149: Paolo Menaspa on Applied Research in Elite Sport

The other side is the quantum sensing, which basically again using quantum technology to look inside the body. A sporting negative straight that was invited to the workshop and clearly they are thinking about using that technology for the detection of substances that otherwise wouldn't be able to be detected. But then our chief medical officer was interested in concussion space. The biggest challenge was that right now the majority of quantum technology is very big. Whatever you're trying to look into your brain, they are like a room size. Because of some requirements related to cooling, you need to lower the temperature to extremely low temperature and with some precision. Again, the size is very big. But 50 years ago computers were very big and now we carry a computer in our pockets. [Music] Very well, welcome to the Supporting Champions podcast. My name is Steve Ingham, I'm a performance scientist by trade and by training. And in these conversations, I want to explore the science behind high performance. And that involves talking to athletes to coaches, to scientists or from people from outside of sport in different performance backgrounds. I really hope you enjoy the conversations and if you do, please do subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or whichever platform you get your podcasts. This podcast is sponsored by athlete now, the go to place for all practitioners to show their ways. What can you do? What can you offer the world? And therefore it's the go to place for sports and athletes to find experts. So if you're interested in improving your performance as an athlete or a team or a sport. And you want to tap into an expert pool of practitioners, then check out athlete now. And if you're a practitioner and you want to put up your profile, offer the things that you do brilliantly, that enhance performance for athletes and coaches and sports, go to the athlete now. Athlete now is the ultimate sports directory where you can find quality verified sports practitioners and coaches. Check out the athlete now.com. Well, hello folks. Welcome to the supporting champions podcast today. I'm joined by Paulo and Manaspa. Paulo has a rich career working at forefront of athlete support, helping athletes and coaches across multiple Olympic cycles and especially in the sport of cycling. And now he leads the science operation as chief science officer at the Australian Institute of Sport. A very warm welcome to Paulo. How are you? Thank you Steve for the invitation. I'm very well. Thank you. Thank you for the intro. Hey look, it's late there in Australia. You just packed the kids off the bed. Thanks for making the time to speak. Everything all right with you? It is and yeah, I have an eye on the living room because they're walking. Hopefully it doesn't happen. But yeah, yes. Good. Well, I've got the dog just sat behind me. So we've both on monitors. You tease there. Look, I've given people a bit of a brief background in your introduction there. But could you finish some of the details about how you started, how you progressed, who you've worked with? Yeah, absolutely. Well, you mentioned cycling and what potentially I mentioned that I started. Well, cycling has been an integral part of my life. As a participant first, I got like very young like under 19, but I got the opportunity to represent Italy, which gave me like a miniature insights into high performance for just because I mentioned my participation into sport and I mentioned that I then at uni, a university I did a player at B Union, the probably the lowest level in Italy. So there's no need to talk out loud that level is, but again, a bit of insights into the different, very different words of team sport. I actually remember being shocked for a number of things about the concentration and the focus and, you know, in cycling, you sit in the bunch for five hours and you just was a sprint. You wait till the end. It's very different in a team sport where you need to be paid attention every minute. So anyway. And then I studied sports science. I was lucky enough that one of my teacher, professor was Aldousassi, a famous cycling coach. And I guess that's how my career started because I asked him if I could do my thesis with him. And so I started to go to the mapai or that's how I pronounced it. The probably need to be more mapai, the lab linked to the professional cycling team to do my data collection and to start to get into the sport applied sport science. That was around 2005 state. I probably seven, eight years and then eventually, I guess when green edge started as a team, I thought it was potentially time to expand or trying something new that would have been to. 2012 fish. And that's where I started my PhD. I mean, the connection was with Dave Martin, a lot of Australian coaches used and scientists used to come to the mapai lab because Aldousassi. I should say it was actually the coach of cut elephants. So a lot of again, Australian in instance of sport would come to the to the lab. Michael Roger was another Australian athletes in the lab. So clearly, I got introduced to the big names when he comes to Australian cycling. I'm probably cycling in general. And so I got in touch with Dave Martin. I proposed like, you know, to have an experience overseas. And that's how I got into my PhD. Which then PhD in Australia with I think Australia. I did my PhD at it is Cowan University in Perth. My supervisor was Chris Abyss, my unit supervisor. And what was an industry based PhD and the industry was the joint between the AIS, the Australian Institute for and cycling Australia. So spent the majority of my time in Adelaide where the truck program was is during the European summer in Europe with the road program. So I kind of was alternating the truck program in the Australian summer and the road program in the European summer. It actually gave me like a number of years of summer, summer to summer back to back. Yeah, very nice. Good direction. Yeah. And then you mentioned it. Then I eventually I walked four cycling to Australia. Number of years until when more recently I moved to the AIS in my current role. And so that industry PhD, you said you were based in Perth, but most of the time in Adelaide. So fundamentally you were an applied scientist as you're going through your formal scientific training as opposed to maybe a research scientist with maybe some small field trips. Yeah, yeah, that is correct. I don't know if it's a common model, but it was common around the AIS probably 10 years ago or 15 years ago when I did it. So the university provides the academic supervision and a salary, etc. But then the industry provide pretty much the field where you can collect the data. So that's the reason why you are allowed from a university point of view to travel to follow the athletes for your data collection. Often the sport sees it as a. But the benefits of having a sport scientist traveling with the athletes so there is like this kind of a win-win-win situation where you're collecting information answering questions from the sport at the same time publishing paper trying to grow knowledge in areas that are of interest for the sport. Yeah. And so then it's been a period of time with the Australian