#2: Dr Daniel Kirkbride - Understanding the human body. Taking a closer look at injury management, performance and recovery

On todays episode we welcome Dr Daniel Kirkbride.

Daniel is an Osteopath | Strength & Conditioning coach from Melbourne, who began his coaching journey in 2014 and graduated from RMIT in 2018.

He is the owner of Williams Landing Osteopathy & Performance in Melbourne and Director of Principles of Rehab & Performance, which is a private online certification for allied health practitioners and personal trainers.

This is such an informative episode. Diving deep into the human body, covering topics like anatomy and physiology but not like in the text book. We unlock recovery systems and their strategies, discuss injuries and understand them from a different point of view. Talk pain and diagnosis, the processes in which Daniel follows and teaches to many coaches and practitioners across Australia. 

This episode is a must listen. Learning Dr Daniels processes, a lifetime of study and work, and we’re bringing it to you live in just over an hour.

Dr Daniel Kirkbride's website: https://www.drdanielkirkbride.com
Dr Daniel Kirkbride's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.daniel.kirkbride/
Oxidate Performance website: https://www.oxidate.com.au
Oxidate Performance Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oxidate_performance/

Transcript

If you'd like to share with us your backstory, you know, firstly where you started and Kane mentioned that you used to be a goalkeeper. So you're gonna go right back to then and give us a nice intro and, you know, bring us up to date as to where you want. That'd be great.

Yeah, for sure. So yeah for me started I mean I was always actually an AFL AFL I used to play AFL Ozzy rules football until about the age of 16 I was playing a pretty good level and just kind of got bored of it to be honest one a new challenge and had a few mates that were playing soccer at the time in high school it was more of a social thing for me just to I guess I'm making it easier to fit in binders I was bored alienates players gave gay soccer ago needed a goalkeeper for some form of one weekend filled in had had a bunch of fun was actually not too bad. And yeah, next year decided to quit footy and play soccer and how to have my first gig at South Melbourne, which at the time, I didn't realize they're actually a big club. And I was like, Oh, this is cool, you know, it's fine as semi decent clubs that played my first year as organisers as a junior I stayed there for about 18 months. I had a few games in there. I kind of readies and then it was gone into VCE. So, I ended up playing that small jalon and no sunshine eagles, which I spent most of my years I like playing seniors. Cows good fun. Yes, I played soccer probably for about seven years almost then gave that up when I was 23. Just because, you know, 50 a union was pretty intense. I was running my own personal training business and just something had to give and probably at the time, I was more interested in partying and girls and soccer kind of took it backwards. So yeah, somehow we ended up here, finished uni started the clinic started doing some coaching. Mentoring has accidentally fell into it. And then yeah, here we are. 24

for those who, for those who don't know, you know, you're a doctor. Austin osteopath in Austin, osteopathy. Can you unpack some of that for us? So that transition from personal training into your fifth year study to to graduating and then to your clinic?

Yeah, sure, sir. I basically I finished high school straight up winning my cert three four finished at about halfway through through my first year of uni. So I started coaching pretty much from first year my uni degree and while I was simultaneously studying, kind of start off with a bit of fun like training like fitness like helping people, it was a better part time job than working at MakerBot came up so it was an easy, easy decision and then probably wasn't until 30 uni I really started taking it seriously. So invested a lot of money in my development. That's why we maintain we did a course called FMA which kind of ignited my passion for education and getting better I finished uni and then basically I went straight into my studio. So I never really changed I guess I just guess I kind of incorporated my personal training into when I finished uni. I didn't want to give that up. You're pretty successful business model. So just kind of integrated osteo is that offering osteo personal training all under one roof? And then that kind of that was about 18 months ago. So it was February last year and yeah, the clinics growing pretty big since then. And yes, I'll probably get into education more. So around August last year, just dabbling a few seminars here and there and then started off with free seminars and just have fun. And then I found a few paid ones and just grew from there.

Yeah, awesome. So our audience is quite broad. We have parents, Junior athletes, senior athletes, and we also have quite a few like physiotherapists and other practitioners and coaches who are part of our following. If you could, perhaps, you know, touch on more of that there's any, you know, younger students looking to make a similar progression. Is there any tips, you know, that you'd like to share along that journey? You know, perhaps setting up the studio, the progressional point in seminars and education?

