S3E02 · Mitch Rowe: Virtus Head Coach

Alright, alright we are back on the Virtus podcast and this is one I'm really, really excited about and know a lot of our family are too. My special guest co-host with me today, Virtus head coach Mitchell Rowe, it's been a hot minute since you've been on the podcast. Yeah nearly three years, just glad we finally got a change of host, you know, people get sick of hearing Lachlan's voice so nice to have a fresh roast. I get sick of it after about 30 minutes so I couldn't bear to think what three years would do to people.

Why so long? I haven't been asked, just haven't been asked so here we are. Fair enough. Tyler asked, I said yes. Easy as that. Would you like to fill in the family and perhaps the extended family that might not be in the inner sanctum of Virtus, might be listening from afar, what's been going on in your world since last on the podcast, 2019? Well, I finished my masters pre-Covid so Amy and I went to Europe end of 2019. So towards November when Covid started to happen in Europe and then finished off my research article at 5am after a few too many vodka red balls but hey, we got it done, masters finished ticked off.

That's stock standard for you to be up till 5am though, that is not, that's not out of the ordinary. It's a knot but it's a choice, it's a choice. So yeah, tick that off, so masters of applied sports science done. Still haven't got my article published but my supervisor for my article actually moved uni so he's been a little bit challenging to get on to so. What was your article on? I actually don't know this either. Yeah, it was on movement screens and performance testing for injury risk assessment I guess you could say. It wasn't mitigation or prevention, it was just do these things, actually tell us what we want them to tell us.

Did you find much? Because I've got an opinion on this without actually doing the research, I don't think we can predict but what do you reckon? We looked at it in specific cohorts so there's so much research around that whole topic as it is but the really, the only findings were that a box bridge, Australia hamstring bridge is a preventative measure for hamstring injuries which is common and we all know about but for the rest of the research and commonly when you're talking about injury prevention and risk mitigation and things like that, there's, it's multifaceted

so there's so many, not confounding variables but there's so many factors that make up when someone gets injured so again, that's kind of what the research tells us and that's what my review told me as well. It's hard to put it down to you get injured because you didn't do this exercise or yeah. Life's and I'm sure this is going to be the theme of some of the questions you asked me, life is never as black and white as we want it to be and there's never one way or one answer for every question, there's

lots of things that make up those confounding factors I guess so yeah, that's pretty much what it told me so I wouldn't say it was a waste of time, it was something that we probably and lots of people already knew about but it definitely, it gave me a little bit of an insight into that side of sport science and high performance of how do you collate and understand and gather research and put it into one succinct way that's easy to understand. And I believe that's a big part of the bio, biopsychosocial model and that- Say that three times faster.

Yeah, couldn't do it, can barely say it once and that things like that are multifaceted like life stress, foods you eat, why you sleep, like it all has a pretty big part on the way that- Water? Watery? Yeah, yeah, just waiting for you to get it in there so. All has an enormous effect on the way the body behaves and it's just really, you can't put things down to just not doing ex-exercise. No. Or whatever. No and I guess this will, I'm sure this will come up a few times as well. Exercise and performance is

complementary to everything else you do, it's, unless you're a strength sport athlete who needs to do a barbell deadlift or powerlifting, you need to do a deadlift, you need to do a back squat or Olympic lift, you need to do a clean, exercise and performance training is complementary to everything else you do. It's a way that we spend 40, 50 hours of our life a week doing but realistically for the most part it's complementary to a thousand other things so that's just kind of how it is sometimes. Totally. And then postmasters, I got, well I

was thinking of contemplating a PhD but with everything else that I'm currently doing and still am doing it would mean that I would have to sacrifice some of that. Even without the things you're already doing, fuck that. Nah, I invest, I love that side of stuff. I love getting nitty gritty and I love taking, you know PhD could be up to six, seven, eight years sometimes so I love taking the time to deep dive those things but yeah, just bad timing. I nearly, I'm still contemplating it but I had one that was kind of offered

to me or put in front of me at the trove around ACL risk and just kind of the mechanisms of injury rather than how to prevent it. Just understanding that a little bit further and the reason that came up was a couple of girls who used to be at St Kilda with a VFW program had done an ACL and they were part of the study and they were just got into talking about mentioning that someone needed to take on that PhD but yeah, bad timing. So maybe one day but not in the recent time, that's for sure.

Spend upon, you work with Saints too. Good segue. Yeah, segue. We love segues. I, this would be my, I think it's my fourth year but it's like my fifth season I think. Actually before diving into that. Could be three and four, it's still confusing because we've got two seasons this year and time just rolls into one since Covid so I think it's my fourth year and fifth season but that could be completely wrong. Before you get into that, tell us about how you got the job because you've told me this and I love this story.

It's, my partner's gonna hate me for this, Amy's gonna hate me for this and she does hate me for this actively is I've never really applied for a job per se and I talk about this a lot with our interns around networking and just connecting with people because again, we love barbells, we love strength training, we love this and that but realistically, we're in the people business. It's, we're not training the barbell, we're training the person so my ability to kind of connect and communicate with people is probably something that I like to do and I love to do but yeah, that came about because 2018 and I do remember speaking about this on the podcast so this is.

Okay, so it's already been touched on. No, no, no, not the job expect but more than how it happened. I, 2018 went to America for three months by myself, solo trip, did both coasts. Anyway, on the way back from that, I came in through Sydney to listen to Dan Paff do a seminar who, if you don't know Dan Paff, he's a world round track coach, potentially even prior to COVID might have been the last time that he came out to Australia so I definitely earmarked that as something to go to and then at that seminar

connected with a guy named Ben Frith who's now the high performance manager at Saints who we kind of knew each other through high school, went to the same high school but he's five years above me I think but was in the track squad as well so we kind of knew each other but he was probably the big year 12 when I was a little preppy, little dweeby year seven, I'll cop that. So just got connected, we knew each other and then at that stage I'd only really done like my own kind of team sport stuff,

a little bit in cricket, a little bit of athletics but no kind of mainstream sport I guess you could say and I mentioned to him that I might be interested in getting into team sport and a couple weeks later he sent me a message saying hey I got a job if you're interested in it so we got together our favorite stomping ground Commonwealth folk as lots of business meetings happen and yeah just got chatting and yeah kind of the rest of this history. It's a big testament to it's not what you know it's who you know not saying you don't know shit but it's yeah goes to show how important networking is.

