The Program Is Only the Starting Point | Dr Kellyanne Redman

0:02 Navigating a Male-Dominated NRL Environment as a Female Researcher Kellyanne Redmond So you were a female researcher, early career inside a professional NRL environment which was built almost entirely around large male bodies, a competitive hierarchy and physical capability. 0:17 I want to understand what you were actually thinking when you walked into that environment. What do you actually have to figure out to make your presence in the room functional, let's say? 0:30 Speaker 2 Well, firstly, thank you for the introduction. I'm not often referred to as doctor. Secondly, I mean, I was super stoked to be there. I wanted that was the only PhD I'd applied for. 0:46 I was a strength and conditioning coach who was doing, I would say, research on the side. So to be able to be doing a PhD in strength and power at a professional rugby league club, and a lot of my experience prior to them had been in rugby league in Pathways, I was really excited to be there. 1:09 Especially a really proud club like the Brisbane Broncos. They've had a lot of success in the 90s and the 2000s. There's a lot of pride. You know, the expectation is you're making finals every year and stuff. So I was really excited, but I was also very much aware of what I was there to do, which was to conduct my PhD, and I wanted to make myself as useful as possible. 1:36 But when you first walk into an organization like that as a PhD candidate, you need to take your time in realizing where you can add value. You can't just go in and day one be adding value because you all feel like you're adding value, but because you're probably going to step on toes. 1:57 So yeah, I think I was really excited. I was really keen just to to try and, you know, help out as much as possible, but also do my PhD. 2:10 Speaker 1 So I guess the reason I asked that question was because your PhD research was on strength and power in rugby league and I can only imagine it would be challenging as a female coming into an NRL environment and telling the players, hey, here's what I would like you to do. 2:28 So who were the first people who took you seriously in that environment and what made them different, if anything? 2:38 Speaker 2 Well, at the time I had one of my supervisors, Vince Kelly there, so he was there in a research and innovation role. So definitely him. Ryan Whitley is strength and power coach because essentially my PhD was on him, his job. 2:57 And then I think with the playing group, you have to take your time to gain their trust. And I think it even starts with, you know, just you going to them and saying hello, how are you? 3:14 Because they've seen many of you before. And that's a conversation that that Brian had with me one time was, you know, Cal, they've seen PhD students like you before. And there's probably going to be more after you. Like you really need to take the time to get to know them as people essentially to be able to influence them. 3:38 Studying the Gap Between Prescribed and Actual Training Loads So what I found really fascinating about your situation and, and how it relates to my podcast, which is one of the big reasons I wanted you to be on the podcast, was you were literally studying like the gap between what athletes are told to do and what they actually do. 3:53 So the prescribed versus actual training loads while you're embedded inside the club and producing effectively that exact gap. So do you want to talk a little bit about that study and what your results were? 4:06 Speaker 2 Yeah. So that study came about from previous observations from some of the staff there and they were finding that, you know, things were getting modified maybe with little consideration. 4:24 So I was just reporting, I spent the first year, I guess piloting the data of what are we prescribing for our K lifts and what are the the players actually lifting. So what you'll read in my study is, you know, those 27 players that were there across the whole season, they had their loads prescribed across the whole season, looked at, as I said, the key lifts and what differences they may have been at different times of the season, different weeks and across different exercises. 4:58 But what you won't read in that study, because there's certain rules that you have to adhere to inclusion and exclusion criteria to make sure things are reliable and valid, is that the the most valuable part there was identifying athletes when they would would have a big difference that we didn't expect consistently and that we might have to action something off the back of that. 5:26 So we had a player development player who spent the first stage of their pre season with our pathway group and then they came into the NRL squad and they they were just consistently going over what was being prescribed. 5:43 And it got to a point where it was like we actually have to retest this athlete to ensure that the stimulus we're giving them is appropriate for the adaptation that we're trying to achieve. 5:57 Speaker 1 And So what was the outcome of that? Well, I guess #1 how did the athlete take that? And then second, was that the right thing to do to retest him? 6:07 Speaker 2 I think it was the right thing to do, absolutely. I think the athlete was excited to get retested as well. Like they were chomping at the bit, having an opportunity to be with the NRL squad and they were going like 1015% above consistently. 6:24 And you know, a young athlete, they're a sponge, they're adapting so quickly. So I think that was the right thing to do. And I think that study has been a great conversation startup for the people in talking about my research is like, you're going to write a program, but are you looking over it to see that athletes are doing it? 6:47 And if they're not, just ask the question of why and provide the context. I work with our women's national rowing team and I have had two athletes that consistently had to be modified. And then conversations off the back of that was like, right, we need to completely change our program for these athletes so that we're no longer categorizing them as modified and we're getting the right adaptation for them. 7:18 Speaker 1 Did you find that there were periods within the season that the athletes were, say, consistently deviating from the program? Were there any themes in that sense? 