What You Have to Unlearn to Work in Elite Sport | Jesse Green

Welcome to The Behaviour Gap with Jesse Green Welcome back to the Behavior Gap podcast. My name is Carmen Colimer. All right, so this is one of those conversations where we probably could have kept recording for another couple of hours. I sat down with Jesse Green. He's worked across the Brisbane Lions, Louisville, the Sacramento Kings, Pitts, Pittsburgh Penguins, and now we're 1080 motion and we got into what it actually takes to operate across completely different high performance environments. But what I found really interesting wasn't just the difference different sports or leagues, It was what doesn't transfer. The things you have to unlearn across the sports, the assumptions that get exposed pretty quickly when you step into a new environment. And honestly, how much of his job comes down to things that aren't actually taught anywhere, like building trust, getting buy in, and understanding where you actually sit in the ecosystem? We also got into data and why more data isn't necessarily the answer. In fact, most of the time the problem isn't the life of data, it's that we're not asking the right questions in the 1st place. There's a lot in this one, probably more than we could realistically cover in a single episode. So fair warning, this might need a Part 2. But for now, here's my conversation with Jesse Green. What Jesse Green Unlearned Across Sporting Cultures Jesse, so you were at the Brisbane Lions, then you went to Louisville, then you went to the Sacramento Kings and then the Pittsburgh Penguins, and now 1080 motion. So that's a number of countries, four different organizations and at least four different sporting cultures. What did you have to unlearn with each step? And I mean unlearn, because there were certain things you had to learn, but was there anything you had to unlearn? Speaker 2 That's a ripping question straight off of that comment. Thanks for having me on. I love what you're doing with this part and it was a pleasure to join. But to answer that question, I think if we think of in terms of the different steps like you go from AFL, for example, Australian rules football, proud sport in Australia and moving across to the collegiate space in America in at Louisville, what I had to unlearn, I mean, I would say it's very when I was at the Lions back in 20/14/27, it was very structured. Everything was incredibly planned and everything was very organized on a day-to-day basis. So when I tried to apply that same philosophy, you know, planning out all macro cycles for the entire year, offseason, preseason and the like. Going to the collegiate space where you've got 500 student athletes rolling through 2 white rooms in 12 different sports. And every day you're in in season with a team, preseason with a team, offseason with a team. So I had to figure out or unlearn that rigidity. I think that I had in my head that I thought strength conditioning was this very rigid plan structured follow. But then when I got there, I'm kind of, I guess I had to absolve, absolve myself from that and remove myself from that and just be much, much more flexible and kind of have these overarching principles that help dodge your programming on a daily in a phasic basis and then kind of roll with the punches. Speaker 1 So was there a certain assumption you had in one environment other than obviously this rigid approach to SNC that turned out to be completely wrong in the next? So I guess you've gone from AFL, like you said, rigid structure, and then you come across to Louisville and you've got so many athletes and then you move into, say, the NBA space and you've got 15 athletes. So was there anything you then tried to apply from Louisville into the NBA, for example, that turned out to be completely wrong? Earning Data Compliance at the Sacramento Kings Yes, well, as I'm sure you can relate to us all common almost everything, many things in that respect. But I think the biggest thing is that in the collegiate environment at the time, the program that I walked into was incredibly well resourced, incredibly well taught and very well educated group of not only coaches but also athletes. So I walked into the Louisville and I was gifted compliance, whether it was GPS, whether it was testing false plate technology, internal load, heart rate monitors, all that stuff. Whatever we wanted to do, we could do it and the athletes would be on board with it because of all of front end education. When I got to the Kings in Sacramento, that couldn't be further from the truth. Not that there wasn't education taken into place with the athletes from the existing coaches, but it's just a Bah Bah, different landscape and a much more different athlete at a different stage of their career, obviously. So I had to try and really buckle down and figure out how I could educate these athletes and not only educate on the actual technology and what it's going to provide for them, but what could it actually or how can I relate to these athletes such that they can trust me to wear this device or to do this test. So that was a massive learning curve for me that took, yeah, the four years that I was there, honestly to get full compliance in certain things. And that's sort of a long term process. Speaker 1 So what did that actually look like on a on a day-to-day basis or, or like in practice, let's say? Speaker 2 Yeah. So walked in, for example, day one into the Sacramento Kings, wanted to use our local positioning system technology that connects on at the time. Walked in expecting to be able to put on chips and put on sensors onto every single athlete right before practice. So practice is about to start. You know, this is my first week. I've got the the deck of chips lying out on the side of the court and I'm standing there and I've got the clips. An athlete walks by and probably things I shouldn't repeat on this show, but tells me where to go. Next athlete walks past, he goes, yeah, OK, fine. But it's a very apprehensive, hesitant, OK, fine. Next athlete walks past, absolutely not. Next for athlete walks past, absolutely not. So within the first kind of couple weeks, I think out of the third, sorry, 17 players we had in that training camp, I think I got 4 athletes potentially to wear the unit. And from there I was like, OK, I've got my work cut out for me. But within that moment, you know, I could very easily kind of just dig my heels in and be very reluctant and be difficult and say what's going on, this sucks. I can't do my job without this information, which, you know, we need a sports scientist in the performance space. We need that information to do our jobs. But it's also incumbent upon practitioners, young, old or otherwise, is you have to earn the ability to collect that information. I think that's not something that's generically taught in undergrad programs or even master's programs. That's just something that experience teaches you. And I think that a lot of practitioners run into at different stages of their career is OK. You go from professional basketball to hockey to collegiate to football environments, how do you shape your relationship and how do you shape your conversations with the athletes to actually build the buy in to collect what you need to collect, to do your job, to service the athletes. So it's kind of this rolling symbiotic relationship that continues to roll. The Four-Year Journey to Athlete Data Compliance So you say you had about four athletes at the start that would take the the connects on chips and so can you actually before we get to that, can you just explain what a connects on chip is just for those who who may not be aware? Speaker 2 Yeah. So our connects on chip is effectively like AGPS unit for outdoor sports, but it's created for indoor sports. So it's a really small device. It's probably, you know if you cut your iPhone into four quadrants, it's probably one of those quadrants. It's a very small unit that connects and communicates with anchors that are placed in the walls around the facility and effectively those anchors around the wall act as what satellites would outdoors. And so it effectively enables us to try elaborate the position of where the athlete is on the court, give us the XY position of where they are plus time. We can derive distance, velocity, acceleration, and all these other metrics that we would normally get from GPS, but we can do that indoors. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I guess the other part is they were worn at the sixes anyway. They were worn in the back of the shorts rather than in between the shoulder blades. Was that the same at the Kings? Speaker 2 Yeah, it was. We had our equipment manager, Miguel. He was the best snow on these little pockets in the back central side of their shorts. And you know, it's that was also a battle as well to get that over the line. But yes, it was in the shorts waistband. Speaker 1 Yeah. And then again, just a little bit more context for those who aren't familiar, The players aren't actually allowed to wear those in games. So in games there's a company called Second Spectrum that would use video analysis effectively to to measure the the players physical output, which obviously has its limitations. OK, so you had 4 athletes at the start by year in year 1 and then by year 4 when you're Director of performance for the Sacramento Kings, how many athletes were compliant with the connection chips? Speaker 2 We had everyone but one player, one player in the end, which was something that I was very proud of myself, knowing where we had come from and then body of work and thought that went into it to get to that point. It was definitely something I'm proud of still today and there's definitely a lot of work in ethic, winning. Speaker 1 Well, congratulations. Do you think it's more, was it more a function of time or trust buy in from the athletes because they've seen the what the effect of you collecting that data is and then using that data for decision making? What was? What do you think contributed most? Why Athletes Fear Data Being Used Against Them Yeah, if I could give 2 answers or two pieces that I think contributed most. The first was, you know, there was a relatively large amount of change on the support staff were in the first two years of me being at Sacramento. And within that change, we had to redefine and we had to establish what it is we do. Like what is it to be a Sacramento King? What is it that we collect as a staff? What do we represent? What do we believe in? So when you're trying to make your mark and you're trying to establish these standards of, well, standard operating procedures, and when I say what we do, you know, that could be related to, we get, we offer treatment time. So we offer different options in the weight room. Part of what we do was wearing this little device in your shorts to help us monitor how much work you're doing on the court and how hard that work was achieved. So it was definitely a function of time because as you know, the carousel of player movement in the NBA is wild. So as players left that may have been more hesitant, new players come in or get drafted, they're perhaps more open to it and more educated on it. And especially as draftees coming in in the collegiate space, monitoring with these kinds of technologies are even more common in the NBA. So we kind of got compliance through that mechanism of just time of people coming in and out the door and showing them day one, this is what we do and then buying into that. And I think the second function of that too was at a double edged sword. But every time we had an injury or an RTP, we utilized that information extensively to build out or not only to monitor how they were progressing, but to also build out future plans as well. So a pretty common use case, I would say of that technology, but one that we found actually facilitated volume with the athletes. So we're going through that process such that once they return to full participation and availability, they were way more open to maintain the use of that. Speaker 1 So you, you talked about RTP as in return to play from an injury. So are you bringing the athlete along for that journey? And what does that look like in terms of, because for some people who may be listening, you don't understand the NBA environment or haven't experienced it. Let's say it's it's very different to, let's call from my experience, let's go rugby environment where there is a lot of just of course you have to have a relationship with the player, but you're effectively telling them what to do. But in the NBAA lot of it is about getting the buy in first and then asking them if they want to do the thing. So what did that look like with the with the return to play process and using that data? Speaker 2 Yeah. Look, I'll be honest with the economy, it was a mix of very, very passive, something that they would just accept that they were required to wear that would help facilitate our planning versus all on the other end of the spectrum is that, you know, we would have a conversation pre and post session with an athlete. I remember this athlete so clearly he wanted to know, you know, what his total workload was. He wanted to know what his speeds were and acceleration and deceleration components of the session were, how that related to his plan. You know very much from that standpoint in what the plan was for him. So I think we had full spectrum of athletes all the way through either side of that. But I think at the very end of the day, what I was trying to communicate and have the athlete understand was that this is not a threatening piece of information. This is not designed to hold you back, nor is this designed to make aggressive or unnecessary pushes during your return to play process. This is for us to have as much information as possible relative to what you've done previously to appropriately progress you through the process. And I think at the deepest level, a lot of athletes accepted that. And although they might not have liked wearing the unit at the time, I think, as I said, deep down they accepted that that was a required piece of the puzzle. Speaker 1 Is there any sort of tech that the athletes just did not want to use? Or another way could ask is, were there any athletes that did not want to use any tech at all and didn't want any data collected on them? And the reason I ask is because in my experience, and particularly in the NBA, there was a certain athlete who was so worried that data would get used against him for trading purposes that he would not allow any data at all to be collected on him, any objective data, let's call it. Speaker 2 Yeah, yes and yes. So the answer to those questions, the most resistant piece of technology we probably had was heart rate monitors, which I tried to use for a couple different applications and that fell pretty flat just given how seemingly invasive it was. You know, you have a strap, especially for a lot of players who you know, might be playing post automatic, playing fire with a lot of contact, especially in basketball too. And you know, you get a charge or you have to front up. Sometimes that sensor can be in a really sensitive spot in the sternum, but it's exact same scenarios you you mentioned there. We had an athlete who was extremely hesitant to wear any technology as it means to avoid potentially being used against them or being used punitively or being shared with the wrong people, whether that was staff, coaches, front office, whoever that may be just a real fear that that was going to get used against them. That's that's a really tough scenario to navigate because that may have happened to them previously, whether it was in a different league, a different level or a different team. Regardless, that's a really hard scar to to work through. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really tough. And I guess one of the central themes of this podcast that keeps coming up is the trust piece. And it is really hard to get that trust from an athlete in particularly in basketball where players, you know, they might get bounced around to three teams and just in one season, sometimes four teams. And so they go into a new environment and they think, who are you and why should I? Why should I listen to you? So yeah, it's it's tough. So you go from the Brisbane Lions, Louisville, Sacramento Kings, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Penguins. Navigating the NBA: Stakeholders and Athlete Trust Excuse me, Which of those transitions was the hardest? And what? What made it so hard? Speaker 2 Probably say my transition from the collegiate space at Louisville to the NBA was probably the toughest for most of the reasons that we just kind of went over. But also I think in in advance of that as well was just the sheer status of the athlete as well. The fact that they are, yes, at the top of their game. They're in the best basketball league in the world and they're getting paid 8 figures to do it, sometimes 9 figures by the time their career is finished. You know, the, I don't think I was necessarily prepared for or ready for the stakes at play there. And just the sheer volume of stakeholders around the athlete. And a lot of people talk about the stakeholders around the athlete