cycling team. So that was a national team so that was more Olympic Paralympic Focus I presume. Yes, that that is correct. That would have been 2012 to 2015. Well, that 20 and 14 and the transition at the end of the PhD. There would be some changes within the cycling Australia and with someone moving to the green edge team eventually actually my contract kind of kept going in a very similar arrangement. But the agreement became became a postdoc between green edge and it is coming university that was 2015 to 2018 so for three years my focus was more kind of switch from the national team. To green edge and and then doing the research for it is coming was mostly with the women team but the work was across the development team the women team and partially with the men. And so in that role at that time what was the focus what was sort of your top priority was it to generate knowledge or answer specific questions around a project or hypothesis that had been stated or funded or was it more broadly to support the cyclists in a range of topics as their hands on scientists or physiologists. Yeah, that's a great question actually. I haven't reflect as much about it but I would say that the second the second option is more similar to what the situation was like the team would have seen me as a performance support practitioner and I would say that in my career I went from being a bit of a specialist to more of a generalist and now I'm probably even more of a generalist when I hear conversation about every sport and I know very little about all of it. But again back then probably one of the mice trend was having connection with experts now having done my PhD around the AIS but now being based in Europe we. with that Gnatch team, my ability was to listen in and connect with the expert based on what the problem was, what the problem is. We work on Calaburans, aerodynamics position, we're connection with the wind tunnel, someone else, nutrition, etc., mostly as, yeah, that function. Yeah, it's an interesting challenge, isn't it, where you, I think a lot of people have this sort of narrowing as they go through their education and against the real world and they're just broadening and broadening. And I suppose one of the key strengths of applied practitioners over the years is to know a little bit about something and have their niche areas that they can really go through the gears. But I've got something to say about everything, but I've also got a really great network that if I need depth or I need to go even further, I've got access to resources, human or all the scientific literature. Yeah, yeah, I agree, absolutely. I do feel like that my strength has been the ability to identify the problem and not being shy in saying, you know, I don't know, give me 20 hours, I'll come back to you. So I've appeared even today, I mean, I do ask daily for feedback and I'm sure there are, you know, in almost every conversation, yeah, if there's someone who knows way more than me, whatever the theme is, you know, these days is statistics or quantum computing. And I'm never the smartest person in the room, probably not even the second, but I don't try away from connecting and asking questions and trying to learn. I think it's the confidence to say I don't know is actually critical at various different stages of your career. I think it's important that people recognize that it could be that genuinely have got a gap in knowledge or genuinely, I don't think we've encountered this type of question before and therefore there's a curiosity to it. Yeah, yeah, which is actually it's a good point. I mean, it's not rare that it's come up with some great, which I think generally nobody actually knows the answer. So yeah, it's great to have the ability to interact with artists because they are very curious minds and constant source of inspiration. Yeah, and so then filling the gaps for us in terms of going from that hands-on role, a support and researching to the role that you serve now, but also because you tell us a little bit about what you do now too. Yeah, yeah, I guess the gap I've been like, what I described now was my role as a performance, that performance support role with Gynedge, but then from 2018. I feel like it was a good, probably nice progression. I became head of performance solutions back with the cycling Federation. That was with under Simon Jones, who was like the performance director with O's cycling. And that gave me what probably was the first time when I was actually managing a decent sized team with a lot of specialists. So I stepped out of being these specialists and communicating daily with the athletes. I was communicating with the specialists and the coaches. I was kind of in between and part of my job was to try to understand the bigger problem. So that's what contributes to performance and try to prioritize. You're always, wherever you are, my feel or my view will be that you are in a in a constraints resources situation. And so I kind of had to quickly understand the importance of prioritizing and working in a multi and interdisciplinary team. And discipline experts and subject matter experts often see there and probably I'm done in two, like their mother is the most important one, which is, I don't see the problem. I like I actually, you know, you want to work with people that they think they they they air of expertise is the most important, the most impactful because it means that they are excited and they push for it and they learn and they study the improve. Well, again, when when you're in reality in front of a competition, you can't do everything, you know, sometimes now as an example in a competition, you never certain amount of recovery between the same quality, the same is an end of final and you can do everything you either decide to do some some strategy to recover or get ready for the next competition and which one is better. It's difficult to know and maybe actually this is a good lane into the my current role in my current role we among other things we're trying to coordinate and we we developed in this two years ago, a reserve agenda, we looked into the priority for research for the following four years. And one of the thing that came out was pretty much exactly that the kind of performance prioritization optimization but in in a competition environment where the we're trying to highlight the importance of understanding the context, a lot of research for very good reason and it's important research and we need that research but I think isolation where you're looking for instance, that's a single supplement a and a time trial with some very specific constraints around it and and and said duration, etc, etc, but the reality of the sport, small field, you know, completely completely different and sometimes you have multiple interest and you're trying one supplement, but also other strategies at the same time you need to listen to the coach, etc. So I guess I started with a very narrow example of something that we've done recently as in that's one of the theme in our reserve agenda but developing that has been like an important first step when I started in my role that was a kind of high. I was given from the previous year when I was when I started this is June 2021 so it's now three years ago and there was