KEEGAN: Live and direct with PJ Lane and his daughter.
How are you?
This is live and direct, going around the world.
All right, so PJ Lane, strength and conditioning coach, strength speed whatever.
You've done it all now, you've worked in a bunch of different roles.
Currently with the Knights, worked with the Roosters.
The goal today is to share a bit about your journey, and how you got into professional sport.
What has it been like in pro sport? What is the reality of good and bad of being in a professional sport to give coaches a perspective on, do they want to do this? How might they do it?
First of all, when did you think that you might want to be a coach in a rugby league team?
When did that idea sort of first sit with you?
PJ: Definitely, it probably wasn't until after…
So at uni you had to do work experience whilst you're at uni just to get through the degree and I found my way at the North Sydney Bears SG ball team.
I sort of sought that one out myself just to get the hours done and that was in 2012 but it probably wasn't until 2013 after I hounded the bloke doing NSW Cup but I said “No, this was actually pretty cool. I want to work with the big guys, the reserve grade boys” and it was in the year 2013 that it started to occur to me that this was actually a professional gig.
Actually, after NSW Cup the goal is that you're a full-time employee at an NRL team.
So 2013 was my third year at uni, that was when it really started to occur to me that this is actually what I want to do.
Up until that point, I always thought I’d go into physiotherapy just as a way to get paid.
I suppose make a living in hopefully working with athletes but yeah…
KEEGAN: So, I know you worked at fitness first.
You were at the front desk. Were you thinking potentially about going down the personal training path or that didn't really appeal at all at that stage?
PJ: No, I had no intention really of becoming a personal trainer as my career.
I don't know. Looking back now. I don't know if it was arrogance.
I was like “Well you guys did your eight-week course and you're making great cash but I’m at uni. I’m not going to be making a living up on this gym… there's got to be something more for me if I’m going to do this three years of education”.
So even while being a PT whilst at uni was actually a pretty common thing for the more switched-on guys, I reckon, but from being in the club I knew that I didn't want to have that stress around having to pay rent and go out and obviously run my own business, find my own clients and charge my own.
I did not want that stress whilst I was 19, 20 years old.
I was actually happy to work on the desk or just chuck weights away on the gym floor for an hourly rate.
KEEGAN: Yeah, I think I had a similar perspective on personal training at that time.
Looking back, it would have been really good if I had gone after a few clients and had the experience of selling a package and all that stuff which was probably intimidating for me as well.
But for coaches who are at university, do you think that that might be something worth thinking about?
PJ: If I had my time over, I would have done it.
I would have done the PT for all the reasons I just said I didn't want to do it, probably even still to this day, they're sort of little barriers to me really diving deep into the private sector or the other side of it, the non-coaching aspects, the charging a price, selling a product, building a business, all that sort of stuff.
I just didn't know back then that that was going to be actually a skill that was going to be required.
KEEGAN: Yeah and you haven't really needed it but you've played around with it a bit.
I’ve probably pulled and pushed you a little bit to have a look at that side of things but now you can see like “Oh, that is actually a valuable skill”, it's a good thing to feel comfortable with.
You had Sebastian Oreb and Cato as well.
I guess some of the sorts of big-name coaches in Sydney and Seb's become an internationally renowned strength coach, that was pretty lucky to have those guys at the gym where you were working at the front desk.
How much influence do you think they had on you?
PJ: Oh massively and I was extremely lucky that I walked into that gym on that particular moment and just asked for a job on the reception desk.
Yeah, I couldn't have walked into a better gym I suppose.
With those guys there and they were huge influences on me in my own training as an 18, 19-year-old guy but then obviously with the influences they had with Charles Poliquin and Paul Chek back in the day when they were sort of in their glory days, I suppose.
Yeah, they were huge influences on my own training and also on how I wanted to train others.
Yeah, absolutely huge influence.
KEEGAN: So then from that experience, you were like “Okay this is the path for me and the north's were a feeder for south's and if I remember rightly, you were a south's fan.
Still are at heart, I guess. I don't know.
So then you came to one of the first events that I ever did or the first-weekend seminar, I think, that I did.
You came along and what stood out to me at that event was you had the courage to ask questions. You obviously trained. You'd had some big lifts and so I was impressed with the energy that you brought to the event and to be honest since I was the strength coach at the Roosters at the time, I’d had experiences with having interns and guys working with me who didn't really train that much and didn't bring much energy to the gym and I was looking for more of that for the next season.
