, so I was, I was really, I
• 23:01
  was in that space. Yeah, it's.
• 23:04
  And so as soon as she showed me the video, I was kind of OK.
• 23:06
  Like I can connect with that. I don't know what, I don't know
• 23:09
  what's going on like, but I can connect with it, you know?
• 23:12
  And I was like, OK, let's just make you pretty powerful.
• 23:16
  Let's just make you rotationally powerful when and that sort of
• 23:20
  just flowed on to her doing probably some slightly more
• 23:24
  specific stuff than than what was originally planned and, and
• 23:30
  just doing some stuff slightly better.
• 23:32
  And so that that probably lead to some of the gain and, and
• 23:36
  sort of first throws over 60 meters in her career.
• 23:41
  And so yeah, I picked up a a couple of discus throwers.
• 23:46
  OK, hold on. So we hear, you know, we're
• 23:50
  episode 200 and 72180 something. So we've got 200.
• 23:53
  You know, we're getting close to 300 coaches here.
• 23:55
  And typically it's usually as an athlete, but sometimes as a
• 24:02
  beginning coach. There's usually something that
• 24:04
  happens that they're like, Oh yeah, this is me.
• 24:07
  I'm a track coach. When you're working with Nicole,
• 24:12
  are you because you're still kind of a a a golf first expert,
• 24:16
  it feels like at this point, does does this success with
• 24:20
  Nicole this, you know, you use the word curious to start with
• 24:24
  and that curious people use those words.
• 24:26
  That's what I love about that. So I can see you kind of like,
• 24:28
  oh, OK, there's some, you know, I can learn this hammer, not
• 24:31
  just rotationally. What, like, what is actually
• 24:33
  going there? Does this like fuel any kind of
• 24:36
  like, oh, maybe I'm supposed to go to athletics?
• 24:38
  Or are you still like, OK, I'm flirting with athletics, but
• 24:41
  it's still golf first and foremost.
• 24:43
  Yeah, so, so for me at the time, I I was purely an Eason C for
• 24:46
  Nicole. So I I wasn't going out to
• 24:49
  throwing or anything at this time.
• 24:52
  And and I was still like, I'm going to be a weight lifter.
• 24:55
  Yeah. Oh.
• 24:55
  That's right. That's right.
• 24:55
  Because you started doing that. That's right.
• 24:57
  OK, Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:58
  And so I was sort of training from 3:00 to 6:00 and then they
• 25:02
  would train from kind of 530 till 7:00 at night.
• 25:06
  And and so Nicole got some good results and I picked up some
• 25:10
  some more throwers just purely for Easton Sea.
• 25:15
  And and so kind of from there what what happened was Nicole
• 25:25
  and her her coach had a big kind of set to he was put it nicely.
• 25:33
  He was he's very French and and his English is not fantastic.
• 25:42
  And so and so in his kind of tone he would has one of his
• 25:47
  favorite sayings is you are shit.
• 25:51
  He knew those English words. He, he knew that and, and he
• 25:56
  was, he was sort of like probably and, and nowadays kind
• 26:01
  of coaching. He certainly wouldn't have a job
• 26:04
  with some of his behaviours. And so Nicole was like, I'm out,
• 26:13
  like I'm not doing this anymore. And she, she'd got injured.
• 26:18
  So she was sort of bedridden at the time.
• 26:21
  And she? Came to me and said, Mike, will
• 26:25
  you coach me? And, and I was sort of like,
• 26:32
  like, look, I don't know anything about him.
• 26:35
  And, and she goes, well, I really like the way that we work
• 26:40
  in the gym. I'm pretty confident you can
• 26:44
  learn that. Wow.
• 26:47
  And and I was sort of like, well.
• 26:50
  You're a little bit less confident.
• 26:52
  Like, OK, like he goes, I'm, I'm either going to quit or if
• 27:02
  you'll coach me, I'll, I'll continue.
• 27:05
  And I was like, well, hey, but what's worse that can happen,
• 27:10
  You know, it can't get much, much worse here.
• 27:12
  Yeah. You're going to quit anyway, so
• 27:14
  if. It doesn't get well.
• 27:16
  And so about sort of around this time, one of my, my major
• 27:20
  mentor, Angus Ross, who who some people will know, he said a
• 27:25
  Sprint jumps coach, power physiologist Essency for for Tom
• 27:30
  Walsh. Walsh here he had he had sort of
• 27:35
  become curious about some of the rotational stuff I was doing
• 27:39
  with the throwers and and he had asked me if I wanted to do a PhD
• 27:44
  and throes and and in particular throws bio mechanics instead of
• 27:50
  power Physiology. Eason C for throes and and odd
• 27:56
  gone like, why not? Like he was like, there'll be a
• 28:01
  there'll be a scholarship there and we're really interested in
• 28:06
  you exploring bio mechanics, throws bio mechanics and in
• 28:14
  power Physiology. He was still like, I know you're
• 28:16
  kind of starting to do some stuff with Nicole.
• 28:19
  I'm I'm really curious about it for Tom and for the, the throws
• 28:23
  program here in New Zealand and my sort of TS and CS did a bit
• 28:28
  of research on gas and he does really cool stuff.
• 28:32
  And I was like, yeah, if you'll supervise me.
• 28:37
  And so I sort of started this bio mechanics PhD journey and
• 28:44
  power Physiology kind of still keeping my hand in the East and
• 28:47
  sea stuff and it sort of fitted with Nicole's stuff.
• 28:51
  And essentially I just started reading research like like what
• 28:59
  a throwers do and and what are the.
• 29:03
  Two questions. One, did you?
• 29:05
  When you were growing up? Did you ever think you would go
• 29:07
  in to get a PhD? I, I don't know, maybe in New
• 29:09
  Zealand everybody has a PhD because that's just your culture
• 29:12
  Over here. I barely can spell like I have
• 29:14
  like a high, like man PhD. Did you ever even think you'd
• 29:17
  ever go that round? That's that's amazing, No.
• 29:20
  No, I, I'm, I'm, I was never through school.
• 29:25
  I was never very good. I sort of failed physics at
• 29:29
  school, which is there's some irony in that, right?
• 29:32
  And, and English, when I took my English results to my English
• 29:36
  teacher, she she essentially said that me passing was a
• 29:41
  failure of the system, which, you know, which is good.
• 29:45
  So that's that's kind of some, it's kind of funny.
• 29:48
  Yeah. You know, and because I thought
• 29:51
  like at this time as well, like when I was at school, I didn't
• 29:55
  really apply myself because I thought I was going to be a
• 29:57
  golfer, right? Like I was singing, you know,
• 30:00
  I'm be, I'm going to be Tiger Woods.
• 30:01
  I'm going to be, I'm going to make four $6 million a year.
• 30:05
  You know, I don't need English. I don't need physics like.
• 30:09
  There's a lot of us over here that can relate to that.
• 30:11
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 30:14
  OK. When you you said when you
• 30:17
  started the the going into the PhD, you started reading a lot
• 30:20
  about the research. Is there a lot of of that
• 30:23
  available? I I'm not sure that I was going
• 30:26
  to ask and you're, you're telling the story beautiful
• 30:28
  here. You know, when someone over here
• 30:31
  has to coach something that they, you know, if a sprint's
• 30:35
  coach gets thrown into coaching the pole vault and oh, I've
• 30:39
  never coached the pole vault. You know, I know Sprint
• 30:40
  mechanics, but I don't know what to do.
• 30:43
  There are, I mean, handfuls of great.
• 30:47
  This is what's awesome about our profession is we're so talkative
• 30:50
  to each other. There are handfuls, maybe
• 30:53
  hundreds of really knowledgeable pole vault coaches that that
• 30:56
  person could call. I was that was going to be my
• 31:00
  first question, but you know, was there like who did you like
• 31:02
  your first thing I got to start coaching throws.
• 31:04
  I'm going to call someone. You had Gus there who seems like
• 31:06
  a pretty good, you know, mentor to rely on too.
• 31:08
  But but you said you started reading into the research.
• 31:12
  There's a like I would have thought there'd have been like
• 31:14
  maybe one article on specifically throws bio
• 31:17
  mechanics. You make it sound like there's a
• 31:20
  a plethora of options out there. Yeah.
• 31:22
  I mean, there's, there's this 20 or 30 in jail.
• 31:28
  Yeah, there's this 20 or 30 articles in Hammer, 20 or 30 in
• 31:31
  Javelin, 20 or 30 in Shotput. Yeah.
• 31:36
  And and so so my first kind of go to was was that and, and I
• 31:43
  suppose as well, I, I didn't go traditional.
• 31:48
  The, the coaching fraternity here is there's a lot of history
• 31:54
  here, but but a lot of that history where I was centered was
• 31:59
  with the, the coach and he felt like Nicole leaving was and
• 32:06
  coming to me was, was a real like kicking the teeth.
• 32:11
  And so he, he literally nationally put me on blast.
• 32:15
  So like every time, the first, like for the first six months of
• 32:19
  our journey was like, like Nicole would drove 54 and
• 32:24
  there'd be an e-mail sent out to every coach saying that coaches
• 32:29
  can't come into this sport, that they are shit like.
• 32:33
  That's so disappointing that that's that is bad ego.
• 32:37
  That is so disappointing to hear it really.
• 32:40
  Is seriously and, and so like, I don't really care, but I, I
• 32:45
  mean, I, I knew, I knew it was going to happen, right?
• 32:49
  Like because prior to that, every time someone threw poorly,
• 32:52
  it was my fault and every time they threw, well, it was his
• 32:54
  fault. So yeah, like I and like, but it
• 33:00
  just doesn't worry me. Yeah.
• 33:02
  And so, so I sort of went to the research to understand what was
• 33:07
  done and, and what, what bio mechanics or what kinematics
• 33:12
  people needed to exhibit to, to throw far.
• 33:16
  And then what was the Physiology, what was the
• 33:18
  muscular Physiology needed to drive that to throw further.
• 33:25
  And, and so we, we sort of went down this route of changing
• 33:29
  Nicole's sort of movement, bio mechanics and changing the
• 33:34
  muscle Physiology to fit with the bio mechanics.
• 33:37
  And so she, she sort of started getting better.
• 33:39
  She threw 62, then 64, then 66 over kind of probably the next,
• 33:47
  next two years. And then when she threw 66, that
• 33:53
  was I think maybe the second best all time performance here
• 33:58
  in New Zealand. And, and people sort of started
• 34:03
  to look at what was going on. And and that's where Maddie came
• 34:07
  to me with, with her former coach Walter and sort of said
• 34:12
  like, need to get faster. And my thing was like, well,
• 34:16
  let's just same process. What bio mechanics do you need
• 34:19
  to exhibit? What's the muscular Physiology
• 34:23
  you need? So.
• 34:25
  In, you know, caveat, we don't talk XS and OS here because
• 34:29
  there's a lot of great first of all, I haven't coached in 20
• 34:31
  years myself. Never a throws coach by the way,
• 34:33
  but but there's a lot of other great podcast clinics, things
• 34:36
  like that. But we do talk about philosophy
• 34:39
  of coaching and and you know, Mike, what I'm hearing you say,
• 34:43
  like I stereotyping a little bit here.
• 34:48
  If a let's do it this way, when a kid goes from high school to
• 34:52
  college, I think, and I could be dead wrong, maybe it's different
• 34:56
  than the throws. I'm going to just speak from my
• 34:58
  experience of a Sprint jumps and hurdles coach.
• 35:00
  We tend to think technique wise first, like, OK, what do I need
• 35:04
  to either change or continue to improve it?
• 35:08
  It's technique first. Maybe secondary is like, oh,
• 35:11
  they didn't have a very good lifting program in high school,
• 35:15
  so OK, I can get them stronger. Things like that.
• 35:18
  It, it feels like because I, I can't imagine you tell me if I'm
• 35:22
  wrong here in those say 2 years as you're going through your PhD
• 35:25
  and you're going through your, you know, real life PhD of, you
• 35:28
  know, learning with the Nicole here.
• 35:30
  I, I, I hesitate to think that you had picked up all the
• 35:34
  techniques side of the which hammer.
• 35:36
  Oh my gosh, one of the most technical events out there.
• 35:39
  So these improvements were less on maybe the technical aspect
• 35:44
  of, you know, the wind and you know, the apex of the ball.
• 35:47
  I'm talking stuff I've heard a thrust coach say before and more
• 35:50
  on the physiological, I'm sorry, the biomechanical, the body side
• 35:54
  of it of of the rotation and things like that.
• 35:56
  Is that accurate or? It's probably it, it didn't take
• 36:02
  long to figure out the bio mechanics that we needed to
• 36:05
  exhibit. And then there was some big
• 36:07
  rocks, right? Like, thanks for Nicole with
• 36:12
  simple stuff like links, creating links and, and rhythm,
• 36:17
  like just really simple kind of concepts of length, rhythm,
• 36:22
  connection with the implement. And, and I suppose one of the
• 36:25
  reasons that I didn't find it too hard was that like the bio
• 36:31
  mechanics are actually relatively simple and, and you
• 36:35
  can, you can interpret them how you want, but it's, it's
• 36:39
  actually pretty simple. The so, so having like a like a
• 36:45
  biomechanical model and most people out there will crucify me
• 36:49
  for, for that, but, but, and, and to clarify, I'm, I'm a
• 36:54
  biomechanist by trade. That's what my PhD is in, but.
