Back To The NRL... 10 Things I'll Change - The Keegan Smith Experience Podcast

So going back to the NRL, 10 things I’ll change.

If I ran this hypothetical, “what would I do differently?” is a question that I asked myself and maybe this will help you with changes that you might want to make to your program, things you want to consider about how to get yourself to the place that you want to be as a coach or as an athlete.

I was fortunate enough to have worked with the city Roosters during three premierships including the 2013 season which began the dynasty of the Roosters.

In that season, it was a record-breaking season in terms of teams held to zero scoreline and it also won the regular season, the finals, the grand final, the world club challenge, and the club championship.

Everything that could be won was won that year, in a year where we weren't tipped to make the playoffs.

What part I played in that is hard to say, you can't look back, you can't know what the scenario would have been with a different strength training program, different nutrition, different speed, the different influences.

My component that is only ever going to be one thing or at least it doesn't tell you the whole picture but what you can do is do what you believe in most as well as you can.

So I’m going to share some ideas on what I would change in that future scenario if I was to take it on in the near future.

Number one, more reverse sleds.

The reverse sled is a very very simple tool and it's a very powerful, effective one.

I’ve seen some of the most athletic humans that I’ve ever met.

I have been extremely fast on reverse sleds.

So this would be like a test and something that I would use as a speed test.

I would have players going against each other, guys in the same positions.

I would use it as a conditioning tool.

I would use it as a speed tool.

We would be doing a lot more of them probably pre-session for quite a few guys who've had chronic issues with the knee, guys who've had surgeries before, post-session for extra top-ups and taking out a lot of the traditional running to put this in.

So you can't get the same sort of metabolic stress through running that you can get through reverse sleds.

So backward uphill running is probably pretty similar.

It's not going to replace all your running but of course, they're going to be getting a lot of running in their normal on-field conditioning work.

So it's not like you're taking out or running, it's just you would take out extra supplemental running especially for guys with specific issues.

A lot of players have chronic issues so more reverse sleds.

I think you're going to see players running faster, and stopping more easily because it builds that deceleration dominance where a lot of players are acceleration dominant which means that everything hurts or they're at risk of injury when they slow down, which is not what you want.

So we're going to build that deceleration dominance through the reverse sleds.

Also amazing for work ethic.

You cannot get the same burn in your legs in any other way.

So many benefits to the reverse sled and that's why we would do a lot more of them.

Number two would be less ice.

So you can see here some top NBA players icing everything up after games.

It's a very common scene in professional sports.

We know that the body is always doing its best to survive, to thrive, to repair.

The body doesn't self-sabotage and when an area becomes hot and inflamed, it's because the body is wanting to repair it.

Blood is the key repairer and I knew all this while I was at the Roosters.

I didn't believe in the ice.

A couple of these are quite challenging controversial because depending on what your role is within the organization, it depends on how much you can actually influence this, but I know top players at the moment with soft tissue injuries who are being told to ice the injury.

That's going to lead to poor quality tissue, more injury, and slower recovery from injury, it's really bad news.

If you look at Gabe Mirkin, the doctor who came up with this theory, he actually came out, apologized, and said “look this is not right”, I think it was about 30 years after and that was maybe 10-15 years ago now.

So you'll find a lot of people in the CrossFit scene and other scenes that will say “yeah the ice thing is done, it's finished.”

But still, most professional athletes are using a lot of ice so I would favor getting a lot of blood and circulation into the area, the reverse sleds are a great way to do that for the lower body wherever the issue is.

Strength training on top of an injury isn't always the answer but certainly, ice is also not the answer so I think we could have a lot faster recovery and regeneration without using as much ice.

Now ice baths, and short-term exposure is a different tool and it's used in a different way for a different outcome.

We're talking about icing directly here.

So along a similar line moving away from normal anti-inflammatory medications, Cortisone PRP, Synvisc, etc. all of these things interfere with what's going on to a large extent.

There may be a case for them at certain times but my preference would be to use a lot less of these.

Again it's not always something that you can influence usually not the decision of the strength coach.