That was what I saw in you at that stage. I didn't mind too much about your studies and whatnot but I could see you train and I could see you had a lot of energy and enthusiasm.
So that was kind of why I was excited to invite you to get involved with the Roosters.
What did you think when that sort of conversation, I think was this text message or something, was it? Facebook message maybe back in the day?
PJ: Well definitely by the time I obviously booked to go on your course, it was very clear to me that “Hey this is what I’m doing.”
I knew I’ve told this story before.
I actually saw the job advertisement that the Roosters put out for the role that you're in and I remember seeing the time.
I just had a little read through and strength power coach in the NRL I thought “That was my plan A and there was no plan B.
I just knew that's all I was gunning for.
To be honest, studies, my third-year uni that I did the bare minimum, I suppose in terms of face-to-face hours.
I was spending more time on the gym floor training myself and just being surrounded by the guys we spoke about earlier and I was at North Sydney Bears every afternoon, even on days when there was no strength conditioning happening.
I was just always there because I just knew that that was the environment I wanted to be in but I remember when you sent me the text and you said “Oh come in and meet Robert tomorrow”.
I was like “Who is Robbo?”
Nothing added up on…
I remember the feeling I had when you sent me the text.
I think I rang you, I was like “I don't think that message was me because I don't even know what you're talking about” and you said Trent Robinson, the coach, and I was just like “Holy [ __ ] I’ll be there”.
KEEGAN: You came in in your suit and then I think that shows the energy that you bring and the seriousness that you've brought to the job.
What do you think now looking back at the suit?
PJ: I wouldn't change a thing.
KEEGAN: Well obviously, it worked.
But have you turned up to another interview or opportunity in a suit?
PJ: No, I actually have not ever needed to but no I have not.
KEEGAN: So then you'd had that experience already at North, what did you think when you first sort of came in with the Roosters?
I know it was a bit of a funny pre-season there, some of the dynamics I was in and out and all that sort of stuff.
It was probably not the easiest way to get started when I’d sort of brought you in and then I wasn't always there and but yeah, pretty early on, you had the responsibility for the under-16s team as well.
How was that sort of getting started with them?
PJ: Oh well, I definitely felt… well, first of all, I was absolutely rattled when you announced that you weren't going to be there full time at least, that absolutely rattled me, that might have been at the end of week one or week two on the job.
So yeah, but that's an experience that I probably wouldn't change either.
It was definitely not the textbook internship but I suppose, I don't know most that go through the textbook internship get pissed out the other end of the textbook internship as well.
So wouldn't change a thing there and definitely felt like a dive straight in the deep end even though I was only under 16, it's to me at that time, I was “Holy heck, I like”.
I still remember that feeling on the first session we had and I was almost frozen.
I wasn't sure what to do and I had the boys in a circle, were having a little mobility thing to get going and I remember I was in the middle of one stretch or exercise and I was freaking like “[ __ ] what am I going to go into next?”
I just didn't know so I was just frozen. But yeah, it was great.
I remember I kept it really simple because thank God I did if I hadn't. Although I just would have absolutely lost the plot.
So it was a great experience.
You're on mute.
KEEGAN: My bad.
Yeah, so that stuff is like, everyone has to go through that, where you think you know because you've seen people do a lot of things and you've read the books and you've looked it but it is a different thing when it's like “No it's you now, it's up to you”.
And with that 16s team, you got to feel “Okay this is what it's like if we win and if guys make it to the pros, if they end up becoming NRL players, I get to be a part of this but if they get injured and they fall out the back door or they don't develop then that's kind of my thing” and until you get that, you're really in the fire in that environment, in the arena.
You don't really know coaching.
In my mind like say getting that chance with the 16s, you had a bunch of those guys for the first time at the Roosters, right?
I actually went on to make it, Roosters were renowned for not having their under 16s make it through and recruiting all of their juniors from far away and doing it later, their star players…
Can you remember back to working with some of those guys?
PJ: Yeah, so I think back at that stage the under 16s team were majority just local kids and obviously, everyone talks about how the Roosters have no junior base, they only have four junior teams that actually fit under the Roosters sort of junior rugby league banner.
So the 16s team was just made up of local kids.
They hadn't made the finals in 20 years or something until we rocked and, to be honest, I think we got kicked out in week one of the finals but just being there in the top eight was a huge success for the 16s program.
It wasn't really until the under-18s program that the Roosters really start.
They fly kids in from New Zealand, from Queensland, all over the shop, and they put together a pretty gun team.