• 36:59
  And and. I suppose this is sort of off on
• 37:02
  a little tangent when we talk about models.
• 37:04
  Models have bandwidths and so a biomechanical model will have a
• 37:11
  large bandwidth to it. There'll be a standard deviation
• 37:14
  there and I guess that's on each kinematic item.
• 37:20
  So foot contacts like azimuth angles, they'll all have
• 37:26
  biomechanical bandwidth to them. There'll be a parameter where
• 37:29
  you need to be within for each one and some of them will will
• 37:33
  interrelate and work together. And so with within that how
• 37:39
  someone fits those together is what people call technique.
• 37:44
  So and, and generally what most and in my experience what most
• 37:49
  non non biomechanist coaches do is they pick stylistic traits,
• 37:53
  right? Yes, yes, yes.
• 37:55
  Yeah, and a stylistic trait is how someone moves between those
• 37:59
  things, not necessarily the kinematic values, but how they
• 38:03
  stitch them together. Like kind of like if you and I
• 38:07
  were to paint, we can be given the same colors, but how we
• 38:11
  weave them together gives us the style of the painting.
• 38:17
  Yet the kinematic values, the paint colours are the sun.
• 38:21
  And so, so often we we pick stylistic traits.
• 38:27
  So the actual movement mechanics are the bio mechanics that
• 38:30
  someone needs to exhibit are relatively simple.
• 38:35
  And so we, we took this kind of approach of like people, you
• 38:40
  need to do this for this reason, let's shift this towards this.
• 38:46
  And. And the Physiology probably for
• 38:51
  those two years, like it probably got a little bit
• 38:54
  better, but you've also got to have the, the kinks in the pipe
• 39:00
  need to be sported out so the water can flow right?
• 39:03
  And so the power generated in the gym needs to go through a
• 39:07
  pipe that's aligned, hence the the kinematic.
• 39:10
  So it was probably some sort of togetherness.
• 39:14
  And. And for where Nicole was in her
• 39:17
  career, probably she needed that over mechanical, over like the
• 39:23
  over biomechanicalized approach because she was kind of a little
• 39:27
  way away from that. And like it took maybe six
• 39:33
  months for me to kind of figure out some of the big rocks and
• 39:36
  certainly identify some of the big rocks.
• 39:40
  I had a few existing hammer throwers come out from time to
• 39:45
  time just to go like, like, what do you think?
• 39:49
  And Dale Stevenson, Tom's coach, seen in videos like, like I'm
• 39:54
  seeing this is this a thing? And the probably the biggest
• 40:02
  thing that that I did early in Nicole's career was, was unpack.
• 40:09
  How like just simple stuff? How many throws per week are you
• 40:13
  taking? And and some of the.
• 40:16
  Like a lot of the research suggested that you need a, you
• 40:19
  need to take between probably between 80 and 120 throws a
• 40:23
  week. That's that's kind of a thing.
• 40:26
  And. Is, is that because is that part
• 40:32
  of have you heard of the, the, the 10,000 hours rules?
• 40:35
  Yeah. Is it a little bit part of that
• 40:37
  or is that more to do with like, you know, if you try to do 200,
• 40:42
  the body's going to break and if you don't do 40, well, you're
• 40:44
  not doing enough or both? There's there's probably like
• 40:48
  there's probably some the 10,000 hour rule probably sits over
• 40:52
  here and that not enough rule sits over here.
• 40:56
  And like if you, if you put it through the, the logic test to
• 41:01
  be good at something, you've got to do it.
• 41:04
  And Nicole's throwing volumes. Maybe she was.
• 41:08
  She would have been hitting between 20 and 40 throws a week.
• 41:14
  Yeah. And.
• 41:15
  And the there was there was some historical perspective from the
• 41:21
  the old French coach that he believed that as you got better,
• 41:24
  you did less. It's cool when you're an 86
• 41:28
  meter thrower, but it's probably not So I.
• 41:31
  Was about to say maybe in some cases that is appropriate,
• 41:35
  right, But you're talking about the 1% of already one
• 41:38
  percenters, right. So when you're talking about the
• 41:42
  the all of hammer throwers that that probably doesn't work in
• 41:46
  general, but again, maybe it works for the 1% of the 1%
• 41:49
  there, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:52
  So, so, yeah, so we just threw more.
• 41:56
  So she probably part of that is like taking her training volume
• 42:02
  from 40 to 70 per week over a period of time probably just.
• 42:08
  Yeah. And and I think the other thing
• 42:10
  that's probably understated within that is and just going
• 42:14
  back a little bit. So one of the I sat down with
• 42:17
  Nicole when we first started and said, like, what do you expect
• 42:20
  of me? And she goes, I just expect you
• 42:24
  not to bully me. And, and I was like, I was like,
• 42:28
  and I sort of laughed it off. Like I at the time I was like,
• 42:32
  oh, wow, that's a given, mate. You know, like kind of.
• 42:34
  And she goes, no, like I, I speak to you not to bully me.
• 42:40
  That kind of breaks my heart, actually.
• 42:42
  Yeah, and I was like, and like, I sort of turned around and I
• 42:45
  was like, Jesus, man, like, how long have you been here for?
• 42:48
  And and she. Goes, well, that's what it's
• 42:52
  been like. And I was like, well, I was
• 42:55
  like, well, like, But then it's a given.
• 42:58
  Like genuinely, that's a given. So, So what do you want to do in
• 43:02
  your career? And she goes, I just want to
• 43:04
  throw again. And I was like, well, like, I
• 43:06
  think you're capable of more. I don't, I don't know what
• 43:10
  you're capable of. Like, I don't know the sport, so
• 43:12
  I don't actually. Know I was waiting for you to
• 43:14
  say I was like, dude, how could you even know?
• 43:16
  But you're you're an an adaptation theorist though, so
• 43:19
  you knew like, oh, I I think you'd be better.
• 43:21
  That might be 1 centimeter, might be 100 meters, I don't
• 43:24
  know, but I feel like you can get more right.
• 43:26
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 43:27
  Yeah, and, and so so I think part of that improvement was
• 43:32
  just related to the fact that like we just had a good time and
• 43:37
  we just kind of tried to figure it out, like, and that was the
• 43:40
  let's just figure it out. Yeah.
• 43:42
  And and let's start somewhere tangible.
• 43:45
  Like let's start with some bio mechanics.
• 43:48
  Like are your foot contacts in the right place?
• 43:51
  Are the azimuth angles right? OK, those are like hammer one O
• 43:54
  1 is the low point and the high point in the right place.
• 43:58
  OK, cool. How long are you?
• 44:01
  OK, sleep like those, those are easy, easy things that kind of
• 44:06
  like hammer one O 1 and and that didn't take long for me to
• 44:11
  figure out even from knowing nothing.
• 44:16
  And so, so, yeah, we started kind of rolling along and, and
• 44:21
  as we, as we kind of went through this, I started to pick
• 44:24
  up more and more athletes. And, and Maddie was actually the
• 44:28
  second athlete I, I coached. Yeah.
• 44:33
  And so 16, maybe 17 year old Maddie came in and, and she just
• 44:43
  goes like, I want to be faster, I want to throw it far.
• 44:46
  And I was like, like, I hadn't coached the shop before.
• 44:51
  Yeah, but I like I knew the bio mechanics.
• 44:54
  So by this stage I'd I'd done a significant amount of research
• 44:57
  and and shop what discus hammer bio mechanics.
• 45:02
  You know, we, we, we know that I hesitate to say the end game
• 45:06
  what I mean. We know today Maddie wins the
• 45:09
  silver medal at the Olympics as 1617 years old.
• 45:12
  Was she really good when she came to you?
• 45:15
  Average what what you know for her age and stage?
• 45:20
  So I think it's 17 years old. She'd throw on like maybe 15.
• 45:26
  Low. OK, that doesn't sound.
• 45:29
  That's not cool. I don't know.
• 45:30
  I don't want to insult. Here's what I'm trying to figure
• 45:33
  out. There's this.
• 45:36
  It's not even a debate this bad thinking that really good
• 45:41
  coaches get really good kids and they don't develop athletes.
• 45:46
  And so like to use the 100 meter dash as an example over here,
• 45:52
  the best colleges will get kids out of high school that are
• 45:55
  running. You know, some of them are
• 45:57
  running 10 flat. Heck, we got a couple high
• 45:58
  schoolers running sub 10, which is crazy.
• 46:00
  But you know, they'll get kids out of high school that are
• 46:03
  running say 10:10 to 10:30. Yeah, that's that's really good,
• 46:06
  right? You know, as you go down,
• 46:08
  there's kids that are running 1090.
• 46:09
  Heck, there's kids running 11:30 that are also going to college
• 46:12
  different levels, right? And invariably someone who ran
• 46:17
  11 flat out of high school through good coaching will run
• 46:22
  10-1. And that's development.
• 46:24
  And that's awesome. No one's taking it like bravo,
• 46:27
  you took a kid from 11:10 one you developed the the, the part
• 46:32
  where it starts getting wrong is they'll look at the coach that
• 46:35
  gets the 1020 kid who runs 10 flat, maybe after two year 3 or
• 46:40
  whatever and says, see, you didn't develop.
• 46:42
  You're not a developer. Why don't you take the 11 flat
• 46:45
  kids and make them ten one? That's development.
• 46:47
  It's like, wait a minute, taking a kid from 10/2 to 10 flat.
• 46:51
  That's that's hard. It's a different hardness than
• 46:54
  from 11 flat to 10/1, which which is also hard by the way.
• 46:58
  So what I'm what I was wondering with with Maddie specifically,
• 47:01
  like did you get her where she was already?
• 47:04
  Like, you know, she's world junior champion or whatever, but
• 47:07
  I know you developed her or did you do the more I'd say
• 47:12
  traditional development of like, Oh yeah, she was average.
• 47:15
  And you know, we, we got really good.
• 47:16
  That's what I'm trying to think. You know, I'm just wondering
• 47:19
  development. Yeah, I, I suppose like I
• 47:23
  haven't been around enough to know what what good or average
• 47:26
  at that age is like. And and so, and I suppose with
• 47:33
  that, like Mehdi had some some significant biomechanical holes
• 47:40
  with you, with you like, however you classify that, I'm not sure.
• 47:44
  But yeah, I guess I guess on that like my my bias here.
• 47:51
  And you tell them we don't recruit.
• 47:52
  We we don't have a population to recruit.
• 47:54
  Like the woman shot put final at our national championship, we'll
• 47:58
  have maybe eight people in it. Right, right.
• 48:02
  Right. And there is like when I say
• 48:03
  eight people, there isn't another six or eight people
• 48:08
  sitting underneath that. So so you kind of have people
• 48:14
  come to you and and like I, I quite enjoy puzzles and
• 48:21
  performance puzzles. So, so I'll get on board with
• 48:24
  programs that they want to do something really cool.
• 48:29
  Like I don't really care who you are.
• 48:31
  If you come and you go, I want to do this.
• 48:33
  Like I kind of see that as challenging to try and figure it
• 48:36
  out. And, and the more challenging
• 48:40
  the, the cooler, right? Like doing something that
• 48:43
  someone thought you couldn't do and doing that.
• 48:46
  That's, that's a really cool puzzle.
• 48:48
  And, and in our realm, that's a really cool sport science
• 48:51
  puzzle. So like if you're Usain Bolt,
• 48:56
  you run 98 996 and and someone goes out, like you go to
• 49:04
  someone, they go, I want to Olympic won an Olympic medal and
• 49:08
  you're Usain Bolt. Like I like, I don't find that
• 49:10
  exciting. I don't really care about that
• 49:14
  to be honest. Like, but if you're team five
• 49:17
  guy and you go I want to win an Olympic medal, like I'm like,
• 49:20
  oh, this, this could be fun. Like this is to to do that.
• 49:25
  That's exciting. So, and that was Nicole, right?
• 49:30
  Like Nicole was, was as far away from being a high performance
• 49:37
  athlete, probably psychological and not necessarily physically,
• 49:41
  but, but certainly there are a lot of holes there.
• 49:44
  And so that was really quite cool, a cool project there and
• 49:48
  many, she has some, some cool goals.
• 49:52
  And, and so my, my entry criteria is 2 questions.
• 50:00
  What do you want to do, and what are you willing to do to get
• 50:03
  there? And what, what do you So let's
• 50:06
  break that down. What are you looking for in
• 50:09
  answers? Because I know you're not
• 50:10
  looking like for a specific like, oh, if they say they want
• 50:13
  to win a gold medal, boom, we're doing it.
• 50:15
  There's got to be some like the, the mentality of the answer.
• 50:18
  What are you looking for in those two questions?
• 50:19
  Because I think that's something important that coaches can like
• 50:22
  learn from. And maybe in the in, you know,
• 50:24
  here in the states with their recruiting, maybe that's
• 50:27
  something they can learn from recruiting.
• 50:28
  Talk about take us through those two sentences and what you're
• 50:30
  looking for in a in a response. Yeah, I'm like, I'm looking for
• 50:35
  something that excites me because because if I'm going to
• 50:40
  sort of pour my my sort of being into what you want to do, like
• 50:46
  I've I've got to be on board with that.
