Gary Keegan interview | What makes a high performance environment

This is an Irish independent podcast. Now welcome so thrilled with our guest today I have to say because he has been hiding in plain sight for long time now in Irish sport. He's had a remarkable career when you listed all out along with Billy Welch over 20 years ago now, not to date as old but he in many ways pioneered the high performance unit that was so successful for Irish boxers, subsequent to the Sydney Games, did that for five, six years then worked at the Sport Ireland Institute we'll call it now from 08 to 17, again putting various programs in place to try and take Irish sport to the next level. And then in the midst of it all, the words seemed to get out that he was quite good because Jim Gavin came calling, working with the Dublin footballers for 15 through to 19 give or take Leam Sheetie's hurlers, the core curlers, various points including last year, a couple years at Lancter Rugby, London Business School Lecturer and works in the business world through his business uppercut and the Lions this summer. I suspect a whole bunch of teams we don't even know of it. So I am of course talking about Gary Keegan. Gary has given us this time today because he spoke this morning at the Benacol conference, it was a habit stacking event which we all need in January I suspect where people heard about how tiny daily habits can lead to extraordinary long term results. And so very happy to welcome Gary Keegan to the podcast. Gary, good to have you on. Thanks Joe, thanks for having me. So you're described in various ways when I read about your sports psychologist which I'm not sure is strictly true, mental strength, performance guru, horse whisperer, you name it. How would you describe yourself? I think I like the horse whisperer. One, that's a nice one. Yeah, I'm not a psychologist. I would consider myself in a high performance expert. So I've been in the field for nearly 25 years. I've seen most of what could be seen in terms of individual sports and team sports. So I've built up a lot of experience over a 25 year period. Could you take us back for a moment I suspect that something you're asked about a lot but just to for younger listeners even because time is flying by. Post the Sydney Games in 2000, the Irish government, I mean, the sporting world at large recognized that we as a country had fallen massively behind. And so a degree of funding came into Olympic sport. One of those sports, I think there were three or four initially. I know with rowing, I think sailing as well, possibly athletics. But boxing certainly was earmarked as one of the sports where we could really get our act together and the funding could bear dividends. And so you I guess being a performance director as such alongside Billy Walsh and from kind of O2 territory to always really got that thing off the ground. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, I think you've you've described the well in terms of I think our Olympic programs are Olympic sports for falling off to the Olympic map. We weren't achieving any consistency around kind of world class performance, whether it be Europeans or championships or Olympics. And part of the Olympics side as well was was also in consideration at that time. So Sydney review had identified that the rest of the world had moved on, had professionalised our systems and had performance directors, coaches, science and medicine staff. And with facilities, etc around top athletes and Ireland were doing nothing so we were well behind everybody else. So some of these systems were open running a decade and a half before we arrived to the to the scene. So they chose four sports and you're correct Joe boxing was one of those sports and I think boxing may have been selected because it had a record for the most Olympic medals at that time. But that history of medals had gone right back to 92 and then the flow of medals had pretty much stopped after that. And we know consistency in medals, you know the success was never systemic. And so we got a chance to get some investment to put together a high performance unit and then a high performance program for Irish boxing. That was established in 2002 and then we start to hire coaches, Billy being the head coach or aunt here being the head technical coach and a couple of others in around the talent program and from a coaching perspective. So literally we were bringing something together for the first time we were green, we knew nothing about high performance. There was no example in the country that we could copy in terms of a system or a structure. So we had to kind of learn by doing and figuring things out and to start I guess I put a business approach to it in terms of what is our vision for the program. What strategy do we need to bring this thing forward? What does the environment need to look like? How do we structure that? What does process actually mean? How do we implement that in the context of training and developing athletes? And then how do we get into what good looks like? So how do we get into the best camps in the world? Zor was very helpful in terms of getting into the kind of Russian system, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, etc. So we were able to get exposure. But before we got there, we got into France and then we got into Germany who on the western nation side were two very successful box nations. So getting in behind and speaking to the top people in those programs was very helpful for us and for our learning and nobody really saw us as a threat. And we were tipping our hat to everybody and we were walking in to training environments across the world with a video camera, literally video and everything they were doing. So we were, you know, as a fancy term now, we were stealing intelligence from from the opposition and they weren't looking and they weren't paying attention to us. And we over the course of I'd say about three and a half years performance grew. I don't remember speaking to the media in the first year and saying, guys, look, we're not going to be achieving major medals in year one, year two. You have to assess us on performance improvement. I said, and we will progress. We graduated the competitions that we were going into to try and build a level of success and build a level of confidence and belief that the athletes could perform and achieve at that level. So we've