This is a medical decision but depending on the structure of the club and how things are put together it's an area that you can potentially influence and for coaches and athletes out there, something to really consider what impact these things are having on healing processes, chronic healing and what we could do instead.

I know that the PRP for example is meant to be a really healing intervention but how can we get the body to naturally upregulate and send more blood to an area is really what I’m interested in.

So we would also include jump balance.

Now that might seem crazy for the NRL but quite a few athletes do actually have to jump and for those who can't and don't, heavier players, I would set the bar lower not every player would be able to do this but that also shows where things need to be fixed.

So it makes you face the problems head-on rather than just kind of sweeping things under the carpet, continuing to strength train, continuing to do field sessions but knowing that there is an underlying issue that isn't being dealt with.

Now the cool thing about the jump balance is it will help to show us the left-to-right differences, discrepancies.

So if a player is always stepping off the same foot or they like to accelerate off the same foot or they always jump off the same leg, if they're a winger or a fullback and they're practicing a lot of single leg jumps to catch balls, etc. then it's going to show up and we can deal with the challenge there.

So by bringing jump balance in, it's going to make much clearer the left-to-right discrepancies in power exercises.

Now there's different ways that you could do this, you could do this with single leg hops and other sorts of tests but I think this is the way to face the issue most head-on.

It's the vertical displacement that is going to be most problematic for guys and that's going to help to get to the bottom of things and really open up new levels of athleticism by taking on the challenge.

ATG split squats were not a part of the program in the 2013 season and they would be if I went back and took on a team again.

The ability to really open up the hips is a key part of this, that rear hip flexor is the unspoken-about benefit of the ATG split squat.

People will use split squats as a preparatory exercise but they often discount or don't value that long-range strength work for the hip flexor in the trail leg, that's really a huge part of this, as well as the ankle mobility there in the front leg.

For people that don't run this, doesn't really matter and therefore they don't value this exercise to a high extent.

For those that run this is a better version, it's going to create more ankle mobility than just Ass to Grass back squats and obviously getting that hip extension to the extreme is very uncommon in the weight room and it's something that can lead to more fluid action at the hips which has carry over to top speed, it has carryover to muscle activation.

There's a lot of different benefits.

If you want to get the glutes firing then we need to get the hip flexors lengthened.

The ATG split squat would become a focus and not just as a mobility movement, it can definitely play its part like that just to focus on being able to get into this position but we would want to get into and out of this position fast as well as heavy and by getting to, you see Ben with body weight on the bar here, we see very very few professional athletes with the ability to get into this position with body weight and I do believe that we would see significant improvement in performance, in knee integrity, in ankle strength, ATFL, the tibiofibular ligament anterior one is going to get strained also with this movement.

So anything that strains an area is going to potentially bulletproof it as well.

So we want to put strain into the areas that we want to be tougher.

So Nordic's over GHD raises.

We were using the glute ham raises, we weren't using Nordics.

Nordics I have used in the past in programs but without the Nordic bench, without the clear standards, partner Nordics really don't work very well. Most of the time people don't feel as though their feet are secure, there's discomfort in the ankles or the feet or something and therefore you're not really getting the benefit that you want. In the picture, you can see a 6’6 athlete on a decline Nordic.

He was able to dominate this movement on the decline and was also throwing down phenomenal dunks like head above the rim.

You don't have to be short.

A lot of the guys that you'll see doing well on the Nordics are quite short but this is a good example of someone who's tall being able to really dominate the Nordic and I think you're going to see this become a staple, you're going to see a lot of athletes able to really dominate Nordics whether you're going to the decline or you're doing the cheetah floater type reps, there's different ways to go at it.

I would want to see my guys make that thing the new normal that athletes are able to control down to the bottom position and work up and we were doing RDLs.

We were doing a lot of posterior chain work, good mornings as well, and variations of Olympic lifting.

You're going to get that extreme lengthened position through the RDLs, Jefferson curls which we were also doing as well but the Nordic we weren't using so this is a very specific position to improve top speed and we would have got some significant gains out of that.

So more tibialis and calf work.

Generally, I think this kind of just gets covered off by running on the field.