• 50:48
  And so if I, if I'm not on board with it, I'll, I'll probably
• 50:53
  say, hey, I'm not, I'm not the right person for you.
• 50:56
  And, and the, the first of the first question, what do you want
• 51:01
  to do? There's, there's 100 answers is
• 51:06
  and, and I don't even know what the right answer is until they
• 51:10
  say something and I go, that's kind of cool.
• 51:14
  And, and so it like it might be a 30 year old person that wants
• 51:19
  to get into the top 50 in the world.
• 51:22
  Cool. Like you've never done this
• 51:26
  before and you want to be top 30 in the world and so.
• 51:30
  But it has to be in your circumstance, sports for sports
• 51:34
  performance based, not hey, you know, I I want you to work with
• 51:38
  me because I just want to get in shape.
• 51:40
  But nothing's wrong with that, by the way.
• 51:42
  But I'm just saying, in your situation, is that more of like,
• 51:43
  yeah, not really. Yeah, that that's just not for
• 51:46
  me. And and if I, if it's not for
• 51:48
  me, I'll just refer you on to someone I like.
• 51:50
  I'm sure I've got a someone who that fits with, right?
• 51:56
  And. So and the second answer is is
• 52:02
  like, I'm willing to do anything and and anything in my world,
• 52:06
  just to clarify that is like it's it's around work.
• 52:12
  What are you prepared to commit to this?
• 52:15
  It like it has to be within the rules, but anything is like if
• 52:23
  it's going to be so, for example, Nicole, we're let trust
• 52:26
  him Nicole and and she was like cool, like I like I signed up
• 52:33
  for this and we literally stemmed on the back of some
• 52:36
  really sort of tight research and I went out and brought a
• 52:40
  stimulator that could achieve certain frequencies that would
• 52:44
  elicit certain adaptations in a muscle and it was painful, like
• 52:48
  really, really painful. And and and it and at certain,
• 52:54
  at certain. Times so so often as well, I
• 52:58
  suppose around that sort of stuff.
• 53:02
  Most people most people think they will do anything to get to
• 53:07
  their goal. Like most people will think that
• 53:10
  and, and at certain times there are vetting experiences where
• 53:17
  where I as a, as support staff and I class myself as support
• 53:23
  staff because like for Maddie Nicole, I work within a team of
• 53:28
  people that are, that are great. And so I'm just one of the team.
• 53:31
  I'm, I'm certainly not the, the top of the mountain here.
• 53:36
  I'm just a piece of, of cog in the wheel.
• 53:41
  And, and so there are certain moments where, where you get
• 53:45
  vetted and, and you get vetted on what you originally said.
• 53:50
  And, and at that moment, I, I, if you don't live up to your end
• 53:56
  of the bargain, I will back out. And, and I've been known to go,
• 54:00
  hey, yeah, this is the end of the road for us.
• 54:04
  What, what I'm kind of hearing, Mike, with that question and,
• 54:09
  and that philosophy, really I, I keep hearing in my head, as
• 54:14
  you're, you're telling that I keep hearing the word trust that
• 54:17
  it's, it's, it's that there's trust.
• 54:19
  Like, hey, if we're going to be in this together, the team and
• 54:21
  you and you're part of that team as the athlete, we're going to
• 54:24
  do some things, whether it's STEM, we're going to lift so
• 54:27
  many days a week. And you've got to trust that
• 54:30
  we've got your best at heart. And if you start like, let's say
• 54:36
  lifting, let's say you guys are like, you know, we're going to
• 54:39
  lift five days a week. And you know, it becomes, well,
• 54:41
  you know, on Tuesday, I got to, I got to leave early.
• 54:45
  I don't need to lift on a Tuesday.
• 54:46
  And hey, Thursday I'm going to cut short because you know,
• 54:48
  it's, it's my, my significant other's birthday.
• 54:51
  And it's like, Hey, we're, we're supposed to be working together
• 54:53
  here. You said you wanted to do X.
• 54:56
  We've got to get this done to do that.
• 54:58
  I just kept hearing that word trust.
• 55:00
  What does what does the the role of trust play for for you as a
• 55:05
  coach and this team and and and the athlete relationship?
• 55:11
  Yeah, I mean. And you kind of spot on there.
• 55:13
  It's a sheer journey, but for us.
• 55:15
  And so, so if you come to the party, I'll come to the party.
• 55:21
  And, and so for, for example, Nicole, Nicole was full time
• 55:26
  working. And so the the hours we had to
• 55:29
  train were from 5:00 AM till 7:00 AM and then from 5:00 PM
• 55:34
  till 7:00 PM. You turn up, I'll turn up
• 55:37
  absolutely like you go home, you risk recover, I'll go home, I'll
• 55:44
  read and research because that that's my equivalent to those
• 55:48
  things. And so if you commit to it, I'll
• 55:51
  commit to it. If you're, if you're buying
• 55:54
  implements to train with, I'll buy stuff to elicit what we need
• 55:59
  to elicit in terms of like Electro stems, etcetera,
• 56:02
  etcetera. And and so I invested in their
• 56:07
  career like I brought the majority of the training
• 56:11
  equipment that that we used because we needed it.
• 56:15
  If if you're going to buy new shoes you need medicine balls
• 56:19
  like I'll invest in the stuff we need to to do.
• 56:26
  And. And so that was that was kind of
• 56:28
  our bargain is that and and if I felt like you weren't meeting at
• 56:32
  me there, it doesn't really matter how good you are.
• 56:36
  Like you're out. And so the first first couple of
• 56:41
  athletes I had and I carried this through my ECC career is
• 56:44
  that I had a couple of really good discus throwers early in my
• 56:48
  career and they wanted to train you in the morning.
• 56:51
  I'd turn up, they wouldn't I come out like there's.
• 56:58
  I think a lot of American coaches just heard that and
• 57:00
  said, oh, good, It's not just us.
• 57:03
  We, we think, you know, American kids are, I'm not speaking
• 57:07
  specifically on those individuals, but not showing up
• 57:09
  at the time that you said you're going to show up.
• 57:11
  There's some character issues there, but it's like, you know,
• 57:13
  here we think it's, oh, it's a, you know, the American kids were
• 57:16
  were lazy. We have our iPads and our
• 57:17
  iPhones and stuff like that. And that's all they want to do.
• 57:20
  And it's like, you know, maybe a universal probably, like, you
• 57:23
  know, everybody has people who have these issues out there.
• 57:27
  So it's good that it's not just us.
• 57:28
  We like, you know, being part of a group.
• 57:30
  Yeah, and, and so, so I, I dropped a few athletes early in
• 57:34
  my career and. At a time where you maybe
• 57:40
  couldn't air quotes there, meaning you needed as much like
• 57:44
  social proof as you could, right?
• 57:46
  And you stuck to your your character.
• 57:49
  Yeah. And and and that was.
• 57:50
  Just like, like if I, if you want to do what you want to do,
• 57:54
  you hold up your end of the bargain and, and let's get
• 57:57
  excited for it. And if you're excited, you'll
• 57:59
  turn up. If you're not excited, you
• 58:00
  won't. And, and so, yeah, I just, I
• 58:04
  just was like, hey, I'm out. Like I'm done.
• 58:06
  That's that's not for me. I've got Nicole.
• 58:10
  I had a squad of four or five others.
• 58:15
  They turn up like I'm investing my time over there.
• 58:17
  They they want to do this. And, and these guys were like, I
• 58:22
  had the two top ranked at the time for Eastern C and I had a
• 58:27
  whole lot of others that were not top ranked even nationally.
• 58:33
  Like I'm over here, this is cool, this excites me.
• 58:35
  We can do something. Isn't that hard to do?
• 58:38
  You know, the equivalent over here would be I have a high
• 58:41
  school team and and you know, I've got a stud whatever event
• 58:45
  doesn't matter. And we say the bus is leaving at
• 58:47
  three and three O 5 kids not there.
• 58:52
  Do you do what you said? I'm I will leave you.
• 58:56
  I'm going, I'm going to, I'm going to ride with those who
• 58:58
  show up or man, that's my stud. I'll give him 5 more minutes.
• 59:03
  It's hard based on the athleticism of the kid.
• 59:08
  Let's, let's be real here. You know, we, we are, let's say
• 59:12
  our quotes as good as our best kids are, that that's, that's it
• 59:17
  sounds universal a little bit here actually, not just
• 59:19
  American. And it's hard to actually stick
• 59:21
  to your guns, to stick to your character and say, hey, man, we
• 59:25
  agreed that we'd be here at 5:00 AM and you're just not showing
• 59:27
  up. I'm I know you're really good,
• 59:29
  but you know what? That's not what I'm here for.
• 59:33
  Yeah, I guess like for me, like I don't care about that.
• 59:41
  Like, like and, and I guess as well there's, there's some,
• 59:48
  there's probably some stuff that sits behind some of those
• 59:51
  decisions. I think some coaches feel like
• 59:53
  they, and, and by all means no offense to I'm just generalizing
• 59:59
  here, some coaches that have failed athletes and sports, they
• 1:00:03
  feel like they need a good athlete at the top to validate
• 1:00:05
  that they could have been good. Yes.
• 1:00:08
  I don't need that. I don't come from track and
• 1:00:11
  field. I'm I'm.
• 1:00:12
  That's what I, I was wondering that I was going to ask.
• 1:00:15
  I wonder if it's because you didn't grow up in track, because
• 1:00:18
  I wonder if the inverse was true.
• 1:00:19
  Let's say you went on and, and maybe you still do, maybe you
• 1:00:23
  went on in, in full bore into golf and golf coaching and those
• 1:00:25
  kind of things. If you know, I'm not saying you,
• 1:00:29
  you are who you are because there's a little bit of like,
• 1:00:30
  you know, your character's your character, whether you're a
• 1:00:32
  track coach, golf coach, professor, your characters, who
• 1:00:37
  is with you, inside of you. But to what you said there,
• 1:00:40
  there is validation. There is ego.
• 1:00:42
  Ego is not bad, bad ego is bad. Ego makes us want to be a better
• 1:00:46
  track coach, a better professor, a better spouse, etcetera.
• 1:00:51
  So there is a validation, you know, having PhD is a validation
• 1:00:55
  in, in, in, in, in that field, right?
• 1:00:57
  I mean, that is a validation in in certain fields, right?
• 1:01:00
  So I wondered if you had grown up as, you know, track and
• 1:01:04
  athletics as my love and my baby, if there would be your
• 1:01:09
  character, I think is still your character.
• 1:01:10
  But I wonder if there would be a little bit, a little bit of Gray
• 1:01:12
  lines maybe in that. I just wonder.
• 1:01:15
  I don't know that it would. I'm just I just wonder.
• 1:01:17
  I think it's the I think there's the possibility there, but but
• 1:01:20
  for me, I want to see something cool happen and and cool doesn't
• 1:01:23
  happen if you don't live up to your end of the bargain.
• 1:01:26
  Like and and cool is, is subjective on and on our scale.
• 1:01:31
  And, and so we, we, we had a, had a saying with Nicole is stay
• 1:01:39
  true to who you are. And so we had our scale and, and
• 1:01:45
  just like me and Maddie have, have our scale.
• 1:01:47
  And so, So what anyone else thinks is good, that's that's
• 1:01:51
  cool. They can think that.
• 1:01:52
  But what we think is good on our scale is what we will celebrate.
• 1:01:59
  And so if you want to see what you wanted to happen, happen,
• 1:02:05
  you've got to, you've got to turn up.
• 1:02:07
  And, and if I want to see that happen, I've got to turn up.
• 1:02:12
  And, and so that's where that original entry question, like if
• 1:02:16
  I'm excited about it, I'll turn up and I'll do what I can.
• 1:02:19
  I'll do anything to get within my field to get you where you
• 1:02:24
  need to go. And.
• 1:02:27
  And so I've got no problem with, with not working with people
• 1:02:32
  that don't live up to the end of the bargain.
• 1:02:34
  And, and I, I think as well, some of that stems back to my
• 1:02:38
  upbringing, like, like my father was pretty hard and you, you
• 1:02:41
  work for what you've got. You say he was a farmer.
• 1:02:44
  Dude, there's something a lot of people automatically a little
• 1:02:47
  bit of assumptions of like, oh bro, that's a tough life.
• 1:02:51
  I lived on a farm for one year. That's all I could take that was
• 1:02:53
  out. That is some tough even the
• 1:02:55
  easiest of easy farming is tough and having kids, you're
• 1:03:00
  automatically you're part of the you're part of the business.
• 1:03:02
  That's that's, I mean, it used to be back in the day, farmers
• 1:03:05
  had more kids so they could work on the farm for crown out.
• 1:03:08
  Loud SO. Yeah, that's so tough.
• 1:03:10
  Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 1:03:12
  And so so dropping people and, and them not living up to the
• 1:03:16
  end of the bargain and like, I'm OK with that.
• 1:03:18
  And that that's it. There's a conversation that
• 1:03:21
  happens prior to that. OK, do you know you you sign up
• 1:03:25
  for this? Is that now not the case?