done some pretty innovative things at that time and we got right into sports signs. You know, we, we, and we didn't jump in and take everything on to begin with. We brought a physio in Johnson McAvoy. We said, okay, we're breaking down with soft tissue injuries all the time. Can you have a look and tell us what you think? And he felt that he felt that the boxes weren't robust enough physically to be able to take on full-time training. And so then we heard an SSC coach. And then we kind of built the team nutritionists came in next because boxes is a way caterpillar sports and they have a challenge with eating properly and all that type of stuff and good diets. Then we centralized the program in Dublin, which was a major decision, you know, because nobody wanted that nobody wanted that and nobody believed that it would actually work or boxes would come to Dublin. But they came because I believe that had to be centralized because if we had a decentralized that we would have had less control and the quality of work that was going on would have been harder to manage. So having everything central and having our best resources in around the athletes in terms of coaching and sports science and medicine was a major deal for us. And then we transformed what was one ring and seven bags to three rings, an SSC area, a physio area, a recovery area. We built, we built the dormitory in the attic and the guys lived there, slept there, ate there, socialized there, got together, got to know each other. And for an individual sport, I felt it was really important that we would build a TV toss that we would share IP, we would share experiences that guys would learn from each other and that proved to be very beneficial over time. And we put our ambition on the wall joe rights that was pretty major and we, because a lot of people said we, you know, that vision is unrealistic, it's supposed to be unrealistic, it's supposed to be unreasonable. But we had our vision was to consistently stand on world podiums, we were naive, but we were excited about the possibility of that and had no idea how we could make that happen. And the hell was really important, but we had the why we were there and we had a belief that if we could produce Irish boxes who could compete and win on the world stage, well then we also needed to produce more class coaches, more class science and medicine staff. So this big kind of development journey that everybody had to develop and grow together and there was a bit of a servant, your apprenticeship at a high performance level and being curious of being open and known that there will be a lot of setbacks and a lot of obstacles, a lot of difficulty along the way. Yeah, this isn't meant to be like a pointed question. What qualified you to all did to do all this nothing absolutely nothing I had been coaching for at that point 70 years within the organization had worked my way up to the ranks Austin crude and Lord rest and Jerry story. And I guess co-opted me on to the national coaching committee maybe as an administrator, but prior to that I was running the you know at a part time basis voluntary basis I was running the kind of international squad training. And I was starting to put some ideas to some of the more senior coaches, some of them rolling their eyes at me and stuff like that, but I had an idea that we could do better. How we should approach it more professionally and get proper training plans in place not just under the back of a matchbox that type of stuff and I remember Billy at that time I'd ask Billy would he be coaching with Nicholas Cruz in the lead into Atlanta 96 or lead into Sydney, actually, he'd been doing some work with in the screws is coaching the national team and I'd ask them would he go and coach the you team. And I was too impressed, but I felt we need our best coaches down at the younger age grades and that that was the future and we needed to create a legacy for for our box of by thinking longer term in terms of the pathway. We were always kind of focused on this season and this championship was opposed to how do we build out for the longer term. So I had a bit of a strategic muscle didn't realize that that's what it was, but I was thinking about what would it take for us to be in a place in five years time and start to put the structures and processes and systems in place to begin to achieve that. So I ended up in I was chair of coach education for boxing for all the coaches and I ended up in a meeting reporting to the Irish sports council at the time, nail sport Ireland on this where we were with our coaching process because they were obviously funding the organization at the time. And the guy who was sitting across Shane Keane, who works for the Irish sports council at times sit across the table, he said, well, what about the Atkins enhancement program, which was the first high performance investment. And I said, what's the Atkins enhancement program? He said, well, it's, it's investment for high performance and boxing has been chosen as one of the programs, one of four programs and we failed to get an application last year. And just five days left before the application window closes. So I don't like a rug, I tapped him on the on the answer, I'll have a go at that. Okay. And so I put together the first plan and investment case for Irish boxing, we look for 1.1 million and we got 225,000 I think and high performance was born. So, so interesting. Any time I listen to any of the boxers talk about those early years, it seems like the place was just pumping with energy. There was kind of magic in the air and as you've detailed, you know, it was, it was thought out and it was, it was structured and it was an intelligence behind it. But I, I sense from the boxes like almost a giddyness about the whole thing, like a wonderful time. It was wonderful and a stressful difficult figure, but trying to find out, you know, break a new ground and try to figure out things an exciting place and I was reading business books. Anything that seemed to speak to where we were at culturally or whatever, and comable ideas and just experimenting with them and many of them worked so many didn't. But I remember, you might be aware that you have Steve Bonds, he's a boxing commentator over the UK, he came over to see us and he wrote a big article on us and he called us to Cubans of Europe. It was just brilliant because we were living, eating, sleeping, the