this idea that we need to really prioritize what the priority the research area of interest are and I my approach has been to try to learn from other fields back to the back to the you know, maybe I don't know but I'm going to do that. Maybe I don't know but give me 24 hours and then find out how we can do it sometimes it takes more than 24 hours but for instance there are many examples on how to conduct reserve agenda prioritization frameworks or approaches. So we looked into what does the world health organization do you know WHO how do they prioritize so we look at that approach other approaches clearly you need to cut it down based on resources timeframe, etc. But what the important thing which you know, by the way won't be in any way surprising to you, but actually you need to listen basically to your stakeholder to your athletes to your coaches. So that was my proposition initial proposition we need to actually you know interview and listen to others and coaches which I think was way from there I didn't know but back then at the AIS there was a perception that sometimes the reserve check driven by the reserve chairs. Which again, potentially is not bad and I've seen great reserves conducted by reserves as we dare on idea that you know I think curiosity is important you will come up with great questions and you and there are so much interesting stuff that we could look into it but there is a point where you try to go from the interesting to the impactful. I think which is interesting for me might not be impactful for the athletes so we can go with the reserve agenda we try to put forward like yeah what is important in impactful for for athletes and coaches so can I pick you pick you up on that and maybe if you're if you're able to just give us a little bit more about how you have gone about prioritizing yeah what's the most powerful voice is it the coaches the athletes is it the is it the probability of creating impact that might relate to you. Is it developing that specialism how do you go about prioritizing the impact the feasibility the the receptivity in sports to be able to actually collect data on well class athletes so it's not too much of a leap to to make the application was your process there yeah yeah thank you. So it's great question big question I'll try to go through some of the steps that we follow but so to begin with one of the principle was to ensure that we were going to ask an open question I think it's easy to fall into the trap of asking a leading question and just trying to give an example because of the war to yeah any buyers or for any buyers but again the question was what should science or reserves are looking into in the for the future you know thinking about prison or thinking about the so so a very open question broad themes and we went we we the I. S. already had an unbrew of groups like an advisory group and I'll tell you that we grew coaching and other representative so we used some of those group is a initial stakeholder I think we had up to 150 participants to give the first list and and we did so and there was an open number of funds of the record game some gave like single war someone along and someone along sentence and then we had a panel of an internal panel for of experts or researcher people working in in performance support which simply add their all of combining similar answers because you can as you can imagine you can have a lot of overlapping answers so we combine these that I kind of remember how many but 150 people you could have had roughly 50. 400 answers. Many of those were overlapping, went up with 80 themes, those 80 themes, then we went back to a different group in this case. And we got the method from another prioritization framework, where there was this, the principle was that they wanted to have equal input from different kind of stakeholders. If I believe, if I remember the numbers, we had like six in each group and we were five groups. I would have been outlets, coaches, performance support, researchers and probably managers. Something around the line. Anyway, this framework suggested to were in this phase to have equal weight for those groups. And the question was to rank the 80 themes. Ranking versus rating, it's a different approach. But it allows to force people to think what is important. We've seen before, like we had seen instances where if you ask between 0 and 5, you end up with a lot of 3, 3.5. And when you have a register, one someone else says 5, you end up with a lot of score, which are really very similar. And if you then rank after the rating, you end up with probably some statistical noise. Like you don't have the power of the ranking. So you're asking people basically again, what's number one versus number 80? Acknowledging that the ranking part, you go. Could you just give a couple of examples of the themes with these interventions specific supplementation? Or was it problem solving warm-up, for example, or training balance? Do you write low intensity? What was the example? Or was it more about, look, just focus on making an impact? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another great question. So does 80, they were at relatively detailed. They would have been focused on this intervention, which then after the ranking, we used like a tool to map. That was prior to large language models, but there was this tool that allowed us to map, basically, it's different from our world, clouds. Things that are similar meaning, they were put in this whole after-girls. - Clustering. - Yeah, thank you. A clustering approach, which then was confirmed by the expert, by the provide support to that clustering. And with that, we end up with four major themes. So again, the 80 recommendations were more details, but we end up with four major themes following that clustering. Basically, they are the foundation of our current research agenda, which by the way, at the end of the Paralympic Games, which is yesterday, when we are recording, our plan is also to review it, because the previous agenda was done in the lead up to Paris. And the agenda itself talks about updating it at four years cycles, because there might be new events, new technology. So we'll start a new process to update the agenda, which we might actually consider also reviewing the process, because I'm always for continuous improvement. I'm always after feedback. We received a lot of feedback, so we'll potentially again change and improve the process. Back to that, the current agenda, the four themes. And the title, maybe not very, they sounds a bit broad and generic and meaningless, but I'll mention them and then I'll give you a bit of an insight of flavor. But the first one is, it talks about successful athletes, and which is an interesting, I think, observation, putting the athletes as a first priority in the agenda. And then when we talk about successful athletes, there are some sub-themed, they go from the talent identification and development to the holistic approach to begin the development. There are sub-themed in the space of holistic, even health, physical health and mental health. There was an acknowledgement that a lot of the research, again, for very good reasons, it is done in separation. You have experts in mental health and physical health. And even when