• 1:03:30
  And, and if they kind of go, oh, because some of these guys are
• 1:03:33
  young, like they, they, they don't, they say these throwaway
• 1:03:37
  comments. And, and sometimes they, when
• 1:03:43
  they, when those moments of vetting come out, that's when
• 1:03:45
  you have the opportunity to see and, and, and sort of the, the
• 1:03:50
  old adage's actions speak louder than words.
• 1:03:53
  And someone's actions towards or away from what they originally
• 1:03:58
  signed up with is sort of what I beat them on.
• 1:04:03
  And so, so, yeah, we, we had, we had some moments around that.
• 1:04:09
  And, and that sort of seems my, my sort of coaching philosophy
• 1:04:13
  that like, we're just trying, we're just trying to figure this
• 1:04:16
  out. It's what I've had to live on, I
• 1:04:21
  suppose. Not coming from from Trek.
• 1:04:25
  You're describing a much more collaborative style of coaching
• 1:04:31
  where, you know, there's lots of different ways to I don't know
• 1:04:33
  if you guys have this, this now that I want to say to someone
• 1:04:36
  who I'm not sure knows the saying, it does sound stupid.
• 1:04:39
  Have you heard the saying in more than one way to skin a cat?
• 1:04:42
  Oh, OK, sorry. Forgive me for being ignorant of
• 1:04:44
  like, of course, like you have. I don't know it just when I
• 1:04:46
  started saying out loud, it's like that's kind of a dumb
• 1:04:48
  statement, But there's many ways to do different, many different
• 1:04:50
  ways to do things and and have success.
• 1:04:53
  There's a, you know, in coaching is a simplest form.
• 1:04:55
  You can have a collaborative or you can have an authoritarian.
• 1:04:58
  You seem to be describing a much more like, Hey, we're in this
• 1:05:01
  together. And if we're not, I'm not the
• 1:05:05
  guy that's going to yell and make you do it.
• 1:05:08
  I'll just we'll go find something else.
• 1:05:10
  And by the way, I'll help you go find something else too, by the
• 1:05:13
  way, just but, but we're not going to do it together because
• 1:05:15
  we're not doing it together. So much more collaboration did
• 1:05:17
  did that. And maybe this does stem back to
• 1:05:21
  the, you know, the farm life, you know, that kind of attitude
• 1:05:25
  is it's usually exhibited like I I saw it growing up from either
• 1:05:30
  teachers or family or or maybe the opposite.
• 1:05:34
  I saw it hardcore, the other side, non collaborative and was
• 1:05:38
  like, that ain't I'll I'll do not want to grow up that way.
• 1:05:41
  Do you remember kind of where like collaboration and teamwork,
• 1:05:44
  like how that was modeled with, you know, church, school, home?
• 1:05:49
  Yeah. And to be honest, the
• 1:05:51
  collaborative approach probably wasn't a thing that I
• 1:05:54
  experienced generally. And that said, I suppose like in
• 1:06:01
  my early days of Easton Sea, I was full authoritarian because
• 1:06:06
  that's the weightlifting community, right?
• 1:06:10
  And, and I suppose through the first couple of years of my
• 1:06:15
  journey, like when you start in a field that you know nothing
• 1:06:18
  about, like Nicole knew more about Hammer than than I did.
• 1:06:23
  No shit. I didn't even know what it was.
• 1:06:26
  And so you have no option. But but then as, as I got
• 1:06:31
  through my research, the sort of areas of research, I started to
• 1:06:34
  dive into a sort of skill acquisition, bio mechanics and
• 1:06:37
  ECC. Because I didn't coming back to
• 1:06:40
  my motives, I didn't want to give someone poor information or
• 1:06:44
  set up a poor journey that could have been avoided.
• 1:06:49
  So I got stuck into some of the skill acquisition stuff.
• 1:06:53
  And if, if you want to, if, if you want someone to do something
• 1:06:58
  exceptional, at a certain point, it becomes an expression of
• 1:07:02
  themselves. And so you have to empower them
• 1:07:08
  and, and allow them to fail. And, and we, we learn from
• 1:07:13
  mistakes. So allowing people to make
• 1:07:16
  mistakes and, and being allowed to make mistakes myself, like
• 1:07:21
  the, the groups I work with them, like mistakes are OK as
• 1:07:25
  long as you learn from them. And so it, it has to be a sheer
• 1:07:30
  journey to get somewhere. And you have to trust that like,
• 1:07:34
  like these young guys coming up, they've got some knowledge, like
• 1:07:38
  they know some stuff. They, they might not have the
• 1:07:42
  direction sorted out and, and often they don't, but you, you
• 1:07:46
  have to realize that you don't know everything.
• 1:07:50
  And, and I certainly don't know anything.
• 1:07:52
  My my role is to facilitate them to get better and part of that
• 1:07:59
  facilitation like they're a part of the puzzle and and there and
• 1:08:05
  by the environment you set up the the conversations you have
• 1:08:10
  are are a trusting relationship. And I suppose to think that, you
• 1:08:15
  know, how they're going to do something is is largely ignorant
• 1:08:22
  because with that is if most people are basing that off what
• 1:08:30
  they did. And and that.
• 1:08:33
  Would be like me saying to you, I know what a steak tastes like,
• 1:08:37
  like, like I don't and I can help you shape your description
• 1:08:42
  of that, but I can't describe it for you.
• 1:08:47
  So, so it has to be this sheer journey and and my my role like
• 1:08:55
  the sheer journey is towards some biomechanical parameters.
• 1:09:00
  But your concept of that, how you describe that is actually
• 1:09:03
  how you describe it. And it's you that has to change
• 1:09:06
  it. So I have to help you change it,
• 1:09:11
  trying to change it for you're going.
• 1:09:13
  And, and this is one of the sort of as an adjunct, one of the
• 1:09:17
  things I have with cues is like, I can direct you, like, what
• 1:09:24
  does that feel like to you? But for me to tell you a cue,
• 1:09:27
  how you interpret that language will be different.
• 1:09:31
  So you might understand it, but your understanding of the
• 1:09:34
  interpretation is so far away from my interpretation that we
• 1:09:38
  end up with some sort of clash and so so it has to be a sheer
• 1:09:44
  journey. How do you that's another OK,
• 1:09:47
  that's important. Let's dig in there a little bit
• 1:09:50
  because I, I can my own experience, I can relate to that
• 1:09:55
  like I can, you know, I set a queue.
• 1:09:57
  They said, Yep, I understand it. And boy, we couldn't have been
• 1:10:01
  farther apart. And, and I would get frustrated
• 1:10:05
  like, you know, hey, I explained it this way and by the way, I've
• 1:10:08
  explained it to 100 athletes before and they've all done
• 1:10:10
  really well. You agreed that you understood
• 1:10:13
  it and you couldn't have been. How do you how do you close that
• 1:10:19
  gap? I, I suppose you, you have to
• 1:10:25
  sit with them and, and so I'll sort of tell us a story here.
• 1:10:31
  So I worked with a shop putter kind of in mid 2019, the world
• 1:10:36
  class shop putter here. And and the first couple of
• 1:10:41
  months of our journey, I coached them for 1818 months, two years
• 1:10:47
  through to through Tokyo. And.
• 1:10:51
  The first couple of months of our journey, I just, I just
• 1:10:54
  asked them, but literally sitting with him going like,
• 1:10:57
  what do you think about here and.
• 1:11:00
  Like about the event? About about the event.
• 1:11:03
  Yeah, OK, OK. And this like, like how do you
• 1:11:07
  describe this? What does this mean to you?
• 1:11:11
  And what I picked up was his, his internal model and give him
• 1:11:18
  mine. I needed to understand his
• 1:11:21
  because I've got to start from where he is and mold what he is
• 1:11:24
  towards the bio mechanics, right?
• 1:11:29
  And so some language. Who, who I'm sorry to keep
• 1:11:33
  interrupting you. I, I, I think this is super,
• 1:11:35
  super valuable for people to hear and understand because this
• 1:11:38
  is coaching. It's cue and response, cue and
• 1:11:40
  response. Whose responsibility is it?
• 1:11:44
  Is it the athlete's responsibility to hear your, I
• 1:11:51
  had to say interpretation, but your story of of what you're
• 1:11:54
  trying to get through in mold, in mold and change, or is it the
• 1:11:58
  coach's responsibility to hear the athletes agent stage where
• 1:12:04
  they are and to mold their queuing or coaching towards it?
• 1:12:11
  So what I what I mean, I want to double click into that a little
• 1:12:14
  bit here. Whose responsibility when, when
• 1:12:18
  you're sitting down and having these discussions about what
• 1:12:21
  they are seeing and feeling during maybe different stages of
• 1:12:24
  the events, whose responsibility is it?
• 1:12:27
  Is it the athletes to change? Is it the athletes
• 1:12:31
  responsibility to change here, here and how what you're trying
• 1:12:34
  to communicate and and change their thought process and and
• 1:12:38
  obviously the movement by things like that, But is it their
• 1:12:40
  responsibility to change or is it the coach's responsibility to
• 1:12:44
  change? They're queuing, not their
• 1:12:47
  belief in in what they're trying to get to cut, but their how
• 1:12:49
  they communicate. Who's who's got the majority of
• 1:12:51
  the responsibility here. I.
• 1:12:53
  I suppose that the the journey there is you've got to connect
• 1:12:58
  with them, so they have to change themselves.
• 1:13:04
  They've come to you to help with that change.
• 1:13:09
  You have to connect the language to them.
• 1:13:12
  So you first have to understand the language that they use and,
• 1:13:17
  and some of the background of that.
• 1:13:19
  And coming back to, to Nicole, So Nicole, all the, all the
• 1:13:24
  coach would talk about was low point.
• 1:13:27
  And every time I mentioned low point initially, he thought of
• 1:13:31
  him filled with anger would just kind of shut down emotionally.
• 1:13:37
  And so we flipped that to high point because for every low
• 1:13:40
  point, there's a high point. And, and so you have to
• 1:13:44
  understand what some of that language means to them and, and
• 1:13:47
  how they interpret literally the, the English language.
• 1:13:52
  So it's, I don't think there's, there's a responsibility.
• 1:13:57
  Some of the beliefs you have to work on, like behaviors are
• 1:14:01
  commonly driven by beliefs. And, and so, so for example,
• 1:14:07
  this, this kid believed that when the, the left foot got
• 1:14:11
  down, he tried to get the ball in the hand and shot.
• 1:14:15
  And so he was like, you know what, that's how you push hard,
• 1:14:22
  get it in the hand, you can push on it.
• 1:14:25
  If it's in the neck, you can't push on it like like, and that's
• 1:14:28
  relatively, and that's a, and that's a relatively logical
• 1:14:33
  conclusion, right? But it doesn't fit within a
• 1:14:36
  kinematic sequence. And so before trying to shift
• 1:14:42
  some of the stuff he had at the front, I needed to understand
• 1:14:45
  why he did what he did. And so then before trying to
• 1:14:49
  shift that, I needed to shift the belief.
• 1:14:53
  And, and so you said about shifting the belief, then he
• 1:14:56
  will shift himself because he no longer believes in that.
• 1:15:02
  And older athlete that will take longer.
• 1:15:06
  So you, you temper some of the patience.
• 1:15:11
  And, and so it's, it's about understanding all of how that
• 1:15:16
  kind of wave of belief healing systems interpretation put
• 1:15:21
  together. And often I, I flip that back on
• 1:15:24
  them. Like what does it mean to you?
• 1:15:26
  I kind of want to see this happen.
• 1:15:29
  What does that mean to you? How, how does that come to
• 1:15:33
  fruition and movement? Like do you, does it make sense
• 1:15:37
  to you? And, and so then if they're
• 1:15:42
  like, yeah, makes total sense, I just can't do it.
• 1:15:46
  And usually at that point, I'll add in the yet, yeah.
• 1:15:52
  And and so we, we talk about it and I think I stole it from Dale
• 1:15:57
  Stevenson. There's only a couple of things
• 1:16:00
  you can really control as attention and intention.
• 1:16:04
  And and the intention. The only part of that that the
• 1:16:08
  coach can can control is the clarity in that the and the
• 1:16:13
  accuracy of interpretation. Just checking in on it.
• 1:16:16
  The attention that's on the like that's part of the deal.
• 1:16:21
  You want to do anything? Well, Chuck your phone away,
• 1:16:26
  Chuck Instagram away, Chuck it all away and let's let's tune in
• 1:16:30
  here. And if you're not tuned in here,
• 1:16:34
  go to some of your practices, come back TuneIn and and that's
• 1:16:41
  kind of how we've filtered it. And so with that, my role as a
• 1:16:44
  coach through that process is if I'm clear that they have a if,
• 1:16:49
  if we and I'm clear that they have a clear intention, Most of
• 1:16:56
  these guys have good attention. So my role from there is to
• 1:16:59
  observe and and so really like I'm, I'm potentially one of the
• 1:17:06
  most underwhelming coaches in the world because and IA story
• 1:17:13
  around that is I in 2020 I had I had a squad of seven.
• 1:17:21
  I've only actually coached 7 or 88 track and deal throwers.
• 1:17:25
  And. I had two qualified, 1 qualified
• 1:17:30
  at World Juniors and six I think were in the top 50 in the world.
• 1:17:35
  So we were, we were like pretty decent as a squad.