whole nine yards there and we traveled all over the world. We know where did we not. So it was no fear. We know fear. I'm not saying the athletes didn't have fear, but we didn't have fear. We knew that we needed to expose them. But in a clever, structured way, but we needed to show them what world class was. This is what it looks like. This is what you're looking to compete against. So therefore, this is how you have to prepare to perform at that level. So that was really, really exciting. We used, you know, process was, you know, let's, let's, we don't control outcomes. So let's not worry about the metals. We know where we want to get to, but let's look at what is the process to get there, whether it's from round one to round four or five or round three, or whether it's belt one to belt five, whatever it is. Whatever it is, what is the process or what is the first punch to the second defense to the first move. We broke it right down into the, into the raw detail of it. And we start to give them more confidence. I'll give you an example of why that program was one of the elements that made it really successful. Was there analysis of what works. So we brought in an analyst to work with the team when we felt we had the resource to do so when we felt we had the bandwidth to start to look at that area. So we didn't load with everything. We took it literally step by step and we were probably two and a half years in before we brought the analyst in to build out this team for us. And I think we spent 11 months just trying to figure out what the template would look like and what key features of the belt we were looking at from a technical perspective. And when we got 11 pages when when we finished that exercise and I said we needed down to one page. And we got it down to one page and said, okay, now can I start analyzing our box to know to go to look at the top five boxes in each way division. And we believed we had seven divisions that we could be competitive and potentially even win medals in. So once he does send weight divisions, I want to know what those top five fighters are doing. So the analyst went out and started to analyze these fours. Now we sent them out with our coaching teams out to multinational tournaments and the coach are saying, well, that's a job. That's a right hand. That's a whole that's a body shot. That's not a score. That is that type of we educated along the way. So he started doing and what we found out was that the best fighters in the world did less, but did it better than everyone else. And we were trying to create the all around boxing, you know, so it helped us narrow our focus and get much clearer that we were operating to the athlete strengths sounds obvious. You know, I think Andy Farrell always talks about presume nothing to be over everything. You know, and we presume that that's how it should be. And that was a big learning for us. We stripped the back work to the athlete strength, make them feel really confident in what is capable to do. And then off we go. So, I mean, you could have stayed there for life, I suspect, and you very much didn't and you went to work with them. We'll call it the sport Ireland. It was Irish Institute of Sports, Sport Ireland Institute for a long time. And that was about building other programs and pathways and all of this big picture stuff. So it's interesting in the midst of all that that, you know, Burner Dunn will say, Jim Gap wants to meet you for a chat. And that three hour meeting morphs into you work with the Dylan footballers. And I've mentioned some of the teams at the top of the show be the temporary hurlers, the core curlers. The Irish rugby team now in a kind of full time capacity for the last five years or so. So you've kind of segwayed a little bit from that real program director thing into maybe working directly with teams. And as I understand it, like one on one work with players and talking to the group a lot and kind of like into the weeds of a group, is that right? Yeah, well, it's indicative of my career, you know, that I wanted to explore different areas to see could I achieve in those spaces. And when I got to the end of the boxing program, I felt I wanted to try something different. I could have stood there and enjoyed the sunshine, but I just felt I wanted to try something different. So that was really interesting. And it just gave me exposure to performance directors, to coaches, to athletes across a wide range of sports, who had all sorts of challenges and all sorts of insights and approaches to how they did things. And we put a performance planning process in place at the Institute because I felt it was important that we learned from each other. So the strategies that the different sports were building was common truth is to for technical assessment essentially. And we learned so much about what was happening. And somewhere within that period Jim Gavin came out to have a chat. And as you say, very good done. And kind of asked me would it would I chat to Jim? And of course, I was very open. I had no intention of getting into that space. I was busy with the work that I was doing. But Jim, I think it was after the 2014 final against Tony goal. Was it the final semi final? But he did lost that game. Yeah. Was a semi was it? Yeah. Yeah. So the lost that. And he was he was opening curious about how it happened. And what we needed to do to make sure it didn't happen again. And that's Jim and the nutshell. So we sat down. Three hours. I think I remember Jim kept his overcoat on for the three hours. So we got so gross to the conversation that he never even took his coat off. And he said we'll come over and talk to the team. I think it was pre it might have been pre a replay against male, the semi final in 2015, not because I think we played Kerry in the final. So I went in and spoke to to Dublin players and the flip chart and a marker. And I remember the conversation I had. The conversation I had around the three dimensions of time to exist in your head. I'm one that exists in reality. That's the past, the present and the future. And that's what I spoke to him about. And the importance of being present and being on the next thing and then the next thing and let the last thing go on. Just that conversation. I'm general enough, but focused and they seem to take it help them to win the semi final. And what they come back and talk to them pre the final