it comes to physical health, there's illnesses and injuries. They're quite separated. So it was a bit of a call in trying to, in potentially coming from the athletes group, we are actually one, look after me rather than analyzing a single aspect. Under the successful athlete, there was also a call, a call out to better understanding the requirements of the needs of a diverse athlete population. And that was a describe beginning in broad terms, but the meaning behind that is pretty much the minorities that sometimes are not often times are not considered in traditional research. Whether it's female athletes, Paralympic sport doesn't see as much research as Olympic sport. But in Australia, there is an interesting, in first nation athletes as well. So there was a call into looking in all these aspects of this successful athletes. The second, this is only the first one, it has been for me to keep going. Yeah, keep going. I've got a lesser question. The second, the second theme was about coaching and the coach development. And based on what I heard is that the first time that in Australia, we actually, you know, officially put coaching science in the spotlight, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen before. There are great researchers working on coaching science and coaching development. However, it was the first time that as a AIS, there was actually, again, a call out, we need to know more about it. And that coaching science theme was also, and that results of the clustering was quite connected with the idea of skill acquisition, creating environments where athletes and coaches can learn, etc. learning environments. The third theme is the one actually I started first, is that athlete optimization with the idea of doing research or allowing to understand the context of the competition. That again, I mentioned a few minutes ago. The other concept or the other sub theme within the athlete optimization is the idea of individualization of training, which again, nothing new, but there was a bit of a call from people from the stakeholder in saying, we would like to better understand how can we deliver training plans at the tailor to the needs of the athlete, which again, sometimes we heard that limitation is as simple as dealing with teams for people to go out and train together, etc. But that was the, again, that's the theme across sports. The fourth one, maybe even more broad and generic, but the title is a practice enhancement. Practice enhancement was a call to trying to improve kind of everything we do with the use of science in an evidence-based approach. You would say, well, that should be it anyway, but it's not always possible, not always easy. One of the outcomes of that was a specific call out to considering meta science, which is science on science, which we ended up having actually. Did the agenda talk about meta science? In reality, we ended up with a meta-resourge program, which is a research on research. I'm not going to be pouring with all the conversation with that about the difference between meta science and meta-resourge, which is which and why we're doing this versus that. But the idea is to understand what we are doing and improve the way we do things. And that meta-resourge asks our meta-science themes, also talk about using research and science to practice, sorry, I should have said that practice enhancement, that's the theme, using science to improve the way we deal with in the leadership space and in other areas. And the last sub-theme within that is talks about implementation science. There was this concept, I don't think it's a concept, it's an old paper that shows that it takes 17 years from the research question to the doctor, the GP's desk, or being actually not from the desk, that can be implemented so that 17 years to translate the research paper and acknowledging that we don't have 17 years before our whole Olympic and Paralympic Games. There was this idea of, we need to learn more about how to implement our own science. Okay, let me pick up a couple of questions from that. Yes, that was super interesting about the different themes that came up. I think increasingly interesting that we're seeing pockets of acknowledgement of the whole athlete and that they have to be well or that our responsibility are ethics and morals to support the athlete rather than just considering them some sort of product that produces power output and metals at a personal cost. Interesting that you flag individual individuality or individual approach. That's interesting that it's come out because my observation is that when you're coaching, you tend to look for shortcuts and there's so many complex decisions to be made that you often revert to a known program rather than tailoring for every individual that's under your care or responsibility. Can I ask you, I've got three questions that come out to you, of how you've explained that. The first is, by the way, on how I explained it, despite the fact that in, you know, actually part of the one writing it is better written than the way I explained it, probably. I haven't read it in too long. I should really read it. It's published. I'm saying you a link. So if you want to share it, like it's, we're quite proud of it. So I, um, Oh yeah, well, amazing. I will include that in the notes. Um, okay. So you mentioned previously that a perception, and I would probably agree, rightly or wrongly, perception that the Australian Institute's sport was, was a pretty good academic department, producing very good studies, very good research has applied in focus. Um, what's your focus now in terms of the, the motivation for cohort based studies so that you have something that stands up to perhaps academic publishing standards or increasing the objectivity in an individual athlete's journey, training, performance so that you have a increased clarity of information about how they're progressing or what's happening in their life. So that, that, thank you. Um, trying to give you a, like a brief answer, uh, we are exploring with expert in research methods, uh, how to best approach the whole and we basically were going, I would say almost, um, when under the 80 degrees, as in we are considering end of one approaches to research, okay, talking with more leading expert very far away from where I sit, but we're trying to understand how to, uh, better understand that, which is like your second part of the question. Basically, I would support the single athletes understand changes that are effective to the individual to then support the next decision, etc. But also we are considering the other in the, uh, big teams, uh, research. Uh, it's something that I'm not aware of, uh, a lot of it happening in sport. Um, we've been looking, I think I can say it like well, I can't, I can certainly say it. Those things exist, but there are a couple of programs. One is called many primates and the other one is called many babies where they're looking at, you know, babies, despite when I googled many babies, actually I got all these red flags and, you know, I couldn't access the web page. But if you, I think it's many babies.com, the, the, the ideas that, uh, babies are, are a difficult, uh, participant because as many athletes, you know, they might, they are underage, uh, so they