• 1:17:38
  There's two or three within the top 34 in the world and and two
• 1:17:43
  at Tokyo. And, and so IA few people kind
• 1:17:50
  of like what are you doing? And one of them came back to a
• 1:17:56
  session to watch me coach. And so I rock up there and
• 1:18:01
  there's a sort of six people, 55 people throwing, I think couple
• 1:18:08
  of hammer throwers, couple of discus throwers.
• 1:18:10
  And, and so I kind of rock up. I'm in my, my flip flops, shorts
• 1:18:15
  on T-shirt, like, and part of that, there's a little bit to
• 1:18:18
  that. So the authoritarian aspect is
• 1:18:21
  like, if I turn up formal and stuff, people kind of see me as
• 1:18:25
  an authoritarian figure. But like, I'm just trying to
• 1:18:28
  help you. So I'm I'm on your level, you're
• 1:18:31
  good at this, I'm good at this. That's even like where you're
• 1:18:37
  most of these guys are young kids with some knowledge and are
• 1:18:41
  vast and vast areas. So I rock up flip flops, shorts,
• 1:18:47
  similar and with my coffee. And so I go around to everyone
• 1:18:52
  and I'm like, how's body today? You clear on what you're after?
• 1:18:56
  Yep. So that takes maybe 2 minutes
• 1:18:59
  and then I walk out to 70 meters.
• 1:19:03
  And. And this kids with me and we
• 1:19:07
  stand at 70 meters and I think, I think on a couple occasions
• 1:19:12
  like all I said was like there it is.
• 1:19:16
  And and we're talking like, like maybe probably within that
• 1:19:20
  session across all those throwers, maybe 150 throwers
• 1:19:23
  were taken. But but the majority of the
• 1:19:25
  conversation was like like that, like that video you sent me was
• 1:19:31
  funny from to one of the athletes or like one of the kids
• 1:19:36
  I was coaching was, was big into was like cooking is like, Mike,
• 1:19:39
  check this out. And I'm like, mate, that looks
• 1:19:42
  tasty. And and this was this was an
• 1:19:46
  hour and a half. That's right.
• 1:19:49
  And. And so the like, like, and
• 1:19:55
  there's, there's some, there's some science to that.
• 1:19:58
  And so one of the most powerful aspects of, of learning is
• 1:20:01
  forgetting. So, so I, I generally try and
• 1:20:06
  disrupt people between throws. And so, so one of the most
• 1:20:09
  powerful aspects of learning is, is actually the forgetting
• 1:20:12
  process. So, and and just digging a
• 1:20:16
  little bit of kind of random science here is is generally
• 1:20:20
  people. People perform well when
• 1:20:23
  movements are in what we call working memory.
• 1:20:25
  Or like if you then a phone number, you go 02755, whatever
• 1:20:30
  and you just repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.
• 1:20:32
  You pick up your coffee and then you go, what was that phone
• 1:20:34
  number? The process of remembering that
• 1:20:36
  again from there is what deepens the the retention of it.
• 1:20:40
  And there's some good science from a guy called Robert Bjork
• 1:20:43
  or Professor Robert Bjork. And so while they walk out, I'll
• 1:20:48
  try and like, we might have a short discussion, like might be
• 1:20:52
  like, yeah, you got close. And, and they'll know what close
• 1:20:57
  is based on what we're trying to get.
• 1:21:00
  And the rest of it, I'm like, so how's the dog or like, and, and
• 1:21:07
  you're deepening the learning process by disrupting it, even
• 1:21:10
  though it appears less professional and part of my
• 1:21:14
  attire as they feel like people feel comfortable with me because
• 1:21:19
  like I'm just, I'm just one of you.
• 1:21:21
  Like, I'm just trying to figure this out just like you are, I'm
• 1:21:24
  trying to figure out how you get better.
• 1:21:25
  Just like you're trying to figure out how you get better.
• 1:21:27
  I don't have the answers. So like I'm, I'm pretty casual
• 1:21:31
  and I'm pretty open and transparent about that.
• 1:21:36
  And, and I think the other part is, is as so, so when I when I
• 1:21:43
  got a PhD in in droves by mechanics, people viewed me as I
• 1:21:48
  had the answer. And and so I actively sort of
• 1:21:55
  engaged and, and normalizing myself.
• 1:21:58
  OK, Like I'm, I'm just one of you.
• 1:22:03
  I I have a PhD, not the answer. Yeah, yeah, They're looking for,
• 1:22:08
  we're all, we're all looking for the magic pill.
• 1:22:10
  So wait a minute, you've got a PhD.
• 1:22:12
  Give it to me, Mike, what is the one thing?
• 1:22:14
  And it's like, yeah, there is no one.
• 1:22:16
  Yeah. Right, and so I had to normalize
• 1:22:19
  their perception of me via like a tie how I talk to them, like
• 1:22:25
  and and like I enjoy the same things that they enjoy, like
• 1:22:29
  funny videos. If it's funny, it's funny.
• 1:22:32
  If it's good food, it's good food.
• 1:22:33
  Most people like know that I drink coffee and and so I think
• 1:22:39
  some of that is, is normalizing that.
• 1:22:41
  And like as you go through that journey, you, you sort of
• 1:22:49
  realize like, well, for me is as I'm just helping you, like I
• 1:22:55
  don't have, I don't have the answers.
• 1:22:58
  We together will try and figure this out.
• 1:23:00
  Now, if that idea comes from you or me, I don't care.
• 1:23:04
  Like, but if you can't voice your opinion because you feel a
• 1:23:09
  certain way, then we need to have a conversation about that
• 1:23:12
  and, and at times that's become problematic.
• 1:23:15
  You're not going to let that be the governor.
• 1:23:17
  You're, you're going to take that part off.
• 1:23:19
  It's not going to be because of me, because you I express
• 1:23:22
  authoritarianism or all knowingness.
• 1:23:26
  I'm going to, I'm going to strip that away.
• 1:23:28
  Those excuses are gone. Yeah, but it doesn't mean that I
• 1:23:33
  won't question really directly. Right, right.
• 1:23:36
  So. Right, right, right.
• 1:23:38
  Like if you come up with an idea, I'm going to beat it.
• 1:23:44
  Yeah. If I come up with an idea, you
• 1:23:47
  need to beat it like and and and so my my role.
• 1:23:53
  I, I, I think that's where we, the generalization here, maybe
• 1:23:58
  lose the, the, the sight of it. I, I think a lot of time, I, I
• 1:24:02
  think there's lots of coaches that would say, hey, if, if you
• 1:24:06
  come up with an idea, it might be the right idea, I'm going to
• 1:24:09
  vet it. I'm going to, I'm going to see
• 1:24:11
  if it checks all the boxes where it's, you know, whether you're a
• 1:24:13
  biomechanical background or technical background, whatever.
• 1:24:17
  I think we lose the punchline when it's the other way around,
• 1:24:20
  when it's like, hey, if I have an idea, you need to vet that as
• 1:24:23
  well, meaning you need to have some responsibility in your own
• 1:24:25
  training. I think we again, big
• 1:24:27
  generalization here. I think that's where we like,
• 1:24:29
  no, I that's where there is a little bit of authoritarianism
• 1:24:33
  of like, hey, if I say, if I come up with an idea, I say to
• 1:24:35
  do something, you do it blindly. You don't ask questions back.
• 1:24:39
  I think we lose that sometimes in coaching.
• 1:24:42
  And, and our thing like from the start has been because I,
• 1:24:46
  because I don't have any prior experience, my, my role is
• 1:24:50
  really filtering. So bringing in information and
• 1:24:54
  filtering it for you and. And.
• 1:24:59
  Some of that as well, I think like commonly some of that like
• 1:25:09
  non willingness to question as perceptual and then so we have
• 1:25:13
  conversations around like, hey, you got to vid this like like
• 1:25:17
  I'm I can be wrong. And.
• 1:25:21
  And I have been wrong. Like I mean, it's in, I think it
• 1:25:25
  must have been like 2017, 2020, 17 or 2018.
• 1:25:32
  Like we tried to do something with Nicole's periodization and
• 1:25:37
  she went from 62 to 56 in four weeks.
• 1:25:40
  Oops. And and she's like, yeah, you
• 1:25:43
  got that wrong. And I'm like, yeah, I got that
• 1:25:45
  real wrong. Like I'm sorry about that.
• 1:25:47
  Like and she but she also goes, but we didn't know like, like
• 1:25:51
  the we both agreed valid input, got it wrong.
• 1:25:56
  And and we've done the same thing, like, like Maddie.
• 1:26:00
  And he's like, yeah, I think that was a good idea.
• 1:26:03
  And I'm like, no, wasn't a good idea.
• 1:26:06
  And, and, and I've had heaps of other kids that have done the
• 1:26:11
  same, like, hey, my, this ain't, that ain't working.
• 1:26:14
  I'm like, yeah, I mean, we didn't know it wasn't going to
• 1:26:18
  work, but we're OK with it not working in pursuit of it
• 1:26:22
  working. And, and so like, those things
• 1:26:28
  are sweet. Like people, people jamming it
• 1:26:31
  in the cage. Like we, we, we had a rule is,
• 1:26:37
  is if you're going to jam it in the cage, like jam it in there
• 1:26:40
  like it's got to go on hot, I'm OK with it.
• 1:26:44
  Like if we're getting after it, I'll, I sort of said to Nicole,
• 1:26:49
  like I'll travel anywhere in the world to see six throws get
• 1:26:53
  jammed in the cage. But if you control one down the
• 1:26:57
  middle, no thanks. Like like we're trying to do
• 1:27:02
  something here and, and jamming in the cage in pursuit of that
• 1:27:06
  exceeds controlling it, trying to avoid it.
• 1:27:11
  And, and so part of that is, is a little bit like it, it allows
• 1:27:17
  them freedom. Like if if Maddie, if Maddie
• 1:27:24
  throws 6 spells if she's gone after it.
• 1:27:27
  Like that's cool. Like 6000, pursuit of it is the
• 1:27:31
  chance to see something happen that we haven't seen before.
• 1:27:34
  Right, right. Like, like I'll sit there and
• 1:27:39
  go, yeah, I'll just sit there like.
• 1:27:41
  That's cool. And can't you coach off that
• 1:27:44
  better? Like I, I was a jumps coach and
• 1:27:47
  I would always tell him with athletes like, you know, on your
• 1:27:50
  8th step or whatever step we were on, you jump.
• 1:27:52
  That's what what you've been conditioned to do.
• 1:27:54
  If you're a foot over or a foot behind, I don't care.
• 1:27:57
  You jump because I can then make an adjustment if you chop or
• 1:28:02
  over stride. I don't know what to do at that
• 1:28:05
  point. I don't know where you really
• 1:28:06
  were. So if, if, if Maddie or Nicole
• 1:28:10
  is doing everything that you guys have worked together and,
• 1:28:13
  and topped it and, and worked through and talked about and you
• 1:28:16
  put it in the cage or, you know, she fouls in the shot.
• 1:28:19
  But it's like, oh, OK, well, I see where, where the mistake
• 1:28:22
  happened. I see how you fouled.
• 1:28:23
  I can correct that. We can talk about that.
• 1:28:26
  But if you I can't think of the example that was you for throw,
• 1:28:29
  but you know, you said control it down the middle.
• 1:28:30
  I'm like, OK, I'm going to take a little easy so I can get one
• 1:28:32
  this one down the middle. Well, what did that really do
• 1:28:35
  for us? I I don't, there's nothing to
• 1:28:36
  correct off of that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:38
  Makes it easier to coach off of. And, and sometimes I think as
• 1:28:42
  well, we like as coaches and, and again generalizing, we
• 1:28:47
  don't, we don't appreciate that like right on the edge of total
• 1:28:52
  catastrophe is total success. And and if we want these like if
• 1:28:59
  I'm true to my, my kind of inclusion criteria, if I want to
• 1:29:04
  see something exceptional happen, I have to be OK with
• 1:29:08
  seeing, with seeing failure happen.
• 1:29:11
  And and. Be comfortable that I know how
• 1:29:14
  that fits into what we're trying to achieve.
• 1:29:18
  And. And so, so I kind of describe it
• 1:29:21
  to them, like if if we go to the racetrack and I give you a
• 1:29:26
  Ferrari, like if you want to drive a Lat PD, you'll probably
• 1:29:31
  crash and you'll crash and you'll crash and you'll crash
• 1:29:36
  until you don't. And when you don't crash with
• 1:29:39
  the same attitude that you crashed with, you'll drive a PD.
• 1:29:44
  There'll be a Lat PD there like. And and then.
• 1:29:48
  We'll go through that same journey again of crashing and
• 1:29:50
  crashing and crashing, but we're starting from this lap TV and
• 1:29:54
  we're trying to get to here and we'll crash in between and then
• 1:29:57
  we'll hit it and we'll do the same thing on the way up.
• 1:30:00
  And. So for me, like I'm, I'm really
• 1:30:04
  OK with six fouls with, with whatever it is with missing
• 1:30:08
  finals with like I don't really care because we're in pursuit of
• 1:30:12
  something that's on our scale. And if you grab and so if you
• 1:30:19
  crash, just make sure it's in pursuit of getting there.