7:27 Speaker 2 Yeah. I think the findings are like that middle season, we had less adherence during that period of time. Like you're us, you know, you're higher playing group of going out to Origin, you know, you're getting niggles and stuff. 7:43 And what my research doesn't look at is reasons why you might have changes as well. 7:50 Athlete Awareness and Buy-in for Strength and Power Data For that particular season. We were very up and down and I would say, but our results also, I think I even make that as a suggestion is our results even would affect adherence. You know, it's really hard to get someone up when you've just been flogged a few days beforehand. 8:12 Speaker 1 Was that a hard conversation to have for the person prescribing the loads? I assume that wasn't you. That was that was Ryan Whitley, for example. Was that a hard conversation to have? 8:20 Speaker 2 No, I don't think it was. We had a really honest relationship where you know it was, it's not personal, this is just about the work and what is happening within the group. 8:36 Speaker 1 Then from an athlete's perspective or the athletes you were working with during the study, was that the gap between what you were prescribing or what was being prescribed and the execution something that they knew about, or were they genuinely unaware? 8:53 Speaker 2 We do report that back to them, yeah, That they wouldn't have been aware. I also had thought that maybe there would be a difference between our upper body lifts and our lower body lifts because anecdotally, I would see them come in off the field and say we had back squat as a key lift that day and felt like they were doing less. 9:17 But there, there actually wasn't a a big difference there a significant difference there. 9:23 Speaker 1 Right. So they were still doing what was prescribed from a lower body perspective. 9:27 Speaker 2 Yeah. 9:28 Speaker 1 Yeah, right. He did publish a study predicting tackle outcomes in rugby league using the strength and power data that he had. So he had, I think, back squat, bench press, bench pull, Catamuma jump, broad jump potentially. 9:46 What did that mean in terms of like what you could actually report back to the player, if anything? So are you saying to them this physical quality predicts whether you win or lose or tackle? And when you try to use that finding to change what a player does in the gym, does it actually work? 10:06 Speaker 2 Wow. There's a lot in that. Yeah. So what we found, those two tackle studies in my PhD. The first one looked at a number of different variables relating to strength and power. And then we found that there there were so many variables and also there were some really strong relationships there. 10:26 So one of my PhD supervisors, Mark Connick, statistician, suggested we do a data reduction technique. We create less variables with the original variables and then we try and predict the tackle outcomes. 10:47 We never presented the data back to the players, those findings. I think in conversations it would be used anecdotally maybe to just help a bit of buy in for some players that didn't see, maybe not didn't see the value, but probably weren't pushing themselves as hard as they could in the gym. 11:11 Because it's a, it's a skill based sport. It's not just on pure physical qualities. So not all, I mean, you, you want all your playing groups to be strong and powerful, but some of them are there because they're incredible, incredibly skilled at that specific position. 11:30 So they, they just see, you know, the gym as, or I have to do this, not necessarily seeing the benefit of what it's going to do for them as an athlete and their ability to play their sport. 11:45 Applying PhD Learnings to Women's National Rowing Team Yeah, keeping that in mind, tackling is a skill. So we like you need to have those physical elements. But one thing that I didn't look at, I looked at tackle outcomes and a number of different outcomes is with like body positioning, like number of opponents involved, like I mean you looked at in your PhD, like even different field position as well is going to probably have an effect on an outcome minutes played. 12:16 So we were just looking at one small aspect, and a lot of my PhD was basically like what we do on the gym floor. How does that relate to what's happening now on the field? 12:30 Speaker 1 Yeah, it's so interesting and it actually surprises me that you didn't show that to the players. I mean, I really wouldn't say that almost as something you could put up as an incentive or maybe to have a little bit of salience bias of, OK, cool, I need to be squatting X times body weight. 12:51 So they didn't see any numbers at all. 12:54 Speaker 2 I mean we showed them, I remember 1 pre season, we showed them the volume load and training intensity. That's all we really fit back to them. You know, we'd feed them back their power results as well. We would do standing board jump and counter movement jump. 13:12 But aside from that, no, because I would say my first year, so I had three seasons there, my first year pilot data, finalizing the research questions, the second year collecting data and I had huge data sets as well. 13:30 And then third year is like your write up and probably your opportunity to feedback to the players. But we had COVID and that's probably one of the reasons why I've been able to publish as much as I have because when everything shut down and there was the bubble, there was always the talk of the bubbles going to burst. 13:49 So I was just madly writing and, you know, putting all my stats together and everything in preparation for having to go back and be athlete facing. So yeah, there was definitely a missed opportunity there. 14:06 Speaker 1 So in terms of that type of research and what you learnt from that and potentially what you thought, OK, next time if I did this again, I would do XY and Z. How do you apply that now to where you're currently working? And do you want to give a little bit of background about what you are currently doing? 