can't give consent, that they, the, the, the participation of the involvement sometimes is difficult to, um, to get participation. Um, in that case of the many babies, they're looking at, you know, sometimes rare diseases. Anyway, there's this, I, you know, I'll invite you to go on that website and see what they do. Again, it's better explained that the way I can explain it. Uh, but the idea is to create consortium where you can actually work as a big team to, to work on the question. Even that process starts with prioritizing the question to make sure that, you know, there's no to limit a search waste. There are a lot of publications showing that a research waste is, uh, starts with answering the wrong question. Um, so you start there, you understand what's the priority for, for your, um, beneficiaries of research. And then you're trying to collect big data set. That big time, uh, big teams, um, approach, um, requires the, uh, fair bit of working to building the infrastructure, which allows to then collect the data and share the data and answer those bigger questions. We're not there, but we are exploring the, the spectrum. I, I suspect that the, if you want to improve and be better and be able to answer questions, the, the, the, I'm not going to say the old style publications with six and eight participants is not the future. I mean, can keep going. Sometimes it is five, some criteria, but I don't think we should rely on, you know, on that kind of research, which often is limited by the number of participants or outlets we in a team. Um, but we're trying to move on again. Have I answered your question? Yeah, I mean, well, if I, if I check if I've heard this correctly, but you're, you're looking to increase the objectivity and standardization of certain, some certain measurements that you might apply to an athlete and that you're looking at methods, presumably big data, um, AI approaches to, to be able to look for specific trends for how, how people are progressing, announce to the, the questions that you're asking. Yeah, well, um, big data and AI are part of the conversation, but they're not, yeah, the big team science is more about bringing together researchers in, you know, in, um, in laboratory that would otherwise not collaborate to be able to, to, to share a creative network where again, instead of answering similar, like, you know, six different, uh, but similar questions, um, they, they come together, they agree on how to collect the data and again, you mentioned the standardization that that's a part of a key component of that big team science, having shared protocols to, to ensure that, you know, the same devices are used or the same calibration techniques at the same process of data collection, um, happens and, and, and, and then we can actually answer a question with more confidence. Okay, next one of my three. So second question. And none, none of these, oh, I assume are going to be easy for you to answer. How do you balance? Um, short term versus long term. So short term that might yield within a year or four years for hopefully benefit to a group of athletes and, um, and something that has some longevity and or might not be possible to answer. You talked, we talked about 17 years, um, from research publication to, to yield, but also, you know, kind of getting some of these ideas off the ground sometimes takes a long time. So how do you balance that when someone's paying for a science program, um, how do you balance the short and long? Yeah, yeah. So generally speaking, I'd say like since the announcement of very small 2032 was 10 years or 11 years and now we are, you know, probably under eight, but anyway, we, that gave us, um, more opportunities to think about long term, for instance, I briefly touched on a couple of examples. Um, we, we work with our, like another science department within the Australian government to work on a document, which we refer to as a mega trends in sport. So we looked at again, did these, what are the trends that are going to change participation and high performance and those include the disruption of pandemic and well, you know, they're in the geopolitical changes and like the increase, or do you say like this sport increase number of people practicing this sort, etc. So anyway, there are number, I think there are six mega trends, um, I'm a quarter, but again, even that one, I haven't already in a while, but we came up and it's published. We came up with, um, uh, with six mega trends. And that's meant to actually have a look for the next 2040 years. It's a ambitious project. We will find out if we're right or not once we are retired. But that's an example of trying to root very long term. Another example of activities that I think we can embrace only because we have the gaming in, in eight years. Um, I guess for, for virtue of my job title, I'm part of a, a group. It's called a government scientist group, which is chaired by Australia chief scientist, and there are chief scientists for each government agency. So like I, you know, I, I, I, I general a lesson and try to learn, but I sit with the, you know, the chief scientist of defense intelligence, the world statistics, the world of material, et cetera, et cetera, like 25 agencies. Anyway, last year, in conversation, basically, the chief scientist of Australia expressed some interesting using sport, to promote quantum quantum technology. Australia has a past on an in quantum research, which we else, I wasn't even aware and I, and I'm not a quantum expert that doesn't need to be stated. But my job became to connect sport expert and, and, and coaches with quantum experts. So we had this, but I think was, oh, no, I think it was August 2023, where this, what we think it was the first, that we are aware of, workshop where quantum scientists met, met sport people. We actually had Olympians and Paralympians in their own. And the idea is to, you know, think long term. Nothing is going to move quickly in that space. But that, for example, led to the, to the Queensland government, opening a grant opportunity, they put five millions, and the title is pretty much bringing quantum to the brisk one, 2332 games. So that's an example of, yeah, you know, trying to influence and think about long term, whether it's going to be successful or not, it's all to be seen. Certainly, there is no benefits for any athletes in Paris and probably not in in LA. But something might happen, for sure, some dollars have been invested and I'm sure that we will, we will, something out of it. So this is the whole particular example of the sorts of things you might be asking or yeah yeah so what I've learned is that quantum the quantum science or quantum generally they are two areas one is quantum computing and one is quantum sensing quantum computing is very I didn't know many were surprised many in the sport the area were surprises and the strength is not big data for example but it's doing many computation at the same time and solve physical logistical problem like they solve logistic issues like the traffic or they do many permutations one example was well everything we're in the logistical space you know in in sport you think about organizing and all in big games or sending big teams overseas all of those calculations can happen very quickly