• 1:30:22
  Like that's, that's cool. You know, real, no, no, you're a
• 1:30:27
  real lesson in that. I, I, I, I, I, I, I think about
• 1:30:31
  it in a, in a relay team, you know, early in the season, run
• 1:30:36
  until you pass the baton. If you're out of the zone,
• 1:30:38
  you're out of the zone, who cares?
• 1:30:40
  You know, sometimes we'll say it here in the States and who cares
• 1:30:43
  if you win the Tiddlywinks Invitational in March?
• 1:30:46
  Do you want to win nationals in June?
• 1:30:49
  Well, we, we got it. We got time.
• 1:30:50
  Who cares if we went early, we got to win late.
• 1:30:52
  And if you run through the zone, I can correct that.
• 1:30:55
  If you pull up just to get the baton through.
• 1:30:58
  Well, again, I don't know where to, what to do with that.
• 1:31:00
  Mike, as we start to wrap up here, how long?
• 1:31:03
  Let's talk a little bit about your experience with Maddie.
• 1:31:05
  You said she came to you around 1516 years old.
• 1:31:08
  How long ago? Yeah, 16 Stephen Tain. 1617 How
• 1:31:10
  long ago was that? Seven or eight years ago.
• 1:31:14
  OK. And so we know, we know the end
• 1:31:17
  result of what happened this year in Paris.
• 1:31:19
  You also mentioned you were in Tokyo.
• 1:31:20
  Was Tokyo your first Olympics? There we go.
• 1:31:24
  OK. Sorry that came out.
• 1:31:25
  OK, was Tokyo your first Olympics?
• 1:31:29
  Yes. What was that like?
• 1:31:31
  Because you know, typically I'm talking to someone who grew up
• 1:31:33
  like dreaming of going to the Olympics.
• 1:31:37
  I don't think the Olympics are a big deal in the golf world, even
• 1:31:40
  though I think we have it in the Olympics or we used to have it
• 1:31:41
  or what not. What was that like at your first
• 1:31:45
  Olympics when you walked into the stadium or you know, the
• 1:31:48
  first time you go to, you know, for us, we think of it's like,
• 1:31:50
  Oh my gosh, I have arrived. We talked about validation.
• 1:31:53
  What was that like for you? The first time you walked into
• 1:31:58
  Tokyo, the Olympic Stadium? What was that like the first
• 1:32:01
  time you walked into Tokyo where there was practice or the actual
• 1:32:05
  competition time? What was that like to know that,
• 1:32:08
  man, I'm here, I I don't want to say you've arrived.
• 1:32:11
  You don't seem like the kind of guy that would be talking that
• 1:32:13
  way. But there is the little bit and
• 1:32:16
  Tokyo's little exceptional, no fans in the stands and things
• 1:32:19
  like that. But you, you, you did you.
• 1:32:20
  You helped someone get to Olympics.
• 1:32:22
  What was that like the first time you.
• 1:32:23
  The realization set in when you walked in.
• 1:32:27
  Yeah, I. Was in Doha as well.
• 1:32:29
  So I had two shop putters in Doha and so, so when I got to
• 1:32:35
  Tokyo, wasn't that surprising. And I suppose like in those
• 1:32:41
  settings, I'm a glorified spectator because if I need to
• 1:32:48
  do something there, I screwed up six months ago or we screwed up
• 1:32:52
  six months ago. And and.
• 1:32:57
  So I don't, I don't really probably, I guess, and this
• 1:33:04
  might be frustrate some people that that want to be there is,
• 1:33:09
  is, I guess I don't really have too much weight in the Olympics
• 1:33:15
  or world champs, etcetera. And and a lot of that comes back
• 1:33:19
  to like a lot of the kids I'm working with are trying to do
• 1:33:22
  things that are either there or not.
• 1:33:25
  And so if, if the, if the target is there, then I've got weight
• 1:33:30
  in it. If it's not, then I don't really
• 1:33:32
  have weight in it. So for example, Nicole wanted to
• 1:33:36
  throw over 70 meters and and she did that and qualified for
• 1:33:43
  Eugene. But throwing, seeing her throw
• 1:33:48
  70 meters in New Zealand was more impactful impact before on
• 1:33:54
  me and I was more proud of that than I was seeing her throw in
• 1:33:58
  Eugene and Commonwealth Games. And and that was probably, that
• 1:34:03
  still is probably one of the highlights of my career is
• 1:34:08
  seeing someone come from here to go to there.
• 1:34:10
  That's our scale and. The first one, I mean, yeah, to.
• 1:34:15
  Me. Yeah, That's kind of, that's
• 1:34:16
  kind of funny. And then there's been a raft of
• 1:34:19
  others in between that have done sort of similar stuff.
• 1:34:24
  So the Olympics didn't hold too much value for me personally and
• 1:34:29
  too much weight for for Maddie. It's it's where we see Maddie.
• 1:34:35
  It's where you'll see like, she's an exceptional young lady
• 1:34:39
  that just loves that stuff and she loves the moment.
• 1:34:43
  And so for me, it's exciting because it's a time when we get
• 1:34:47
  to see what we've done. Like like we're confident that
• 1:34:52
  she's going to turn up and, and she's thrown a PV at every major
• 1:34:57
  and so she's thrown a PV at every major since Tokyo.
• 1:35:03
  And so sooner will we get to see what she's good for or that's
• 1:35:07
  that's where we will see her do something exceptional.
• 1:35:11
  So for me, that's exciting. So like I'm, I'm kind of excited
• 1:35:15
  to see what we've done, but but I'm also like, there's a,
• 1:35:22
  there's a role there for me to fulfill with what I need to do
• 1:35:27
  to allow or to, to create an environment that allows you to
• 1:35:31
  do that. So if I'm nervous, if I'm a
• 1:35:33
  certain way, then then I might detract from that.
• 1:35:38
  So I'm quite aware of how I operate in those settings.
• 1:35:42
  And and like that, that's. Like like we love those events,
• 1:35:47
  but we love them because it gives that kind of, it gives us
• 1:35:53
  that environment that she thrives on.
• 1:35:57
  And and so it's a really exciting time, but but not
• 1:36:00
  necessarily the event itself, if that makes sense.
• 1:36:04
  So similar question. I'm assuming this may be a bad
• 1:36:07
  assumption. Was Maddie your first athlete
• 1:36:10
  that medaled at the Olympics? At the Olympics.
• 1:36:12
  Yes, yeah. So similar question and I feel
• 1:36:15
  like you are going to let us all down just like you did because
• 1:36:18
  we're all like I get into you. Every listener right now was
• 1:36:20
  like, what? What do you mean?
• 1:36:21
  I guess it's the Olympics. I mean, we, you know, over here
• 1:36:23
  it. Is the be.
• 1:36:25
  All end all for athletics, for tracking field.
• 1:36:28
  So what about when the dust settles and Maddie wins a silver
• 1:36:34
  freaking medal? That's huge.
• 1:36:38
  Did you just go get another coffee?
• 1:36:40
  I mean, how did that feel? No, I, I think one of the it's,
• 1:36:45
  it's certainly, it's certainly a neat moment, but but as well
• 1:36:48
  it's, it's important to, to understand that she threw
• 1:36:52
  further to win a medal. So she went in with a 191960 PB
• 1:36:58
  into that campaign and we ended up with like 1986 or something.
• 1:37:04
  So, so for us, that's really exciting that she's progressing
• 1:37:08
  along the journey towards where we're trying to be so.
• 1:37:11
  Are you kind of telling us that if she would have gotten 5th but
• 1:37:15
  thrown 1980 better than her, her 1960 PB coming in, you guys
• 1:37:19
  would have been all hunky Dory? Yeah.
• 1:37:22
  Wheelie Yeah, yeah, definitely. What if she'd thrown so so then
• 1:37:29
  then versus she throws 1940 and gets silver or gold.
• 1:37:32
  It would have been a little like, you know.
• 1:37:35
  Yeah. Wow.
• 1:37:37
  Yeah. So you're all about pushing the
• 1:37:41
  envelope of the of the I'm saying of the body, but in in
• 1:37:45
  their specific event, it is all about that PB.
• 1:37:48
  It's our scale and and so the top of our scale and and like
• 1:37:53
  it's Maddie's prerogative to share that.
• 1:37:55
  And so I'm not going to share her scale, but but it's our
• 1:37:59
  scale and so she's progressing towards that.
• 1:38:03
  That is cool. Like that is exciting all.
• 1:38:06
  Right, this next question because of how you just answered
• 1:38:09
  that you might punt on it. I'm, I'm going to ask you
• 1:38:13
  anyway. So there were studies done
• 1:38:17
  specifically on medalist and I think they did all sports, not
• 1:38:20
  necessarily athletics. And that the out of the three
• 1:38:23
  medalist, gold, silver and bronze, the one that was the
• 1:38:26
  most disappointed you would think would be the bronze
• 1:38:29
  because they only got they only. It's the silver.
• 1:38:32
  It's the silver because the, the the silver says, oh man, if I'd
• 1:38:36
  have just done 1 little more thing, I could have won gold.
• 1:38:38
  The bronze says, oh boy, I made one little mistake and I'm not
• 1:38:42
  even on this podium. So they're just ecstatic to be
• 1:38:44
  it's almost like they're just happy to be there type of thing.
• 1:38:48
  Did you? And again, because the way you,
• 1:38:50
  you, you answered that. She answered that really
• 1:38:52
  maturely, Mike about hey, her, her story is her story, you
• 1:38:55
  know, her scale. So she has to share that.
• 1:38:58
  I can't say, but did you experienced any of that with her
• 1:39:02
  from where you sit as the as in your role as the coach, was she
• 1:39:05
  disappointed? Yeah, yeah, she she said.
• 1:39:08
  AI think? She said APB, so of course you
• 1:39:10
  guys were happy. That's where I'm learning on
• 1:39:12
  this. There's there's always an acute
• 1:39:14
  reaction to like, damn, it didn't win.
• 1:39:20
  Like like she's she. And I guess The thing is, is
• 1:39:24
  she's a cool, calm, collected customer, but she's fiercely
• 1:39:28
  competitive. And, and so when when she
• 1:39:32
  doesn't win, naturally there's frustration.
• 1:39:36
  Like I'm fiercely competitive. And, and so there's still that
• 1:39:41
  kind of like, yeah, we didn't win, but but with that, like we
• 1:39:48
  progress closer to where we want to be.
• 1:39:52
  And, and that's our scale. And so as you kind of the the
• 1:39:55
  dust settles, you go actually we're climbing our scale here.
• 1:40:00
  That's cool. Like we did something.
• 1:40:03
  And and Yep, an Olympic. Needle to do it at the Olympics
• 1:40:06
  is is kind of cheery on top, but the actual kind of cake there is
• 1:40:11
  that you progress to where closer to where you want to be.
• 1:40:15
  And, but I suppose with that is Maddie's whole family was there
• 1:40:21
  and in fact, my, my mom and sister were there as well.
• 1:40:27
  And, and for me, seeing the, seeing how proud they were of,
• 1:40:34
  of Maddie is, is really special. Like that's, that's one of those
• 1:40:39
  things that will will sit with you for forever.
• 1:40:43
  And and I saw the same thing. In.
• 1:40:46
  At World juniors, when she won world juniors and, and tampering
• 1:40:50
  is seeing how proud they are of their daughter is, is just as a
• 1:40:56
  really special thing to see and the fashion that she did it in.
• 1:41:01
  And, and I think as well for us around how she represents
• 1:41:05
  herself and, and who she is, is it's just a pleasure to work
• 1:41:10
  with her. And, and that probably comes
• 1:41:13
  across in a lot of the interviews, but but that's
• 1:41:16
  genuinely like, I, I think the value of that is quite
• 1:41:21
  understated is, is who you work with and who they are and, and
• 1:41:25
  how a day-to-day exchange goes makes all the difference.
• 1:41:31
  And Maddie is just, she's Maddie like, and she's been Maddie
• 1:41:35
  since world junior. She's Maddie now.
• 1:41:37
  And it's, that's the coolest progression to see of a young
• 1:41:40
  lady that's just comfortable with who she is.
• 1:41:43
  And and to play a small role in that is certainly a privilege.
• 1:41:49
  I love that. I think, you know, I, I talk
• 1:41:52
  about the superpower of a coach is seeing something in someone
• 1:41:54
  else before they can see it in themselves with you, the way
• 1:41:59
  you, you describe that, you know, the positive impact you
• 1:42:04
  make on young people is immeasurable.
• 1:42:07
  And, and that, and that's not even as much as you're
• 1:42:10
  expressing about, you know, the, the pursuit of the scale and the
• 1:42:14
  PB and those are important. You know, I'm a big believer in
• 1:42:18
  PBS because they suck. And what I mean by that is one
• 1:42:20
  day you're going to hit your last one and you ain't going to
• 1:42:22
  know for 3-4 more years. So celebrate every one of them
• 1:42:26
  because one of them is going to be your last and you ain't even
• 1:42:27
  going to know for a while, right?
• 1:42:29
  But the, the, the experience, like if a Maddie doesn't have
• 1:42:36
  the team around her to help her achieve her goal, she doesn't
• 1:42:40
  get to go around the world. I mean, those are experiences
• 1:42:45
  that, you know, I, I assume much like here, 99% of New Zealanders
• 1:42:49
  stay in New Zealand and never go out of country.