and I did and they went on to win the final. They seem to think that I had a little part to play in that. So Jim said look, will you come and build a mindset program? I had some ideas as to, you know, what we did in boxing and what I felt with work and I felt that that was a huge part. It's just a such a huge part of. And it goes beyond it to work that you're directly doing with an athlete. You know, I feel if all the psychologists is doing is working one to one with a player or an athlete. Well, then they're missing context and I've done not let into the center of the conversation with the head coach and the coaches. It's very hard for them to operate effectively. And then it's also, you know, there's a danger there that the conversation that's been happening at a one to one basis is absent of context. And therefore maybe less beneficial than it could be. So I went in and I started to build something within Dublin, but very much conversations with Jim and the coaches and sitting in on their sessions with the players. I talked about language consistency, a language and meaning of words and all that type of stuff and how we did it. So shaping the environment and the culture and the interaction between coaches and the players themselves was really important because the coaches are probably the most important contributors to the confidence of an athlete. And so therefore how they communicate and how consistent they are and how consistent that is horizontally across the coaching team is a masterpiece. So it makes the job of a psychologist or someone like me in the space that's a performance coach and makes it a lot easier if the environment is set up for success. It's set up to get the best out of itself. So that interaction, I can help me to be successful in that space and I would refuse to work any other way. If you couldn't have access to that, I feel that I'd be compromising an athlete by not really understanding what it is we're trying to do. So you needed the furniture. Exactly. So that worked really well. And my windows of opportunity were sometimes small in terms of the group, but I always had some time around the group. So we did the group stuff which I call fishing. And so I put an out debate. So let's say I have 60% of the players who are common one to one, but there's 40% who aren't. For various different reasons, don't trust themselves or don't really know how to engage in a conversation such as that. And so you put the content down and you draw them in and you go with text and said, I was really interested in what you said here. Could you expand on that and we'd have a conversation and we'd build it open there. So that worked well. And as you know, 2019, Jim stepped away. I intended to step away. Anyway, I think there's a point at which you run out of road. And this is a chance for someone else to come into the space. And I don't like old backwards. So I felt like it's time to move out. I did a little bit with Lester in 17 and 18 and just happened to be in the space when they were when they won the two in a row. I don't think I had a huge contribution to that. And anyway, shape or form was very small, but but certainly some early conversations with the playing group and bringing them through some content around the mental game and some conversations with Leo, which I hope they found useful. But I wouldn't suggest in any way that I was a big player in that space. And could you like, so you said you said they're a mindset program. Could you like give us, yeah, really interesting. Could you give us like some very specific detailed examples of like regardless of almost any team or individual you're working with. Here are my go to things and maybe people listening, glean something from it as well. What are the things that you put in like you get a call from any team and you just know, regardless of the team, I got a certain template certain things I'm going to speak to them about. The first thing I felt was important that each individual player had a performance plan, right? Not one that I designed, but one that you could give them some ideas of what should sit in there, but one that they crafted and believed in for themselves. So I think that's the first mental tool is to have a plan and within the plan, because you have a schedule for the week in any high performance of one does the schedule schedule is not going to get you there. That's the important and just schedule up as windows of opportunities in which you can focus on certain areas within your own game to ensure you're prepared at the end of the week. So having a plan was massively important and what became even more important in the plan itself was what was in the plan. So deciding on what to focus on and playing some plays just didn't know how to do that. No one had ever discussed that with them or showed them how to do it. So you get players in the initial sense would have a lot of detail in the plan and would never be able to get to it in the week. And then they were flipping from one thing to the next, so helping them to focus if a player is confident, he will know what to focus on. Right? If a player lacks confidence, he'll spin plates. So he'll go after everything and hopefully he'll work as hard as anyone else, but he won't progress as well as the guys who are more focused and clear, this is what's going to make my performance impactful if that makes sense. So getting the plan right and they're getting clarity around where they focus and then outside of that from a mindset perspective. So I think some of the technical elements were easier. So I was describing skill as a behavior. So I started to teach the players that performance is behavior and behavior is performance. So if you're a forward, a key behavior is movement and if you become static, you're out of the game because you're going inward. Right? You're saying I'm not getting any balls and I help me out and you're going, you're actually monitoring your own mind and you're out of the game. So movement is a behavior and I want you to focus on movement and create opportunities. I'm part of that would be that you're keeping opposition defenders right busy and you may be creating a channel or an opportunity for it. It doesn't matter who scores. It just matters that it's us and we do it. It doesn't have to be you. So I would say, well, what's your goal of a goal is to score one three? I said, if you've no control