I'll cop the don't know shit thing too don't worry. Oh you know a bit. You gave me a drive by on the last podcast. I hate to say it. I was waiting for it. I don't recall it. I don't know what else has happened since then. It's kind of just working away I like as most people will know and give me stick for I like I like work got a few different roles few different jobs but with all of that wouldn't do any of it if I didn't feel like I could manage it but also if I didn't enjoy it.

Many fingers in many pies. Yeah which I like so got here got say it's got a little bit of coaching at Frank's and high which I've been doing for longer than I've been at Virtus actually got my own kind of online program running programs that kind of stuff got some casual taking teaching at Deakin and I think that's about it since since the last podcast and you got a house and you got a new dog that too got a house got another dog living out in Narnia also known as Glide North Internet service is not

great out there so another dog another burner Boston who's who's a bit of an idiot but we love him we love Boston he's about checked in at 56 kilos yesterday just big boy one year old yeah he's a bit of a bit of a goofball buck that's a pretty good segue into coaching in the AFLW system what do you love about it and how does it compare to I guess the private system that we run here at Virtus. My role at Saints is purely strength and power so Jaz who I'm sure we'll get her eventually

on the podcast we might as Lachie said we might have to tie her down to the chair but we'll get her I have to drag her in and lock her to the chair but we'll be getting her on eventually she looks after our rehab side of things and I look after all the strength and power stuff in the gym so my role is get them strong get them fast and don't break them coaching wise from the AFLW system I think you have more touch points and this is what we're talking about previously to this year

they mainly were all part-time workers and part-time footballers with a couple having a full-time job and football on top of that but this year with the pay increase and stuff like that there's a little bit more girls focusing purely on football which is gonna be great for the game and great for the system itself but previously to that as we're speaking about before like coaching the person like a lot of the times they've come from a eight to ten hour day and they're mentally cooked physically little sore like preseason for us is this year realistic

is only eight weeks before we play a practice game so it's not a lot of time to get in enough load so that they can manage and cope with the loads of the year so a lot of it is around just kind of people managing and knowing the person when you walk in there they walk a little bit lower you go all right you need a little bit of a dropout tonight so a lot of the coaching in the AFLW system for me specifically is more just knowing the person and knowing what they need like

realistically as I said before it's complementary to what they do there and this is probably something for younger coaches that I love to talk about is because we love no one loves our job as much as we love our job but it's a really hard and something you need to learn early is that it is complementary so you need to take a step back and say hey these these girls here and these ladies they're here to play football so realistically if they you know do half a gym session or they take a little bit of

load off their main lift for that night or they take a sit off this it doesn't matter it doesn't they're gonna feel better in the long run for not doing that yeah because my job is to complement the on-field load and complement everything the physios the high performance manager they're giving them my job is not to take over that and be kind of the overarching thing so early on that was probably tough for me to learn and I'm sure lots of people go through that as well yeah I'm still grasping it yeah and like it's

just one of those things that comes with doing it more often so when we talk about coaching in the system it's having the realization to complement rather than trying to overtake and you know we still trace like heavy strength gains we're still trying to be fast and powerful but at the end of the day sometimes you've just got to coach a person say hey you need a little bit less than that so that's what I'm gonna deal with so yeah and that's one thing I've learned since starting here yeah over a year ago now it's

not necessarily physical prep business it's just a relationship building business and yeah and yeah I think all the girls like and I've been there for three or four years now maybe five whatever it is I think it's only four I'm pretty sure it's four yeah five seems a bit excessive but our kind of core group has changed a little bit over across the four years but there's still that kind of set playing group as well so they know me I know them they can come up and say hey I'm pretty fried need a bit of

a chop out but at the same time they can they don't necessarily have to tell me that I could pick up on those things yeah you're just kind of reading the body language and the personality so that's probably the biggest thing from coming from an AFIW system it's part-time so yeah I'm just gonna see them that's something I found I struggled with when I first started at Virtus and still didn't really know many of the members on a deeper level was struggling to read them and pick up on those cues when they might be a

bit flat when they might need to pick me up what not yeah we have that with time we have metrics to tell us these things as well but at the end of the day numbers and numbers and people are people so you know our Nordic testing it's it's gonna give us an insight into their neural readiness counter movement jump testing their wellness they do daily their on-field load conversations you have with them so I'm kind of pacing all those puzzle pieces together into one big picture and say hey what do you need right now what's

best for you to now sometimes that may be hey we're not gonna gym tonight or hey we're gonna do half what we need to do or hey you're feeling pretty good let's give you a little ramp it up yeah it's not just taking stuff away it's just knowing the moment for what they need yeah question from BJ favorite science player I was gonna say I didn't know you were gonna mention the name so for BJ SAG who did a little bit of off season well did a lot of off-season training here she wants me to

say her but my probably my favorite player is probably Darcy Cutridge she's uh cops that also knows BJ's partner yeah nah you know I'll sit on the fence and say they're all my favorite don't necessarily have a favorite per se but tell you what whereas I'm in total disagreeance coaches have favorites we have favorites I do not gonna say it on the podcast I don't think I do huh no like everyone else bring something different at the table that's it and I'm not just sitting on the fence everyone bring something different and it was the

same it was the same when I was studying health and PE and was in the classroom we have favorite students got favorite athletes um switching the lens from I guess team sport high performance to the private sector um what vertice athletes have been crushing it this year we've had a fair few and I guess having not a lot of one international competitions for obviously a couple of years but also state and just local level competitions you get to see the amount of work that people did put in through cover come through that's probably thing that

the biggest thing that I've noticed of those that have been consistent and have stuck through their training and we all know covered it was a thing it was difficult you know all we could do is kind of run and walk and if you had strength staff and kettlebells great fantastic but it's more the the attitude towards training and from a vertice athlete point of view I mean you could name 20 30 40 that have done great event stars yeah recently we've had obviously Ray who's downstairs is our mile currently and Ali lorans has just been