• 1:42:51
  Same in the US, even though we, we think we travel all around
• 1:42:54
  the world, the vast majority of us never go to see other
• 1:42:56
  cultures in other countries and here and with you, maybe you
• 1:43:00
  grew up on that farm thinking, yeah, maybe I'll go to
• 1:43:02
  Australia. Maybe that's what all New
• 1:43:03
  Zealanders do. But I'm not going to go to Org,
• 1:43:05
  you know, America and Tokyo and France, You know, I, I certainly
• 1:43:10
  didn't grow up thinking I was going to do those things.
• 1:43:12
  So to have those experiences, whether you finish first,
• 1:43:16
  second, 3rd, 10th, that is the enrichment of life.
• 1:43:20
  That is as Maddie grows up and becomes whatever she's going to
• 1:43:22
  become a doctor, a coach, a mom, and she's a daughter.
• 1:43:26
  Those are the kind of experiences she's going to be
• 1:43:28
  able to impart on others because she had a good team around her
• 1:43:32
  and taught her how to throw a bar a, a, a ball, a shot put
• 1:43:35
  far. I mean, it's kind of crazy that
• 1:43:37
  it's throwing this 4K thing far. You get to go to all these
• 1:43:40
  countries and meet all these crazy people and experience.
• 1:43:43
  I mean that just that to me is the beauty of sport and the
• 1:43:47
  beauty of coaching beyond accolade, beyond the metal,
• 1:43:52
  beyond PBS. It's that enrichment of life.
• 1:43:54
  I just, I just think that's absolutely cool.
• 1:43:57
  My, my, my kind of last wrap up question for you, assuming
• 1:44:01
  you're not in golf today, do you miss it?
• 1:44:05
  Do you regret it? I mean, you're you're a golfer.
• 1:44:07
  You're like the for us track people, the great golfer.
• 1:44:11
  It's like you got rid of that sport.
• 1:44:12
  Good. You came to the good side track
• 1:44:14
  and field. Do you miss it?
• 1:44:15
  Do you ever think about what life could have been that route?
• 1:44:18
  So I actually sort of stepped back a little bit from coaching
• 1:44:23
  to, to be close to my, my family.
• 1:44:25
  And so I, I do play a little bit more golf now.
• 1:44:29
  I do a little bit more work in golf, consulting with the East
• 1:44:32
  and Sea stuff, trying to sort of take back the learnings from
• 1:44:35
  track and field back there and oh wow, this way.
• 1:44:38
  Wait a minute. So you took a lot of things from
• 1:44:41
  golf to track. Now full circle.
• 1:44:42
  You're. Yeah.
• 1:44:43
  Because you've gotten better and more knowledgeable.
• 1:44:46
  Oh, that's neat. And, and so I'm sort of sort of
• 1:44:49
  somewhat back there with my little consulting business I run
• 1:44:53
  and and to some degree I've. I've not stepped away from
• 1:44:58
  coaching, but I I only have a couple of athletes that I
• 1:45:02
  coached because I moved away from Auckland and, and a lot of
• 1:45:08
  that was to do with just some reflections personally around.
• 1:45:15
  And, and you guys, I suppose are pretty lucky is like if you want
• 1:45:20
  to go to a big track meet, you might have to fly up to ours.
• 1:45:23
  If we want to go to a track meet, it's, it's weeks like we
• 1:45:29
  and so from from probably 2018 through to 2021, I, I traveled
• 1:45:41
  sort of three or four months of the year consistently and block.
• 1:45:44
  So I'll be home for a period of time.
• 1:45:47
  Our summer season would be in Australia quite a lot and our,
• 1:45:51
  your, your season, we would be with you in Europe.
• 1:45:56
  And my, my father and parents are getting older and my father
• 1:46:00
  in particular is having some surgeries.
• 1:46:04
  And the day before I got on the plane to go to Tokyo, dad went
• 1:46:11
  in for back surgery. Yeah.
• 1:46:14
  And, and that happened a couple of times since when I've been
• 1:46:18
  overseas and, and I just sort of thought, well, like, and, and
• 1:46:23
  the thinking was if, if everyone that I was coaching.
• 1:46:29
  And so at the time, there was probably I had 3-4, four people
• 1:46:37
  in the top duty in the world. And at the time I was like, if
• 1:46:45
  everyone, let's say dream scenario hero makes the final
• 1:46:50
  and three out of four medals, let's say.
• 1:46:54
  And. My father dies.
• 1:46:56
  Will I be happy with the time I've spent in the last 10 years
• 1:46:59
  with him? And then literally I could count
• 1:47:02
  on one hand how many, how many hours I've spent with them
• 1:47:07
  because, because part of that journey, like I was saying
• 1:47:11
  originally was like, I've got a, if you're going to shop, I've
• 1:47:14
  got a shop. So Christmas, Boxing Day, like I
• 1:47:19
  we're throwing it gets training time.
• 1:47:22
  If we want to be, if we want to be you guys or whoever, we have
• 1:47:27
  to do something that you guys aren't.
• 1:47:29
  And so, so I, I committed to that and and I still do.
• 1:47:32
  I just have support staff and a fantastic team that I work
• 1:47:36
  within formatting that, that help that and have A, and allows
• 1:47:42
  me to not be there as much so that like I don't end up sort of
• 1:47:49
  regretting some of the choices I made.
• 1:47:52
  And some of that comes with maturity.
• 1:47:54
  And, and so I stepped and so, so I stepped away a lot.
• 1:47:57
  And given that my dad's now the golfer in the family started
• 1:48:02
  playing a bit more golf and, and as a function of some of the
• 1:48:06
  stuff I've learned, I've started working with a few golfers.
• 1:48:09
  And whether I have it's, it's an interesting journey because sort
• 1:48:16
  of the stuff that I don't have in track and field, OK, the
• 1:48:18
  biases, etcetera, I do have in golf.
• 1:48:23
  And so I fight the opposite of what I fight in track and field.
• 1:48:28
  Which is, which is a. Cool journey to kind of go
• 1:48:31
  through an experience you sort of self-awareness and you catch
• 1:48:35
  yourself going like, is that a thing or is that just the thing
• 1:48:37
  I believe in? That's.
• 1:48:40
  Funny. So yeah.
• 1:48:41
  You know, Mike, it's interesting.
• 1:48:43
  I, I sit in a pretty privileged seat.
• 1:48:46
  You know, I, I get to interview coaches.
• 1:48:50
  I, I, I hesitate sometimes to say around the world.
• 1:48:52
  I feel like now I officially can say around the world to the
• 1:48:55
  podcast and, and I get to hear journeys and learn journeys of
• 1:49:00
  all different types. I've had people who coaches who
• 1:49:04
  were 80 plus years old on the podcast.
• 1:49:08
  I've had coaches who have coached for 80 days.
• 1:49:12
  It's their first time ever, you know, they were an athlete or
• 1:49:15
  whatever the, the semester before.
• 1:49:18
  And what's interesting, as I listen to your journey, you
• 1:49:21
  know, you're I, I love your age and stage of where you are and I
• 1:49:26
  love that I get to have this interaction with you.
• 1:49:28
  You know, I, I usually use like a 400 meter example, but I, I
• 1:49:32
  think I can do this with the hammer.
• 1:49:35
  It's easy for you where you are right now in your age and stage
• 1:49:39
  to think that, you know, you're especially as we're facing elder
• 1:49:43
  parents. And so we're, we're facing with
• 1:49:45
  the, the end of the story, if you will, it's easy for us in,
• 1:49:48
  in our area of, of age to think that I'm also getting closer to
• 1:49:53
  that stage. You know, I've done and, and for
• 1:49:55
  a guy like you who's very accomplished, like, man, I've
• 1:49:58
  done this and that and that, like, it's easy to think like,
• 1:50:00
  oh, I I know I'm I'm not gone yet, but you know, I'm winding
• 1:50:03
  down. I'm on the downhill.
• 1:50:05
  Dude, you're so young. How how old are you?
• 1:50:09
  You're. I think I yeah.
• 1:50:11
  Oh, you're younger than I even thought I was thinking you're in
• 1:50:13
  the 40s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:50:14
  You're 36, bro, 36. So you have been coaching esque
• 1:50:21
  for? About eight years, given eight
• 1:50:25
  years and track and field. Yeah, I was going to, I was
• 1:50:27
  going to give everything. I was going to give the whole
• 1:50:29
  SEC everything. What, 12 years if you count all
• 1:50:32
  of these. Yeah, let's use 12, right?
• 1:50:34
  12. 36 you know, I don't know how it is in New Zealand, but
• 1:50:38
  you know, we have a hard time financially retiring even at 66.
• 1:50:45
  So 30 more years for you. So let's say you get to retire
• 1:50:49
  at 66 and you know, with the way health and medicine is getting,
• 1:50:51
  we're going to live way longer. So we're going to be able to
• 1:50:53
  work. You guys like me and you work
• 1:50:54
  towards 7080 years old. But even at at at 66 or 30 more
• 1:50:59
  years, that's four more roughly three more roughly lifetimes of
• 1:51:04
  coaching you are in. So it's easy to think in the as
• 1:51:08
  we use a hammer analogy that maybe we're in our final turn,
• 1:51:11
  you know, we're getting close and you know, we got the release
• 1:51:13
  and the results and all that. You're barely in your first turn
• 1:51:17
  and that is exciting to me because the impact that you've
• 1:51:21
  had on others is great. Today at 36, well, guess what?
• 1:51:27
  Another 12 months and another two years, five years, 1020.
• 1:51:32
  You are going to be able to continue to have such an amazing
• 1:51:36
  impact on people. And I always typically say young
• 1:51:39
  people I know you're dealing with, you know, 'cause I'm, I'm
• 1:51:41
  usually stopping at 22 at the end of college.
• 1:51:43
  You're dealing with, you know, as people continue into a
• 1:51:45
  professional post collegiate, we would say here, you're going to
• 1:51:49
  continue to have that positive impact on them as your parents,
• 1:51:54
  You're going to continue. I can't.
• 1:51:57
  I had this picture of your dad and I've never seen I saw, you
• 1:52:00
  know, no clue what he looks like, but I had this picture of
• 1:52:04
  your dad hearing this story and just smiling like how proud of
• 1:52:09
  the because because you're not your story is.
• 1:52:12
  If I had, if I had to sum your story up in like 1 sentence,
• 1:52:15
  which is impossible. You have lived for other people
• 1:52:19
  that that's what that's what servant leadership is.
• 1:52:21
  Your your, your jollies, if you will, are are gotten from Oh,
• 1:52:26
  they got better. Oh, they were able to achieve
• 1:52:28
  this goal that they had. That is where you thrive in.
• 1:52:33
  And that is a life worth living, my friend.
• 1:52:36
  That is legacy. And so I'm just so excited to to
• 1:52:39
  be able to capture it at this age and to be able to sit on the
• 1:52:42
  sidelines and see what the next decade and next decade like I I
• 1:52:46
  can't imagine IA guy like you. I would not be surprised.
• 1:52:50
  I'm going to check in with you in 20 years and you're going to
• 1:52:53
  be Yeah. You know, I coach a bunch of
• 1:52:56
  surfers, you know, that's rotational.
• 1:52:59
  And yeah, I'm a surfer now. And you know, we do this thing
• 1:53:03
  and I, you know, I rehab veterans who, who have gotten
• 1:53:07
  hurt in wars or whatever, and I teach them how to surf and
• 1:53:11
  still, and I have no doubt I Oh my God, I hope that comes true.
• 1:53:14
  By the way, that would be amazing.
• 1:53:15
  I predicted that in 2024, but that that's what I feel like.
• 1:53:18
  That's what I see. And you're like, oh, you're
• 1:53:20
  going to be doing something, whether it's like in athletics
• 1:53:22
  at like this high level of, you know, Olympics and things like
• 1:53:25
  that, or on just the, the, the ground level, getting it done,
• 1:53:29
  helping people improve their lives, man.
• 1:53:30
  And I just, I just think that's so cool, bro.
• 1:53:33
  I just see that news. It's so much, man.
• 1:53:34
  Thank you. I love it.
• 1:53:36
  I love it. It's yeah.
• 1:53:37
  And and it's just, it's puzzles that excite me.
• 1:53:40
  Yeah. Like it's, it's never been about
• 1:53:42
  a lot of it's been about like my own sort of filling the hole in
• 1:53:48
  my own career. Like the gripe that I feel like
• 1:53:51
  I was let down and and not allowing that to flow into
• 1:53:55
  others. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:53:57
  But it's never been my career has never been thus far has
• 1:54:02
  never been sports specific. I've worked in boxing and beach
• 1:54:05
  flags and weightlifting and stand up paddle boarding and
• 1:54:09
  volleyball and it's just puzzles that I find exciting.
• 1:54:15
  And so you never know. I mean, at the moment I'm doing
• 1:54:18
  some lecturing at EIT here, which is a local kind of
• 1:54:22
  polytech and sports science. And, and it's, it's interesting
• 1:54:28
  seeing kids that would like me, like literally like me, you
• 1:54:32
  know, like kind of don't know what they're doing.
• 1:54:34
  And, and that's an interesting thing.