over that, that should not be it, right? So your goals need to be more process driven, the target driven, what do you want to do? I want to go from right, if tackling is a behavior, right, what's your current target count? We're all about three a game. Well, you know, if I'm a forward, that might be all right, but if you know, if the target count is important to the outcome of the game, should that three be more? And where could you take it? So if I can get them to focus on behaviors, they can go out and have something to target, which is really, really powerful. So within the plan, I'd say, well, your training needs to match that. Our environment needs to simulate what it is that we're going to face in the game. So coaches, good coaches will do that. They'll create chaos on structured games, on structured practice. They'll pull people out, pull people in, 12 against 50, all that type of stuff. They'll bring chaos so that the guys can bring order back. So they're creating this flexible mindset rather than, oh, tough. You look at all the daily players are in the county level. Tell me they're not tough. They're tough. Look at rugby players. They're absolutely tough. There's no question of the toughness, but I dislike psychologically flexible. Can they adapt? Can they deal with when momentum has changed? Can they deal with that? Can they stop that momentum shift and take the game over again? Can they remain present? Can they remain outward focus? So the plan was for me, that if a player, if a player thinks he's prepared, if a player feels he's prepared, right? He'll, he'll, he'll not cope with pressure. Because pressure is always there. He leveraged pressure. He leveraged the up-levelest performance, because pressure is always there. Pressure is always within the high performance one, not just in the game. It's in the training environment, selection, injury, all the sorts of things, trying to stay the top of your game, is part of being in these environments. So the plan was really important in my mind, how they shaped it was really interesting, because players were innovating on ideas that I had at Brazil. And then I'd say to a player, I'd say to you, Joe, Joe, you're really good at this, right? If I send a player or two to you, will you show them how you did it? Sure, no problem, right? So we had, we had forwards, sharing the right ideas, forwards, who were trying to win the jersey often. Same position, guys sitting down and having the conversation, because I said all bolts were raised at the same time, some of them are raised higher than others, right? Because of the capacity to have, the potential to have, etc. So that, for me, was the central tool, I believe. And then we'd say, okay, well, how do you now prepare the mind? So that's part of it, I have a plan, I can trust it. I have said that if you have confidence in what's in the plan, and you get through that in the week, you should have confidence heading into the game, because your preparation is evidence for your performance. But if you start questioning what you did in the week, and you don't trust it, and therefore you don't trust yourself, well then your performance is going to be compromised. So let's not question ourselves at the end of the week, let's reinforce ourselves by what we've done and got through, because if you don't trust the plan, change it. If you don't trust what's in it, put something different in it that gives you confidence at the end of the week. Does that make sense? It does. So it's that, it's, it's that piece. That was made, so, so for example, and you have your plan, and you've delivered it today in, in your two sessions, whatever that was. And at the end of the day, you can say, today was worthwhile because I've got through this, I've got through this, I've got through this. I did what I said I was going to do. I missed this, but I can bring it into tomorrow. So I can close off today and go to sleep with a good conscience. I know that tomorrow is covered, because I have my plan for tomorrow, and that I miss today. I can slide it into tomorrow, tomorrow, if I feel it's beneficial to do so. Yeah. So it's not just the plan, it's reviewing the plan, having confidence that you delivered what you said you committed to delivering. It strikes me the way you're, you're talking about it, that a lot of these people are under severe pressure. You know, you take the rugby team, you take the dobs, you take any of the teams you work with, the lead level. They're young men and women, there's scrutiny, they're scrutiny of the coaches, the media themselves, their families, their friends, it's, it's just a lot. You know what I mean? And it strikes me that the plan is a wonderful force field that I can wrap around me, take comfort in my plan. And it makes you use the word feel, not think. So I feel, I feel ready. I feel prepared. But that, you know, so if that's true, you know, at times it just must get on top of that. It must be just tough to deal with what they're dealing with. What are the more common things when you sit down with someone for chat one on one say, and you know, maybe to the outside, their form is grand. They're so so, they're 6, 7, 8 out of 10. What are the more common things when they're at their most vulnerable that athletes would say to you, the things you've heard time and time again? Self-doubt. Self-doubt from players who have delivered time and time again would still have it. So over the last number of years I've come to realize that self-doubt is an important part of the performance itself. And because I think self-doubt is sometimes just checking. I just want to cross the tees and dutty eyes. So player and community, I feel a little bit of doubt. And you might be 24 hours out from the game or might be 26 hours out from the game. The time that we call the struggles on between your final piece of preparation and the game itself. Where players start to undermine their own capacity to perform by overtinking teams or starting to doubt themselves or starting to not trust the preparation they don't know the weak. Finding reasons right to to disrupt the very things that were well structured and have been well delivered over the week. So self-doubt can can be an issue overtinking can be an issue which then forces them into more detail and then compromises the clarity of their plan if that makes sense. So they're going too heavy on detail and they're