14:24 Speaker 2 Yeah, so I'm a sage of strengthening dishing coach with the NSW Institute of Sport. My athlete group that I work with is our Australian Women's National rowing team. And like even recently we had a training objectives meeting. 14:41 So our objective for the month of May and June develop, develop strength and power. And I presented all my data to the rest of the performance team and our coaches. And then for the first time, I actually put my slides up on the wall and presented it to our athlete group as well, which has been incredibly valuable for them to be able to see like, hey, in January we were up here and we're down here in June. 15:14 Like, some of it's just related to efforts, some people just not pushing themselves as hard as they can. But now you have it right in front of you. There's no hiding away from the numbers. 15:29 Like, how can I help you get back to where you were or as close as you can be? I also presented some findings to our current athlete cohort from one of my PhD studies, which is I looked at the effects of the offseason on power. 15:49 And what I presented back to the rowers was, you know, we're preparing them for, we're about to go back overseas for world champs. And then there's three weeks off. What are you going to do in those three weeks off? And you know, I've given them their their strength sessions and I just provided back to them as well some of my findings, which was that, you know, the number of upper body sessions were related strongly and significantly related to the rugby league players coming back and feeling mentally restored. 16:25 And, you know, the number of full body sessions had a significant relationship to feeling physically rested and that's what the aim of the offseason is. So another piece of information to try and influence their behaviors to, you know, do those sessions and use it as an opportunity to relieve some stress as well as have the physical benefits of, you know, not having as much strength decreases in the offseason that what we did in the previous year. 17:02 Speaker 1 And so like you said, you presented that to the group. How was that received? My first thought, playing devil's advocate would be, but shouldn't the athletes be allowed to have a rest? And would there be long term, say chronic fatigue and implications on not having a full rest? 17:19 And I understand there's probably never a full rest. There will be optional gym sessions which of course are beneficial, but how do you balance that? 17:30 Speaker 2 I mean, all of this is optional as well. And even within that I have different sessions. I think as a coach I like to empower my athletes to make their own decisions. 17:45 I might be away for whatever reason, I'm not always going to be at every session watching them lift every single weight, so how can I help them make the best decisions for themselves? 18:01 I think female athletes certainly need to touch on that top end strength quite regularly because they lose it quite quickly. We're also only two years away from the big dance, which is LA for us, so and we have different periods of time where we do have to pull back. 18:23 And if strength and power is something that you need to work on, like there's huge aerobic loads in this sport, there's less aerobic work that's going to be going on. Like this is your opportunity if that's what you feel like you need to work on as an individual to go after that a bit. 18:40 Speaker 1 And so I guess we're humans, we're incentive driven. So when you presented it to them, did you present them as the incentive is that you will come back at X&Y? 18:52 Speaker 2 I started it off with like, you've done a lot of hard work this season. So like, let's not, you know, let's keep building on that. Let's keep maintaining that. And I also then showed them what as a group their average was leading into last year's world champs and then as a group what they came back As for our key lifts. 19:16 And like for the lower body lifts, there was a huge difference. And I also told them, like, it took us X number of months as a group to get back to this. So, like, keep that in mind. And then I will, so, you know, acknowledge that the offseason is for physical and mental restoration. 19:33 And we want you to enjoy yourselves, but we also want you to train a bit. And so here are your options. 19:40 Contrasting Influence Strategies in NRL vs. Women's Rowing Can you talk about the differences with, say, having that type of conversation in an NRL environment versus in a women's rowing environment? 19:50 Speaker 2 Yeah, the women are so inquisitive, they are so curious. And I think you, you, as I said, you wanna empower them to make the decisions. I don't think. 20:06 As women, it goes down too well to be an authoritarian and tell them exactly what they have to do. Like, you're not going to win friends that way, you're not going to influence people that way. So I think giving them all the information, telling them what you suggest that they need to do is probably the best way to influence them. 20:27 I think in rugby league there's a culture of like these athletes have been signed since the age of 15, a lot of them, and they've been told what to do the whole way through. And they're highly resourced as well. So I think you could probably be a little more direct with the men and they they probably appreciate that. 20:50 They probably just want to be told. Some of them probably just want to be told exactly what to do. Whereas I think the women, they appreciate being given some autonomy and being given all the information, the reasons why, how it's going to benefit them, etcetera. 21:07 Speaker 1 And I think that kind of leads well into my next question, which is a little bit more about the actual training environment. And say, for example, with your PhD, in any professional sporting environment, particularly with ones that are well resourced, you're typically asking a lot from the athletes in terms of monitoring, testing and so on. 21:25 So you come in and now you're asking them to do can boomer jumps, broad jumps, you know, whatever it might be, things that they potentially previously haven't done before. So how did you go about influencing the athletes and making sure you were actually getting them to lift at the intensity you wanted them to lift at or put in a proper effort when it came to testing? 