and in a way that it's more feature than that traditional computing we have maybe I'll stop there the other side is the quantum sensing which basically again using quantum technology to look inside the body a sporting negative trailer was invited to the workshop and clearly they're thinking about using that technology for the detection of substances that otherwise wouldn't be able to be detected but then our chief medical officer was interested in concussion space the biggest challenge was that right now the majority of quantum technology it's very big you know whatever you're trying to look into your brain they're like a room size because of some requirement related to cooling you need to lower the temperature to extremely low temperature and with some precision again the size is very big but you know 50 years ago computers were very big and now we carry a computer in our pockets in the quantum side is side of things every they their reserves should they were all excited you know and and they took the challenge fascinating really interesting um the third third question then how do you balance in on sorry go on on the short term oh yeah so yeah yeah we had the opportunity to have some some research grants and you know in successive years of what we we decided in a strategic way we made them to say in very late terms big and small you know one year we gave up to up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per grant following year fifty the following year up to four hundred thousand dollar which made some project bigger and longer and some other smaller and shorter in in in 2023 we went with the fifty thousand dollars again on purpose pretty much to achieve what you described because almost all those projects were twelve months in in duration so we were able to to support more projects because the total amount of of funding was the same so we were able to diversify the more project but also smaller with the with a quicker turn around interesting um i can bet that's any thoughts on impact you might have seen for parodies but um if i could ask the third question what's please how do you how do you balance as uh i guess a leader of applied science how do you balance uh what people want versus perhaps what people need well that's a great question but you are making me feel like we probably first of all lose the people because certainly there's still a lot of research that happened oh yeah a lot of research questions coming from the different different uh stakeholders um some i'm trying not to get in trouble here but something we do uh they are like to answer questions with my come from government or they might come from you know lucky you have an requirement to look into a theme because that has been raised as uh as uh as important whether or let's ask for it or not um you know i don't think okay i think i think it i think it's i think it's i use the well-being is an example i mean uh it's probably been forced a bit into outlets you know uh not many outlets ten years ago for the vascular to look into into into their well-being i i i i'm i'm guessing um and so is an example so something you need to start them because they're important and they kind of come a bit top down whether it's the government or the chief medical officer or like someone says this we need to look into concussion um and other ones actually gain the come bottom up and so they they're exempt you know a call from from athletes and coaches they're couriers and they they actually it it it it this emerges as something that we are really we really need because we think it does it's got an impact yeah okay and um and then how about when you're you're trying to make sure that scientific concepts are landed with coaches and athletes i guess it's going to be fairly simple if you've if a team have said look we want you to answer the question for us you know to be able to to then go and work on that but equally it might present challenging findings um you might need to introduce a new idea for coaches and athletes to grasp how much of your focus is on the applied craft of translating and working with coaches and athletes to make sure that knowledge comes to life yeah yeah um so my my current role is um for unfortunate I don't know if uh but but relatively sitting back from seeing other than coaches but I would say it's part of my focus is there but my role is uh again i'm trying to say no i'm not trying to say i'm saying it's not my decision was a call from you know from a second that anyway a call for that implementation science i mentioned before that's an answer your question so um having implementation science as a focus in the agenda and ensuring that i actually get implemented with the right expert uh it's the answer again is the answer to your question so i i'm not the person communicating the results to each athletes to each coach or to each sport uh but we would like to better understand with real expert that often they might not even be in sport how to be because you know implementing changes about behavioral you know behavioral science you know to people that you know people that they understand how to all you know how to get people on board etc and sometimes its communication sometimes it's understanding the context and tailoring the message yeah so have i answered it yeah i'm just curious to know about how much of a focus because i think of my career i've seen seen some great brains with um a really good grasp of a applied scientific concepts but they haven't necessarily worked to develop trust for a coach they haven't necessarily got the communication skills to be able to to and maybe we've a metaphor uh to give a an example to to to build that that uh capacity for them to say and therefore i think this might be of an approach you need to take or this is an area that's worth your attention when coaches have got their minds full of the complex decisions about athlete welfare, athlete training, athlete performance schedules the scientist has to be very prioritized and effective in influencing that that coach to not make a change. No i get it under percent i have to say that my experience here in the Australian system is a lot of practitioners whether they are at the AS or we are referred to it as the NIN the National Institute Network so Australian is a federal state as a state they're all institute or academy of sport and people working in the in that network in the NIN i think that yeah generally speaking very good at it i'm quite comfortable that they you know they're again skilled and able to translate and focus on it. In my role my job is ensuring that in the research side when we find a piece of research we we want to propose that includes the dissemination component we want a proposal that includes a plan for measuring the impact of the research so we moved on from not long ago but still you know it still happens we get research proposals for support etc where the you know the the practical outcome it's a publication and when you say like no we actually need something a bit more tangible and becomes a conference presentation so that's where you know part of my role is devising guidelines or processes where the things cannot finish with that with a conference presentation or not even a infographics to be honest because