That year as well they won the comp but yeah the 16 was almost just… you're just biting time until you're 18's really.
But I had Lachlan Lamb and Victor Radley in that team.
So two local juniors that obviously have gone on and given a real red hot crack.
So that was looking back on my time at the Roosters.
That is one of the happiest sorts of memories I have is just knowing that my progression at the club coincided with a couple of local juniors with their progress.
As I sort of stepped up, they were stepping up as well and I think by the time, my first year actually in charge of the program at the Roosters was right on par with when Victor and Lam both got exposed to training with NRL as well.
So it's quite eerie actually to think about how we're sort of on the same sort of wave there.
KEEGAN: Do you remember what they were like in the gym?
Did you see them as the two that were the stars at that stage?
PJ: Lambie was definitely the star player in the team.
He was the half-back of 5’8 at the stage but he was being the son of Adrian Lamb.
Obviously, everyone knew who he was but he was great, the gun player.
Then, Victor Radley, I remember he was playing lock like he does now but he would have been one of the smallest players in the team by far in the entire lineup.
He would have been one of the smallest but he had the biggest heart.
It was the most courageous player in the entire squad for the little sploke and he had this long wavy blonde hair, used to wear headgear and I just remember the smallest bloke on the team was the one putting the biggest hits on the field.
He would smash blokes. This kid just played with no fear because he had war headgear but he had absolutely zero fear and he was absolutely rattling like 16 year old, like big 16-year-old men that you obviously get in those sorts of competitions.
He was smoking them.
KEEGAN: Yeah, so it's no surprise when he came to first grade he wanted to play the same game.
You mentioned there, you went on to coaching, like actually taking on the strength for the NRL squad, what was it like when you sort of knew that you were going to be in charge of putting the program forward and obviously you had a close relationship there with Trav and you had a lot of trust by that stage because you'd worked together for a number of years.
But how did you sort of look at that chance?
PJ: Oh, I was pumped, like I said, I knew back in 2013, NRL strength and power coach.
That was all. That's all I was focused on achieving and I think I was, I’m 23 when I got it.
So to be fair, it's easy to say I didn't think I was gonna achieve it that young but at the same time that whole entire year, I knew that I was ready to take it forward.
So it sort of still surprised me when I got the chance but I knew that I wasn't feeling like [ __ ] I don't think I can do this”.
I knew I was like “I know what I can do now. I know where I can take the program”.
So yeah, I was confident and obviously having Trav’s trust which I knew he had my back, that's what gave me that confidence like “Hey, whatever I offer up here as new ideas or anything like that, I know that they're not going to be surprises to Trav as my boss because I think he knew exactly what I would have been thinking.”
KEEGAN: Yeah, I think having the relationship with the head coach, Trent Robinson, and the head of performance, Travis, was a good position to go in, especially as such a young head of the program and obviously you're part of two maybe not so obviously but you had the two premierships there, back to back.
The first time that anyone had won back-to-back premierships in the NRL for 30 years or so.
What were some of the things in the program… you never know how much impact the strength program has versus the recruitment versus the defensive system but there's a lot of factors that go into winning a competition but what were some of the things in the strength program that you would say like “Yeah, I’m really glad that I valued that and I think that that contributed to what we're doing”.
PJ: So I took over for the 2017 season and previously before that the boys were really strong in your classical lifts.
We were very consistent with our squats and our presses and our deadlifts and all that and so my philosophy going into it straight away was I wanted to give the boys some more athleticism in the gym.
The boys were already doing power cleans and power snatch in the weights program but that was all that was, it was either power clean from the floor or power snatch from the floor.
So I started throwing, it was more of a conjugate approach I suppose in terms of that I was always cycling through different variations.
So we did a lot of work from the hang, a lot of work from blocks.
We did a lot of complexes as well I remember with my programming so it was always one from the hang then the second from the floor or first rep from the block, second from the hangar.
It was always something different and I thought that that meant that at that stage I enjoyed it, I think the players enjoy it as well because every session every time they walked into the gym it was almost a new challenge for them to express their force or their athleticism, I suppose.
And the other thing I did that year was we came off the back of two years of only ever back squatting and we pretty much stuck to a whole year worth of only front squatting and that sort of fitted in with that idea.
I want them to be more athletic and obviously, you can argue, lift more weight with a back squat versus a front squat but I enjoyed the boys achieving more mobility, more range of motion in their entire body by just front squatting as well as I thought there was definitely something in the ability to have a big front squat meant you had to have a great sort of core and postural strength.