21:52 Refining Testing Protocols and Data Feedback for Athletes When also, you know, I was not the strength and power coach as well. You know, I'm kind of standing on the side a little bit. But I think, you know, it's a lot more of like just you're told to lift this weight. 22:09 When it came to testing as well, we had the gym we're on, so we're measuring velocities as well. So we get more of an understanding of how close they are to their failure. It's an incredibly competitive environment. 22:26 So there's that to help push people go further. You know, you've got for them, we would prescribe loads up to about what we thought they were going to get to as well. And you open up a dialogue with them about, all right, your next load is X. 22:42 What do you think about that? For more your senior athletes, for more your development athletes, you're probably just more telling them what to do. And we would video the the lift as well to make sure that they were hitting the key positions too and then making the decision whether they go up or not. 23:03 Speaker 1 Would you show them the videos at all? Was that something for them to see, or was it just for you? 23:08 Speaker 2 No, I think we did show them because sometimes we're referring mainly to the back squad because you with the bench press, you're getting immediate feedback, you're getting a touch on the chest. With the bench pull, you're hearing the bar hit the bottom of the the bench. 23:24 But with the back squat, that position that 90°, it's like, oh, you probably went too deep there or you need to give me a little bit more here. That's when you'd probably show an athlete what it what it look like. 23:40 Speaker 1 Is there anything you would have done differently in terms of of that approach? 23:46 Speaker 2 One thing I didn't mention with the the counter movement jumps, there was one pre season where I reckon we actually jumped them too much and we weren't getting 100% effort out of them. So I think just picking your key moments like your start of pre season before they maybe go away on the break when they come back, even just like changing the timings of it, like I just went often by alphabetical order. 24:18 So I and we did it before any training in the the morning. So I'm always asking our captain at the time and our most senior player to come in the earliest and do the jumping. So I'd probably change that around. 24:36 I'd probably give them just more snippets of what I was doing with the data and how it was going to benefit them as an athlete. As I said, that was probably a missed opportunity there. Equally, I would say it evolved as time went on. 24:55 A bit of advice I got in probably my first couple of months as well, because you know when you're starting the research process you're so keen on, like doing a training intervention and all of this. And the PhD student who was finishing up at the time, JP, he suggested look at what you can collect on a daily basis and then how you can help that to answer the research questions that you have 'cause I was also given the topic of monitoring. 25:29 So there was myself in another PhD ship. We both got scholarships from the University of Queensland. And he got priming and I got monitoring. Pete Harrison and I, I remember crying to Ryan, 'cause I was like monitoring. 25:46 So boring. I want priming. I want to do priming interventions. And he was like, it's going to be all right, Carol. We're going to make it really interesting. And it was, like, incredibly interesting. And it's helped me so much as a practitioner. 26:03 Yeah. 26:05 Speaker 1 Are you happy now that you did the monitoring? 26:08 Speaker 2 I'm stoked, I'm stoked because you're, it would be almost impossible to do priming because you can't prime half your NRL group and not the other half. And we gave the boys priming, priming as options, like as an optional on the day of captain's run. 26:28 And it started out with like a high number of people, then it slowly dropped off. So yeah, it would have, I would have definitely been biting off way more than I can chew. Because also I got feedback at my confirmation of canditure saying that I was spending too much time at the club and then I needed to do more of my. 26:54 Speaker 1 Professional sport. 26:56 Speaker 2 Yeah. 26:58 Speaker 1 Just to touch on something you mentioned before. So how often were you jumping the guys that you wished you hadn't jumped them as often? 27:07 Speaker 2 Oh, that's such a good question. This was probably in 2019, so it's 2026 right now and this would have been the preseason, which meant it might have even been still the back end of 2018. I think we would jump in them either weekly or fortnightly. 27:27 And I was just getting like definitely grumbles from the athletes and them kind of, for lack of a better word, taking the piss. Some of them, because, again, some of them are skill that really highly skilled rugby league players, They don't necessarily see the benefit of doing a counter movement jump to them as a rugby league player. 27:58 So yeah. 27:59 Speaker 1 What? What question were you trying to answer with that kind of movement jump data? 28:05 Speaker 2 I mean, I used I used that data in two of my tackle studies. I was probably like looking to use it to look at changes across either just the pre season phase or the whole season. 28:22 I wouldn't be able to say off the top of my head because also some of I had more studies in mind and I had a really big PhD. And had I had even more time, I probably would have published more work and put more studies in my thesis, which I would not recommend as well because that just when you're doing the thesis, because it just opens you up to more criticisms about your PhD and then more changes you might have to make in the examination period. 