Yeah, sure. I think

I think the main thing I see a lot especially with doing more education now is just people not spending enough time on the basics. Like it sounds really cliche but there's all there's a bunch of courses out there's a lot of education, a lot of information out there and we're probably too focused on trying to learn the specialty or you know, go into a niche really fast and learn something really good when I think we tend to gloss over the foundation so my whole philosophy with the education mentor and stuff like that is always start with the foundations get really, really good at the basics. Because you know, you programming everything we do is you know, from those foundations if you don't understand anatomy, biomechanics physiology, which I always say to people who trio as a coach or therapist, if you don't understand them, really well then your programming, that's going to be you know, second best, essentially. And then from a business point of view, I think, yeah, for any coach or therapists out there in you know, studying CEOs videos, I think the best thing you can do is get your hands dirty, early on, I think the biggest like the thing that put me in the driver's seat when I finished you Compared to a lot of the people I was in uni with was the fact that done you know 10,000 hours of coaching and had 1000 clients by the time I finished uni versus a few people you know, it was it maybe two or three people my you level who did personal training. Another guild Danny ends analysis, probably you guys might know her who works with Andrew Luck. So I think, you know, it leaves clues when the two guys that were doing the most PT and you know, obviously been able to put that knowledge together. So I think it's a good it's a good way to start to put all the stuff you're learning and unique into a practical sense. Is it an experience because that experience is what allows you to then expand your knowledge and deal with that?

Absolutely. I mean, you look at it, like I said, you follow the clues we pick up the crumbs of any entrepreneur, any successful person in whatever field the first failed or the first person to get out to game you know, get their hands dirty, get that 10,000 hours deliberate and purposeful practice. And I'm grateful that we've caught you now before you blow up any further mate because we you know, I keep my ear pretty close to the ground. Oh, I see. who's who's doing really great work, you know, who's who's starting to step out, you know, outside of the box, do things a bit differently things a bit better. So I'm happy to catch it now before you, you know, you probably start charging for these types of podcasts and, and for your time. I

know a lot having a good chat always good guy. That's another one. Yep, sorry. Go

on to the next question.

Yeah. So, um, all right, a personal question what's, what's the impact that you're looking to have? So you now in your current position, what's your focus and the impact that you're looking to achieve?

Yes, kind of falls into two categories. So, you know, my passion has always been to help people from a, I guess, a general population point of view in terms of trying to help people better themselves education around health and performance, give people a better platform slash you know, almost a bit of a framework unstructured or valuable insights into their own stuff take control of their own health long term. So that's definitely a passion of mine. Something I love doing But for me, I guess with the last six months going more towards the educational apps, taking a step back and thought of it is I'll never stop in the trenches. And I'll never stop working because I love it. And for me, it's not about money, it's about actually making an impact. But if you look at it from the perspective of if I'm having 20 coaches go through my program, who has seen 20 to 30 patients a week. Now that ripple effect of that is massive compared to how much I can ever do on my own. So in taking a step back and thinking big picture, and what I can actually do, is definitely where I'm starting to look now. So how do I take those same principles, what I'm doing in general, and start to do that for coaches, so, you know, giving coaches and therapists a framework or a structure, they can start to simplify all these complex topics and make it you know, easy to understand feasible education platform, they can start to, you know, take away and start to implement straightaway with their clients is that Yeah, just having that effect that I want on a more global scale, I guess.

It's really cool, really inspiring. It's in As we progress as coaches as mentors and become educators, you start to really take the blinkers off, and you start to look at that bigger picture. And if you can, you know, instead of we all work with, with clients and patients, instead of working with one patient, if we educate coaches and parents and staff and we create this, you know, broader platform, then that's when we truly start to get, you know, positive changes. Yeah,

I'm set. And I think like to add on to that, for my my specific background, I guess, in osteo. I think the way I think osteo is by far I'm probably biased, but I think osteo is by far the best profession out there. In terms of the allied health world, I think we're we have the best ability to bring all the different compartments together and facilitate that in a way that's actually holistic and starts to understand the human side, I think kind of takes if we looked at all the individual professions, it's like you're always taking you know, the the manual therapy component of the Maya therapist or massage therapist, you're taking the thought process of a physio, you're taking me in No adjustments of the car. He's taking the holistic understanding of the body from a functional medicine practitioner, you put all that together and essentially having a practitioner who can do it all. So I think the all the individual ingredients are there, it's just like how do you then mix up those ingredients and make the correct formula for these practitioners to start then applying that in a way that makes sense. I think, to me unions, like you learned a bit about everything and Kane and me always banging on about the fatik system and looking at all the recovery physiology, which we can delve into quite deep if we want to. But like, it's something we don't really do much of it, you know, it's kind of like oh, here's, here's a, here's a lymphatic system. Next slide, we move on. Here's, you know, some other stuff about the parasympathetic. Let's move on. Here's a few exercises for a rotator cuff and let's move on. It's like, we never go deep enough into it. I think, you know, with any degree, it's like, you can't teach everything in five years. So it's nothing wrong against the unique curriculum. It's basically trying to expose you to a bit of everything. But I think if we can start to create more of this hybrid model of like taking osteo when it was some s&c blended or some function, man You know, that's that's going to be a lot more powerful long term to start to help people more holistically rather than the current model that we're in is this has limitations in terms of working with people one on one, on a very consistent basis, I guess, like you're very limited with the results you can get. So for me trying to create a what, what I've done in the clinic is trying to take convention last year, we've got some training with medicine and try and find a model where essentially, it's education with the osteo traditional model that has a better impact long term for everyone.