or the key stakeholders around the athlete. In the NBA, it's immense. You might have a dozen touch points if you're a really good player. If you're a starting point guard in the NBA, you might have a dozen 20 touch points with different people per day asking you for thing. And So what made it difficult for me is, I guess in the beginning, not understanding that I was such a small, small piece and another touch point for that athlete, asking them to do yet another thing. I don't think I had that awareness around where I kind of sat within that ecosystem. And that was something I had to learn, learn the hard way throughout my process. Speaker 1 And how long did it take to learn? I guess again, you know, similarly, I understand that experience and you do have a lot of touch points. And my role in particular, particularly around a number of, like you said, the starting players, you're on Zoom meetings after work with quite a few different people and trying to develop a relationship with them and understand what they want implemented. And you're the the effectively the conduit between that person and the athlete and then trying to implement the thing they want implemented. So how did you go about managing that? Speaker 2 You know, it's that kind of the old adage is instead of meeting them halfway, you have to meet them where they're at. So, for example, we would have a player, I can remember him as well. He was during my second season, He got traded to us, a veteran player, had been in the NBA for 10 years already. I had a pretty, not fixed necessarily, but I thought I had a pretty solid idea of what a sound assessment protocol would look like for an athlete as they came in outdoors and what some training would look like in different areas. We had to make sure we targeted. And he kind of just kind of quelled all that for me. He said, look, I know, I know all this is important to you. I know all of this is well thought through and I trust that this is good for most possible players. But I'm at the end of my career and this is what's worked for me. And in that moment, I'm like, you know what, again, who am I, this 25 year old white guy from Australia to go against that right when he's not only been in the league for 10 years, but he's supporting his family, he's supporting his kids, he's supporting all of these other people in his life. And it the health of his body depends on that. So yeah, all that to say, I think it took a few moments of humility and just kind of taking a step back and realizing that, you know, they are ultimately the guardians of their own career. So I think working with them as opposed to against them is the way to go in that. Speaker 1 That's such a good point and definitely something you don't learn in university in your undergrad, that sometimes an athlete knows best in terms of their body. I mean, look, yeah, you get a 17 year old, 18 year olds just being drafted in whatever sport and then they're trying to tell you they know their body best. Perhaps you can influence that. But when it comes to someone who's 34 or 35 and has been doing this for 14 years, yeah, I think you, you need to listen to that. Addition by Subtraction: Maximizing Data Insights Just was doing a bit of a deep dive into previous presentations you've done and things you've said publicly. So you said when you got to the Pittsburgh Penguins that they had a pretty good tech suite when you arrived, but the opportunity was squeezing more out of what already existed. So what did squeezing more out actually mean, and what was actually the problem underneath? Speaker 2 This is another really good question. I think when I say kind of building it out or kind of establishing, squeezing more out of it, it was more so a process of addition by subtraction. You know, we had all of this technology and the ability to collect so many different things, but how can we first of all establish if some of these things are interrelated and there's some statistical processes and different pathways? You can go down there, principal component analysis and other statistical processes to determine, OK, what's telling us the same thing? That was kind of the first thing that we can kind of tease out of those data sets. And second of all, what are the relationships perhaps between some of these different data sources that can enhance these data sets and provide us with a little bit more context and more richness I would say and more breadth amongst this data? So for example, a really common one is internal versus external load measures so that GPS or connects on device I was talking about with heart rate data. How can we combine those two together to perhaps determine the cost of doing X amount of external work. That was a path we went down ended up being quite fruitful in terms of determining for individual athletes what the different cost for them was were doing external work in a practice environment, for example. So in terms of how we could evolve that program and what the quote UN quote problem was, it was more less of a problem, but more an evolution that I think was required. I think we had all of this data, but we just had to now take a critical lens and say what what's essential? What do we absolutely have to keep monitoring and then what are the some of these other kind of secondary pieces of technology or secondary datasets that we can filter down to what's important or establish connections between different datasets that can perhaps tell us something that we didn't? Speaker 1 That's. I love that concept of addition by subtraction. And you know, there's so many times people think they always need to do something in order to make a decision, but sometimes not doing something is also making a decision and it's also having an impact. So that's so interesting. So when you decided to do that, did you hit any resistance? And where did that resistance come from if you did? Speaker 2 Yeah, there are definitely was resistance most of all from the coaching staff. Actually the coaching staff at that time in Pittsburgh were very much built around and familiar with using internal load measures as a means of assessing and establishing volume and intensity of practices and different sessions across the season and the preseason. We came in and thought we could bolster that or bolster those insights with some external load measures. So something like I'm not connects on again, for example, yet I don't think I did a good enough job of really describing how that complementary nature of pairing the external load, the work that's being done with the internal load can really again bolster the insights of just one. It's kind of not 1 + 1 = 2. It's when you put 1 + 1 together in that context, it gives you 10, for example. You get so much more unique insight as a result of combining those two together. So most of all, I think it was the coaching staff. With that said, by the end of our time there, I think we really started to make progress with combining those data sets and facilitating just more educated conversations around how much work we were doing, how much was too much, how much was not enough, what players need more, what players need less, all of those kind of common load monitoring questions that that many of your listeners are probably experiencing. Lessons Learned Introducing Data to NHL Coaches So it sounds like getting the coaching staff on board was the main issue there. And so you said you probably didn't do a good job to explain that to the coaches. So if you could go back in time, how would you potentially change that conversation or how you approached it? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think first of all, I think I came in way too hot. You know, I, I had a very strong belief in that, you know, this data set was the way forward and was going to provide XYZ things that I mentioned previously. I think I just needed to take a step back and just slowly drip feed the education instead of coming in week 1 saying, I know you've been collecting this, here's something else that's going to help us immensely. You know, that can kind of trigger perhaps a defensive mechanism, especially when you add in the context that this team that I walked into had had the longest playoff streak, making the playoff streak in professional sports at the time of 16 years. So for me to come in and to have that level of confidence perhaps about changing things or adding something or modifying a way of doing things, I can see now how that could have been interpreted as this guy's just come in, he hasn't worked in hockey before. He's got all these hot ideas, Maybe defenses kind of go up a little bit. So to answer your question, taking a step back, perhaps taking a longer period of observation, 2345 months even maybe a season if the timing is right. And then really getting a full appraisal of the environment of where the gaps are and purely focusing on addressing those gaps, like purely focusing on. Speaker 1 So that approach that you talk about, is that relevant purely just to an NHL team or how you would approach NHL coaches or do you think that approach would have been the same in an AFL environment versus a college environment versus NBA versus so on? So what you know, why did you come into the NHL with with that approach that you would now go back and change versus say with the NBA or with college sports? Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a great question. We have some self reflection going on here, but I think why is that now relevant more than ever? I think I came into Pittsburgh thinking that, you know, it was a much more, I guess, synonymous jump or a similar jump from the NBA to the NHL. I mean, the schedules are almost identical where we travel to, the frequency of travel, how the schedule is structured, All of those things are extremely similar. So having spent the previous four years in that environment, in the NBA, having built a system around that environment, I had a very strong opinion or a very strong idea of how I thought that piece of technology, for example, the external load could facilitate bigger things within that system. And not only just helping the coaches plan practices and plan weekly, monthly, whatever, but also when that part falls into place, then what we do off the ice could also fall into place. So why did I have that level of confidence or why do I have that reflection now? I think it's because I put in such a body of work to build up that approach that I thought was gonna be very not easily, but more simply planted from the NBA to the NHL. Whereas going from the collegiate space into the NBA, I didn't have any preconceived ideas of how I wanted that program to run. And not to mention, I was coming in to the NBA to very do the role, very junior role. And by the time I left, it was a very much more of a senior leadership or a management role. So I think, yeah, just purely based on career progression, I think it was, yeah. I think that was probably the reason is coming across from a place that I had built a system that I thought was going to work. Speaker 1 Such a tough position to be in because like you said, you were such a senior position in the NBA. And then to go into, I guess the same position, but in a new sport, in a new environment with new people, you do almost need to check your ego at the door and say, OK, I'm going to be humble now and I'm just going to try and learn for a little bit. Done exactly the same thing. So I get it. It's it's really tough. So yeah, at least you can reflect back now on things you would do potentially next time. So I saw you prevented represented previously at for a catapult conference and you talked about moving beyond data collection. When More Data Makes Decision-Making Worse So what happens after you've captured everything? So most teams seem to think that the problem is usually not enough data from what you see you've seen in your time. What does it actually break? Like what does it actually break down to? Speaker 2 Where it breaks down, and this is something I've thought of, thought about at length, just because I've had my efforts or efforts to kind of take data from collection to cleaning, manipulation, analysis, visualization, all the way to presenting it to that target audience. I've had that breakdown so many times and I've had that kind of had to modify certain elements within that so many times as well. And I think how I think about it is, you know, the further to the left side you are on that process and more towards the, the cleaning and the manipulation analysis, the more that can kind of be automated. Now, I mean, with AI these days, you can automate that entire process even through visualization. But I really think that the further you move from collection to presentation to the audience, there's a higher chance about breaking down at each one of those levels as you move across. So a lot of people collect even less people clean, even less, manipulate, even less analyze, even less visualize, and then even less get to that point of presenting it to the key stakeholder, let alone that's sticking. So I think where it breaks down is most likely right at that end stage where you've done this whole body of work and we've all been there, you've done this massive body of work, you've collected it, it's cleaned, it's a phenomenal looking report. You've got the meeting set and it just lands flat in its face. Or the GM goes, actually, can we push this to next week? I've got a meeting with a player agent or you know, the coach goes, this is great, but you know, I'm colorblind or something like that, which I have had happen happened. So it can I think where it breaks down is most of all that far right into the process where you're meeting with that target audience. And right at that point, I think is where the most time should be spent to really address and I guess make that, make that final resource, whatever that may be, as catered to that audience as possible. Speaker 1 I guess this, yeah, it's, it's such a big topic and I don't want to dive too much into the weeds here, but you know, you, you do want to add in data like you were saying with the internal load and the external load. And that's just one example. There's obviously so much we can collect now. So is there a point where adding more data actively makes decision making worse do you think? Speaker 2 Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I think it's starting with the the end in mind. And when I say that, I think starting with a question. So a sound question could be how can we establish or how can we determine if our players are fatigued today. And so starting with that question we have, we assess the current data stack that we have or the kind of information that we have. Can we answer that question yes or no? Yes, excellent. Let's go all the way through that process. If we get to the end of that process and we realize, you know what? We thought we could, but I don't know, it's not valid enough. Maybe our data is not sensitive enough. Perhaps we didn't collect it the right way. And yeah, of course we can go back and we can reassess and determine whether we need to add more information. I think it's incumbent upon practitioners like us to do what we can with what we have first Dos, those options, and then go down the path of acquiring new technology. Because also as you go through that process, you start to figure out, wouldn't it be nice if I had that? Wouldn't it be nice if we had this piece of information and you can kind of annotate and reflect upon that journey as you go through. And then from the all having known all of that and gone through that process, make the best acquisition for a new piece of technology or a new data stream subject your object. Speaker 1 Yeah. I was actually going to touch on this questions based approach that you've mentioned before, but we'll get there in a moment because I am interested in that. Can you give me an example? When Data and Coaching Instinct Collide And this is such a broad question, but maybe an example of a time that a data set, a data set said one thing but the right call was potentially something else. Speaker 2 Definitely, Yeah, definitely. And this happened quite a lot in hockey, more so than basketball, in my experience. And I think we could talk in a whole separate podcast around how the traditions between those two sports and the customs and just the the environment, how that determines different actions within those environments. But I recall quite clearly, yeah. And this is, I'm sure everyone has a story similar to this, but we collected heart rate variability with Pittsburgh and we would do that ideally as frequently as possible, but it ended up being maybe once or twice a week, which has its limitations, no question. But we obviously moved those sensitivity measures to reflect that variation. But anyway, we came in one morning and our heart rate variability measures were just in the gutter. They were really, really low, low across the board for most of the players walked into coach's office, which is what I always did, put an awesome report together. So we handed them report and I said, coach, this is the lowest we've been since I started working here. And it was off the back of a really bad win. We got absolutely smashed