29:00 Kellyanne's Journey: From Masters Research to the Broncos Just winding the clock back a little bit, can you give us a little bit of a background story, so maybe a bit of an origin story of how you actually ended up at the Broncos? 29:11 Speaker 2 So I'll go one step removed, as in what I was doing right before I started my PHDI was doing a Master's of research with Westfield Sports High and Western Sydney University. 29:27 So I was looking at the effects a rugby league match simulation has on decision making. So like as the game progresses, is a player's ability to make the right decision still there? 29:44 And throughout that as well I was coaching at Westfield Sports High with the rugby league program, I was with the Cronulla Sharks with their women's programs. I did some emerging NRL referees, SNC work as well. 30:02 One step before that, I was working as a health coach for the Queensland Police Service and for a while we were also working with the Queensland Fire Service and I was trying to make a transition into sport and I just wasn't able to even get a job interview because obviously a lot of my work was in more that corporate health space. 30:27 That's what I would say. Our program was at the Queensland Police and so I knew I had to go back and do some sort of study and I landed on the Masters of Research. 30:41 Speaker 1 Did you publish anything from that one? 30:43 Speaker 2 I did publish from that one, and that also came about because Westfield Sports High were looking to do an embedded master's of research and I didn't get that particular scholarship. But who I interviewed with, Jason Siegler, who went on to be my primary supervisor, had said like he'd be interested in supervising me for a master's of research and he had some tutoring work that I could do on the side as well. 31:15 So that's how I ended up there. 31:17 Speaker 1 And So what did, what studies did you publish from that? 31:20 Speaker 2 I did a match simulation with, I think it was mainly our like senior athletes, our year 11 and 12, where I'd take in. So that was a two years master's of research. I'd take in data from matches the year prior and come up with a match simulation where I'd done it in on my Mac where it was like run for X number of seconds or X distance jog tackle. 31:52 And I'd have the the athletes at the start do a counter movement job, play metric push up at what would be half time do the same things and during that as well during the the start, the middle and the end. Ask them to watch some footage of their their own matches, maybe they were rugby league matches and clips that the rugby league coaches at the time had helped me cut up and just ask them like, what should happen next. 32:25 Yeah. And so then they also had to do a reactive agility test. That was like a huge training intervention. I learned a lot of skills doing that and probably a huge undertaking for a master's of research. 32:44 What I found was although they were physically fatigued or they they jumped, their jump height was lower in the middle of what would be half time, they were still able to make decisions throughout the entire, the entire like match, so to speak and. 33:08 Speaker 1 Referencing back to what we were saying before, did you talk to any of the athletes about those findings? 33:14 Speaker 2 No, because at the end of that I was finishing up my thesis. I had some personal stuff going on as well, so I wasn't at the school as much. But then I got my PhD at the Brisbane Broncos and you know, I was up there a couple of months later. 33:37 How Environment and System Design Influence Athlete Behavior Next thing I want to talk about is influencing behaviour and how the system potentially influences that behaviour. So a lot of times in elite performance environments you might see some non compliance, some short shortcuts and there's athletes that say they'll do something but do something else. 33:57 It's never actually really about the athletes themselves. I think it's about what the system influences the athletes to think it's easy versus something that's challenging. Do you think that's true? 34:11 Speaker 2 As in, as practitioners, we have to let them see how easy it is, the things that we're asking them to do. 34:18 Speaker 1 And we set up the system or the environment to make the behaviors that we want to happen as easy as possible. 34:28 Speaker 2 I mean, that's, that's the ideal system. You. Yeah. Like even here at the National Training Centre, you want athletes to have X number of carbohydrates for X amount of training. 34:44 So there's a fridge and all snacks and stuff as they're walking out into the boat shed. You know, if that wasn't there, and this is even, we're about to go to Italy to do a small training block before the girls bump out to World Champs in Amsterdam. 35:05 There's no fridge in the gym and in the gym sessions the girls are having poppers and all of that and getting that extra bit of food in throughout the day. We don't have that in Italy. And it took some prompting. 35:22 And even then I don't think we got as much people eating throughout the session. But it took me saying to them like, hey, I don't mind if you bring in food. Just make sure you you're clean and tidy. I've noticed, you know, you're not eating as much that we do when we're at home. 35:39 And, you know, one of our coaches, she even would be bringing snacks in and offering them to rowers throughout the session. I think, yeah, the best way is to set it up so it's as easy as it can be for them. 35:57 And then they can maybe start to see the benefit as well. I think one of the reasons why you might also have non compliance is because they although you might tell them the benefit, they might not feel it themselves. And until they have that experience, you might continue to have non compliance. 36:16 Does that make sense? 36:18 Speaker 1 Definitely. It seems like such a small thing, but in a sport like rowing, I can imagine that nutrition is so important and it's actually a big thing. And we had a similar thing when I was working in basketball, and we actually set up the nutrition stations in order of when you should eat this. 36:36 So this is 60 to 90 minutes out, 60 to 30 minutes out. And then there was immediate energy available. Make it a frictionless environment and make the the options as easy as possible and as, you know, tempting as possible. 