Ep 7 - Common Goals

Hey guys, Ferret's Den podcast. I know there's been a little bit of time between recordings, but we thought we'd get another podcast out to you for the holiday season. I know a few people are going on a couple of long drives made for Christmas lunch and so this might be something you can tune into. I'm here with Josh Kelaik-Kavenar, the head of Data and Performance here at the Mara Racing. Good day guys. Good to be back on another podcast and give you something to digest over the Christmas and New Year period. David Wrath is on this week's episode which who is the coaching innovation and game strategy manager at the Essendom Football Club. David has an extensive background being with the Hawthorne Football Club during their premiership area back in the 2010s as the head of coaching and innovation back then. So while we're spending three years it's the St Kilda Football Club as the head of football. David also started his time 20 years ago now at the AIS working with the rolling and swimming teams along with many other coats and he's well versed in the biomechanics and strategy space. So I really hope you guys enjoy the episode. Enjoy! David thanks for coming on this episode of the podcast. Tell us a little bit about your current role and also a little bit about your past. Sure yeah my current roles in the sort of coaching innovation game strategy space with the bombers. Previously I worked in sport science biomechanics technique analysis that sort of space at the Australian Institute of Sport in the sort of period either side of the Sydney Olympics and after that moved into the AFL space firstly with Hawthorne I was there for 13 years from 2005 to 2018. One of the AFL for a short period in the sort of game analysis and rule change and coaching education space before having a stink with the saints. The World Beas as you mentioned and now with Ascendant. That's quite a I just feel like the time you've worked and there would have been a lot of change over that sort of period. It'll be really interesting to sort of dig into that. I'm not sure how much you know about Keremah Racing and the work that we're doing in the sort of sport science area but we've sort of been in that pivotal time where there's been a lot of change and introduction of using technologies and changing the way we train our horses so I think that would be quite interesting to get from your perspective. Yeah well you know that period around the 2000s was a pivotal change in particularly in biomechanics at event of a lot of digital technologies which made motion capture in particular a lot easier. When you're looking at how people move you want to quantify it and when I started at the AOS we were doing that with you know with the old Sydney film. We'd actually film with the you know the Sydney photography, the Sydney film that the basically they use for making motion pictures. We'd have to get that developed and then we'd sit down and manually digitise so you'd have to go through and watch each frame of vision and manually sort of mark with a cursor where the joint landmarks were and then you'd go through and process. That was a really laborious process so from you know the starting point of getting your film it could be months later before you have any data. By the time I finished at the AOS the technologies had changed Keremah Klem. We had you know marker based motion capture which meant you could turn around the data you know within a day and now it's you know it's even quicker. There's maritalist systems that can give you instantaneous data so yeah there's been a massive you know changing the way you go about things because of technology and biomechanics for sure. Yes really interesting about that work you've seen along the journey and no doubt you saw it a long long time ago. From the biomechanic point of view we're trying to look at a little bit in terms of our AOS as we use some software that uses motion analysis to objectively quantify trot ups so we're basically trying to monitor gate and any changes in gate from a visual point standpoint. Was there anything about your work back at the AOS to look at sort of monitoring for injury risk prevention? Was it a performance related measures you're looking at or sort of talk us through what you're actually monitoring there from a biomechanic point of view? Yeah sure ironically one of the first biomechanics studies ever performed was by a guy called Mybridge who's considered one of the fathers of biomechanics and that was on a quine gate so you know trying to quantify when a horse galloped I think it was galloping whether it had all four hooves off the ground or not and so there's a great old footage of that being done and they obviously they found yesterday that was the case that all four hooves were off the ground. But yeah ironically the early biomechanics was done on horses and then they started using this technology and applying it to other forms of movement so there's some similarly cool old you know stuff on file that you can find of horse gate but yeah with with humans it was both it was for technique analysis and for injury prevention did a lot of work in close conjunction with the physiotherapist at the AOS in those days where we do we use a lot of the icon technology which is the marker system I refer to before so you basically put little retro reflective spheres on and attach them by tape and you track the body segments that way so that was largely injury prevention but then with some of the other coaching applications it was more around techniques so definitely both but there's been a real transition I think in how we think about you know human movement and optimizing technique and I think when I started off in this area there was definitely the feeling or the idea that we were trying to search for an optimal technique and that if we could identify that then we could coach everyone to do that technique and that's changed dramatically and we now realise that there are multiple ways of doing things and there's been quite a few studies which have looked at how we're more in Helium exports and found you know champions