by a team we shouldn't have been smashed by. And he looks at, he goes, Jesse, that's all well and good, but I don't give a stuff with a bit more colorful language. I have to hit the boys hard today. And I kind of take a step back. I'm like, you know what, maybe that's the best thing for the team today. Maybe they need that. Maybe that's more important than kind of leaning into this one measure that we know has some, you know, statistical limitations in terms of its validity and its stability across the season. Perhaps this is the best thing for them. And again, stepping back, who am I, this Australian guy who's never skated and tried skating and it looks horrific versus this versus the coach that I'm speaking to is 1/2 Stanley Pops and is coached some of the best players in the history of the sport. I'm probably going to lean on his inside there. And that's just one example of where you know, that's a coach to practitioner, practitioner being me interaction. I can give you examples of coach to physical therapist, coach to athlete coach to or practitioner to equipment manager, for example. There's just so many of those examples, but it's all about, I guess having a broader scope of the larger process. Like, I think it's on that specific day with that example I mentioned with the coach, we're kind of in a really meaningful part of the season and the stakes are really, really high. I just didn't think it was the right timing for me to kind of push back on that at that time. And that's just one of the many small decisions you make as a practitioner on a weekly basis. Speaker 1 Jesse, you can't leave that cliffhanger. We need to know was it the right decision? Speaker 2 Well, no one got hurt, no one got hurt. And I can't remember like I remember if we won the next game or not, but I remember that practice was nasty. I was really feeling for the boys in that practice and I did get a couple dirty looks because the players know what's going on. The players knew that I would take this information, aggregate it, come up with a team based score and take it to the coach to help facilitate perhaps the plenty of that practice or that day. And occasionally we would make changes, but on the practice based on this information, based on the input of different elements of the program. Sometimes we decrease things where I'd have a lot of my players would be best mates. But then when this kind of things happens, I got a couple of dirty looks like there's no way, Jesse, you told him that he needs to push us this hard. Speaker 1 So would you, I don't want to get too off topic, but would you say you're in that environment anyway? You had more of a performance first environment or a injury reduction, sorry, philosophy or an injury reduction philosophy? I. Speaker 2 Think it was very much a performance. First we had a we had a coaching staff that believed in working and believed in working hard times. I would definitely say to a detriment for the most part. I think it enabled us to aggregate more load and aggregate more work over time. From a physical standpoint, I think put us in a pretty good spot later in the season. But as I said, there was still sometimes where I think we could have undulated that a bit. Hearts, we'll say some of the adaptations later in the season. Speaker 1 This is my favorite type of conversation, but that's not the premise of this podcast, so we won't get too much into the weeds there. OK. The Power of a Question-Based Data Approach So let's get back to this questions based approach. So using data to answer questions rather than collecting it and then hoping some sort of insight emerges as you mentioned. So what's the difference between those two mindsets that organizations or teams you've been at may have? And then why do so many teams, organizations like default to that second one? Just sort of hoping an insight emerges. Speaker 2 I think I'll start with the second part of that question. I think now more than ever the availability of so many different pieces of information and pieces of data floating around. As us mentioned, we can measure everything from internal load, external load, heart rate variability, physical testing, off the field of play. We can look at sleep related measures, force instrumented insoles. We have all of this really high frequency data that's flying around that we kind of have this premise of off we collect all this and we just put it into a blender, put into a model, something good is going to come out of it. You know, And I think the danger of that is, is that when you start including so many different pieces of information and you put them into these really sophisticated models, neural networks, artificial intelligence models, those kinds of things, they kind of go beyond the point of understanding from our standpoint in terms of what the perhaps those interrelationships could be between these different data sets. So yes, you may have something come out the back end of it, but do you know all the different confounding factors around it? I think is really, really important. So on the flip side of that, how to address that is to have a very sound, well thought through group viewed and group stratified question that from us, maybe a strength conditioning staff or a sports science staff, whoever that may be to have a question that you know is well thought through. The parameters around that question of thought through and how we're going to collect the information to perhaps answer that question. I think that's the approach. Especially based on what I mentioned earlier about it's more about the journey as well as you go through this process. And yes, you might take spin offs and you might go, oh, this would be cool to look at. You might take a right turn here and a left turn there. But if you have that question based approach, that overarching question, you have that kind of North star, that guarding light that keeps you on the straight and narrow, keeps you moving forward, which I think for you, especially Tom, on that PhD process that you just finished, I'm sure is something that you can certainly relate to in terms of having that overarching question and can always anchor your work to. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's such a good point. And I mean, I think the other part is it's got to be specific to your environment, which I think is what you're alluding to sitting down with the S&C is or whomever may be important. But I guess there's also an iterative, iterative process as well as with a PhD as well. My PhD subject studies started off very different to what they ended up. Do you think? And obviously you've worked in a number of environments and so the question may have been different in each of those environments that you were trying to answer all the questions. Do you? Is there, in your opinion, like a specific question that most performance departments don't know to ask, if that makes sense? Speaker 2 Yeah, it does. It certainly makes sense. And I think less so a question that they're not asking, but I think just not being specific enough. I think, I mean, there's there's overarching questions. Say that example I gave before, like are our players fatigued on the day of a practice? You know, that's pretty broad. How can we be much more specific around not only what we're trying to address, but what we're trying to change? But the question could then evolve to be how fatigue our players to practice for a very difficult practice or a moderate practice or perhaps a low practice. So how can we stratify and structure our investigation to have a very specific outcome on the back end of it? Because if we just answer a very broad answer, a broad scope of a question, it doesn't facilitate a specific answer. Like you can't ask a really broad question. You get to a really specific answer. You kind of have to match those two to really take it all the way down that path Of we collected the data, we analyzed that, we looked at all of these kinds of practices compared to the moderate, compared to the low. And we found that based on this measure, this fatigue score may not be favorable for a players to participate in a high level practice. So I think it's less So what a question they're not asking, but it's not being specific enough within their current questions. Guiding Practitioners with 1080 Motion Technology So I feel like one of the things there would be teaching practitioners to thinking questions rather than metrics. So you're currently with 1080 motion, which is I'll let you describe because I probably won't do it justice of what the device does. So let's just say you're trying to convince a practitioner that this is a useful device and they've never had to ask a question in relation to what that produces. So kind of combining those two, how would you teach practitioner to to thinking questions that maybe the 1080 motion device could could answer? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think so. First off, a little bit of background on 1080 is 1080 Motion is a motorized resistance technology company effectively that was founded in Sweden some time ago, a couple decades ago I believe. And we provide essentially motorized resistance technology solutions where it's effectively our one of our units. The Sprint 2 unit for example, is a really sophisticated motor that's attached to effectively a really strong fishing line. And at the end of fishing line is the carabiner that you can connect to a handle, connect to a belt, connect to anything really. And what we provide with that 1080 Sprint machine is we can do isokinetics, eccentric overload exercise. We can provide different resistances, different speeds. We can really basically taking a cable stack combined with a Kaiser cable effectively add constraints around doing anything within resistance training or running, for example. Now, how that applies to your question around how do we facilitate better questions from practitioners, perhaps using the technologies I always start with when I talk with coaches, when I talk with sports scientists, is what are you trying to do? What are you trying to develop? What do you believe in? So if I'm talking to, say, a rugby team and they say, well, we're trying to get our players faster, OK, that's what you're trying to do. That's the adaptation you're chasing. How do you evolve at it or what do you believe in? Oh, we believe in, we believe in high speed exposure once a week. We believe in getting 4 exposures above 90% on a weekly basis. OK, great. So to me using that information on the back end is you told me you believe in speed. You told me that you're trying to continue to develop it, but now we need to get to the how so then it's OK. How do you guys develop speed? What is your system for developing speed? And then it's kind of boiling it down question by question from my standpoint to really dig in on the philosophy of who I'm talking with. And then from there, kind of layering in where I think the technology can facilitate. Speaker 1 So I guess you probably go into environments and you're trying to, you know, nudge them in the direction of asking these questions before actually trying to extract the data. So if you have ever been into an environment where or even just in your own practice in in previous roles where no one can actually agree on on what the question is that they're trying to answer. Achieving Consensus in Complex Performance Environments Yes, definitely, definitely. I mean, I've been a part of that myself where we can't get on the same page or you know, perhaps it's not only what we should be developing, but how we should develop it. And I think that's what separates cohesive successful starts from non cohesive unsuccessful Staffs. But I think now what we see in professional sport, especially here in the US, as you would know, is some of these performance and sports science Staffs, including medical are getting so big 1015 people, it becomes much more difficult to reach consensus around a certain way of doing things. So then it becomes a hierarchical argument around, OK, who has the final say, is this a collaborative effort or is this more of a kind of a top down traditional leadership approach? And I think a lot of staff spend a lot of time on making decisions and making those impactful decisions and asking the right questions that then the practitioners can actually begin to work on. So I think with the availability of of again, the vast availability of data and resources, podcasts, books, LinkedIn posts, Instagram, all of these different sources of information, there's just so many different schools of thought floating around and so much accessibility around information now that I'm not surprised that it becomes more difficult to make an assumption or to post questions. Sorry about how we should go about doing things. I'm not surprised. Speaker 1 It's so interesting and and it keeps coming out in this podcast just how complex the performance environment is. And that's not to say that other industries aren't complex as well in their working environments. It's just that, you know, you're told so much as a sport scientist that you have to know about typical error and smalls worth of change and confidence intervals and so on and so forth. But yeah, like you're saying there's this alignment 1st and then what is the question? And then we collect the data, but you have to know how to collect the data. And then the next part is actually influencing the athletes. So it's it's quite complex. So just on the because we talked a lot about interacting with staff and coaches and so on. Earning Trust and Influence with High-Profile Athletes But if we were to go back to working with players and that interaction there and influencing them. So you've worked with some very, very high profile players across a number of different sports and they're at the peak of their peak career, obviously. So you're coming in, you've never played basketball at a high level or hockey at a high level or AFL at a high level. Sorry, but. Speaker 2 I wish. Speaker 1 How do you actually earn the right to influence what someone like that does on a day-to-day basis? Speaker 2 Yeah, it's, I'd like to say there's a catch all answer in terms of the approach that you take with different athletes in different sports in different countries at different stages of the career and whatnot. But I think there's one thing that reigns true that although incredibly simple, I see a lot of practitioners kind of fall away from, and that's simply do what you say you're going to do. If you're working with an athlete and you say, OK, every day we're going to do this 10 minute warm up protocol before every single practice. And for the first week it's going great. And then the second week, you know, maybe the player starts to drop off and you're like, hey man, come on. Like we're going to go in, we're going to do this. We agreed to this, we're going to do it. And then the third week it's getting a bit rough and you start to slack off. And then the 4th week you're like, maybe we'll just do once a week. And then it just floods off and just kind of drops out and washes out at a time. Think again, do what you say you're going to do. I think that shows an investment and it shows a level of care and it shows a level of thought and that goes into whatever you're trying to do with the athlete. If it's, as I said, if it's a warm up protocol, for example, or if you're a therapist, if that's a 10 minute treatment or some sort of warm up, I think that's really, really important because ultimately you want to be reliable and to be reliable and to be relied upon or to be accountable. Sorry to those words that you said. So I think it really is for me that simple. If I'm going to come in and from day one preseason with an athlete and say, look, you had three ankle sprains last year, we're going to go through this protocol once a week and we're going to measure this every two weeks. I know you're going to be mad at me. I know you're not going to want to do it sometimes, but we really need to collect this. We really need to inform ourselves of if what we're doing is working, this is how we need to go about it. OK, And got you perfect. Let's do that. OK, great. So now I've got permission from them to hold them accountable. Now it's up to me to say and do what I said I was gonna do. And for me, that's a really, really big piece. Speaker 1 Doesn't appear important to the performance department then it won't appear to be important to the athlete. That's 100% what I've seen as well in my practice. And it's so true. And I think sometimes, again, coming to that consensus and that alignment with the performance department where, you know, maybe the physio is also saying, hey, have you seen Jesse this morning for this? And then all of a sudden it's a number of people saying, hey, this is actually important to us. Yeah. That's, it's such a good point. Do you think, is there a specific moment where you feel like that relationship changes and goes from like, OK, maybe I do trust this guy, you know, is it a week? Is it 2 weeks? What? What is the moment? Speaker 2 Jeez, I think, I don't know. I think there's a moment that's reflected in their actions. I think that example that I gave is actually a personal example of mine from from the NDA. And I think where that moment becomes or the moment where it becomes kind of a reality that you've really pushed through is that you're away or you get pulled away for another reason, for a meeting or something. And you come back from the meeting and they're doing the protocol by themselves without you there. And now it's just become part of their routine. So for them to do without you being there, that tells me that, OK, they believe in what we're doing. First of all, something's working on that side of things. And secondly, they trust me in the sense that and they don't want to let me down as the coach because we've built up so much kind of trust equity, I call it, or basically working towards that endpoint of trust being trust being the goal, obviously. So that's kind of the, that was a key mind when that happened. I walked in and he was already doing it. I'm like, oh, it's Christmas, Christmas come early. Speaker 1 Dear of trust equity, do you think it's like trust as itself is something you earn once and then that's it? Or are you just constantly re earning that trust? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think, I think there is a level of consolidation of trust on a regular basis that needs to be, that needs to be heated or that needs to be focused on. Incredibly hard to build, incredibly easy to lose trust or psychological safety as it's often called in the research. There's no one-size-fits-all. I wish, I just wish I had like a nice little tight top three for everyone to be like, if you do AB and CA-12 and three, you'll get the trust and you'll have it forever. It's just, it's just not the case. We're working with humans and you have to get to know them as people. You have to get to know what motivates them because that was a huge misnomer. Not misnomer, but a huge mistake that I made early in my career is that I assumed that all of these players were motivated by the same thing. And that was, you know, winning championships, winning games, which it's an unfortunate reality, but some players are not solely motivated by winning games. They're motivated by getting a paycheck and motivated by being on the big stage. They're motivated by being visible and having a platform to talk about things that are bigger than basketball. Digging into those things and showing a genuine interest and care and what they believe and what motivates them. Then you can anchor your decisions and what you do with that player to those things is a strong, strong way I've found to build trust over the long term. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's such a good point. And I guess probably something that comes with experience as well if we because we've only got about 5 minutes left. So I just want to switch gears just a little bit going from you were working inside organizations frontline of sport for 10 plus years in a number of different positions. Common Traits of Successful Performance Departments So now you're a consultant with 1080 motion. So what do you see from the outside now that insiders in the on the front line of sport can't see about their own say system? So what patterns keep repeating itself that teams think may be unique to them? Speaker 2 Well, that's an excellent perspective. I think think a lot of practitioners I talked to and I currently have, I guess the luxury to be able to talk to so many different practitioners in so many different sports on a daily and weekly basis that I get really strong insight into how these things are working. But I think a lot of practitioners, especially younger ones, they're starting with the minutiae and they're getting really, really by digging into the data on a really, really deep level without going through the 123 steps prior to that that link what they're doing to the bigger picture of the program and the bigger picture of the schedule and the bigger picture of where this team wants to go. And to be more specific, it may be, you know, I might get a call from someone using 1080 or you even trying to mix 1080 with some other piece of information. Like, hey, I'm trying to work on like, why can't I look at the peak force of Step 3 right after they've finished their contact time right up rough for flight time. I'm trying to mix that with force flight numbers here and there. I'm like, let's just pop the brakes for a second. What is the goal of this analysis? Oh, well, I'm trying to figure out if their Step 3 is as powerful as that, you know, step 4:00 on the other side, let's just take a step back. Like why? Why is that important to you? OK, because they're slow or because they are starting to slow down. It's like, OK, let's take a step back and let's look at some of the other things that might make a bit more sense that we're already collecting that could help us answer this question before we get into this deep, deep, deep minutiae. So I think to answer a long answer to your question is I think a lot of people are not starting with the highest level filter and then working their way deeper and deeper and deeper. They're just going straight to the deep stuff, and the answer might be more simple than you expect. Speaker 1 Are you noticing a pattern, say you would have now had a glimpse into many different organizations and some that are consistently high performing and and some that potentially struggle or have struggled quite recently. You know, have you seen a consistent theme among say the high performing organizations versus the ones that are struggling? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think yes, definitely, actually in from a practitioner's standpoint, the teams that I work with, I find that the teams that have excellent collaboration and cohesiveness within their teams themselves have this really cool kind of openness and curiosity amongst the star and the the safety, the trust, the psychological safety within the group to put your hand up and say, you know what, I don't know the answer. I don't know what this data means. I don't know if this is signal or noise. And have that trust within the group to not get shot down and not get fired. Obviously at the worst case scenario, those are the teams that I think create such a nice or such a safe kind of web around them that they can then lean on all of the other people within the performance staff to facilitate getting to an answer to that question. Whereas on the flip side of that starts where perhaps there might be a little bit more assertiveness around knowing everything and a lack of curiosity and you know, to think that we know everything that we need to know and we don't need anything more. We don't need anything less. What we have is what we have and that's all we need. I just don't see that as a long term solution. The collaboration and cohesion in sport especially, just especially given how fast the industry moves in terms of what we're realizing now isn't as useful as what we thought 10 years ago. Which also lends itself to say what we're doing now. In 10 years time, we'd be like what the hell are we doing? Why are we collecting that or why are we processing that or what we're even looking at? I think to be so locked in and rigid in your thinking, in your ways to the point of being static year on year on year is, is a really dangerous concept. And it's that, you know, it's that idea of, you know, someone's in the industry for 10 years. Is it 1 by 10 years of experience or is it 10 by 1 years of experience? You know where you've evolved and evolved and evolved? Speaker 1 Strong opinions loosely held comes to mind. I like that, yes. How Leadership Drives Organizational Culture in Sport So with those organizations that you've seen and the ones that are quite open and they're potentially more of that psychological safety and you've got to feel for them as well, because sport is so volatile and, and that's your life, you know, and like that's your paycheck, that's your mortgage and so on. And you, you have a job and you have a contract, but that can all just go away. So I think I've been in that position before. I think you've probably been in that position before and it's, it's tough. So are you seeing? I guess there's more. Open environments in particular sports or is it? Is it actually not relevant to the sport at all? Speaker 2 More so the ladder, to be honest with you, calm. I think it's more incumbent on it's more on an organizational level, not necessarily a sport level. Yeah, I think it's it's definitely driven from the top down and by the top. It might be, you know, as high up as the general manager, it could be the coach, but most of the time it's whatever the the mandate or wherever