That's the art of, of coaching and practice. Isn't it combined the science with stuff that actually works and streamlining that not for the streamline effect, but actually for the impact? You know, to get more out of people with your time? Yeah, yeah. So that that's my next question to current practices and programs. You know, can we explore, you know, what makes you you and your methods, obviously, we see on social media, what you're doing and that type of stuff. If you happen to share with I'd love to hear more on you know what it is you're doing, why you're doing it and How that helps people?

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I started off traditional, like any other osteo physio car, you know, you finish uni, you go into practice. I mean, I probably didn't start off conventional because I just went out and Irish right away. So I had to learn pretty fast because if someone came in and they were one of those really tricky cases are another luxury of knocking on my boss's door and asking him to step in. So I think for me, it was always good, though, because I threw myself in the deep end. And it made me start to create systems and create processes in my head that I could fall back on when I did have those difficult cases. I think that stimulated my way of wanting to educate others too, because I started to think, Well, you know, you learn if A equals B to C and B equals C to D sort of scenario at uni, when realistically, there's never any black and white or 50 Shades of Grey. So it's like, how do you create a process that you can then use on any individual that comes through and not to say it's not personalized to say, Well, I need a framework that I can fall back on when I'm unsure what the answer is. I'm not sure what's going on to me. It was really good to create that resiliency and income structure and then be able to then now you know, share that with other people to create a framework. But also in terms of the actual business model. I think what that made me realize is there's so much more to helping people in the 30 minutes. 60 minutes is the same as personal training. Like we talk about personal training, we say, How often do you see class and personal trainers and massage therapists I'd say pretty much the frontline runners in terms of they see people the most often the PTS you see someone twice a week, three times a week, massage therapists MRC, someone once a week off to physio might be once a month, once a song for six months. So it's like in terms of who has the biggest potential impact our clients, even though they might not have the most prestigious degree compared to a physio osteo, they're really amazed that they're working with people much more frequently, and therefore they're more potential impact. So what I was thinking was well as a personal trainer, what I've gone from seeing people twice a week, once a week for six months to now seeing Susan or john, sporadically, and my impact was significantly better when I was Less smart and less qualified these people versus more smart, more qualified or not same deal. So then we start to think, Okay, well, even if I am saying someone who is awake, what's happening the other hundred and 66 hours a week, I don't see them and how can I start to, like help those people. But then when you look at it from a business model, you can see why physios or CEOs don't really promote much of that stuff, or that they're not pushing for it cuz it's like, well, if I get something better, faster, I make less money. And it's kind of like a shot in the foot. Like you, you're a good practitioner, you get something better in two sessions, rather than I made you make less money, and now you're under the pump business wise. Also, if I do a bunch of extra work on programming, education videos, outside don't get paid for, I'm just making 30% more work I don't get paid for. So it's like, you can see why there's this model that is it's not like it's a bad model. It's like, I don't think all CEOs physios make this model with the idea of I just want to make money. We all start off with the idea. I want to help people but then the model kind of ends up kind of broken out into this model of the sea and the ocean we have because we want to we want to do all these things we know like work, but there's no motivation to do it because now I'm just going to make my life harder. So what I was thinking was okay, well how do we make a model that kind of fits in the middle where you see people want a one on one face to face because everyone wants that no matter what Coronavirus for example, like, no matter what you tell people people still want hands on. It's alright, john, you don't need to see me for a treatment. How do I exercise you can get that up. Now I just want to see like, it's always gonna be there. People want the touch people want the connection. And that's never going to go away. It's like how do you blend that with the all this external education and extras to get a better result for the client, the create a more flexible business model that actually works using not burned out seeing 60 patients a week and see, you know, gives you more fulfillment, it gets better results because we know that arguably 98% of the results come from what happens outside the session, not what I do in the session. So that was kind of where I went with the hybrid model. And now it's you know, I still see people face to face, but it's more of that almost a coaching model personal training model words. Like, no, you're paying me as a, as a coach, you know, a nominal fee on a weekly basis and you include certain things, rather than you come and pay me, you know, 80 bucks or 30 minutes and then I might give you some exercises and my follow up, I might not, I probably won't because I'm not getting paid for it, or I probably won't cuz you gonna get better and then they'll come back and then now I can't eat I mean cornflakes for next two weeks. So, yeah, I think it's a it's a bit of knowledge is one component, it's a knowledge gap. There's another component, it's also like a business model that doesn't allow for us to express the knowledge that we have.