do things differently that don't all move the same so we're not necessarily trying to identify one optimal technique for everyone anymore we're trying to look at the common factors but also the variability and the more the functional variability so that variability is not such a bad thing in human movement we don't want to try and necessarily do the same thing exactly the same but a feature of expertise is being able to modify that variability functionally so to actually change your technique to demands so yeah I mean maybe in in-horse you know horse applications that may mean that a you know a horse subtly changes the way it it gallops on different surfaces you know to deal with that so that would be the application you probably in how bottom mechanics has changed over the past three to 20 years and how have looked at things I think in your sphere perhaps yeah that's interesting I you know I picked up a few points there but in everything that we're doing with horses we've sort of found a similar pattern and a way of looking at horses just even with their their heart rate their locomotion recovery sort of every element there's no real one set profile that says this horse is going to be a champion in this horse is not all this horse is going to be a sprinter this is going to horse is going to be a stare it's sort of trying to find a baseline for a horse and then monitor that and then you know train that horse individually and try and improve them for type of horse they are yeah so I think from like I'm probably always trying to relate back to horses based on what you're discussing there but I picked up when you said that you work closely with a physio so if you are monitoring an athlete are you working with a physio then to do exercises to change the way they move or strengthen if they have a weakness is that what you mean yeah definitely a lot of that would be screening so you're getting baseline measurements you know trying to quantify how an athlete moves when they're healthy and then you can look at deviations from that there was work done with you know putting in orthotics and seeing how that older people's movements you know definitely pre and post injury looking at changes and you know changes in variability as well because variability can be a signal of healthy gate or can be you know if there's a lack of variability or the ability to adapt then that can be a signal for someone who's perhaps at risk yeah yeah that makes sense because so if you are working with a horse and you notice that they had something technically wrong with their gate and you wanted to improve it I'm just thinking if you were working with an athlete that couldn't communicate with you I think that's where our difficulty lies with using biomechanics because we can't explain to a horse that we need them to strengthen this area or but yeah how would you sort of I suppose take on a task like that yeah this is a fascinating area and there's been again a lot of change in this space with humans and there's there's almost a suggestion that technology is given us too much information in some senses and that we can overcoach and you know that there is still a fair bit of coaching which is around I try to identify this this perfect technique in trying to get around and kick this you know in 40 it's trying to get around kick the same you know and that's not necessarily the right way to go about it so The other approach is to, instead of telling someone how to move, is to use constraints to shape how they move. So for example, if we're working on someone's balance when they're moving, we make their balance, we challenge their balance. So we might get them walking on a beam or something like that, rather than necessarily saying, we want you to be better balanced when you walk. If we're working on someone, an idea is say someone's having a problem with their stance leg with a kickin' and we want them to walk. We want them to be a little bit more aware of their balance. We can get them to wear a sock on a basketball court rather than their boots where they're more challenged. And that'll change the way they move. So shaping the environment and shaping the task with different constraints is a really different way of doing it. And you can get, you can elicit different movement from changing the demands of the task as opposed to telling them what to do. You know, so with your stuff, it might be that changing surfaces, you know, obviously changing heights of obstacles if they're jumping horses and things like that could be ways to go about it. You might even have different, potentially different, you know, hoof plates or I'm not probably using the right technical terms there. But you could be playing around with stuff like that that could change the dynamics of the way they move without telling them, or you can't tell them, obviously with the horse. But we do that sort of thing with humans as well. So adapting the balls, adapting the equipment using, you know, in striking sports such using different weighted instruments in tennis. You can do it by changing the speed of the balls. All that sort of stuff is a different way to go about it, which is really productive. Yeah, it's an interesting one. And I think we just touched on about there about this overload of information. And one that I just had noted down for you was how a couple of years ago we were at a conference and someone was talking about how athlete surveying is the new rage and athlete surveying God is coming through constantly. And I've talked to a lot of people who sometimes say, they can't really use that much. And I was just interested to get your take on it because it was interesting from our perspective that we're not actually able to communicate with our athletes that much. I was just wondering when you're trying to strengthen up these specific skills and areas of these athletes, how much value you can put into those surveys. And we can obviously ask the jockeys for feedback, who are probably the closest to the athlete at the time. But yeah, just interesting to hear how you use that sort of athlete survey data. Yeah, well, definitely