• 1:54:38
  And I work at A at the local, we have a sports facility here,
• 1:54:42
  quite a cool facility and seeing young athletes and young Eastern
• 1:54:47
  seas and, and I suppose like, like it's one of the, I suppose
• 1:54:55
  one of the issues was someone like me coaching a medalist is
• 1:54:59
  that people now perceive that I have knowledge.
• 1:55:01
  Like, like, I don't even know if I have knowledge.
• 1:55:04
  If you, if you bring your kid to me and you go, can you help them
• 1:55:09
  throw further? I'm just going like, like it's a
• 1:55:14
  process of us trying to figure it out again.
• 1:55:16
  We're back at the start. I've got, I've probably got a
• 1:55:19
  few not to do's, but I don't really have the to do's.
• 1:55:22
  And, and I think like I'd be lying if I see anything else.
• 1:55:28
  But, but some of the kids asked me like the SNC guys here, they
• 1:55:33
  asked me like, what's my advice? And I'm like, just just start.
• 1:55:38
  Yeah, like make some mistakes. Like the the beautiful thing.
• 1:55:43
  And, and probably one of the coolest things that I've had in,
• 1:55:49
  in my coaching career is, is Gus the mentor that I talked about
• 1:55:54
  earlier, because he's there was, there was a raft of PhD students
• 1:56:02
  under him and he just was curious about all sorts of
• 1:56:06
  stuff. And he's like like 50 years old,
• 1:56:09
  just still sending me stuff. And we use Skype and Zoom and
• 1:56:12
  we're talking about like hopping frequencies and all sorts of
• 1:56:17
  stuff. But he also allowed us to make.
• 1:56:20
  Mistakes and and he. Gave us some real reality when
• 1:56:27
  we needed it. And, and one of the most
• 1:56:31
  prominent stories there that probably he, he probably doesn't
• 1:56:34
  realize it, but he shifted the course of my career on the back
• 1:56:39
  of Maddie winning at World Juniors.
• 1:56:44
  He said he like like I was a young guy, pretty egotistical,
• 1:56:50
  probably just didn't know it. Like thought I was this kind of
• 1:56:54
  level headed, you know, but but I was probably pretty eager to
• 1:56:57
  school. I don't know.
• 1:56:59
  But I remember getting on the plane from Finland and I got a
• 1:57:03
  get a text from Gus saying when are you back?
• 1:57:06
  I want to catch up with you. And, and he he came up to
• 1:57:14
  Auckland and and he sat down with me and he was like, so, so
• 1:57:17
  where are you at? And I'm like, Oh, you know, like
• 1:57:21
  really good world junior champion and he goes So what do
• 1:57:29
  you think? I was like, oh, you know, like
• 1:57:32
  just kind of waffled my way through a pat on the back and he
• 1:57:39
  goes. Before the trip she threw 17 O1.
• 1:57:44
  After the trip, she threw seventeen O 9.
• 1:57:47
  She would have got that waking up in the morning without you.
• 1:57:52
  So what have you done? And and he goes, there's A and
• 1:57:59
  so he goes, you need to, you need to look at the data, look
• 1:58:02
  at the stats and figure this out because because you need to do
• 1:58:06
  better. And, and I sort of went from
• 1:58:11
  here to like, actually, do you know, you can't argue with that,
• 1:58:17
  right? Like like Mattie was young, she
• 1:58:22
  she should have been improving much faster than that.
• 1:58:25
  And so potentially I was letting her down at that point.
• 1:58:29
  And and so I go, like I said to gas like, like I actually don't
• 1:58:36
  know where to start. And he goes, wait, let's figure
• 1:58:42
  it out. And, and so while he gave me the
• 1:58:45
  reality of like, like actually, like probably you made some
• 1:58:52
  massive mistakes here. And, and he as part of that, he
• 1:58:56
  brought me back down. And then he helped me unpack the
• 1:58:58
  last like kind of couple of years.
• 1:59:00
  Like, Hey, you could have done this, you could have done this,
• 1:59:02
  you could have done this, you could have done this.
• 1:59:05
  And that that could have seen me down the path.
• 1:59:08
  Like without that I could have gone down the like, I'm the man.
• 1:59:12
  Yeah, we're doing everything great.
• 1:59:13
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:59:16
  And so, so he kind of shifted me back into this like curiosity,
• 1:59:20
  like this is a puzzle and you've, you've viewed this in
• 1:59:26
  light of an outcome, but not in light of the data that's within
• 1:59:30
  that outcome. So, so keep being curious about
• 1:59:34
  these puzzles and keep exploring them.
• 1:59:37
  Like it's OK to get it wrong. It's, it's not OK to think that
• 1:59:42
  you got it right when it wasn't quite it.
• 1:59:46
  And, and that was really early on in my career.
• 1:59:48
  And he set me down a different course to the point where I was
• 1:59:50
  like, Hey, actually like, like we're about our scales.
• 1:59:55
  And I've gone off on a tangent here.
• 1:59:57
  Like I need to come back to these puzzles to, to keep
• 2:00:01
  figuring out puzzles and, and stay there because that's what I
• 2:00:05
  actually get value out of in in my career.
• 2:00:09
  That's what excites me. That's a great reminder.
• 2:00:13
  You know, we talk a lot. I think everybody would agree
• 2:00:16
  when we talk about mentors and how valuable they are and and
• 2:00:19
  they are. That is a great example that be
• 2:00:24
  careful on my words here. I want to say a true mentor.
• 2:00:27
  I'm not putting anybody down here, but that a mentor will say
• 2:00:31
  the hard things to you that a mentor is not there.
• 2:00:34
  I should say it this way. There is a style of mentorship
• 2:00:37
  that is there to gas you up, tell you you're doing great.
• 2:00:40
  You know, there's times when we need that, when we're at low
• 2:00:42
  points and we need someone to say, hey, man, it's not as bad
• 2:00:45
  as you think, you're doing this great, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:00:48
  But but we also need those mentors that are like, hey, you
• 2:00:51
  feel like you're on top of the mountain.
• 2:00:52
  Well, what did you actually do? Let's talk about that to reset
• 2:00:56
  us a little bit on that curiosity stream.
• 2:00:59
  So that was a that's a great, great story.
• 2:01:00
  That's a great place to end it right there.
• 2:01:01
  Mike, thank you so much, man. I am so grateful for this.
• 2:01:06
  I, I, I love this aspect. I think this will especially
• 2:01:10
  amongst our throws coaches, but I'm encourage you if you are
• 2:01:12
  jump Sprint, you know, some of the top coaches we've had on
• 2:01:16
  this podcast talk a lot about that.
• 2:01:18
  You know, not to pigeonhole yourself that you're not a a
• 2:01:20
  sprints coach, you're not a throws coach, you're not a
• 2:01:22
  distance coach, you are an athletics coach.
• 2:01:25
  And so I'm going to challenge you if you're you, you may have
• 2:01:29
  gravitated towards this episode because you know, the title says
• 2:01:32
  throws coat, you know, he's in has success in the throws, but
• 2:01:35
  I'm gonna challenge you to share this with your other coaches.
• 2:01:38
  That and for you as a throws coach to expand your repertoire,
• 2:01:42
  if you will, that there's a lot to learn here.
• 2:01:45
  Even just the concepts. You know, we didn't get a lot of
• 2:01:47
  we didn't really get into XS and OS.
• 2:01:49
  We didn't talk about like what to do in the weight room for
• 2:01:51
  rotational and things like that. I love the way you describe the
• 2:01:55
  kind of the, I don't want to say the difference, but what makes
• 2:02:00
  up technique? And there's these bandwidths of
• 2:02:02
  the biomechanical aspect that, you know, you were describing
• 2:02:05
  that and I was thinking, oh, that's long jump.
• 2:02:07
  He's talking about long jump there.
• 2:02:08
  Oh, he's some of block starts like there.
• 2:02:10
  It wasn't like, oh, that's throwing like, oh, that's what
• 2:02:13
  we do to in the pole bar, the high jump.
• 2:02:17
  Like, yeah, there's things that parts of it that there's
• 2:02:20
  bandwidth of what it has to look like.
• 2:02:23
  And the whole thing together is stylistic is, is technique.
• 2:02:26
  So I just challenge you to think about some of the things he
• 2:02:28
  said. Listen to what he said there
• 2:02:30
  and, and how do you apply that to your to your coach?
• 2:02:32
  And so Mike, man, thank you so much.
• 2:02:34
  You know, one of the most valuable things that you can
• 2:02:36
  ever, ever give me is your time. It's early.
• 2:02:39
  I hope you had your coffee before you.
• 2:02:41
  You stepped in. You got a whole day ahead of you
• 2:02:43
  here, man. I'm I'm ready to kick it and go
• 2:02:45
  to bed, man. I'm, I'm out.
• 2:02:46
  I'm done, but just want to say thank you from the bottom of my
• 2:02:48
  heart, man, I absolutely enjoyed this.
• 2:02:52
  I got better. There's I love when, you know,
• 2:02:54
  I'm not a coach anymore. I'm coached in close to 20 years
• 2:02:57
  now, but I like when there's the subjects are about things.
• 2:03:00
  I'm like, Oh, I like I can actually take these concepts and
• 2:03:03
  make them better for our team. You know, the team that I helped
• 2:03:05
  lead here at Gill. So I'm just so grateful for that
• 2:03:08
  aspect with you as well, my friend.
• 2:03:10
  So thank you so much for for being here, man.
• 2:03:12
  Thank you for having me much appreciated and it's been a
• 2:03:15
  pleasure day. Have a chat and for you to
• 2:03:18
  provide a platform to the coaches to share stories and and
• 2:03:22
  I'd like I just had to say I hope that my story is of value
• 2:03:26
  to people and or they just get some laughs out of some of the
• 2:03:29
  stories. That's right.
• 2:03:31
  Sometimes we need that. That's exactly right.
• 2:03:33
  Hey, if if someone is listening and says hey, I want to pick his
• 2:03:36
  brain or I want to learn more, what might be the best route?
• 2:03:39
  I know you and I connected through Twitter.
• 2:03:41
  What what's the best route for someone maybe to reach out to
• 2:03:42
  you? Sports performance at
• 2:03:45
  nz@gmail.com I I can see you there and check it in the in the
• 2:03:50
  link if you like. Yeah, as I'll say, why don't you
• 2:03:52
  do that? Go.
• 2:03:53
  For it, e-mail me. Yeah, send me that or and any
• 2:03:55
  other links, anything you want and I'll put that in there.
• 2:03:58
  Absolutely. And and don't hang up when I
• 2:03:59
  stop here. We'll do a little post.
• 2:04:01
  I forgot to mention that during the pre.
• 2:04:02
  So guys and gals, thank you for being here again.
• 2:04:04
  I'm just always so, so humbled when I see how many people are
• 2:04:08
  listening to this podcast. Trust me, none of this hits my
• 2:04:11
  ego and that it thinks that you're here for me.
• 2:04:13
  You guys have access to me anytime and not not everybody's
• 2:04:16
  doing that. So I, I love that It's fine.
• 2:04:18
  You're here because of our guest.
• 2:04:19
  And you know, as we creep towards 300 episodes, as we
• 2:04:23
  creep towards the end of season 5 and we're going to be right
• 2:04:25
  back here in season 6 and 2025. I'm just so blessed, honored and
• 2:04:30
  grateful for the men and women who sit down with us.
• 2:04:33
  This is not I, I always say this is not an easy podcast to listen
• 2:04:36
  to because this isn't a 20 minute podcast.
• 2:04:38
  This we're, we're on, we're, we're past two hours here.
• 2:04:41
  I think this is not an easy to podcast to listen to, which
• 2:04:43
  means it's not a easy podcast to be on.
• 2:04:45
  So I'm always grateful when guys like Mike are willing to sit
• 2:04:48
  down and share their journey and their story and gas up their
• 2:04:51
  mentors. I, I just, I'm just so grateful.
• 2:04:52
  I, I sit in a very privileged and, and honored seat here to be
• 2:04:55
  able to help bring those connections together.
• 2:04:58
  So join us next week. We'll do it all over again and
• 2:05:01
  we'll have some fun. We'll probably be in the United
• 2:05:02
  States next week. Just going to guess, but New
• 2:05:04
  Zealand was a lot of fun today too.
• 2:05:06
  So thanks everybody. Have a great.
• 2:05:09
  If it goes to appreciate the coach the ones that pour people
• 2:05:12
  most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 2:05:16
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul
• 2:05:19
  For those of us stay on the go proper hand off and stay in the
• 2:05:22
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 2:05:24
  There's more than one way to go taking notes that's paying
• 2:05:27
  you're told it ain't practice If your purpose Saint Clair it
• 2:05:30
  can't happen until you listen. We're both is you can't mentor
• 2:05:33
  without a mentor here of experience.
• 2:05:35
  You can even invent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
• 2:05:38
  deliver to the price sacrifice. Can you give up you.
• 2:05:42
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 2:05:44
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 2:05:47
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 2:05:50
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000.
• 2:05:52
  Waste of time, choose none. So y'all cross finish line.
• 2:05:55
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 2:05:58
  to put in the network. Your athletics is the network.
• 2:06:01
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 2:06:05
  every track. Coach could be blessed.