overseas both Oceania champs they thought I'd be draft was last night some of those girls have floated through vertice across the last couple of months and they got picked up and I had a lot of obviously speaking through curve again had nearly 600 people go through running programs and just the difference of that makes nowadays just something they probably don't ever really notice but the accumulation of them putting in work is making sport not better for them but they're better for it if that makes sense and things like their recoverability their ability to bounce back

after big bats like that's highly indicative of your aerobic capacity yeah it's just resilient suited workload or stress yeah doesn't necessarily have to just be mental stress is what sometimes we can get kind of lost in that pathway of stress just being mental stress but it's also physical stress of being able to be resilient as you just said so yeah the people you've just mentioned and the athletes that are the most successful what are the habits that you see amongst them like what is what does separate them from the rest that may not be seeing

the results I would just say an acute awareness to what they need yeah in that day in that moment what is best for them because and I think the change and this is why it's probably potentially any good thing is everyone had to stop all right we've all been go go go for so long and yeah especially you know you turn 17 18 19 you start to get a job and that you know starts to take over most your life whereas school was quite cruisey you go through school 9 to 3 30 after school have

a nap good training whatever you do there yeah for more the older not older but over 18 demographic everyone kind of had to stop for a little bit so it allowed people to have a little bit of awareness when they need a little bit of a reset and I think that's probably been one of the biggest things I've noticed is sometimes client walks through the door and they go ahead I'm going to do something else today I need to change not from a change necessarily I need a new program it's how I'm going to sit

in the normal techs today how I'm just going to go up in the summer or hey I'm just going to go for a walk like yeah that's it and like there is always something you can be doing no matter how you're feeling which is something I've battled with with a lot of my younger guys in the last couple of months that may have little niggles and they might have sort of a parent or another coach to answer to like how do you how do you go about in selling the value in you know there's always

something you can do when you because you made a post you made a couple of posts on social media in recent times about training with injury and then one of your biggest gripes is battening down the hatches and just doing nothing when injured how do we sell the value in the injuries are opportunities and there's always something you can do especially to like younger guys that may not have that knowledge or may have a parent to answer to I guess there's two ways of looking at it let's say you're a 25 year old weekend warrior

local athlete who potentially has come from a background of not overly sure what recovery things are accessible to me whereas compared to let's say some of your 15 16 70 older athletes that we have here at the moment they have seen this recovery stuff before and they're educated around what the benefits are so if we're looking at that kind of not necessarily older demographic but those that potentially have many experienced and haven't had the insight into that recovery it just comes from an education point of view it's okay I know that these things are available

to me and recovery isn't just an ice bath anymore no it's not just a put your feet up and have a breathe kind of thing like those things are and this is something we talk about a lot is recovery is how you feel and you mentioned this in the last book yeah I listen don't worry recovery is how it makes you feel so for me personally I love I used to love ice baths even just jumping in an ice bath that still makes me feel good now and you mentioned about your ability to regulate stress

and things like that and I was kind of in the same boat whereas for some people ice baths are horrifying and they make them feel like shit makes me feel worse yeah they dread it the end of the day recovery is how it makes you feel so if that works for you great if it doesn't work for you sure our biggest thing as coaches is to educate around the 8 to 12 things that they have access to or could potentially do and let's find out the one that works best for you and we're talking about

injuries and things like that is programming for us is the easiest part of our job rocking up to work is the easiest part of our job so when someone comes in say hey I've got a bit of a sore quad a little hot spot on my quad might be a little strain sure easy to modify so I think the education around the ability of the whole industries itself is program is becoming easier for a lot more people one more access to resources but two the other day it doesn't necessarily matter what you do is we're

all going to get the same outcome yeah we trust in our education system in our background and not just coaches at vertice coaches from football backgrounds that they're starting to get more educated around what's best so that an athlete can take into account all these little factors and say what do I need right now so I guess it comes back to athletes being more self-aware that's it that's probably the changes I've noticed the most in the last couple of years yeah yeah that's it like I had young young Nicky Birdie in the other day he'd

um jarred his back so we just didn't put load through his spine he still gained a heap of strength but there's always something you can do you just train around those things hey I may have forgot to upload his program sorry Nicky I'll look after him don't worry um but yeah I think that's kind of the biggest thing is realistic yeah our industry in high performance sport especially in Australia or just private sector personal training strength education whatever whatever name you want to put on it it's still quite a new industry so yeah from a

general population point of view and when we talk about you're talking about juniors before we have parents who are involved coming back to that coaching at frankston high school now when we first started our strength conditioning training in the morning we call it semper squad which for those in frankston I'll give a little giggle right now our school might always optimize sample which means best always so semper meaning always we want to we started that I think I came in maybe the second year of it it would have been six or seven years ago now

it was quite fresh quite new and I remember doing it myself maybe starting like year nine or ten and we'd have four six eight maybe rock up to these training sessions whereas now like I've got 40 to 50 kids on a Thursday morning in a gym that all may have to get dragged out of bed to be there but when they're there they love being there so I guess so you've built a really really good training training environment in which people want to come to yes and no like yeah personally I'd love to think that

but also it's the education from the parents who have now grown up with it more that yeah hey this shit is really good yeah let's get my kids involved in it as well and I think that's probably the shift that I've noticed in the last kind of six years yeah since I've been at frankston is these numbers are growing up because the facilities and the opportunities are more it's more the education around hey this is actually really good strength training isn't just getting jacked it's this is going to make me feel good too so the

education from just the general population has probably changed over the last kind of four to six years I mean since I've been involved in the industry now that's kind of changed and that's kind of boosted everything else around athletes being more self-aware because the education not just from us but from teachers from their own parents from their own sports coaches who have just been involved in this stuff more is now different to whatever has been so it's a great positive space for kids especially when you were discussing athletes crushing at vertice before I noticed a

bit of a lack of male representatives there did you want to highlight some differences that you may note between coaching females and coaching males because you obviously spend a lot of time with females at saints and over the years at vertice too yeah I personally I never really had a what's the word I want to put on it not machoism it's kind of like that but never like a it's a boyish behavior what's the word for that give me a word being a rat bag yeah being a raccoon I was never like that even as