I thought that would have a lot of transfer to not getting folded in half in a game of rugby league in the collision.
So that was another idea I bought and that was met really well by the team as well and by the other coaches.
So probably the two big changes I made initially and then that evolved in 2018.
I went away from that sort of conjugate, sort of every session, sort of having slight variation to it and I was a lot more regimented and more like I was putting blocks together and so guys then… and it wasn't more boring than the previous year, it actually meant that every week, week by week, month by month, guys could actually see a progression because though we were sticking at something for three or four sessions in a row and so they could see that they were getting better and then I would naturally progress from one block to the other.
So I really enjoyed that involvement as well in the program.
KEEGAN: So I think for coaches listening they might be thinking well like don't you have a philosophy or how do you go from being more conjugate style to being more block?
What would you say to that?
PJ: I was 24 years old and I was honestly working it out as I went along.
I was looking back, I must have been… I don't really consider myself a feeler but I was obviously feeling it as I was going along, it just felt right to me at the time and the progress, the involvement of the program from 2017, 2018.
To me, it felt like the natural and necessary progression that the program needed.
So I had no issue sort of shifting from a conjugate style to a more block sort of periodization, I suppose, it just felt right.
KEEGAN: Yeah, it's the art science side of things that is important too because if you are taking on a new program probably the most important thing is that players and coaches are on board with what you're doing.
If you don't have that then it can be a really short run.
It can be a run of a few months and then the structure changes.
You may not have made it to the end of that first season if you hadn't come up with something that clearly the players were on board with and the coaching staff could make sense of.
So I think it's really valuable for coaches to hear that and what I’m guessing from my understanding and what I saw of what you're doing there, your philosophy was still what you valued, was still the same, you valued being really strong, big lifts, quality movement, the ability to express power with heavy bars but those things were still there.
But you played with… the method of delivery. there's not one way of doing that.
You're sort of talking about having some fluidity.
I’d imagine you'd still be able to deliver different styles of programs and be really confident that this is going to work, this is going to make them better.
I think that's valuable to hear.
Some coaches feel as though there's one formula and they'll do the same thing for 20 years.
I know coaches that have done that and some of them have been really successful.
Others have been moderately successful but it's not the only way to do things, right?
We were talking about Hayden Knowles and maybe that's a good transition.
You're working with Hayden and Brian Smith is on here as well, my father, who employed Hayden Knowles about 20-something years ago.
But Hayden was my first mentor and now Pat works alongside him.
We were talking about the most creative coach in strength and conditioning and a head of performance who isn't afraid to sort of break rules and do new things and is all about the excitement of the program and the vibe and yeah, Hayden is into the science and he's connected with Usain Bolt and with all sorts of different athletes and coaches from around the world to improve his knowledge he ends up coming up with something that's different to every other program but also different to what he did the year before.
Tell us a bit about like so far your journey with H and the decision to sort of work alongside him.
PJ: When I did take over the strength program, H was in charge of the speed program on the field.
So we worked side by side that year and again I probably couldn't have asked for a better bloke to be working alongside in my first year.
He'd already been a mentor to me for two years previously but just the idea of wanting to take the program forward from an athletic point of view that just suited H to a T as well because he or that was always that had been his philosophy I suppose for probably 15 years before that and so anything that I wanted to do in the gym, I wasn't in my own solo and H wasn't in his own solo.
It was always a collective thing.
H was in every gym session with me and I was obviously pumped about everything that was happening on the gym floor but H was just as pumped and the language he was using meant that the boys understood that “Hey when we do this in here that's when we go outside and we do XYZ on the field” and so the language that both of us, even though I was running the gym, he was running the field, he was very much helping drive my program in the gym as much as I was helping try and drive his program on the field.
And we just both complemented each other really well.
I remember multiple times we'd have little projects and there was actually the other thing about working with someone like him was, I was never afraid to actually hand over particular guys to him in the gym if I knew that he was going to be able to milk something more out of them by giving them that sort of one-on-one attention.
Yeah, we just worked so well together, our philosophies aligned even though I’m sure if he was running the gym program at that stage, he might have programmed a different way.
We still would have been achieving the same thing and working together towards that common goal of just trying to create freaks.
KEEGAN: That common energy is such a valuable and important thing and it's not a given.
Another key factor here is the synergy between staff is a huge factor in the success of a team and also if you love going to work or not if you really… we always have different levels of human connection.