burning capacity mentally and emotionally in the lead into the game. That can be an issue. And then sometimes the player is common to me because he just wants to confirm and sign off and know that he's done that. So reach out, have 10, 15 minutes of Gary, I do it every time before the game makes me feel better and I know I've ticked our box and it's not a tick box exercise. But he knows that he's covered off on everything and it makes him feel a lot better and hopefully helps him and sleep better. What what do you tend to say in those conversations? Well, first of all, we go back over his plan. Have you done everything you said you would do this week? Yes, I have. You know, you've had some mistakes training because training is designed for mistakes. You know, it's designed to learn and grow. So there's nothing wrong with that. So you normalize stuff. But also, if a player is a little bit more on the anxious side, you know, I might sit with them and do a breeding practice, for example. So within the plan itself, they would have some rituals, some strategies around how to manage the mind. So we would talk about tinking hygiene, right? So washing out some of the maybe more negative tinking that will appear in a player's mind by journaling. You know, we're just putting stuff out there and the way I would describe it that once it's out of your head, it's on the page, you get one step removed, you can be detached from it. And you can look out from a rational perspective, you can consider what your thoughts are. And then you can counter that with, hey, you know what? That's not factual. I actually am in a really good position in terms of how well I'm prepared. So it can be various things rarely will a player comment and have conversation around selection, but often selection is a worry for them, especially for players who are not maybe getting as much game time. As other players. And so keeping them focused on the progression they're making and the influence to have an on the group being a really good team player. Team first mentality, you know, and we keep doing the right things and you are progressing and growing, you know, your time will come. So that could be another factor, injury can be another factor where they're in a rehab scenario and they had a rehab and an injury and they're not as committed to the process because they're too focused on the outcome. You know, when will I get out? Will I be ready for that game in three weeks time or whatever? Will I be ready for this? And it's pulling the backs and you need to focus and fully commit on your rehab process and be fully engaged and trust what you're doing every day. I said, because if you're worrying too much, you're putting stress into the system, you're putting tension into your muscle, you're predisposing yourself for re injury, just clarifying things with them. And for some players who are all over this stuff, it's just making the feel better about themselves, you know, you're, you're confirming what they already know. And they're soundboarding that they're in the right place, they're leaving feeling that was good. That was enough. Some players would start being five minutes and say, that's all I need and they're up and are gone. So it's teaching them to, I used to say, when you know what makes you tick and when you know what makes you on tick, well then you can navigate it more effectively. So become more familiar with what makes you tick because that's, that's where you can ground your focus. And if there's any adjustments that need to be made around that, it's much easier because you have clarity on what works for you. And it's different for every player to some nuance in there. Not every player will do the same thing. Some of them will be very detailed in their planning and some of them will be less so. And I talked to them a lot about social don't avoid right so acceptance is power avoidance is the grim reaper. So if you're suffering in silence and suffering on your own and trying to pretend that you're present when actually you're drawn into the future or you're worried about the past. And that's just going to destroy your capacity to perform and then ultimately will contribute negatively on what the team is trying to achieve. So getting them to take ownership of what's going on for them and to try and put their hand open be open and be vulnerable so that we can help them to deal with it. It's not acceptable. I don't think in a proper high performance culture that you would compromise the team just because you didn't want to reach out and seek some advice of support. Does that help you? Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah. And farrell to be fair preaches the vulnerability thing a lot, you know, it's it's almost become. Like people parry it almost, you know that he's vulnerability vulnerability vulnerability, you know, he's often talking about that and seems at pains to create that environment in what is like a macho alpha sport. And you know, it's quite commendable in his part because I'm fairly certain the wig and dress room of the 90s he was in was not a vulnerable place. Yeah, I sometimes follow the examples of our leaders. So I think leadership is all about how you're perceived. You know, and or help people perceive you, especially your own team. And what and the expects of the group, I think he needs to expect that of himself as well. So he's open about that because he knows that that's an experience that he has had in his career, you know, so he's not trying to avoid that. And I think you're in an environment where you're worried that you're going to break something by saying something will then the environment is wrong. You know, you've got to trust the players, you got to be open and he's very open with the players very, very open and very clear with them. And if he sees something, he'll say it. If he feels something, he smells something, he'll say they'd be very open. I think the players have become comfortable in those elements of discomfort. That makes sense because they almost expect that if something is out of place that somebody will raise it. And we don't hide things that we need things to be open. And when things are open, we can figure them out together. But when we're not aware of them, we can't address them. So going back to the individual player, we talk a lot about avoidance and acceptance accepted. You know, these things are difficult. That's