The guys just get conditioned there by their running and to get sore in those muscles because they're running hard and it's just sort of left to itself and that is a good solution until it's not a good solution.

It's really going to be optimal to just run and have the body kind of heal itself up because if you're developing a lot of other areas and you're developing a lot of muscle in other areas then you create an area of weakness and then that area of weakness is susceptible to injury.

In this variation, the main difficulty is sort of on the inner range.

I find the wall tibialis raise to be an inner range dominant tibialis exercise which is great for activating the muscle but then I would use them more so on the slant board and with the tip bar to be able to really quantify this exercise and go hard with it.

Calves as well put more emphasis on.

We mostly just did some skipping and we didn't really do calf raises and I think that we could have had a slight increase in performance but also more resilience by doing a little bit more calf work.

I don't have an image here.

So much for reverse sprinting but the backward walking becomes backward sprinting.

Huge fan.

If you can be explosive in backward running, the research shows that you get a much bigger improvement in running performance based on sprinting backward and the transfer.

You're also going to get the deceleration gains which is really what we're looking for professional athletes.

You want to be able to accelerate but you don't want to be able to accelerate more than you can decelerate.

The ability to stop is really what we want, what we're focusing on.

We didn't do any reverse sprinting and I think it would have been very very interesting.

I think introducing this stuff into a team and to players who've had chronic issues, you'll get all sorts of things showing up, and then soon enough the body will adapt and it just becomes the normal, and everybody will be doing it.

I think initially you would see huge differences between the speed guys can generate on reverse sleds or the speed they can generate running backward and it might actually be a really good diagnostic tool to say “oh yeah well that guy has had the chronic issues and look at this he's 70% of what the team averages on this movement” where maybe that doesn't show up in their top speed work, definitely it doesn't show up in their top speed work like you won't see those huge discrepancies which I think you will see when you introduce these new movements even with tibialis and calf raises, things like that.

More Peterson step-ups would be another thing.

Why would we add more Peterson step-ups? The Peterson step-up is going to load the ACL.

It's actually recreating the kind of forces and tension that snaps the ACL.

It's recreating the mechanism therefore by putting stress pressure on that ligament, I think you're going to see increased tensile strength in that ligament.

Anything that's put in a cast, anything that's not loaded we know in the body is going to decondition and it's going to become more susceptible to injury.

So the opposite of that is to train it, is to develop it.

Put load into it, progress that load, and then progress the speed with which that load can be handled and good things will happen.

So the Peterson is the most proven ACL preventer according to the Poliquin method and Peterson himself.

The statistics with the Canadian skiers and winter Olympic sports downhill skiers, they got phenomenal results with this.

Together with the Nordic.

The Nordic pulls from the back and then having a super strong VMO also helps to support.

So that's the variation here on the right for those who are watching the slideshow.

So clear targets is the next thing.

We can be very very clear about what numbers need to be achieved here and we can identify in the matrix of the ATG system where the strengths are and where the weaknesses are and if an athlete can see that and have that laid out in front of them and say “look this is where the biggest potential areas for failure are, the biggest possible weaknesses”, we know where to put increased training volume and if you can be really coherent and clear with this with athletes but also with coaching staff, if you can say look you know this guy has been in and out for years, this is what his numbers are showing like he's this much down compared to the rest of the squad, compared to where we want him to be is this much down can we have two weeks to focus on improving this can we have a month, can I can we make it an effort to train over the Christmas period on these two movements?

So that issue can be eradicated.

I definitely didn't have this dexterity as a coach, understanding exactly where players sit in this matrix.

We did have a lot of numbers and I could see where the strengths were, and where the weaknesses were and they've been there's been a lot of money invested in these sorts of systems.

I’ve seen systems from different coaches with the spider plots and all these things and they're great and often they look really good but the devil's in the details and the details that matter in this are whether it's on a ground-up, whether the philosophy underpinning the scores is going to actually improve performance.

That's really what we need to know.

So just by measuring things doesn't help.