a person now like I'm still a little bit softer than what traditionally a male coach could could be I'm not saying that they're all like that but for me personally I have that little bit of a softer touch and my personality is a little bit more despite country belief is a little bit more quiet and a little bit more reserved in the in the gym space it's you kind of got to put on a facade but different masks for different personalities exactly my personality itself suits training females more because for them they're they love learning

they love growth they love development where sometimes training males they go ah yeah I'm just gonna do bench press and bar so yeah I know what I'm doing I don't need to listen to this guy and for me never coming up with a machoistic kind of behavioral outcomes I guess you could say just as a person training females for me is not necessarily more comfier but I can connect with them a little bit better and I guess it's great especially at the moment with so much you know research development funding you put any tag on

it you're like being involved in female sport now especially at the junior level like it's a great space to be in and the only really changes you just have to be more conscious of like who they are where they come from whereas not stereotyping stereotyping men into this one bracket but typically they love dunking they love bench press they love bicep curls they love running fast they love running lots there's lots of we're very aggressive that's just who we are when we talk about sport yeah a lot of energy and that's something I've learned while

coaching the young mount martha junior footy club boys I just I embrace that energy and I just like to let them be boys I like to like to let them have their dunk offs yeah I sit in the corner and I just coach my little clients like to let them break the lights with a med ball keg toss no and and training females they're still super super competitive it's just a different way of being competitive yeah it's not so in your face and involved it's more go about my work really well and then I'm going

to show you show it up to you yeah so training males and females is still very simple and still very similar in its like essence it's just the way that you communicate and behave with them is potentially a little bit different depending on who's in front of you and like you speak about nick before nick is not exactly the loudest kid going around so the way that I communicate with nick is similar to how I communicate with other male clients and other female clients is you just painted the picture to the person yeah different masks

different personalities and from a training point of view like especially our girls are saying they love getting jacked they love doing their basketballs on their arm farm we actually we had our Irish one of our Irish recruits who we got over from West Coast in the gym on what's the first Thursday so must have been Monday night first training session first arm farm and for those listening to the podcast who have done an arm farm before makes you feel pretty good but it's it's quite taxing to the upper body so all the girls are giving

her a little bit of stick around her first arm farm and stuff like that so they still love that side of things it's just the way they go about it is different so from like taking a step back perspective not a lot really changes when you're coaching males and females it's just it's just a different way of doing it yeah is you you have to be a chameleon basically I love it yeah that's something I think you taught me in the mentorship different yeah yeah different personality yeah you adapt to the personality that they provide

yeah and for me personally I'm quite an introverted person but not many people will know that or believe me when I say that but I can sit on my own anywhere and just be content doing what I'm doing yeah whereas like inverter sometimes and you'll hear it and people will tell you like you got to be out there and I definitely yell and yeah you got to be able to flick that switch and yeah exactly so provide that energy just being community personally community whatever's right for the moment and that's not saying that I'm always

right for the moment like I absolutely get it wrong sometimes and that's completely fine that's just wouldn't say it's normal or natural it's just something that it happens so we got to adapt and overcome that so and that's needed to pick up the energy on the gym floor to touch hooking back around to females where you've said it's improving where has the industry gone wrong with it in the past female athletic development who knows haven't been around long enough yeah because like for me like I've only had positive experiences yes there's more education more exposure

it's probably a better word yeah and it's probably that lack of education is where it's gone wrong in the past for mine so I'm still relatively fresh in the industry and I'm probably the same I've only really had positive experiences and really really good mentors to teach me the way yeah I'm absolutely not qualified to talk about it yeah I'm sure if you get some of those you know female athletes on though they'll talk for hours about it around you know things that could be better because we talk about exposure and education it's sometimes you

just don't know until you know and it's hard to break that kind of barrier especially would have been from like in learning a long time ago in the industry but training females isn't calorie deficits it isn't hip thrusts and you know booty bands yeah booty bands I wasn't gonna say it booty bands my pet hate but it's not just evolved around that like it's just the exposure brings on the education and the education bring on the empowerment so I couldn't tell you what goes wrong yeah I don't think I'm qualified to say that either but

for me personally like I've only ever had positive experiences in that space yeah so yeah I think that's a win onwards and upwards that's a win for everyone for those that may be on the fence how do we convince those that it is valuable to invest in your development rather than just going to a commercial gym how do we yeah how do we convince not just women but junior athletes all athletes to see the value in investing in their physical development it's one thing to know what you want it's another thing to know how to

get there so I guess our job is is bridging the gap between where you are now and where you want to be and for me personally like high intensity training f45 bfd whatever you want to call it like it's a lot of stick from the s&c world for being shit training but really see for me I couldn't care less like from example one of my clients and like he's gonna hate me for saying this because it's not my business but from a business point of view it's horrible to lose clients but for me personally as

a coach like I don't mind if my client leaves here because they've moved somewhere else yeah location ways let's say they move house you know closer to the city and then they go start training in f45 bft what I feel like I've taught them and powered them to do is make good decisions but also to be safe in one of those environments to go hey this is still good training and I'm working out I'm feeling great for me personally I don't care where someone trains as long as they're doing something and that's sort of one

my programming sort of branched out a bit to include movements that in the past I may I may have you know shat on such as burpees sit-ups Russian twists they're all back regularly in my rotation just for the she facts I can't remember who brought it up I was just listening to a podcast a few months ago and you don't know where your athlete or client might end up in the future the best thing you can do is get them in a state that's robust enough that they are prepared for whatever that new coach may

throw at them yeah and good training is good training she training is still training yeah if you're still moving the benefits are moving over not moving still that way the type of training you're doing yeah and for me personally as I said before if my client moves somewhere to another gym or something like that for any sort of reason whatsoever I don't necessarily care as long as for me personally I want them still to be doing something because I care about their health and lifestyle like there are there are far too many people not meeting

the minimum physical activity movement requirements to be putting barriers on what is good training what is bad training what we should be doing what we shouldn't be doing I think we just embrace all movement is good movement yeah like what is good for one person is not good for another it doesn't mean it's bad and what's bad for some person is prove it tell me it's bad yeah bad training she can't burpees for an example okay yeah it's not necessarily the greatest exercise but sometimes if you do 10 babies you get a little bit sweat