36:50 The Importance of Integration in High-Performance Teams What what was interesting about what you said was that it, it sounded like everyone there in that department is well aligned on that. And you know, I've seen lots of departments that have all the right people. So amazing physio, amazing SMC, sports science, medical nutrition, but there are times when they're not completely integrated. 37:15 So everyone's doing their individual job really competently, but the the entire system underperforms. So it's where have you seen that done really well? Have you seen that done poorly? 37:31 And what was that like? Because I know that, for example, the Broncos, you would have seen maybe 3 different heads of performance. And then obviously at your time at End Swiss, you would have seen a number of different departments in the sports that you've worked in. 37:49 Speaker 2 I'll start with where I've seen it, where everyone's kind of working more siloed, and that's like when you're in a decentralized system. So when I started at the NSW Institute of Sport, the two sports that I had were rowing and wheelchair track and road, wheelchair track and road. 38:10 We, we had our coach Louis Sauvage in house. And so it's, you know, she's going to drive the program in and really lead that program and she empowers. This is not the example of how it doesn't do well. 38:27 She's done a great job in terms of empowering every individual performance team member to come to the table with their ideas and look at training through their perspective. But in rowing it's the pathway program and and Swiss you have all your performance team, but you don't have the coach. 38:50 So they will row at their clubs with a number of different athletes. Like you might have two athletes at one particular club and the the head coach there or a number of different coaches are taking care of 4050 however many athletes in the morning because that's their job. 39:13 That's where their KPIs are about running that particular club. And then you have the athletes come to a completely different site and they'll have dietetics, physio, Physiology or Physiology sometimes will be at the club SNC and then information is getting lost across the team because everyone's time poor. 39:38 You're only maybe meeting with the rest of the performance team as a whole once a week. You might only see like the physio, like you got 2 physios, you might only see one of them that week because they also work on a number of different sports. 39:53 And that's incredibly challenging. And I think that's where my philosophy of empowering my athletes really solidified in that environment because. 40:10 There I might not be getting information from their coach or from other performance team members, and I might not have time to refer out and have a chat with them either. So how can I make sure that the athlete themselves can make the right decisions? 40:26 How can I empower them to tell me I got a sword back? So all right, well, we went back school today. We'll, we'll need extension instead. And how can we ensure that they're also going to tell their coach and they're not going to allow the pressure of I got an 8 needs to go in the water and I'm the only one available to say to them, I actually can't do that 20 K session here at the NTC. 40:52 It works really well, I think because also I share an office with all the other performance team members and coaches. I could turn around and touch our head coach and I think he's done a brilliant job in putting everyone in the same office. 41:08 And even where he sat himself in that office, the door is there. The athletes walk up the stairs and walk past him all the time. So if he needs to speak to one of them or they want to speak to him, that's so easy to have that interaction. 41:25 And then additionally with, you know, things being set up, food being set up, that it's on their way out as well. Their environment has been set up really well to have those constant touch points and to have try and have that positive influence over the athletes. 41:46 And you know that alignment is key. I know what the head coach is messaging to the athletes. I can echo that message in my session, or I know they're working with you on this. How can I help you in the gym for that quality as well? 42:02 But when you're not having that interaction, it's incredibly hard to be aligned. 42:09 Creating Facilities for Enhanced Communication and Integration I love the idea about setting up the environment so that there there has to be these multiple touch points because I think that's really important. I've seen facilities being built where that wasn't in mind, and that's fair enough. It's not necessarily how we think. 42:25 And as a result, athletes don't go in the meals area, they don't go and see the coaches often. So there's obviously a way that it has to be integrated into the day. So if you were to design like a perfect integration day, even with the touch points that you have now, what would that look like to you? 42:47 Speaker 2 I mean, ideally everyone on the same floor, I think, you know, facilities are always thinking about, you know, all athletes servicing on this floor and then all staff on this floor or like performance staff and stuff and then all business staff on this floor or on this side of the building. 43:12 How can you make sure that there's as much opportunity for people to have those corridor conversations and those touch points as possible? And, you know, putting the head coach's office on the next floor up and all the way down a corridor is pretty intimidating for any athlete because also they're going to walk all that way. 43:38 And then other people might see them and go, oh, why is calm and going and having a chat with such and such? What are they talking about? And that can become really toxic. So yeah, everything all on one level and trying to make even office spaces as open as possible to allow the athletes come in and have those conversations. 