the environment set by that kind of like performance director in Australia or high performance manager in the States. It's often VP of performance in medicine, someone who overseas that entire support staff. It's kind of the mandate or it's the culture that they set, whether it's OK to do that or it's found upon to do that, whether you accept it when people ridicule for not knowing something, whether you accept curiosity, it's whatever that mandate is set by that senior reader. And that's such an important role. And I think I'm getting off topic here a little bit, but I still think the US and US sports and organizations, they're still trying to figure out what that role means. And I think a lot of US organizations have a lot of trouble with people and practitioners that aren't practicing or don't have their hands, you know, in the coal at the coalface per SE on a day-to-day basis. People in these senior leadership roles that have more managerial and leadership role in the organization, I think a lot of teams have a lot of trouble with that still. Speaker 1 So you're, are you saying sorry, just to to clarify, you're saying that there are people potentially running these departments that don't have that frontline experience? Speaker 2 More so in the sense that I think a lot of US practitioners aren't used to that senior leader that doesn't practice on a day-to-day basis, so it doesn't have an interaction practice with the players per SE. Speaker 1 Right, right. Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, the the position is different. And I mean, I was really lucky I had Simon Rice, who I've had on the podcast and I mean, I'm lucky because he's an outstanding human, human being as well as an outstanding VP of athlete care. So very open environment. And he really created that. And and like you said, he has helped create that role the way you're describing it. And then has also been contracted by other teams or asked by other teams to help advise for that type of position in those teams as well. Because like you said, it's, it's not very common or it hasn't been done potentially the best way in in the US yet anyway. So now you've got this vantage point where you're not on the front line. Building an Ideal Performance Department from Scratch So if you could go in and start from scratch and design your entire performance department however you wanted, what would you change? Speaker 2 A change relative to what I've experienced before. Speaker 1 Yes. Speaker 2 Oh geez, would start with perhaps. You know, I used to think, and this is not that long ago, maybe four or five years ago, I used to think that if I was ever to assemble a staff, I would find the absolute best practices I could get my hands on and just put them all in a room and work together and everything would work great. Well, I've unfortunately been in scenarios where it's somewhat that kind of approach and that staff has happened and has not gone so smoothly. So I think what I would do is I would purely, I would take more of a perhaps a generalist approach and say, OK, where instead of going to hire this ultra specific standpoint or perhaps they're incredibly good at addressing the Achilles tendon issues, we're going to just add more generalists. We're going to have more people that are perhaps T shaped employees that have a very broad sense across rehab, sports science, strength, conditioning, periodization, Physiology, all of these different areas with a specialty in one of those such that we can all kind of facilitate having a discussion together. Instead of bringing people in that are ultra specific in all of these different areas that we're trying to kind of mash our heads together. And we spend a lot of time explaining what these different terms are, but we're actually talking about the same thing. So I think first of all, hiring journalists, but also above all just hiring the right people, like really good people from a personality stand that it might sound cliche, but you know, you can teach, you can teach someone else with Physiology. You can't teach someone to be a good person, a curious person, a collaborative person. You can't. Speaker 1 And I mean, I've been so fortunate that the places that I've worked, I've had, I've worked with such good people and like you've said, just genuinely good people. But I also wonder if sport weeds that out, you know, where you spend so much time with each other. It's not a nine to five job, particularly in NHLNBA. You're with people sometimes 16 hours a day. You can retreat to your room for a number of hours and then you're straight back into work. Like you will get found out very quickly if you're not a good person. But yeah, hard, hard to teach. Honest Advice for Aspiring Sport Scientists So Jesse, I just wanted to wrap this up and you potentially giving someone advice. So someone who is potentially in your shoes 10 years ago, they're in Brisbane, they're doing good work and they're wondering how to get to the next level. What's some honest advice and not like motivational advice, but just some honoured advice on what they should be focusing on right now? Speaker 2 I see 10 years ago, what I would tell him is probably stop trying to be the smartest person in the room. First of all, stop trying to ask the smart questions and sound smart. And second of all, kind of similar to what I just mentioned is read and learn very broadly. Now is not the time to go into specifics. Go abroad, learn about nutrition, learn about some new conditioning, learn about periodization, learn about analytics. You're at such a base level of your career that you're learning some of those core concepts across multiple domains is going to serve you much, much better as each of those domains evolve over time. Whereas if you just go super specific from the get go, all of these other domains are going to also evolve really quickly and you're going to have no clue about how they're going to progress from that position. Speaker 1 Feel like that comes full circle back to what you were saying of the sports scientists really getting stuck in the minutia and they don't actually have that global view of the entire program and how it fits all in. All fits in. Sorry. So yeah, I completely agree reading. And again, you're not trying to be a specialist, nor are you trying to. I'd step into someone else's lane, but at least understanding how your piece of the puzzle fits in with their piece of the puzzle. Jesse's Book Recommendation and Episode Conclusion So then final question which relates to that, is there anything you have read or listened to lately that has particularly influenced your practice or maybe how you think this could be a podcast, a research paper, a book, anything? Speaker 2 Well, not a good one too as I look at my most recent reading stack over here that I definitely haven't gotten all the way to yet. But I think something I read and happened to reread was some of Dan Cleaver's small form books, and The Force is one of them. He's just got another one he just released about Sprint training as well. And I think what I really liked about those books is I'm a bit of a math nerd. I was going to go to UD for engineering, but decided the first last minute to pivot. So I think all that to say, his books really boil it down to here's the physics, here's the math behind that physics that describes human movement. And here is what that looks like for a number of different tasks. Here's why it matters for performance. And he puts it into many applied contexts. So I think, well, after I read that book, it was kind of like like a breath of fresh air, Like, OK, there is a way that we could describe these things that makes sense on a really basic physical level. And we don't need to over complicate it too much because I find myself you go down the rabbit hole and get into the weeds deeper and deeper and deeper. And before you know it, you've got no clue what you're reading about and you've got no clue how to actually put this into practice. So I would say some of Dan Anything by Dan Cleaver is books I can do excellent. Speaker 1 That's a great answer. And no, I have not read any of those books, but I will put them in the show notes for anyone who is interested. One thing I really like about you is you are very intelligent and you're also very human. And your bedside manner and your ability to relate to the athlete is something that's, yeah, quite admirable. So I just want to say a big thanks for you taking the time being on the podcast. I will link to your socials and LinkedIn in the show notes. And thank you very much, Jesse. Speaker 2 Thanks for your time and the kind words.