It's great to be in that environment where you're excited to interact with the other members of staff and you're looking forward to working with them.
I know I’ve definitely felt that working with you but I’ve also been in environments where that's not strong whether it's between me and someone else or between other members of staff who don't interact as well.
That human side of being in a professional organization again is something that you're not really going to learn about when you do your degree but it's probably going to have a huge impact on the results that you can get as a coach.
H is definitely a master of that and again that's more stuff that you don't really learn about and why it's so important.
If a coach is talking to me, if someone watches this, listens back, and thinks “I’d love to follow the journey that Pat’s had” or that I went on, the first thing I always say “how can you get in that environment?”
Just offer whatever way you can go and buy coffee to as many people who are in that situation, in that environment as you can.
Most coaches will make some time for you if you're really enthusiastic, if you're clearly trained, if you've got good energy then they'll let you watch a session, they'll let you be in the room.
And that's probably the first thing that I would encourage any coach or any university student to do is get in the room and then you'll feel the energy and you'll know so much more because people think they go and get their degree, they're gonna get their masters, they maybe do their Ph.D. and then they sort of start to work out like “Is this for me or is this not for me?”.
Where the earlier you do that and know that's the path I want to go down or it's not… and if you're thinking about physio or physical therapy then do that as well.
Go and have a look, “Okay what does the day in the life of that person look like?”
It's not too hard to work it out but you might save yourself a lot of time and energy and money by doing it because I’ve had other guys who are given a similar opportunity to you and now they live on a farm.
Nathan Gould had the same sort of opportunity.
Now he lives on a farm on the North Coast of New South Wales and he runs his business and he's as happy as anything and Jeff Goddard and there's a bunch of other guys that had the chance to check out what this environment's like and they went “Yeah, no that's not me”.
We've got a couple of questions there, maybe we jump to them.
What if I sled for an hour will I become a mutant?
Yes, one of those sorts of questions.
Yeah, what’s your take on sleds?
PJ: Yeah, a bit of a love-hate.
I don't do well with lactic acid actually.
I was doing the sleds today and today actually I handled a lot better.
I did a lot of sled work when I came back from having covid actually, just because I felt like I got back in the gym and I felt fresh because having covid, it's not a hit on your nervous system, it's a hit to your immune system.
But when I got back in the gym I felt strong, I felt fresh, I felt great but my work capacity was shot.
So I suppose I was hitting the sled sort of two birds in one stone.
I was getting a good pump after not being able to do much for a week but I felt like I was getting a really good blow as well.
So I do like the sled.
I was talking to guys from the Roosters on the weekend.
We brought in the reverse Woodway walking just because you could get more time on attention on the roof on the Woodway than having a 15-meter sled track and guys… they use that religiously every day as part of their own little individual prep for, it doesn't even matter if it's not a big training day
They'll come in on a captain's run.
They'll do it.
They'll come into the club before heading up to the stadium for a game and they'll do it.
It's just part of their routine.
So there's definitely something in it.
KEEGAN: The Woodway is a resisted non-motorized treadmill.
So a bit like the assault mill but it's resisted there.
I think those ones are usually like fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars then they're not super cheap but yeah the Woodway, that ability to be able to go continuously and to be able to quantify.
I had some great sessions with players who didn't get to play especially if you're the 18th man which means you sort of suit up and you warm up but if nobody gets injured in the warm-up then you don't get to play.
Some of those players did very tough sessions on the Woodway.
So resisted sled but you can really quantify it.
So I love the quantification aspect of doing that work on the heavy sled.
Ben's actually working on a custom sled that will quantify output.
So you get a reading of sort of how far you went, what time and that will create effectively like a rower, like a concept two type of concept.
Yeah, so you could have a world sled championship at that point if you wanted to and you would have a clear winner.
So yeah, that quantified nature of sledding is a good one but for a coach as long as you have the same track then you could sort of have athletes against each other and you can time it.
Maybe the track warms up, it's not black and white, that science.
If you really want to quantify things, if the track gets hot with friction, depends on lots of factors but sometimes they do and they age as well.
If you do a lot of miles on a track, your first-year scores might not be the same as your second-year or third-year scores if they're sled tracks.
That's one of the worst things about sleds and I think one of the reasons why it doesn't get the same love in a program is because with the squat it's like a nice clean clear number and coaches tend to love those numbers where with the sled because you don't get that nice clean clear number you might not value it even though maybe it's a better expression of real on-field strength power.