So look, I think you've just summed it up perfectly. And it doesn't matter in terms of what context in the industry, you know, coaching, personal trainers, strength conditioning, it's that business model. It's that, you know, education, that knowledge and you know, that the health system, essentially I had a chat with Andy Bryant podiatrist, I'm not sure if you follow any of his work, and he was talking about the health system as a podiatrist and you don't make money unless people are coming back to see you and it's kind of broken by You know, how do you educate? How do you change that the systems that you put in place? I think it's awesome to hear that. Because sometimes you're right if we fix the client because we're really good at what you do in a session or two, they don't come back Yeah, that's that's what we want to achieve, but you also don't earn so filling in those gaps. Definitely.

The second thing there, though, was like, I don't like the whole idea of fixing people in one or two sessions kind of pisses me off a little bit just because you can get someone feeling good in one or two sessions but he never truly fixes on and that's a big difference too in terms of it's half a business model problem but also often education from because also I'll send you guys a photo after but like my whole idea of like rehab to performance is that you know, there's a few checkpoints along the way and going from checkpoint one number one to checkpoint number two, which is route desensitization, like pain relief is restoring normal range of motion. It's pretty easy, like any sort of manual therapy, any sort of intervention, can you achieve that pretty easily, it's not hard to get someone back pain to go from an eight out of 10 to a four out of 10 in 30 minutes. Which you know, certain techniques if you know you're dumb, but what is more, a lot more complex is well, you can have 10 people with back pain or have the same experience with same symptoms, we got 10 different methods of how they got there 10 different underlying root causes of how they got there. And that's really what our therapists and coaches we have to understand. So it's this combination of like, yeah, getting better. That's what they paid for. They want to feel the pain the same time. You didn't fix them in two sessions, you just got them feeling better in three sessions. If you don't have this external thing there of education and long term longevity, then they just don't come back after two sessions, which is not good for your business. They're not good for them either. So everyone loses in my, in my books, I've lost money, I've lost the climb. They haven't got better. So I haven't actually solved that problem and done my job as a coach as best I can. And it's just shit kind of forever, versus it could be. You have some sort of hybrid platform where it's like cool. We only need one or two sessions to get you feeling good but we also need you know, eight to 12 weeks 16 week block to address you know, your hip mobility issues or your got issues or your training program or your lack of stability, whatever it is sort of thing. Because those things are going to take time. You can mess up someone out of pain, if I could mess us on and make them stronger, more mobile more stable, I'd get paid a lot more. Like those traits that people the traits that cause people to get paid can't be solved by manual therapy. You can't get stronger from someone touching you, you can't get more stable from someone touching those need to be trained. They're more active intervention. So I always bang on about five like passive active neural is the way I do things. We can work on passive in session, activate neuro lab have to have an external for that session. If we don't bridge that gap. Then there's the revolving door keeps happening. And you might have inflate your ego which I definitely did when I first started I was like, yeah, I'm that I'm that osteo that almost got myself Visio that I'm the house do that someone comes to see and I get them better in two sessions. But really, I was stroking my ego stroking my ego patient will come back two months later with the same thing and they only came for two sessions rather than 10 seconds, which means business model was shit. I was always scraping. I wasn't getting the person that are and I was a striker omega versus now it's cool. You have x is going to take a process we're going to have, it's the same as coaching, you want to lose 10 kilos, it's going to take six months, we're going to do three sessions a week, then we're going to do this you, this is what you need to do this what I need to do to clear expectations, there's a clear road, clear map, clear GPS of where we're going, and what kind of checkpoints are along the way. And from there, it's like better client experience better outcomes, that our business model and this is, I think, in my experience, it's this where, where our health needs to be in 2020. And we're kind of stuck in this outdated like 19 1980s model of how many patients do you get a week? Same as personal training, how many sessions Do you do like 40 sessions? And where do you go from there, you're gonna be working for them to 1pm Thursday left. So it's like Plus, if there's nothing outside those sessions, and they're just never going to get where I need to get through. So I think having this new kind of model is what I'm trying to push for the

gold just there might be a nice segue from bridging the gap between the clinic and the gym floor. So if you're actually going to start to work with people, and start, you know, strengthen, you know, progress this patient or this client from early diagnosis treatment plan, and what does that look like for you?