okay. But we can help you to navigate this more effectively. So the hygiene of the mind is a major piece. I say to them, we got to, I used to describe it as COVID when we got the 22nd washing of hands. You know, and the fingers going through the fingers and all that. We were all doing it. Right? Because we knew it was a behavior to stop us from getting this condition, this virus. And I'd say to players, washing the mind is the same way. It's the same thing. Just wash it out through your journaling or audio it and then listen back and you might actually have a smile at what your thinking is at any given time. Or retail to just have a conversation, to have a chat about it. Because when we do that, we feel a lot better. And we feel more supported in an environment that facilitates that. And not just facilitates it, but promotes it as an important part of never compromising the team. [Music] Just a thought. And this is quite a difficult question for you, actually. So you know, the world is like a wash with self-help books, which increasingly feels like a kind of cynical, overly commercialized space. And you kind of can't cross the road without meeting somebody who hosts a podcast about high performance. It's kind of, it's just everywhere. And I honestly think it's like a magnet for bullshitters as well. And it's just, it's become a very busy space and there's money to be made and all that's going on. It strikes me when you're talking about those athletes there, one of the things you're doing is managing like how much they want us. You know, motivation is almost, I almost, I could be wrong, but I would say in your space, motivation is never the issue. Really, you know what I mean? These guys want it. They don't need it. They want it too much. Yeah, they want it too much. And so that's kind of the high performance fight, whereas it strikes me in the real world, because I know you work with the business world and corporate and corporate, so I was looking to sport. Sometimes saddened and interviewed sports people are psychologists, but what they can learn, what the business world people here listening can learn from this person's sporting experience. And it always strikes me. I don't necessarily say it to the room. They might not appreciate it, but it always strikes me. The person I'm interviewing sports person, they wanted it more than anything. It's fine to be shouted out to do whatever it took. And actually a lot of the audience are like, you know, I wanted to be an actor, but now I just work and I'm, I'm, I sit in my desk and it's a wage and I get through the day and it's, it's a little deflating. And yet they've been told how they can perform better and performance and all this kind of stuff. That world where like the business world tries to kind of learn from the sports world is, is this, is an interesting one, but I often feel a lot of the people listening to their arms cross gone. Yeah, that's all very well for you. You're off women hunting cups. I'm kind of sitting here and I have to do a report from my boss. I don't really like. So I wonder what do you say when you work with people in that kind of a sphere or maybe it's completely different remedy entirely. But it is different. There are some parallels. But it is different. It's a different context. And there's no business that I know that doesn't want to perform better. There's no business that I know that doesn't want high performance. But what it takes is a price of entry around what it takes. So we work with senior leaders, CEOs under executive teams on, on how they become more effective as a team and how they become more aligned. And the importance of relational trust in the team, you know, you don't have to love a fellow player, but you know, I'm using this loosely. You kind of dive them on the field. Yeah, you know, you may not want to go out and have points with them, but when she's a member of your team, you're going to protect them. And you're going to support them and you're going to push them and you're going to challenge them. And that that's the piece that we do with senior executive teams talk about what it takes to get to that level of teamwork and effectiveness. And that knowing that you have the support of your peers that you can lift the phone any hour or the day or night and know that you'll have a good sound aboard and know that your teammates have your back. And I think senior leaders are looking for that now, right, because they have big responsibility and they have accountability. The difference in sport is it's visible. Everybody gets to see it. It's on video every aspect is measured in terms of a player or a team's performance and cultures are on that spot right the end of every single week. So there's a drive to be better. There's a drive to improve. There's a drive to innovate and learn and it's constant, but not in a way that's overwhelming. You know, it's very deliberate. It's, you know, we call them at this kind of incremental evolution, you know, but it's managed. We're looking to evolve. And there's so many things impacting on the group and that the context is slightly shifting to some former transition going on at different times and acting kind of disrupt the quality of of the collective performance. And you're looking to play and adjust that. And the head coach is trying to orchestrate and is trying to conduct and manage and shift and use the resource as best as he or she can within those environments. And they have to do that really well. So here I have a listening to an Andy Farrell speak into a business or he's very matter of fact about that. That's just a reality and we just have to get on with it. But I do think that the big difference is this that commitment within a high performance sport environment from every member of the team and staff. If it's not just players, it's sports scientists, sports medicine, it's coaching. Everybody has to deliver a performance that contributes to what we're trying to achieve with the team. It's that team for us mentality and Andy will often say it's not about you. It's not about you. It's about what we bring to the team. And that's all that matters. And that's really, really helpful because it just brings that clarity to everybody around the expectation. And once the expectation is clear, well, then we can all try and reach a level to be able to contribute to that. OK, last one really because I noticed