our performance and conditional guys use the RPE, which is the rate of perceived exertion. We get that sort of feedback following drills and at the end of sessions and stuff like that, which is useful data. But not on its own. We'll combine that data with a whole range of different scores around muscle soreness and sleep. And just trying to flag stuff that might pop up. It's useful. It doesn't always tell the story. Sometimes your eye tells you more. And that you actually need to see them in the performance environment. I visited Harrison, Jermaine, which were obviously a high level soccer team in France some years ago. And they did a lot of monitoring. But they found the most useful thing was to actually to check the readiness of their players. What they do is they put them into a small-sided game at a start of training and get live data on how they were responding in that, rather than actually relying on surveys. They put them in the performance environment and get a sample. And then respond to that start of training. So if the players were flagging in that game, they'd have data that they could actually use to modify their training. So it's different than asking players, but it's another way of going about it. And I think that's a really useful approach. Yeah, I actually had a brief conversation with Cody Waitman from the Bulldogs. And he was saying that all their players, they do a-- I think it was their-- a doctor. They do an adductor test. And then that would tell them if they were at risk of injury or would change their training regime for that day if they were fatigued or based on that test, is that something that you've done at Essendor? Yeah, our physios and our rehab team do that at Essendor. I'm not involved explicitly in that. I do get exposed to that data when we have regular high-performance meetings where we would talk to around player readiness and how players are tracking. And that's one of the points of conversation always. There's regular screening that's done, which is updated and informative for sure. So how does it all work at Essendor or other places that you've worked with regard to what you do in the biomechanics and then your sports science and the players and the coaching team and how decisions are made around players or how that's all sort of communicated or-- Yeah, so my role's probably morphed a long way from being what you call a biomechanics role since I've started in the 40 of-- I've moved into different areas. And one of those is game strategy. One of those is the more skill acquisition space. So I don't strictly work in the biomechanics space anymore. But I still have, obviously, that baseline knowledge and can apply those ideas and have input into decision-making using a biomechanical lens. But it's a collaborative process. So we all have regular meetings where we sit down with our doctors, our physios, where we have staff and our conditioning staff. And there's a coaching presence in that meeting as well where we'll basically go through the whole list of our players and status update and red flag, work out plans moving forward to modify loads as necessary for the upcoming week. So yeah, that's an ongoing discussion with all stakeholders. And it's always a balance because we're trying-- especially this time of the year-- we're trying to get conditioning load into the men for ball load. But it's a fine balance. And you don't always get it right. And sometimes you get a few that flip over the edge. And it's a little bit like the canary in the coal mine that you want to be close to that edge. But you don't want to be pushing over it consistently. And you will get a few little red flags. And monitoring those closely is really important. But you're not going to get through them without getting those niggles. You're always going to have a few that crop up, but say you modify and monitor. And yeah, it's a very collaborative process. Yeah, that's really speaks volumes. And it's exactly the same as what we do with horses here. And trying to, you know, combine as many data points and as much feedback as we can and, you know, using everything together to try and work out exactly where they are on that load and how they're handling the work. And so it's quite cool to see how, you know, quite a different sport that how it sort of all aligns in the same way as well. Yeah, track their training lives really closely. We have a number of metrics that we use in terms of the, you know, the different speed bands that they move in. And their accelerations, they're probably the key metrics at our high performance staff look at in terms of profiling each session. And we work closely so that the planning of training is a really collaborative process as well, done with our coach from a tactical perspective, we'll look at what we're trying to get out of our week. And then we'll sit down with our high performance staff together and we'll say, these are the constraints. This is the amount of load we want to get into them. You know, we want this much low level load, this much of the higher speed stuff. You know, watch, watch later on this week, because there's a couple that are coming off a camp or all coming off a camp, we've recently been on camp to baller. So, you know, that will impact things. Yeah, it's very collaborative. And it combines the tactical and the physiological and the psychological. I guess it's interesting to talk about that. And we're monitoring that going forward as well. And we database it obviously. And you probably will be collating that from wherever you've worked in the past as well. But how much sort of applied metrics that you apply these days from day to day that have you learnt from sort of the research you've done in the past? And obviously, a touch base is out sort of looked at your, you know, research gate you've been involved in a lot of research publications, which will put pop in the link to the podcast of this episode, which is, there's a really interesting stuff in there. But we're trying to get involved more and more with these spaces, which we've got such large data sets for equine based research institutions to