Yes. So I've got a kind of like framework that I have printed up in my clinics. And it's an eight step process. So again, there's always I think, in any allied health, any coaching, there's no process, you can create a process by thinking but there's never gonna be a process because everyone's completely different, but it's having that to fall back on at least puts you in the right ballpark where you can be a little more flexible rather than if you don't have a framework. You don't have any GPS tied in you just kind of driving around like a Belgium car bouncing around hoping you get to the destination. So for me, it's step number one is desensitization. So, pain modification essentially, step two is we're still wearing normal full flexibility so restoring normal range of motion, removing any restrictions to read. emotion. So we can go through definitions in a minute you want. After flexibility, its mobility. So, you know, allowing, allowing a person to then achieve full range of motion actively on their own without my assistance after mobility stability, so can actually have the requisite stability from a kind of neuro point of view to now produce force. So we talked about strength, and we talked about stability, we can eat stability in the appropriate section, and the ability for our joint to resist forces. If our joint can't have adequate stability. From a neutral point of view, we can have limited strength, which is what we want at the end of the day strength performance, by virtue of whatever the goal is. So once we've restored sort of flexibility of abilities to do it today, for me, the missing step then is looking at motor control. So a lot of times when we'll get some, as practitioners, we'll go through those three steps. There were manual therapy, you can get someone out of pain and restore normal range of motion. And then we go cool, just go back to training. And the end goal is performance. So the steps of doing there is once you've got normal, full range of motion once we can get Adequate stability, isolation integration skill, which means taking someone through a bit of a process and that's all movement based. So it could be, you know, cane comes in with back pain is a disc bulge or something like that the diagnosis and the effect is a disc bulge, the root cause, and the predisposing factor is not a disc bulge, the predisposing factors and the root cause is that maybe he's lacking active hip flexion. So now, every time he deadlifts he's getting lumbar, flexion as a compensator button for hip mobility issue, he doesn't know how to brace and breathe properly, therefore, he can't create intra abdominal pressure. We look at the physiology component, it could be that the volume is too high, the recovery is too poor, and the overall sort of allostatic load in the system is too high. So zankel is chronic overload and then led to tissue degeneration or tissue injury. So we don't address all those underlying predisposing factors. It doesn't really matter if it's a disc bulge annular tear, what kind of disc bulge is because we're kind of worrying about what's the bottom of the pyramid rather than what's actually causing it. So then if you look at a treatment modality for that, it could be well sweet For sure, you know, manual therapy, copying, scraping, dry needling like inserts is a technique of choice. And the technique there is based on the principle, the technique there is basically I want pain reduction, I want to restore normal range of motion. So I think everyone on social media like getting really butthurt about what technique works better as it's done, because it's like we're comparing, you know, different methods that do the same principle into that. So I think they get a bad name. When people say all these things don't work. It's like these things do work, you just need to know where they fit into the continuum of care. So for me go through some sort of technique. If you're a manual therapist, this is not your therapy. If you're a non manual therapist, you can do foam rolling, you can do their mobilizations. You can do flossing, you can do

like in dry needling, like you do whatever you need to do. Dry needling, probably not a good one for coaches, but you get the point. So you choose the technique and the goal is let's get you from step one to three. So step one is desensitization flexibility, mobility. I use those techniques and now cane is able to move because if cane can't move the best s&c program is done. If you can't do the exercises, because you don't have the range of motion because you're you've got so much pain, pain is an output from the brain and pain is going to affect range of motion. So mobility, active range of motion is also going to affect force output. So when your brain senses pain, or senses instability from sensory inputs, and the kind of receptors, muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs, or you know, different kind of regulators that are sending information to the brain about pain, so heat, vibration, temperature, etc. all this information is going through the brain and sensory input, the brain then needs to interpret all his information and essentially modulate what's going on. Imagine your brain is blind, it doesn't know what's going on. It just hears all this information and has to make a decision based off all the information receives and your brain's natural. inclination is safety and preservation. So I always use a joke like if you're walking in the bushes, and you're walking in the forest and you hear something ruffling in the bush could be a tie. Could be Dave you make from the pub and he's a bit drunk he's had a few too many your brains number one thing is that's a fucking tiger. I'm not going near that I'm gonna run fight and flight mode safely. Your brain doesn't go oh my just go to the bush and kind of see if it's Dave and see if it's a tiger because if it's not Dave, you get the brain's natural default mode is protection. So what's happening is you're getting all the sensory input sensory input can be from some of those receptors about pain. sensory input can also be mechanical receptors, muscle spindles, which is detecting, you know length, changes in the muscle length, changes in the muscle, joint position, etc. all that information can come in and branching out I don't feel safe. I feel threatened pains and output to stop you doing the activity or it's going to cut off your range of motion pull the handbrake on, cut off your force output. Now you lose active range of motion mobility. You test someone on a table, they've got full range of motion. That's it. Why can't they use it brown or I do force plate testing. I like muscle testing. I do muscle test. Testing and they can produce 50 kilos of force. Why can they only do 20 kilos on their exercise? Again, it's discrepancy brain central nervous systems of the pyramid, musculoskeletal system bottom of the pyramid. So that's where there's a difference between manual therapy and passive interventions versus activate neuro because as a therapist, you can do all that stuff easy. You can get someone from step one, step three, by doing interventions. How do you get from step three to step eight. So step four is stability. Step five is isolation. Step six is integration. Step seven is skill. So motor control motor patterning, to actually do this specific movement you want to get better at and then step eight is good performance. Let's get strong let's build muscle Let's run a marathon let's do a complex insert goal here. So it's like this clear checkpoints of how you get from point one to point A. And it's not biased toward one technique is good or one technique is bad or one exercise is the wrong size. But it's basically saying, Here is a principle you need to apply and how you personalize it is now your coaching. Cool, what is the tool I can use to improve mobility? I don't care which one you use as long as it works for that person. How are you going to work on skill skills gonna be specific to the motor pattern they're trying to work on so you can get the best you can be the best in the world at single leg rdls doesn't mean you're gonna be good at squatting. It's a very different motivation. So how do we then improve that cool single leg audios integration was done to integrate and look at muscle function muscle action, but if you want to get better at squatting, we need to actually improve the skill of squatting before you start squat for performance. So this is continuing as I go allied health kind of fits in from step one to three. s&c coach kind of fits in from step 48. But there's like this broken bridge in the middle that no one knows what the fuck they're doing and who does what it's like when coaches are really good at this. I always say coaches need to understand anatomy physiology better, and therapists need to understand programming. s&c better and if we all kind of work together, it's like you can bridge that gap in the middle of life. It's not who's at the beach. getting bigger and who's got the bigger degree, it's like coaches can do this stuff without having to diagnose you just understanding aggravating factors, relieving factors, how to take someone through a process, and therapists or osteo, physios could go, Well, now the model that actually helps people get better rather than just this yo yo, or telling them they get better, they really get better. We just made them feel good, or having to keep them on the kick and come back forever. So I think if you don't understand that, though, it's like, it's hard to the Intel therapists like, Hey, have you considered this model because oh, this thing is I'm just gonna lose clients lose money, when really, like, you could actually work less, make the same money, more money, and you'll get your client better, and enjoy it because now you're accessing 100% of your brain versus 10% your brain. So the biggest thing for me was when I finished it was like, I felt like when I was in the clinic, I was literally using 10% of my brain capacity. And I was like, I'm just literally doing manual therapy, diagnosis, but like there's this whole other world of like lymphatics in recovery and nervous system. An exercise rehab that I kind of get to dabble in, but no one really wants to pay for slash wants to be here because that is coming in within commentation. Now I'm going to come in and get 30 minutes and go home.