you're you're speaking at this same vehicle conference and it mentioned in the press release about it. How daily habits can lead to extraordinary long term results. So it is January and people are probably assessing themselves and assessing life and assessing ways to improve to some extent. Rather, what advice do you tend to offer to people in that broad space of your daily habits and how they can impact your life? Because again, you know, it's not easy. Life is busy. Life is complicated and we all have the best of intentions, but we're human beings. Yeah, and so the end of the year and the start of a new year is where we reflect and review, isn't it? We all find ourselves when and I think that we should not on the rent, on the estimate, the importance of space. So we get space in our own Christmas. And before we go back to work, start to reflect on what that year was and what we want to ensure that we get to that we didn't get to in the following year, maybe get back to a little bit of fitness or back to a little bit more family time, or whatever it is that you're going after or you're feeling maybe your health is something that you want to focus a little bit more on and get some healthier habits around what you do. But but I think the space is really important and because we go in with some motivation of Christmas and you'll see people out running in the rain with caps on, which you won't see them by the time February comes, they will just fall and out of that space. So motivation is not sustainable. You know, it's it's kind of it's emotionally driven. It's not structurally supported. So the thing we will we will speak about that in a call event will be this what they call habit stacking. You know, I give you an example of a habit stack that I have with we all brush our teeth in the morning. The dentist will suggest that we should brush for two minutes. And I noticed when I'm brush my teeth, I'll be rushing to brush my teeth. So I'm not present them and just get to doing. I may not brush my teeth for two minutes, but now I'll slow down and I'll breed. I'll just take the moment, beware my feet are and I'll brush my teeth for two minutes, but I'll also get some breath work done while I'm doing that, you know, because stress to get out, stress to get down and get kids ready. Whatever it is, all these little stresses that we have in our lives prevent us from being present. So the breath work for me stabilize that the other thing I'll do is I'll place the mild wash right beside that. So that's another little habit I'll have and it's very simple for me to to do and I heard one person describe that they make the lunch, for example, even before that's putting good system in place. You put your lunch in the fridge and she said I put my benacol beside my lunch so that I don't miss it. I take it every with me every day or either have it at lunch when I'm in work or I take it before I leave the house. So small, they say if you want to really change things, make small things, things that there's no big resistance to things that you can get, you can get at a lot easier. So adding small habits to habits that you've already, there are already good habits. The example would be, when you get home from work today and you arrive into your house and I don't know what your family situation is, but you stop in the driveway and you take three minutes and you just do some breath work to create a transition bridge to what you've just done on the TV or what you've just done in the radio station and you you just settle into now going in and being a dad or a husband or a wife or a mother. And you go in to just be present into the next role that you have. So small things can make a hell of a difference, but motivation is not good enough. You have to have a why, a real why, you have to focus on the what's going to be different. They take example you decide you're going to go down and join the local gym. The local gym is a good thing because there'll be people there and you'll have social connection and you'll make friends and then you'll be committed to what they're doing. And you'll also bring water which you because you think that that's what you should do so your hydration will be improved. You'll also find out that you maybe should take some supplementation post it like for example a protein you'll have that ready and that's a lot of habit to stack them. So this way in which you you create a lifestyle out of good habits, you know, you say that this is what I want my lifestyle to be. The big problem we have, Joe is phones. I've seen a piece of research last week that the average person three and a half to treat the three and a half hours per day on the phone. That's an incredible stat. That's whatever 21 hours a week and if you multiply it up by the year, how much time we're actually losing. And the time is probably not the worst part, but it's the our ability to be present in our relationships. You know if our kids are watching us on phones all the time, they're addicted to having the phone and we're handing the phone over what we don't want them to be on really. And there's a whole host of things that we can potentially change to improve the experience of life by just changing life. For example, we come in and we'll put the phones into a into a phone box and they're put away because the temptation to be on them is it's just too high. And it's stealing our attention, probably the most valuable asset we have is our attention, our ability to be present in our conversations and our interactions. Very good. What's next for you? Are you going to keep working on what teams are you going to go into some big overarching role in Irish sport or do you know? Definitely not a bigger overarching role in an Irish sport. And probably they say if you stay on the road long enough, somebody will run you over and sort of be at some point and maybe my career in sport will come to an end. But my focus also is on building out the uppercut team and the uppercut business and the impact we're trying to have with business leaders. Lots of stuff on the radar and to go after. We're still very motivated to improve and to keep learning more, but yeah, looking forward to the year ahead, Joe. Great. Well, listen, really good to talk to you because we've been hearing about you for so long and amazing career thus far. Gary Keegan, pleasure. All the best, Gary. Thank you, Joe. Pleasure. Bye-bye.