44:09 And then also for the performance staff members to have those conversations equally, like having a door so you can shut it and have private conversations so that the athletes don't hear because they don't need to know everything that goes on behind the scenes. 44:26 Speaker 1 Definitely. And I've been part of conversations before about developing and building a new facility at a professional Sports Club. And I think the original architecture plans had the players lounge directly opposite the coach's office. 44:44 And I said they're not going to use it, I promise you. And so, yeah, sometimes you just need that understanding of what actually happens on the ground, even when it comes to facility design. 45:00 Formal and Informal Communication in Elite Sporting Teams So in professional sport it's very common to have team meetings. So what does that look like in at the National Training Centre? 45:09 Speaker 2 When we're overseas, when we're in Italy, we will have daily meetings which are just, and this is after the first session. It's just an opportunity for everyone to go around the room and talk about how people are medically, how people are going in the gym, you know you need this person struggling a bit on water and just exchange information informally. 45:36 Now that we're right now, we're at home in Penrith, we have weekly staff meetings to have those discussions, those more formal discussions. I think I know when I was at and Swiss with the rowing program, wheelchair track and road, the rowing performance team would have weekly meetings to exchange information, but we would, it'd be really hard to catch up with the clubs And that should happen like once a quarter or something because there's, there's always something going on. 46:14 There's a regatta either here in Australia or there's one overseas and people are away and stuff. So it's, and that's that decentralized model as well. It's hard to get people all in the same schedule. But then wheelchair track and road, we'd have monthly performance team meetings where everyone discusses their individual area and shares information. 46:36 And in wheelchair track and road, that's the only performance team that I've been a part of where we have the athletes in that meeting and or the two athletes that I worked with there, Madison D Rosario and Reed McCracken, both very experienced athletes. 46:54 They have their say and they reflect on the last month of training as well. But there's always infrequent touch points there, too, because the coach is in house. 47:06 Collaborative Program Design and Athlete Periodization Yes, it sounds like a really well integrated system that you have there. In terms of 0 role specifically, as it stands, you've got the Olympics every four years, but then you've got multiple competitions we did within that World Champs and so on. 47:23 So that gives you time to periodize quite well, right? So how do those conversations look? So with the coach and then also with the athletes. So for example, you say, OK, that we're going to go through a phase where we're going to push really hard and you're going to be sore. 47:40 How does that look with the coach, for example, where he's saying, well, hang on a minute, we really need to get these times. And then the athletes are, you know, saying something similar. 47:50 Speaker 2 I think the way that I work with our head coach James, is I work around his program like rowing is the most important thing for a boat to go fast. And when you're trying to get eight people to row in the same rhythm and at the same time, that needs to be the highest priority. 48:13 And then what physical qualities can we have off the back of that? So, you know, we've been home in Australia for four weeks. So we've got five weeks of training here before we go back overseas. And that's just a sit down conversation between me and the coach. 48:31 And like, hey, I'm thinking about this, what are you thinking about? This is what you want. OK, well, I think we can fit this key lift around this session, you know, because as well, you know, back squat's a key lift for us. But should I give Aurora a heavy back squat on this, the second day of a three day cycle when they have X number of KS in their body and in their back as well? 48:58 Like, no, I'm going to give it at this period of time. So it it's a collaboration and that's what's the beauty as well about being in the Olympic Paralympic system is you have extended period of the time to develop those physical qualities. 49:20 And when I was with the wheelchair track and road program as well, Louise, we'd sit down and she'd tell me these are my key sessions. This is what I'm looking for. And I would build my program around that. And we'd spit for like, hey, I want to front end the week. 49:35 For these reasons. I will. I'm going to front end the week. OK cool. I'll back end of the week then. Like how can we get the most out of the athletes? 49:49 Speaker 1 Then I guess from the athlete perspective, is that a conversation you need to have? 49:55 Speaker 2 And we're all, I think it's often just looping them in, hey, just so you know, this block of time is a Max strength block. So we are going to go heavy, we are going to move slow and you're going to like have a red hot go because at this point in time, we're going to back right off. 50:17 So now's the time to go. 50:21 Speaker 1 Has your approach to those kinds of conversations, whether it's with the coach or with the athlete, has that changed over time? 50:30 Speaker 2 I think I'm probably more more confident in not having an answer straight away or saying I'm unsure or let me think about that. 50:45 I think over time and with the experience, you just become more comfortable with saying like, oh, I'm not quite sure. You know what, let me have a think about it. And we pick this conversation up later, I think as well with the wheelchair track and road program. 51:01 I would always like Lou does a great job in empowering the service providers around her and for the two athletes that she has who are incredibly experienced, like continuing to innovate their programs. 