that's just a different differently printed piece of paper and so we are pushing hard for pushing hard we are changing you know the guidelines to make sure that there is a plan for the implementation which you might include involving the coach earlier on. I mean I mentioned it before it's also linked to the research list but you need to answer a question from a coach and yeah I think you said it too if you're answering a question which is not relevant it's more difficult to sell but then probably you should cancel it. Yeah I don't know I think I suppose it's a little bit by the Henry Ford you know if you ask people what they want they want to fast the horses and I think that they're probably needs to be a perspective that is multi-sport that it is that has the distance from the goal face that means that you are addressing problems addressing areas that perhaps people aren't seeing or asking for I think my memory of leading science teams you ask people what they want and they feel the pressures of their day athletes are broken so I want some physiotherapists we're in a weight-making sport I want an nutritionist we're in a high energetic sport so therefore we want a physiologist. And so you ask people what they want, but then perhaps, and this is all due respect, there was certainly a lower appetite for biomechanics. But yeah, there's a high degree of logical mathematical understanding to understand what the impact can be. And so I think the balance is an interesting one to be struck over time about what are the pressures you are seeing, but what are the ones that you're not seeing that offer you an opportunity? Yeah. So there is one of the things we discuss about is actually the and it probably goes back to that bottom up and top down. But when you ask Arthur and coach, one of the limitations is that you know, I'm not let's carry my finish within years and the coach often a contract goes with an Olympic cycle or Paralympic cycle. And so clearly, there is a research question, I mean, that's short term period. And so that could be a limitation. So that's for example, one of the areas where again, you try to bring in a different view. Yeah, I think that you actually just made me think about is the I think it's not worldwide, as well as the exact same terminology, but what it takes to in approach, which basically is the concept of looking at the determinants of performance. And so that allows should allow if followed in a methodological way, in a systematic way, to actually see where your biggest bank for box are, where you can actually make a bigger difference. And that is another approach or another consideration that comes into play. You mentioned that they hairy for the example people would ask for horses. What I would like to think when a with that analogy comes out that you know, there is a way to further ask, you know, the family, maybe some are referred to the YYY. So when you ask what do you want, they call it more horses, but the third Y eventually they'll tell you that what they want is to go faster from A to B. So that's where you can actually invent the car. Because again, potentially the first answer is I want another horse, but again, and so that makes me reflect. Or you know, the importance of not stopping at the first answer, but trying to dig deeper and trying to understand what is the core, the core need of the culture of the artlet's or. I think it's a really perceptive comment, I think, that simply asking and engaging at these encotures, you know, how's it feel? How's your training going? What are your goals? What does it feel like when you're competing? What are the concerns and worries? What are the things that you're emerging from your debrief that you want to dressing? And then digging a bit deeper is to how do that play out on the day? That can also unveil the quality of information that you might want to address, but also creates rapport. It creates understanding. It creates appetite for them to take on board some of these concepts too. A couple of questions then just to wrap up. I know a couple of big ones I suppose, but what's your commentary on how Australia have bounced back as an Olympic nation? I'm saying bouncing back from sort of Rio London where there was a lower level of certainly gold medals. Australia is a formidable nation punching above its weight, even then, capital, but what's your thoughts? Because Australia certainly had an incredible Olympics at in Paris. What's your thoughts on what's underpin that? Yeah. I must say that I did spend some time reflecting on it and talking with colleagues and probably I came up with more questions than answers with a part of the research. I agree Australia that yeah, great performance both of the Olympics and Paralympics. I mean, we've seen like amazing performances that we need to be very, very happy with. Some of the again, again, thoughts around the impact of system and strategies on outlets because clearly we went the ISS change across the years, but every organisation probably keeps changing and you need to bring some change. And so I guess you look at some success of outlets in many sport, their career might be 10 years ago, 10 years long. And so the question is like, is the performance linked to the last change of strategy or plan or to what happen 10 years when they were selected? For example, that's a consideration, but then there are also sports where skateboard outlets are 14. So like, what is the impact of what we do, what we decide in Canberra in the life of 14-year-old? One of the, again, it remains a question, but in conversation, someone noted how, again, this is in the Australian system, and some medals were clustered, almost in suburbs. So there is a suburban called course that produced two gold medals in skateboarding. I was that even possible. Like, what are the chances that if I remember their numbers right, but like six medals since we come from the same swimming club? And that could be different because some swim has moved to that club. But still, how fascinating is that they move toward the coach in the end? And one of the possible hypotheses is that concept of pushing each other, when you have like a bit of magic, it's not a better description. I don't have a better one, but an environment where outlets push each other, and they just better each other, and they keep improving and they challenge. I think in one of the, again, the conversation I mentioned, someone else raised that in truck and field, you know, the sprinters. And here I'm not talking about Australia, but many are coached by the same person in the US and they are in the same training environment. Being there is more important than that a lot of other factors. So yeah, I don't have an answer, but this fascinating would be nice to know what makes the medals. Yeah, interesting. Look from a distance, I haven't got through the full tables, but swimming, kayaking, very strong performances in certain sports. And so looking forward then to Brisbane. Yes. This unusual situation that you have 11 years from announcements to hosting the games, you've got two pit stops along the way in Paris and Los Angeles. How are you looking forward and how are you approaching maximizing the impact of science on those games? Yeah, well, when we found out that the amount