on yeah it's hard it doesn't matter movements movement any more for any more on that I don't think so I've got a little game to break up the podcast you don't know I'm doing this it's a bit of word association my favorite you I am going to read out a bunch of words or phrases sentences you're gonna give me the first vertice athlete that comes to your mind when you hear each one and there might be if there might be a word such as disciplined and there's a lot of athletes that come to mind I

don't care I just want to hear the first athlete that comes to mind yes boss each of the words yes boss alright disciplined shane scott is all that coming funny funny finn witty rule 11 reach program all of them tardy tardy but late late all of them the parents the parents are okay yeah so yeah so for like that one the parents have leeway sof has an eight minute window yeah we start training at 608 if she's not here by 608 in my mind she's not coming used to be 604 that's sort of been pushed

out by a minute over the past few months punctual first person that comes to mind saying a lot about our member base but there's there's lots that are always punctual there's not someone that's every single time punctual and that's why because life gets in the way yeah consistent cats one bar yep wise wise well give me some context what wise do you want what life was darren murs one that comes to mind deck for me yeah he's not gonna listen to you won't be listening young gun young gun nick betty got national yes good luck

nick good luck nicky sunshine uh jamie howlett yeah good answer stephanie one for mine jamie's good answer too most likely to get famous answering the questions you answer the questions i'd just like to put my two cents in what was the next one most likely to get famous for a good reason or bad reason you decide oh most likely to get famous let's go beck wallace oh boy anti-fragile mike bazin yeah that's that's an inside joke do you know what anti-fragile means yeah i'll i'll hamstrings bazin uh anti-fragile let's go with he's not gonna like

that either uh this is tough i need to listen in front of me anti-fragile next one is peanut oh half of them all of them you name it peanut uh matilda argus oh that's stiff corporate jeff deck most likely the most likely to get arrested mike bazin never leaves no it depends you're talking about across the years or in a session because that guy takes two and a half hours there to his sessions yeah never leaves who's been here since the start lee roy jenkins nice uh and procrastinator oh lots of them lots of them

i'm gonna go with i'm gonna have to go with sophie again i'm gonna go mike bazin for the last three it's half of the list in funny because when you get on one you go yeah because we all have the same things that we do now i'm not gonna read all of them again but just for your saints girls now disciplined oh catch you funny jess matton that hurts me to say she'll get it tardy uh live esley consistent oh this is tough because they're all pretty good you don't get you don't become an athlete

like that yeah yeah yeah fair enough peanut jess matton again most likely to get arrested oh i'd say tilly but we just traded tillie the hawks so i'm gonna have to go yes she's gonna be jess mannequin and procrastinator none of them really procrastinate we don't have time procrastinate same thing i guess if you're at that level you're not fucking around yeah exactly exactly like we know we're gonna we get to our meeting starts at 5 30 we're off the track by 7 30 7 45 we're out there by nine so it's not exactly a

environment we can no time to fuck around whatsoever yeah a few dot points from the vertice members we briefly touched on your pooches before how are yours so well trained at keeping off the black matting which is essentially where all the squat racks and big lifting happens like you you're all over that and a lot of the other dog owners are not over that first of all i'd rather not have my dogs who not exactly the cheapest dogs in the world also i don't want them to cop a barbell in the head you know i

have to take them to the vet so but a question for you how do we change behavior reward good behavior exactly consistency yeah so from the start it's just training dog training is super simple would you say dog training is like human training absolutely i was just about to go there it's consistent it's rewarding good behavior it's understanding bad behavior but not shaming bad behavior wait you got to bring it back in line so early on set standards how have you created a gym because you've been you're part of the furniture here how have you

created a gym culture in which everyone feels comfortable it just comes down to being a personality chameleon again yeah i know for some people i've got to get up and about and we're saying this to a couple of our interns last week week before and have ever had the underrated matt martha girls in yeah i want to be matt harrington i'll say this too he'll like a shout out thanks to matt that sometimes in those environments for me like i've got to go full whacko and i'm so okay with that and his comment was you

know what you're pretty good at that so but for a bunch of underrated girls who are doing potentially a one-off session or they're not here consistently it's making this environment feel comfortable for them to be themselves but also to have a little bit of fun and enjoyment depending on what they need and you get a vibe of the group and you just got to pick out a few of them that you go all right you're the troublemaker you're the one that's off of the fairies and you're the leader yes find out those people in the

group and your leadership style that's funny they are bring them in they're the three personality types i've picked to a peanut the captain and then maybe someone that's not quite all there in that group we have one that just completely off with the fairies all the time and not because she didn't want to listen to me that was just who she was as a person just off with the fairies and it was so funny because as soon as i said so i went off with the fairies she went and it just became a thing for

the night where you just let her know that she wasn't listening again and she could tell it was getting to her no that's great with that comfortability i mean like being here for this is coming i think it was a bit six years i've been here for now like we've probably had 500 600 i don't know what the number is hundreds of clients come through vertice who all come from different walks of life with different backgrounds and different personalities and different approaches to training some people may have negative training experiences before so when it comes

to creating environment it's about creating a positive environment for that person and for someone who asked that question i know who asked that question she is more quiet and reserved so for me i'm not going to be in her face yelling at her and telling her to go do this she just let her cruise through a session because that's what she enjoys whereas for some people you've got to pick yourself up about and go oh yeah i need you to bring you with me let's let's go for a ride and it's me being a little

bit silly a bit yelly a bit yeah but not necessarily in their face but being a little bit more energetic so it's just knowing when to push when to not and just who's in for your environment and what each person needs because just because there's eight different personality types it doesn't mean you have to pick one out and go hey i'm going to be this person for the hour it's you turn yourself on and on and for me how i do that is you're good you got everything you need like it's just making little checkpoints

to say i'm still here if you need me it's not and we're talking about coach position with our interns as well like where you position yourself on the floor is super important when you're managing i know for our system we have vidt who's group training everyone does the same program whether you've trained for six seven eight years ten years plus or it's your first week it's the same program so for those people who are new to training it's still potentially a bit confronting so hey i'm here for you if you need me whereas we have