51:18 And you know, the physiologist, hey, I'm thinking, let's do an altitude block here. It's going to have these benefits. This is how we're going to determine like success or non success. Like what do you think? And then, you know, generally it would be the coach and the athlete would make the decision about whether that intervention was to go ahead and you know, also then bringing it to the other service providers. 51:44 And how do you think it's going to affect your area of the program? You know, what do you think that athlete like? How might it fall over? How can we enable it to be as successful? 51:58 Speaker 1 As possible. 52:02 Patience, Authenticity, and Warmth in High-Performance Sport So we're going to wrap up shortly, but, and I know a lot of people ask this in podcast for this genuine question, if you could go back to your ish circa 2018 self and when you first walked into that high performance environment at the Broncos, what would you tell her and what honest conversation would you have with her? 52:31 Speaker 2 Be patient, continue to be yourself and let people see maybe that more personal side of you. 52:52 We've spoken about this before and there was a podcast Dario's CEO had a woman talk about what was it, competence cues and personal cues. And like, what are you sending out? 53:08 And I think I initially was very much sending out competence cues and not enough personal cues. And so probably just allowing more of that to come through. I think as a woman coming into a male dominated environment, you very I very much wanted to demonstrate my competence and not show too much warmth. 53:35 Speaker 1 So it's funny, my next question was going to be about what non-technical skill matters the most at this level. So how do you exercise warmth? 53:47 Speaker 2 It's in the small interactions that you have a so when I accepted the role at the NSW is to choose sport and I was assigned rowing and wheelchair track and road. This is right before the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics and they had been delayed. 54:07 So they're in 2021. And I was told like, you're going to work with Madison de Rosario. She's a high profile athlete, really important an athlete. And I thought, oh, OK, great. And I just took the opportunity. 54:25 I didn't have the pressure until after the games. And I came in in April and she competed in like August, September. I didn't have the pressure of riding the program until after the games. I was just delivering it. 54:40 And I thought, I'm going to take this opportunity to just to get to know her as a person and she'd be frosty to me the first time we met and we have a great friendship now. But I think she really appreciated that, that I wasn't just asking her about her sport and stuff. 54:59 I was asking her more personal questions. And even with the girls, he just asking them something as simple as like, how was your weekend? And like seeing they have their own social media account. You know, seeing one of the girls, they did a surprise hens lunch for her, asking her how her hands was and stuff like that. 55:20 And just, you know, switching off the Kell SNC and turning on like the Kell as a person when the the time is right, you know, when we're about to start gym session, you're going to get careless and see and in the gym session you're going to get careless and see. 55:37 But around anything around that, you're going to get personal care. 55:43 The Enduring Value of Trust and Personal Connections And I assume the the imprints there is that helps with the the trust and the buy in. 55:49 Speaker 2 100% you need to have trust both ways. I can't watch every single Rep that every single athlete is going to do. So I need to trust that you're going to do the right thing at the right time, and you need to trust that I am going to ask you to do something that is going to benefit you as an athlete. 56:08 That goes a long way and trusts is earned over a period of time. It is not just given the second you walk into an environment. 56:21 Speaker 1 When it comes to, say, the non-technical skills, is there anything you think you're still trying to figure out? 56:29 Speaker 2 Technical skills, I think always just trying to figure out like how to relate to an individual, you know, I've been working here with the women. I've probably been with them since November, officially since January, and it's the end of July right now, but there's still some of them that I haven't quite figured out and haven't quite understood how I can have a positive influence on them that's going to last longer than a gym session, if that makes sense. 57:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess that's the thing with sport. You come across so many different athletes with each one with their own personalities, and no one is the same. 57:17 Speaker 2 No. And I think, yeah, that's that's a big thing as well as like how like the psychological element, the social dynamics as well. I'm not here as much as they are. What's kind of going on between people too? 57:34 Like just yeah, always trying to get a gauge of like the room. There's one of the athletes, I go up to her and sometimes I'm like, I need a vibe check. What's the vibe around the group right now? She's like, oh, and we'll just give it to me. 57:50 Speaker 1 That's actually really valuable. Is that a leader that you go up to, or is it someone that you just have built a relationship with? 57:57 Speaker 2 That's just someone I've built a relationship with and. 58:01 Speaker 1 Then that helps guide your I guess narrative for your SNC session. 58:06 Speaker 2 Massively, if the group is down, like all right, I need to come up. If people are sensitive right now, I just need to like, say less. Be gentle. 58:19 Speaker 1 Doctor Kellyanne Redmond, I want to thank you so much for your time. It's always great to catch up and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it, Kels, and I'm sure listeners will get a lot out of this. I know I have, so thank you. 58:37 Speaker 2 Thank you, Doctor Carmen Columa.