go off. Sort of how much have you learnt in the past from sort of research collaborations with universities and alike? You'll look definitely the research stuff informative. It's different working with, you know, particularly from a skill perspective, very different working with athletes from a coaching perspective as working from a scientific perspective. Because when we're running a scientific study, we're trying to look for, you know, differences between experts and novices or, you know, optimizing individual technique, that sort of thing, whereas with individual athletes, you know, with, I suppose the difference is with research studies, we're using that really high burden of proof, you know, you're looking for that. Peac was 0.05, that very small margin and the burden of proof is quite high from a statistical significance point of view. Whereas with coaching, you just want a difference. You don't necessarily need that, you know, that we have. really clinical data driven to see the way that would be generalized across populations. You're just looking at changes with individual athletes. So it's a really different focus from a coaching lens than it is from a research lens. I think that's one thing that's distinctly different about the two realms of working. With one, yes, you're looking at big data sets and you're looking for trends. And so you've got a lot of subjects and that can cloud differences, whereas it's almost n equals 1. Every athlete is one subject and you've got to individualize which gives you more freedom in some ways. So big differences in that regard. - We're actually doing a bit of research ourselves and I understand what you're saying there with sort of trying to look for something. And obviously there's not as much research in the equine world, not in an applied sort of setting or within natural race or stable. And you look at the research that's been done in horses or rate horses, it's always sort of five or six horses and two drop out for whatever reason. So we're sort of feel like we're in a privileged position where we should be trying to offer our support to universities and allowing them to do research in our stable. But it also benefits us because if we can find small insights or marginal gains, whether that is in nutrition or biomechanics or training horses, and we've actually recently started some research with University of Melbourne looking at load management and injury prevention so that hopefully might be able to draw some insights on our, we've been doing our PE and chronic workloads. But it just gets difficult with horses because you don't get their actual feedback or the difference with track services or duration or we're sort of just doing our best I suppose. - Yeah, it's interesting, it's, you may find the same as we find that, with different stimulus, you'll get responders and you'll get non-responders. And the problem with that is when you combine all the data together, then it gets washed out. So really looking at individual-based analysis, I think it's a really productive way to go rather than necessarily combining data can be really useful because you can get the power of large data sets can really understuff, but it can also cloud your analysis if you're not careful. So I think looking at individual responses is a really productive way to go about it. - I think that's key there, touching on that base that it's individual-based, which I think we've learnt a lot, Kat, you'd agree there along the way that it's individual-based training and obviously measuring life for life's, when we look at the likes of the recovery or action and I remember grabbing out all the data, looking at how much would you expect a horse to shorten its action on a rain-affected track-based, in training and as a whole, they're actually, they're not actually shortening or changing their action, but when you look at it individually, they might be adapting and it's not necessarily whether or not they preference one, which you probably see a lot in the human world as well. It's just that adaptation to a different environment, you know what I mean? - Exactly, yeah, that's the point I was referring to before about the constraints-based things, that's exactly the application of that. And that, you know, perhaps as a, if you wanted a horse to shorten its stride, then maybe there's a sweet spot with track, the wetness of the track, which is again individualized. So, you know, that'd be something that would be interesting to play with. - Yeah, that was also just going to ask you, when you're talking about respond to the non-responders, what were your actual metrics there? Was it a strength based or was it, like from testing? - Yeah, that's more, more from a, you know, a load perspective, I suppose. I'm trying to think of a really good example of that. You know, even power training, you know, that our strength guys are doing different people to respond differently to that. And so, you know, it'll be how they recover, you know, whether they've got the capacity to actually, you know, whether they're fast twitch, athlete or a slow twitch athlete, and they'll obviously respond. So, I'm always fond, you know, really quick responses to power training. Others, you want to get much out of, based on their fiber typing. So, I presume you guys do boxies and that sort of stuff as well. - We do that based off of gene test. - You're watching. - That looks at a gene that tells us if they have got a higher degree of fast twitch or slow twitch. - Yeah, well, that'd be pretty informative, obviously. You know, that's, we sort of generally know, based on how they respond to our training. We don't, we don't do biopsies. That sort of has been done in the past, but we don't do that with Aval for Paul for sure. But yeah, you know, you have different ways of assessing that responsiveness, I suppose. But training tells you a lot. - Yeah, and I suppose from a psychological sort of area, do you find that you have to train your, like you have to look at your individual athletes and change the way you try to get them to do something or to change, or do you have any sort of, I suppose, from