vid so everyone's on their different programs and you know we're trying to my person my coaching way is basically being a traffic manager and putting everyone in their little spot so they can do about their thing as best they want but still being hey i'm here if you need me and being in a position where i can see everyone and doing everything i'm not you know stuck in the middle of the rocks i'm on the turf mainly just kind of watching over everyone um so that gets that comes back to the comfortability part yeah that's

something i've had to learn too is how to be a bit more soft-spoken and cater to i guess that personality type because that's something i'm really bad i'm really bad at going yeah there there and i don't say i go there there tough love is not also that horrible sometimes um yeah i i probably much prefer to be a bit of a rat bag and like i enjoy having those groups of young boys and being a bit of a rat bag with them because it's probably indicative of what i was like in school too yeah

i need like three coffees to be able to do that i don't know if it's just me getting old and cynical but uh i need a few uh espressos to get myself one of those ones a few uh few new tropics yeah shine shout out um why oh we've we have touched on this but again why is a coach and athlete relationship so important for success our job is complementary yeah so we're talking about success success is what you define it as first whether that is and we're speaking about a lot of this when we

go into schools and stuff we're talking about health function and performance for me i don't currently play sport anymore for most of the kids there's always one or two in the class that don't play sport so for us who come from vertice performance it seems like it's all strength and training and athletic base whereas my mum and dad who don't play sport anymore either performance is not an athletic endeavor it's getting out of bed in the morning without back pain to be able to walk around all day so for that environment it's okay what do

you need best um do you need to have a little bit of you know hip mobility do you need to run fast and when we talk about that coach athlete relationship it's what do i think you best need what do you think you best need let's join them together and let's work out a little bit of planning and process and when we're in a service-based industry our job is to deliver results no matter what they look like and for some people that maybe weight loss muscle gain something like that some people may be getting out

of pain the coach athlete relationship is strengthened by knowing the person getting results and then being able to communicate with them and say hey you're drifting outside where we think you said well let's bring you back in and i think that's something that probably being in a service-based industry a lot of people struggle with is i don't want to lose a client whereas sometimes you need to lose a client because that's the best thing for them yeah and it's happened numerous times over the last few years where again it's not my business so from a

financial point of view i'm you know not not so well off here and lucky will will hurt me for this but sometimes losing your client is the best thing that can happen for you because regaining some of the energy back that you're having to give to this that person allows you to give it to six other different people as well so it's not all about gaining more members and you know putting more weight on the bar or anything like that it can sometimes be the opposite way so it both serves you but the best way

for us is to realize what do you need now bridge that gap between where you are where you want to be and then let's put a little plan together and if that plan gets cracked halfway down and it stops you know becoming viable then there's no point walking ahead our feet through the sand or through the mud it's what do you need yeah when i was personal training in ballarat there was nothing better than losing a client that probably just we weren't serving each other and then energy could be better directed into other places exactly

and you know there's a everyone's going to fall off the the train lines our job sometimes is to bring it back on or our job is to find a different line for them to get on yeah and as we're coming back to you know people finding different gyms and stuff like that it's what best serves them so yeah that's my kind of philosophy i guess you could say on that that stuff you were briefly touched on our client base isn't just people playing sport but also yeah elder people too that may not be playing sport

anymore i mean we've got a good 50 50 split of people that are training for a sport or just general population just wanting to move pain-free and do the things they love don't know who wrote this question feelings on mother's club taking over the gym mother's club everyone has a mother's club meeting don't know who wrote it down that's what these whole rumors for it's for our mother's club yeah uh mother's club i don't know who's involved in mother's club i might have been out of the depths here with uh who's involved in mother's club

but hey everyone loves a bit of a chat and vertice is not here just for performance and strength training and pushing the prowlers and moving the ropes and skipping vertice is a place where people can come and be community or be a part of community that they can feel involved in so sometimes and you know again this is something that's kind of challenging to learn early on is we all want them to do their reps do their sets add more weight or anything like that sometimes they just want to flow through their session just let

them go because that's what they need today so yeah it comes back to that argument again how do we normalize failing lifts or exercises no other context than that i reckon step right that processing an answer uh failure is not a bad thing failure is a teaching and a learning experience but failing a lift means hey i'm going to give this a crack and it's a mental grind we've both failed lifts yeah never happy about it but it's a learning experience go because when we talk about lifting specifically and failing lifts it's like driving a

car the faster you go the more likely you're gonna have an accident same with lifting the heavier you go there's more likely that something's going to go wrong i'm not saying you're going to blow your spine out or it's an injury but something from your technique may get brought to the surface and go oh this is stopping me from doing a lift so oh now i learned from that so normalizing and it's knowing the moment again because some people are okay with failing and some people hate failing and jed yesterday work experience kid jed seven

thousand he has trained here before and i know jed loves success and loves doing things and i gave him a challenge for yesterday morning was you've got to hit you've got a cake toss a three kilo bolt into the roof i swear he did 300 reps so jed specifically doesn't like failing and not saying failure is a negative thing he doesn't like achieving the outcome whereas for me like if i you know get to the bottom of a bench and you know lose it halfway and ends up flat on my chest i'm so okay with

that because uh sure i did this i did that and all right i need a better for the next time so there's you know different ways to approach failure i guess you could say and it's from a coaching point of view it's knowing how do you one how do you learn because some people like to see what they did wrong some people like to feel what they did wrong some people like to be told what they did wrong that also goes the other ways everyone might not like that you might not like to be told

where you go wrong but also it's how do you best i guess rebound from failure what do you need do you need another set to give it a crack do you need to go down a little bit of weight shane's a good example of this actually shane's got sometimes the last car i've been giving you some pretty nasty heavy fronts got some cleans and he gets a little he gets a little grumpy about his bowel cleans but for him he's going to strip off 5 10 15 kilos whatever it is and he's going to give

it another crack and he's going to add the weight back on so from a coaching point of view it's again it's just knowing the person what do they need it's a mindset thing you can either see it as a failure or as a learning opportunity as an opportunity for growth like for me there's nothing better than a deadlift that's stapled to the ground and not coming up because it just sort of lights a fire underneath you it's like fuck yeah let's yeah let's go hard for the next few weeks and get this yeah yeah so