You can measure what are their bicep curls and what are their tricep extensions and how strong are their glutes but if they're not built right from the ground up then it doesn't matter what your numbers are and you can't deduce anything from the scores about how fast they're going to run or how resilient they're going to be and I think it's particularly this area of resilience, like the number one thing in a program is to decrease injuries.

If you can have your players on the field you use the least number of players for the season, you have players consistently training, and that is the biggest thing.

They talk about superheroes.

So the superhero, that's the last man standing, the hardest to defeat in superheroes.

I was listening to Michael Saylor talking about this in relation to money, in relation to engineering, in relation to bitcoin but the thing that can't be broken, the superhero that can't be damaged is actually the most valuable one.

So eventually, the one who has the defense mechanism will be the winner because it can't be touched.

So that's the biggest superpower to have and I’ve seen athletes make their career out of being extremely reliable, and resilient, they play week in week, week out.

That is the number one thing that we want to do here.

Players are already coming with a lot of talent, our goal is to upgrade the hardware and make them connective tissue dominant so that they can continue to play.

So our targets and our ATG performance matrix has to tell us whether the athlete is connective tissue dominant or is extremely muscle dominant and therefore at high risk.

We have to know where the areas of weakness are and to be able to quantify the level of tendon connective tissue weakness relative to muscle weakness.

So this would be the real goal, aim, and matrix, that I would share with the player and with the coach so everything is really clear, and then over time that data will obviously get better.

ATG is still in its infancy and this kind of matrix have been used for a long time but not with these sorts of numbers.

So the numbers is really what make all the difference.

The movements that are selected and the quality criteria around the movements.

I think this is where we're going to see a huge change in elite sports and that's what I’m really excited about.

So I have had the opportunity to implement this system for a month with Sonny Bill Williams.

The results from that program were phenomenal.

He said that it was the best he's run in years.

I also ran the best I’d run in years.

We had other players who were at the event who also were very excited about the changes that they felt in their body in a short period of time.

You really can get a significant change in a short period of time.

Often the underpinnings are there with high-level athletes.

It's just the right areas aren't being challenged in the right ways to optimize movement.

You can get a significant shift in a short period of time and we did see that at that camp.

Now there were other factors involved in what happened after that.

Sonny didn't really get to express a lot of that but he did end up finishing his career back at the Roosters, no one can know whether he would have done that.

We did do some preparation also for the world cup and we applied some of this philosophy when Sonny was in doubt for the world cup.

I went over there to work with him when he was concerned that he wasn't going to make the world cup.

I had 10 days over there and we did some work on things.

We did some things that are different to what's done conventionally.

He did end up going to that world cup and he signed the biggest contract in history shortly after that to play with Toronto Wolfpack.

I don't know what role I played in any of that, all I know is that I did my best and that we did things that most teams, most clubs, most trainers are not doing.

My feeling is that it was the good stuff and it really made a massive positive difference.

I know I did for myself and so I hope you enjoyed that.

I don't know whether we'll ever go back and work full-time in professionally in a team, it's probably pretty unlikely at this stage with the way things are going in the world and the way things are going in my own business and life but I do still really really love seeing professional athletes thrive and I do think we can do these things better.

I know sometimes it can be consumed like people sometimes think I’m really negative by criticizing the way things are done and other systems but I that's the only way that we get to the next level is to look critically at what's going on and look for what's coming next.

I’m mostly focusing here on criticizing what I did in the past.

I’m not talking that much about what I actually did but I’m sharing some of what I didn't do and I think that there is a lot of value in that if we look back at what we've done and say “yeah this could have been done better”, that's positive and can have a real important impact on the future.

I’m going to do another one of these diving more into the underpinning philosophies and checklist for coaches to know if they're putting together a good program or if they're putting together a program which is likely to result in more injuries.

Coaches are doing their best and I think what we need to do is just upgrade our philosophy and the matrix of understanding of what makes a great program.

So if you'd like to see that series or if there's another question that you'd love to hear answered, please drop me some thoughts, your biggest take-home from today, which one out of these 10 is the huge focus for you at the moment, or what's changed recently?

I’d love to hear from you.

We'll chat soon.