a player not wanting to change their way, they do something, or if you've sort of picked up some, yeah, it was. - Yeah, the psychological component. I mean, particularly if we're looking at it from a skill perspective, the psychological aspect of skill acquisition is a massive determinant. Firstly, do they want to change? Are they actually aware that they've got a problem or a deficit that can be addressed? And that can be psychological barriers to that. Some athletes have problems accepting that they're doing something that is less than functional or it can be optimised. They can take it as a personal slight, or they've been told to do things a different way in the past, and their psychological makeup doesn't predispose them to actually take information really well. There are a whole lot of things. It may be that they've been told that they're really poor at a skill and don't think they can change. So that change might set. Mindset is really important. Yeah, it's a massive part of what we do, particularly obviously, as coaches, rather than as scientists, we deal heavily in this psychological space. And if you can't work in that space, you won't get re-far with athletes because it's all very well to have the data. But data's only evidence, and it doesn't actually change anything, unless you can work through that with the athlete. Yeah, absolutely. It rings a lot of bells with us. I mean, we set up the operation and I think I've discussed it with a couple of times. It's good to have the feedback and monitoring there, but what are we actually doing to, and cats applying that in terms of the adaptations to training and actually breaking down the mold of what usually would be done, and really working around training programs to actually optimize to get the peak performance out of some horses. And we had some success with one that cat had changed this year, which was a key to sushi. You got to the Melbourne Cup. It was probably on the side of a lot of makeup of slow-tweet fibers, and cat was able to change his program and put some faster work into his training program. And it sort of have a bit more of a turn of foot. And he was pretty effective in that, winning a nice race, and then going on to the Melbourne Cup and performing really well. So it's not just about sort of being that boring monitoring mechanism and having that data like you say. It's about actually what you do with that. That is key, no doubt. Yeah. And I think we're talking about the response and non-responders. I think one model that's really useful in that space is that idea of actually probing and seeing what an athlete does or a horse in your case. And then sort of ramping up, if you see a response or dampening it down, if you don't, and being adaptive, not necessarily thinking as a coach in our, well, not necessarily thinking not all the answers, but being prepared to actually test something on a small time frame and actually see if you get a response and then adapt on the fly. So it's a test and learn sort of model, I think, which is really useful. And that's maybe something you guys could think of that as well. And what it sounds like you are, Kat, sounds like that's exactly what you've done there. Yeah, and you actually do see it in a horse when they're responding well to training. They sort of have a new sort of aura about them. They bounce around. They sort of come on in their coat and they bright-eyed and used to actually saw that with a key to sushi, but that's a big part of the training team and what Kieran and Jack and the rest of the team do and actually they're bound to see that in a horse and make those changes. And then the data is there just to sort of support that and often just help them confirm that that's what they're seeing and it's right. But yeah, it's interesting that you sort of see that yourself as well. Yeah, well, I mean, from it, you can try to make technical changes with athletes. If you get that bright-eyed sometimes, well, you get the dull-eyed sometimes as well and you know that you know you're not getting through and so you have to adapt and try something totally different and different way of framing things. With us athletes learn differently. So some of them like visual presentation information, some like to hear it, auditory, some like to be able to do things. And so firing the right way or the right mode of getting that across is challenging, but you've got to be prepared to adapt. And look for that, you can see whether there's this bug in the eye like you're talking about or not. And if you're not, you need to try something different. Yeah, that's cool just to see that a better line. At the end of the day, there are athletes and they're all individuals and that's what we love about coaching or training. So if that sort of realisation that you're getting somewhere and you're seeing the benefits of the changes that you've made in getting a result. No, I think that really captures how my philosophy has changed working that space. I think when I started off in biomechanics, I'm really keen to use numbers to prove and capture the ideal technique. Now the numbers are sort of you're on a journey and you use the numbers to give you feedback and adapt. And the athlete's learning rather than you teaching, which is a little bit different way to go about it. Yeah, that is well put. And I would definitely agree that that's sort of the journey that we've been on here as well. I think we could probably just continue to talk and talk all day, but that's been very insightful. I've really enjoyed talking to you Dave and hopefully you have a successful season this year with Essenden. I know we've got a few Essenden fans in the office, so they'll be very interested to listen to the podcast. And I'm sure we can maybe have some more chats maybe outside of this podcast because it would be definitely interesting to get things further. Yeah, it sounds like you guys are doing some really interesting stuff. We'd be great to hear some more of it. No, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for your time, Dave. Appreciate it. No worries, good to check out. Bye. [MUSIC]