it depends on how you approach it didn't always used to be like that a lot of broken tennis rackets and spines and shoulders but let's not go into that especially shoulders rubber shoulders what's next for mitchell row in 2022 and beyond 2022 well we are weak i think this is a halfway point of 2022 give or take a week or so it is tomorrow's the first it is quite literally the halfway point so for me personally not a lot will change um no massive endeavors amy's going off your holidays so i'll have to keep the

house tidy keep the dogs in check and it'll be tidier without her there yeah might try and get away towards the end of the year but from a work and point of view it'll probably be this is week three end of week three of our preseason of saints so putting together a good little seven-week period here where we're progressing because our whole thing is just getting better every day that's our kind of motto for this year is getting better every day whether that's football specific or physical or anything like that so for us and for

me it's putting out a good pre-season and then going into a 10-round season so that'll kind of be most of what i do for vertice it's you know keeping clients happy and getting clients further towards where they want to be um go back to teach deacon in a couple of weeks so that'd be good to um talk through covet so it was a little bit online um i had to use you as a skinfold model one day so it'd be nice to do that yeah that was lockdown wasn't it yeah that was lockdown yeah so

did some teaching through last year in lockdown which is if you're a teacher out there it was a little bit of a struggle at times to get yourself up couldn't think of anything worse for me personally it was hard enough as a student i didn't do a lot of zoom so i didn't get zoom fatigue but it is more harder to not impress uh imply and employ your knowledge on other people so looking forward to get back to deacon that's about it athletics proceedings about to start as well so we'll have some athletes come through

here thanks normal just keep your kids having fun get more people healthy it's probably one thing we didn't touch on um deacon how did you find the whole online covert learning experience teaching experience across the term is that something you always wanted to get into like university lecturing not necessarily until i kind of went through uni and i love teaching people but i didn't necessarily realize that uni was an option probably um that it's not super easy to get into teaching at uni but realistically you only need to do the degree or one above i

think it's one above do the degree one degree above what you're teaching is that another case of not what you know but who you know yeah yeah it was yeah our masters my master's uh course coordinator and put up a little group in our linkedin uh lucky's favorite online put in a post on our linkedin saying hey we're looking for casual demonstrators for uni for this semester and at that time it was covered so life wasn't as busy so yeah one i threw main in the ring and yeah just keep filling in holes that they

need filled and that means just sometimes i go hey we need you know this our field and if it fits yeah sure why not i'll just do it um so probably not something i really realized was an option but have enjoyed since um i guess looking after our mentorship here it's still teaching and educating but a little less formal whereas teaching at deacon i find challenging but fun and enjoyable mainly because for me i'm not exactly the most uh the tallest guy going around and maybe not the most old guy going around so some of

the students not kids because i keep saying kids some of the students that i'm teaching at uni have way more life experience than me and i've done way more in life than i have but i'm trying to stand up in front of them and educate them on the things i know so that was probably a challenge at the start is you know not am i ready for it but are they gonna actually listen to me um i guess that comes around i think some of our mentorship students like one of them at the moment has

a child like how the hell do i teach you something like you've got way more life experience than me that's a real big imposter syndrome thing that i still deal with like coaching people that have a bigger bench press than me like they're stronger than me better than footy at me and i'm trying to coach them how to do things like it's yeah if we're gonna go down that path a lot of it and this is common for a lot of coaches is like well it's more i think more like sport pacific coaching for example

let's say a football coach that played 200 vfl games i'm not targeting anyone i'm just throwing numbers out there a vfl coach a vfl player played 200 250 games whatever are now coaching at local level let's say i go and take over their high performance role at a local level for me it's like okay you've got all this experience and for them it's like does this guy really know what i've been through so for us as coaches it's taking on all those experiences that our clients give us and then putting together our own way of

doing things and for them i think it's a learning experience and it kind of correlates me back to uni is what can i give to you that you can't give to me from a uni perspective is how can i teach you some of the things that i know from a life of things i want to learn off you you tell me everything you know and my big thing with teaching uni is i don't necessarily remember all i don't remember all of my demonstrators or tutors but no way for me i want to be someone they

in a few years time go hey mitch i remember you going through this like can we catch up for coffee go through that i don't necessarily have to be friends with them but i want to have a relationship even with the people that i'm teaching that in a few years time you can we can re-catch up and nothing's really changed and for me like that's something i didn't get at uni and you'll know being through first year uni you kind of just get thrown head first and go here's uni here's a report learn out how

to write it there's no one really helping you along the way yeah yeah although i've got to say in my time at fed i'm probably different to yeah every other experience that i've heard of where we did have a really good relationship with our tutors but i know i know that's rare yeah and like and the biggest thing that i find on that is marking first year assessments compared to marking third year assessments like there's a massive learning curve of bringing yourself up to a uni standard coming from a year 12 standard so that can

help bridge that gap and help first year students be more comfortable at uni i guess is probably one of the bigger things as well yeah splendid hey um any more for any more i don't think so i don't think there's any other questions this is good i enjoyed this one we're sitting at 53 minutes at the moment good spot to end the podcast hey will you come on again i'll always come on again you just have to ask i'm an ask kind of guy i'm gonna say i don't think i had any questions that people

asked me if it wasn't 10 a.m i wouldn't mind it uh drinking some whiskey with you and doing some tasting and oh god that wouldn't be well for you blowing my head off again again might do a 4 p.m friday podcast in a couple months time oh i got one for bailey bailey schmidt goes how good were you at footy well bailey probably not as good as what i thought it was but no as a junior maybe okay as a mid-team to adult no good because i just probably and this is something that i didn't

know if we're going to talk about because you don't necessarily know where i come from a sporting background i just know you broke your ankle and that was it yeah yeah it was but on that note like nowadays we talk about education like i didn't necessarily have i didn't do my rehab probably for starters because i didn't know yeah hence this is why i started doing what i do but from a sporting point of view i didn't necessarily have the mental fortitude to go back and work my ass off to get back to where i

wanted to go which is probably why i stopped playing sport full stop is i like to be i don't like to be good at everything but i like to challenge myself in a way that i want to be i want to strive to do well i don't have to be good but if i'm not putting in effort then i don't want to do it because for me it's like why am i doing it so from a sporting point of view that's probably why i gave up that side of things um so bailey do you answer