Maybe it's a better expression than weightlifting which we're both fans of, the snatches and cleans, that sort of stuff.
We started playing around with the farmer's carry thing, you remember we're doing relative body weight in each hand, how far can you go? That kind of stuff.
I wonder where it would fit in terms of if you got those numbers from guys if you had those nice quantified numbers on the sled, do you think it could become a key metric that you would look at?
PJ: Oh, I think so. Yeah, I think it definitely would yeah.
KEEGAN: And will it turn you into a mutant?
PJ: No.
KEEGAN: The biggest benefit that players like what were you talking about there, where the players actually love it is they just feel good, they feel like they can express their power because they don't have the joint pain.
The joints, and tendons feel better and therefore they're able to express themselves.
You're also getting a ton of practice of locking out the knee so that last part of knee extension kind of heavy quarter squats which is like a peaking exercise, you're effectively getting a ton of that with potentially better, more specific joint mechanics and positions.
So it does make sense that… because Ben, he's had NFL players, pro guys that are playing currently in the NFL who are 100-ish kilos, his height or smaller and they can't keep up with him on the sled like running backs and guys that are…
There's something to it man if you go there, you'll see that even though he's not squatting triple body weight but they are legitimately, ridiculously good at sleds and it's like there's something to it with “Okay they're ridiculously good at that and they can jump, sprint”.
We're talking a bit before about evolution of our understanding and application of ATG and since we're on the ATG channel and we spoke about it a lot when I was sort of consulting there with the Roosters, you were running the program.
We're speaking about it a lot.
I think both of our positions have evolved quite a bit but how much influence has ATG had on how you look at strength?
PJ: Yeah, it's had a huge influence.
I was obviously… back when I was younger, I was already drawn to this idea of structural balance and having numbers, having ratios but one thing mattered compared to another thing, and those numbers, they really appealed to me.
So quantifying all of what most people would sort of refer to as either assistant stuff or remedial stuff, actually quantifying that and putting numbers on it that made it matter, was definitely the most appealing thing to me from the get-go.
It's been a long journey.
I think that would have been back in the beginning of 2018 when you first started showing me in Queenstown and it's taken four years, I suppose, for it to really… I’m still only now feeling like “Now I get it, now I know what he means, now I know how it all fits”.
So yeah it's been a really good sort of journey of learning and understanding and evolving, adding that stuff into my philosophy.
KEEGAN: What might be a key application for it?
Where would you say, “Yeah, I definitely apply it in this situation or this is how I’d apply it” like give us an example.
PJ: I always and I probably still believe, I always remember thinking “Wow, this program, this isolated program, the ATG stuff, I always felt, not that I’m ever going to do it but if I was an SNC guy working in a soccer team, this is the program here, this is the [ __ ] that facaders that I know that the players would prefer to be doing” I suppose.
Oh, not that I’ve ever seen but you always hear about how they're not renowned for being heavy lifters.
But they're having that idea of first of all injury prevention but also performance enhancement.
They're always going to go hand in hand anyway but I just felt that was the program that was going to be most suited for a soccer team I suppose but then in my own situation, I don't think the heavy compound lifts are ever going to leave, that they'll always have their place for a big brutal sport like rugby league.
But you can definitely complement those things with everything that they don't achieve with keeping your body healthy.
If the best ability you can give the boys is availability like the ATG stuff is what is actually gonna keep them together and keep them feeling healthy and strong and pain-free.
It's gonna help complement all the heavy stuff you do in the gym.
It's gonna help them stay out there, bigger, faster, better, stronger, and longer on the field as well.
So yeah, there's definitely a place for the ATG stuff in a rugby league program as well.
KEEGAN: “The best ability is availability” is a good line that should probably be the first goal especially if you have a good team and a good roster.
If you're at the bottom of the pile then availability isn't going to cut it.
That's one of the things that sometimes programs sort of have the cotton wool approach and probably professional soccer may be known for this because they play so many games and they're on so much money relative to the coaches as well and relative to the strength coach. The strength coach tends to be on a hundredth of what the star player is on.
That power dynamic of the financial stuff matters.
The star player can kind of do what they want to do a lot of times in those sports.
The ability to kind of get the balance right between how much you dictate, how much the player dictates, getting them on board is also a key factor in whether you know where it's going to go but if you don't have a good team then you might want to go in with a more aggressive program or if you're expected to lose then you could potentially.