So my question is, so this is more for coaches in terms of coaches that work with actual soccer players and teams. Yeah. So that rehab to performance. So say for example, you see a coach that's got a group of 15 boys and say they're under four scenes. They've had a player that's been injured. Do you think is important for these soccer coaches to know a bit of a system on return to apply?

Yeah, I think it's important I think it's important for them to have like in general, coach, therapists, PT anyone in that realm, it's important that you know a little bit of everything but it's also important to know that you're never going to be a specialist in anything and you're never going to be better at a person who's a specialist so like, it's important for that under 40 inch coach to know a rough guideline so is it so he's in the know is like he can actually Have a good bullshit filter of what's right and what's wrong. And also what is client, what is code? What is clients, I guess, students should be doing. But the coach is never going to be a cane or a Jacob or me, like, you know, I mean, like, that's our job. So we spent lots of time and money to be a spec specialist insert, he can have a rough idea. And you can do a bit of program. But I'd always say, you know, like liaising and networking with people who can do things better than you is always going to be the way to go about it. But I guess the second thing there is going to be well, from a logistics point of view, funding and stuff like that. If there's no coach around if you can't, there's no coach, that club slash a 14 year old can't afford to get coaching stuff like that. What's the plan, they will then in Plan B, at least if he's got an awareness, he can start to help the kids still so it's always like the best option versus the best option for the situation. You know, it's never going to be 100% ideal just because of logistics and stuff like that. But I think if he has a good idea, you can take them through a process. If he doesn't, then you can outsource it

I think it's um, it's an interesting one and obviously being in that in that demographic, so I, I work at a lot of different clubs. And the biggest difficulty I find is, you know, the the physiotherapist, perhaps once they hang on to this, you know, they've diagnosed they've given the initial treatment plan, but there's no integration and it's what he talked about before then it's the everyone was sort of working together and it's dropped the ego let's let's go inside, let's actually do what's right for the patient or for the client. So I've had a lot of issues previously with, you know, being a performance coach or s&c coach to, you know, wanting to drive that return to sport returned to perform program, but it's been withheld. And you know, whether it's come from a coach who's trying to do their own stuff and not outsource the physio or the s&c coach, it's just been an interesting pattern where I've found a lot of difficulty to work with club physios and club coaches. Whether it's ego, whether it's education, who knows.