your question not that great i'm still waiting for my trophy to be delivered that you found one day in the deepest darkest sore room of frankston ycw football club boy apparently there's a there's a trophy in there somewhere but coach's award came back to play for more social aspects but uh yeah as a junior okay but too short too slow yeah that's about it really and more on that little issue got there oh apparently fat bar straight facts from phil english phil english would like to know how much the fat bar weighs 23 gonna 17

kilos you stitched him up ah sorry philip he quietly not threatened me just strongly advised that i bring that up so that's that's something that he wanted to talk about but no sorry philip very specific question another one is why do you go to bed so late this is a misconception i don't think it is no it is this is my point exactly there's one day that i go to bed late one day and that's a sunday because i do all my programming and all my coaching stuff on the same day meaning that i may

start at 3 p.m and i may finish at 5 a.m butts butts i still get my adequate and required amount of hours of sleep so i still plant my life is planned around six hours of sleep no matter what to do or four and a half because i know i can i know but for me that works for me i know that i can survive off four and a half to six hours of sleep and we talk about sleep cycles and we're getting this in another day but that works for me so if i still

go to bed at five a.m the only reason i do that is because i know i don't have to get up until 11 a.m the next day so misconceptions there's only one day that i can i do stay up late but for example if i come here vertice for a six a.m shift my first alarm goes for 4 30 so i mean i'm in bed by 10 10 30 11 o'clock that night before so misconception yeah even i've got to agree there are a lot of people thriving on six hours sleep i think we do

get married to it i've got to have your eight hours but a lot of people doing well off same as recovery same as recovery it's what works best for you that is not me i need seven if i'm not getting seven i'm done yep so i know i can survive on that so misconception question not always up to four a.m i've seen some weeknights up till three watching american sport and soccer worth it though worth it um and i think benny reissenberg what happened to the celtics hey don't do that to me don't do that

still fresh it's a wound uh benny reissenberg what are your biggest influences and sources of education in the industry no sorry benny i must have missed that one and i'm gonna go with a maybe not a controversial answer but something that's becoming a little bit more prevalent i would say over the last two or three years i get most of my resources from instagram or twitter same copped a bit of shit early on for not me personally but it copped a bit of shit for being a place of resource because as we know there's so

much it's a jungle random gibberish but your ability to decipher through that information and find people that have different ways of thinking about things and i'm not saying that there's a right or wrong way of doing the things you're taking in a little bit of information from everyone so for me i'm a visual guy i love to learn by looking or watching yeah um so instagram is a great platform for me twitter because you know i know three percent of what i could know around this kind of stuff and even though i've been doing it

for six years and feel like i have a pretty good grasp on how i like to do things like there's still little things you can take in from everyone so yeah for me personally instagram twitter i still really like reading research um jump on google scholar or now that back teaching at deacon got access to the deacon library so typing in a few key search words and if you've ever done a data unit at uni you know you know how to write in your search words to find something specific so i still like deep diving

research and i probably don't get as much time as i like to do any more on that kind of stuff but they're kind of my two main sources of information what about i'm gonna say exact same um and also probably financially investing in the mentorship programs of those that are well established above you so if you're looking up to someone that's doing really good work and it resonates with you and you want to learn off them i think surrounding yourself with the people that are doing better than you and the impositions that you want to

be in it's the best way to go about it so it's why i got a job at vertice it's why uh yeah once or twice a year we'll invest in an online mentorship from a account that i follow and i really enjoy so i've just done angus bradley's late last year um i hope to do a melbourne strength culture one later this year and i've done a heap in the past too so just investing in that stuff like yeah it's a financial commitment that's going to pay you back tenfold yeah i love courses i love

yeah weekends because one you get the great aspect of for me visually seeing things and how people teach and learn because you kind of get to the point where let's say you do the same course a few times and for an example greg's fms courses i think i've done i would have done in excess of 15 different courses at different times because the best part about them is you can go 15 different fms ones between the whole system between fcs fma fms i reckon it'd be close to 15 now but there's little things you pick

on each and every different time but also the things you pick up on is how greg communicates it is how it is different to how i communicate it so we're talking about personality community that's how to communicate if the same thing to different cohorts and different types of people so for me personally it's not necessarily about the information specifically involved in a mentorship or a course or anything like that it's how do you decipher and then take it out to someone else yeah that's it and when i did my first ever short course in early

2017 at a christian woodford workshop and it was when i was doing my health and pe and had a cert three in fitness and had no experience whatsoever and didn't know shit like it was mind-blowing to me like the whole weekend was just all these massive nuggets of information and now i'll do a short course or a course and oh here we go and it's just you know you don't go there to get your mind blown you just go to get you know just a little a little uh piece just a little piece of information

and you go and use that so if you can learn just one little thing from each course then you're laughing he's just ruining our visual representation here for those listening sorry for those on youtube yeah lockman's being a pest as per usual bye bye um i think that's uh that's about it from the learning perspective yeah i mean i i learn from people so yeah coffee like sign me up let's go have a chat that's just kind of doesn't necessarily for me now it's not necessary learning you know about cluster sets or this loading scheme

to this and that because at the end of the day who cares doesn't matter and it's something you learn by doing it's learned by experience it's it's not about sets and wraps it's about people so learning different things from jeff who we all know jeff character tyler's favorite question what's what's the game let's go with jeff oh boy jeff if you're watching what's the go but even like those that aren't in a health and fitness or sports science industry you can still learn from those people so it's not just about sets and reps and articles

and these drill for that everything so i mean i've learned the most on the job just by coaching like 90 of what i know is just from doing the job and fucking up and learning off people better than me 10 formal education can't argue with that lovely um we'll leave it at that yeah i think that's all i'm quite happy with that i don't think there's anything else anyone wants to talk about not at all i'm cooked done early morning for you very early uh been an absolute pleasure thanks very much for tuning in next

week mr greg day will be sitting down with loki wallace that is huge that's gonna go for three hours that'll that'll go for two not might have to be a three-parter i'll be having a week off um good week to have a week off too lovely thanks for tuning in