of time we had, part of the conversation when it comes to that science and research space was about, if you want to look, and it is in sport to think about four years cycles. So we kind of told each other level we've discussed having potentially a like a discovery phase where we are looking at the more basic research and potentially work on those infrastructure out to make sure that we can work together. And this is a comment about 10 years ago, also a different system. But when I came to Australia, there was this applied physiology conference. First time I attended and I had the impression that they were like, you know, four PhDs for different states doing pretty much the same thing within their own team. And not a criticism, because again, everybody, their idea about the wars, a lot of competition within states, in putting the athletes in the national team. So, so because it's a federated state again, competition with other states. But now we have a, so that's a big system change. We have a system strategy, it's called HP 32 plus, also known as win well, where for the first time, 50 plus organization are actually signed at a strategy altogether working toward the same goal. So that has been a system change. And I'll take it back to the science. So like we talked about science research, one cycle where we work on the infrastructure, we build about that discovery. Then the the following cycle could be more on the developing and innovating on what has been discovered, what has happened in the beginning. And eventually end up with the delivery. So as we go toward, you know, the Brisbane, we need to turn up the implementation, turn up the defined tuning to then be able to actually see that the science in the practice. Okay, interesting. So you've, you've stumbled across a similar approach that I've kind of created, probably within us one cycle, which where the innovation and the exploration is really high at the beginning of the cycle. And then the mid phase is about developing that protocol. And then it's about executing it towards the end of the cycle. Yeah, I should acknowledge it's not, yeah, nothing new in what they say. When I was in the sport, it's very similar. I could tell me, you know, in the last six months, we are not training training or trying anything new. Last six months is about delivery, except that you work back. So it's a similar concept, yeah, stretch till the 11 years. Yeah, good. Okay, so last question then, because you met a comment there, win well. What is the measure of a successful Olympic Paralympic sports program? Is it medals or is it the mana in which they're delivered or the the role models that you're created? How's it measured? Yeah, yeah. So win well as a stretch. strategy, which again is published actually has a specific page and measure of success. Now we are testing me. I do not remember all of them, but they talk about, they talk about medals, but medalists, medalist, breath of sport. So the idea is that you know, you need, we need to be successful in many sport to achieve the number of medals. Medal medal medal medalist and breath of sport. Those are the three when it comes to the, if you want performance on the field, but then there are consideration about winning well when it comes to the well-being of the athletes. And we've had months of conversation about how to measure it, involving experts that they come from other field and how to measure well-being and it's not an easy answer. And there is the inspiration factors. If you want our organization also sends some surveys out to some part of the population to understand if, you know, Olympians and paralympians are inspiring or what, if they are proud of what's happening at the games. And so those measures will help building this big picture of what is success. So everybody, all of the above, at least that's what is described in the strategy. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a lot of evolution of what has mature systems are now going through. Yeah, thinking is it all just about the metal that comes home or is it all about the effect and what's what is sport for this quite a thoughtful philosophical cycle that people are going through. Now, I'm going to say the things that get me fired is that, you know, we're talking about metals and metalists and winning well and the breath of sport, but then when we know a lot of gold medals in and up on top of the on top of higher in the metal telly, I guess, you know, it's easy to look at the metal telly even though that's technically is not what we committed to to deliver. I think our goals and our measure of success are more important than the metal telly because again, we talk about medals, not the number of goals, but then when you win a lot of gold and you know, your name is up there, clearly no one complains. No, that's right. I think I'm talking to more on these things. Yeah, working with the French system to help them prepare for Paris and part of my conversation was, you know, you need to make sure that the National Anthem is playing a lot as a big focus. That should be part of the conversation. That should be part of the strategy because those winning moments are the ones that people create that broader impression about how it went and how successful are we. Alongside some incredible stories about athletes delivering genuine inspiration for their nation and their their society. Yeah, I guess paradoxically in this hypothetical scenario, which never happened, but if you win one hundred medals and zero gold, our Australian going to be inspired by being the last in the metal telly, well, that's, you know, what is your measure. Yeah, I think the winning value is an important one and those success, we've seen some amazing success stories of, you know, athletes not winning medals, but that they've been in the media and they've been, yeah, I think truly inspiring the next generation. So, and I think we need more of that. Fantastic. Well, great note to wrap up on, Paula. Thanks so much for talking to me. It's been fascinating to hear about how you're approaching the work really considered, the inspiring about the method, the approach, the breadth that you're bringing to your thinking and, you know, more power to you. It's great to see Australia bounce back and hopefully a few more cycles of thriving ahead. Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for having me. My call for feedback wasn't, was genuine. So if any listener, if you have any idea and you tell, hey, you can actually do better there. Please reach out if you want to work with us or suggest things. I'm easy to reach and very interested in doing better. Fantastic. Well, Phil, Paula is in box and can I, with him on Twitter, all the links will be in the show notes. Paula, thanks so much. Not thank you again. Bye. Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen. I really hope you enjoyed this week's conversation. Now, we've got plenty more to come. So if you'd like to support and champion us, then take the time to subscribe and leave a review on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube or wherever you tune in. You can also give us a follow on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. All the links are in the show notes. So in the meantime, have a great week.