Yes, it's always it's always been like that. But, I mean, it's unfortunately, I think it's a big area that we need to improve on. But I think it's like it's a tough one because Yeah, what can you do, it's like, unless everyone's on the same page, and can drop the ego and be vulnerable and work together and have the same sort of common goal, then you know, there's always gonna be a problem now I think that comes down to more of like a culture of community rather than an education thing like this is degree of education to it. You know, some people it's the ego is a bit of a smokescreen for them not wanting to be vulnerable and admit they don't know they don't know. And it's almost like, oh, especially if it's like a physio or it's the coach. View, and then I don't want to outsource to you because it's like, well, then they feel like they're not doing the job properly at all. I feel like you know, they're they're admitting defeat almost like they don't know anything. So thing versus if you got a good community, your culture and everyone knows their role and knows what they bring to the table, then it's like, you have no problem with that because you know, the head coach's goal, the head coach's role, his tactics, Game Day stuff, training, the SEC Coaches after performance, the physio is there to deal with early stage rehab diagnosis, like everyone knows their place knows their role. And this is last cohesive circle. That makes sense. But if there's any, if you have one rotten egg, it makes the whole, the whole culture shift essentially. So I think it comes down to who you selected and who you're working with. But at the same time, it's like, well, there's a bit of limitation to it, because you can't just unless you're the club manager, you can't really choose and pick everyone you work with.

The reason I asked you that question is just because, you know, from coaching in that environment, you see some coaches, you know, who get players back and things like that. And they just ask them a question, how do you feel and the players you know, as we generally know, they're going to say, Yeah, I feel I feel great, I'm ready to go and they're not and they just get injured again. Yeah. But I think you you kind of went into it because it's that logistics as well. Because you know, if they don't have the money to be able to hire someone, or you know, the club won't let them work with someone. I just think, you know, for the coach to have a little bit of an idea to know you know, you have to be out Run 100% you know, if you've, for example, very general a hamstring injury, for example. Yeah, you know, if he can't sprint then you shouldn't if he says he's fine, you got to know. That's just from my my experience. So that was cool. You answered the question perfectly

Aurukun. If you have an s&c coach, like the s&c, coach and pretty much create a bit of a history, create that sort of framework for them, and then be able to educate the coach on that. Like if I was the s&c goes on a soccer club. Like I used to do it back in the day, what I what I kind of did was like I'd have a framework like return to play hamstring returned to play, you know, in certain injury, osteitis, pubis, stuff like that. And again, it's not going to be the exact same way as having a one on one consult me and me overseeing the program and having weekly check ins and like getting that intimacy of care. It's but it's still, you know, second best option. So the coach is saying how do you feel and the player goes back? So I think having the framework there and then being able to have a conversation with the coach where I can sit down and say, Look, man, he's my return to play for him. Like little Johnny has to hit step number one for step number two, he doesn't hit step number one, do not pass go do not collect $200 here's an option you can do. And it's kinda like you just create like an almost like a flowchart of step one, yes, go here, step two, no. And then you give them context of what that means have a conversation, sit down for half an hour, I'll do a seminar at the club, get old coaches rather than 12 hour days there, it's one hour of my time rather than 10 hours of my time, because I think a big thing, there's logistics to s&c coach could have an ego could just be really busy, and could be getting paid quite poorly. And a lot of times, which is a scenario too, it's like, well, why do I want to spend an extra 10 hours of my time doing all this stuff when I'm getting already unpaired worked and kind of just, you know, that sort of situation? So it's like, well, look into that, again, my coaching model of like semi private, could I run a seminar for two hours and give everyone a pamphlet of return to play and kind of give them the key points they looking for the key things to, you know, do you notice notice and then that way when those things do happen, they they're not out there, out in the loop kind of thing. So that's a way you can look at it, I think. And then when it gets to more in depth cases, at least they've got a good foundation there. And then if it gets beyond that they can refer to

understand, I think that's a very good answer. And we talked about a lot. Anyway. But recovery, I just want to get your thoughts on it. I know you've got your pyramids and your circles and all that stuff, which, which we love, which are really cool. But you know, we see a lot of youngsters just want to train all the time, wherever it shrim conditioning, whatever is on the pitch where we're just running whatever they might do. Can you explain to us a little bit why recovery is so important for performance?