And as a coach it's important to know what is a more aggressive program, what does that actually mean.
Does it mean we do more intensity?
Does it mean we do more volume?
Does it mean we change the exercise selection?
These are all the questions that a coach has to answer and the results are then, does your team win or do they not win?
If they win in professional sports you get to keep going.
If they don't then you get to go and look for another job which is the tough reality of pro sport.
Yeah, for you, how do you deal with that side of things?
People have to make that decision in terms of their quality of life, do I want to work in professional sports where it's more volatile, or do I want to build my own business or have my own gym or run personal training?
I guess whichever way you go as a strength coach, it's kind of volatile, it's kind of tough.
It can be tough if you don't get the results that you want but how do you look at that side professionally?
PJ: Well, I know a lot of guys obviously, that have been in professional sport for a little while and they talk about how they always had the back of the mind that “Oh well, it's not going to last forever”.
So I’ve always gotta have something ready to go when it doesn't work out for me or whatever and some guys have actually left and feel like “Oh it's so much better now. I don't have to handle the pressure. I don't have to worry about whether am I still gonna have a job next year” or anything like that because they've got their own business and whatever.
But for me, I’ve always known that my purpose is to be part of something much bigger than myself.
I have a thrill every day over the pressure and I suppose the uncertainty and all that sort of negatives to working in professional sport.
They're not negatives for me. They're part of the reason why I do it because the only reason those things exist is because what we do actually [ __ ] matters not only to ourselves and our families and the players and the other staff and the board and all that sort of [ __ ] it matters to millions and millions and millions of people in this country and in other countries about the [ __ ] that we're doing every day.
I’m now working for a team where I know that the majority of this town that I live in, how they wake up on Monday morning will be a direct result of how the team I am trying to help do something special, how they perform on the weekend.
It matters so much to these people and then there's 15 other teams in the comp as well, where the same thing's happening there.
Yeah, the idea of “Oh [ __ ] there's no sort of job security or anything like that.
Well it's easy to say I know but just do a [ __ ] good job, just be [ __ ] great.
For me, I suppose that's how I just attack that mindset, there is no issue around job security or there's so much pressure because well I [ __ ] want that.
I want the pressure because then that'll bring out the best in me and when I’m giving my best, what's there to be uncertain about?
KEEGAN: I think it's a great answer.
I think you need to have that if you want to work in that environment.
I think that's the perfect way to look at it.
I love the side that it matters to people and it brought some meaning to my life in a time where I didn't know what I was going to do if I didn't.
It was great for me to coach those teams.
I also knew that it wasn't my purpose and I knew that there was something else that I needed to do and I’m glad that I did have the courage to go and explore something else but in saying that, I love the environment and yeah the best way to know is to to do it, to get as close to it as you can and I love that you've chosen the path that you want to be on and you're still on that path and you're still getting better and you're only, how old are you now?
PJ: 29.
KEEGAN: Yeah, I was going to say you must be 30 but you haven't even ticked over the big 3-0 and you've already had all this experience.
Generally, coaches won't feel they really know what they're doing until they're 35 or 40.
So you've got tons of experience and yeah I really appreciate the passion that you put into that answer and that's the passion that you put into the program.
I think if people could see what a session actually looks like and the energy you bring to what you do, it would probably bring even more meaning to this conversation but yeah there's a touch of Patty Lane.
We've got one question here from John and then we'll get towards the end of today's broadcast.
Have you had any players that are outliers in the numbers when looking at structural balance?
That's from John Clayton who was actually at the Roosters as a junior and had some injuries and yeah he's helping people through this process now.
So outliers in terms of structural balance.
PJ: Yeah, I suppose looking back on the couple of years of stuff I’ve got from the Roosters, funnily enough, it was always our single leg work which was out of whack with what the numbers that I was referring to which were obviously based off ATG stuff.
Our split squats were always down relative to our squats, I suppose.
Our overhead work was also slightly down.
It was never where I wanted it to be but to be honest, I probably never… it still didn't cause me to almost… It's easy to write an article around “Well, stop bench pressing for a while and specialize in overhead pressing if you need to bring that up” but I never did that.
So yeah single leg stuff and shoulder stuff were always not where I quite wanted it to be but year to year they always got better.
So yeah, I’m trying to think what else.
KEEGAN: And they probably wouldn't be at many clubs, potentially moving more in that direction it is already getting…
They'll be diminishing returns with how far away you are from those standards if you can't overhead press 40 kilograms but you can bench press 160 then your shoulders probably do hurt and then there's diminishing returns as you go closer to the ratios.