Yeah. So simple answer would be what basically is looking at the nervous systems. I think in the nervous system, everything is going to control our recovery control adaptation drug what's going on. So I do like my graphs, and shapes. It's good as an easy visual for especially parents, if they're listening and want to know you know why it's important for the kids or the actual Real kids are listening. They want to know why they should stop training. Well not stop training but why they should work on aspects outside of it. We can think my company knows just me you've got two different types. You got two different nervous systems, central nervous system, autonomic nervous system, your autonomic nervous system is the ones going to regulate your recovery regarding growth regulator, okay. We can break that down into parasympathetic and sympathetic. When you train. We're driving a sympathetic state. This is your fight and flight mode. This is the tigers in the bush who want to run away the brain doesn't have eyes the brain doesn't know the difference between a tiger or some person beeping at you in traffic, it just knows I have a look. I have sensory input and I feel threat I turn on the diagnosis. Your sympathetic nervous system we can refer to as catabolic. So catabolic means it breaks down muscle tissue or breaks down resources. So when you're in a sympathetic state, your body will break down essentially resources from your bodies will say glycogen and fat depending on what kind of intensity you train that muscle tissue depleted state

to produce energy I ATP so that we can convert chemical energy ATP into kinetic energy I run, kicking them all talking to you mate, blah, blah. So being sympathetic is naturally catabolic. Not a bad thing, if we spend time in there when we're training because when we're training, we know that we want to have that really heightened sense of we can lift heavy run fast sprint, etc. But if we stay in that state, the key thing there is it is catabolic. So someone stays in sympathetic and they can't drive themselves out of sympathetic and you're naturally staying in this catabolic state. We can also think about it in terms of you can't be in both systems at the same time. So if you're sympathetic, parasympathetic, parasympathetic and sympathetic. So, the second bad thing about that is, well, when we look at recovery, recovery happens when we're in parasympathetic, rest and digest or is it feeding breathers and other ones are basically all your functions of the body and we can refer to this one as anabolic anabolic is what we know is the big bodybuilders They want to get jacked and put on muscle. But anabolic is basically we're using resources now to build. So this is important and a big missing component of rehab in the allied health world twos because we'll only look at an Li health is biomechanics. What's the weakness? What's the range of motion issue, we don't look at what's the actual energy budget look like the energy resource in the bucket of that person. Because if you want to build muscle, we need a surplus of energy. If you want to restore I heal tissue repair tissue need a surplus of energy. If you want to improve motor control, if you want to lose fat, if you want any of those insert adaptations build mitochondrial density, you want to increase cross sectional area muscle, whatever adaptation you want, you need a surplus of energy resources ATP so your body has the building blocks to build those outtakes. And that happens when we're in parasympathetic state. So parasympathetic, anabolic, sympathetic, catabolic, sympathetic, good for training, good for short term elevated heart rate, elevated blood pressure got everything we need to perform, but then we need to get out of sympathetic into parasympathetic as fast as possible. So we can allow these processes to occur, whether it's rehab, we need to heal faster, whether it's in between a session with is trying to prepare faster, or we're trying to do trying to get trying to get any of those adaptations we want, we need to be in parasympathetic. So we need to create balance and balance, I'd say, you know, we need to spend 80% of our time here and 20% of that time, then what happens is, if you're just constantly training, you're just constantly going into sympathetic, your body starts to finally Calm down, and then bang, go to bed. Again, we never get this like refractory period with the body actually has time to start to repair and rebuild tissue, and you know, create the rotations you want. So we think about training is essentially the stimulus. You're just pushing the buttons. The body has all the resources, the body has all it needs to do the functions like we don't, when I treat someone, I don't fix them. I just push the right buttons and get the connector circuit so the body can actually do what it needs to do. Like I'm not magically fixing stuff. So when someone comes to see me for three minutes, like I'm just trying to get them out of sympathetic, parasympathetic, parasympathetic, then this doesn't drop in the body can heal itself. That's one of the principles of osteo is the body has its own healing mechanisms, its own regulatory mechanisms, usually to get out of the way and do a job. So the goal should always be to get them out of sympathetic and parasympathetic so the body can start to heal, regulate and do its job. So if training too frequently, and you're not respecting recovery, then pretty much is driving a sympathetic catabolic state. And you're going to have the opposite effect, which is going to be you know, muscle strains, repetitive injuries, overuse injuries, you know, shit, gut health, brain fog, chronic fatigue, like all these symptoms we get, we start off with symptoms and it's basically the body giving you signs and signals of Hey, man, slow down, and all those signals happen before injury happens. We just ignore them. The police not telling you and gives you outputs and says like, you get discomfort before you get damaged. You get symptom before you get chronic disease. You don't buy You know, IBS doesn't happen overnight. You don't get tendinopathy overnight like these things develop, develop, develop, we just keep ignoring it. Ignoring ignoring it. We take we take pain medication, we take fucking stimulants, we take all these things, we just keep training, push through and ignore, and then we go, Oh, that's weird, like, how did you get a tendinopathy? or How did he get leaky gut syndrome and it was there the whole time, you just ignore the body, the body was shut down, you wouldn't ignore him. So promoting more of that stuff is, you know, the first step essentially, to having more of that preventative model of healthcare, rather than this reactive model of healthcare. Oh, you got tended not to be. It's like, if you listened to it eight weeks ago, you would have stopped it at week two when the body gave you the first time was pissed off. So yeah, personally, we need to promote more of that rest. And as Luke layman refers to lease mode, rather than beast mode,