Yeah, a lot of the split squat emphasis now in the ATG program.
So there's a couple of key numbers there the ATG split squat to seated good morning.
I both really considered mobility exercises more so now but we just still talk about those numbers of having them in ratio to each other and then also that they should probably be somewhere around half of your back squat as well, your paused full-depth back squat really sitting on the heels type number, which is probably 20, 30% less than your general back squat number.
And that's the thing as well, you have to take the ego out of the numbers to get really clean numbers in the way that Charles intended.
The idea that the gym isn't a competition and what matters is whether you win or not.
It's not what numbers you put up in the gym but I still have a strong feeling that getting that split squat mobility and seated good morning mobility would help a lot of players to feel better even if it's only at 40, 50, 60 kilos.
Not necessarily even getting to those ratios.
I think that's probably one of the biggest things that I wished I would have had.
I had some success with the teams that I worked with and we did work with loaded mobility but we didn't go as far with those ones and I think that they're probably the two big ones for me.
What are your thoughts on that?
PJ: Well like I said, I think one of my mistakes that I made when I tried… when I went all in with the ATG stuff at the Roosters, I went all in because I was so obsessed with the numbers and the ratios.
I almost wanted to take the quickest route possible to get everything up to par and that's obviously where I think I learned where it doesn't fit and I made some errors there with certain guys.
So I definitely learned the hard way that's probably not the way to do it but it's… and even now that's why I’m starting to understand that there's actually really true benefit to the body weight only stuff like the zero program and even listening to Tom Hibbett who's pretty switched on dude and there's videos of him saying “It's the execution of the split squat” like he doesn't care about the weight that you use on a split squat and so when I first hear that I’m like “It almost hurts, what do you mean of course it [ __ ] matters” but I can see now that it's probably one of those things now.
We talk about having stands and even at the nights now we're trying to have a program in place where there's standards right across the board from 16s all the way up to NRL and we keep coming back to this idea that “Oh well maybe at that age the 1.5 bodyweight squat doesn't matter just as long as they have a really nice looking squat”.
So that's where I’m starting to sit now with some of these things like the split squat and seated good morning, it's not so much about having half your body weight on your back for five, for ten reps.
It's actually more about do you have the ability to just hit a good position with that movement and the load especially, that's why I even regressed back at the Roosters with, we went from trying to load up a bar in the back for a seated good morning to actually “Let's just hold the 10-kilo plate in front of our chest and use the weight to assist the movement as opposed to resist the movement”.
There are sort of ideas now that I’m starting to play with with regard to those types of movements.
KEEGAN: Yeah, it's important to always consider what you're doing, evolve the program for big strong guys, people that have a lot of muscle mass already.
What's going to make the most difference to their performance, that's really where we should be looking and every coach is going to make these decisions for themselves and I think looking at what's working for other coaches and experiencing it for yourself.
I think in some ways it's a blessing and a curse Patty but you have really good positions with your own movements and maybe you don't feel…
There's very few players who have the movement quality that you have which is great because they aspire to move more like you but I think as more of the guys can move like you, I think you'll continue to see that they love that and they recover better and they run better, they run more freely.
PJ: And yep it's funny actually, now that I’m at a new club and I’ve obviously come in with lots of ideas that nothing's new to me obviously but it is so brand new to these players at this new club.
Boys still ask me.
I’ll be training and they'll watch me train and they'll be like “Have you ever had… what surgery you had… have you ever had any knee issues?”.
I’m just like… “What do you mean, no?” and then it's a shock to them to hear that my answer's no.
Sweet, like it's always been sweet.
So it's a bit funny actually I’ll be doing front foot elevated split squats thinking that [ __ ] I’m elevated up here on 225-kilo plates here, that's not great and I just can't believe that I actually can achieve that position with 15-kilo dumbbells.
So yeah, it's all perspective.
KEEGAN: Yeah, it's great that you get to show them a different path or potentially another way because yeah so many professional athletes accept that their knees won't work like they used to work when they were a child.
Yeah, it's cool man.
I really really appreciate this conversation, it's always good to connect, and congratulations on the big win there in round one against the old club.
Yeah, I hope you're having a great season, the Roosters have a great season as well.
Yeah, I’ll be keeping an eye on what you guys are up to and hopefully we can do this again in the summer, later in the season.
PJ: Yeah, sweet, too easy.
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