S4E10 · Emily Wallace

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back to the Verdi podcast. And Wallace, what an absolute pleasure. Pleasure's all mine. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast, first and foremost. But second, welcome to Verdi. Thank you. Happy to be back. How long has it been since you graced the doors of 1/2 Talker with your presence? Oh, it would have been a couple years now, I think. A couple of years, mate. It was like six years. Okay. Well, I was trying to be... When was it? So you did the internship in 2017, '16? Yeah, I think it would have been '16 or '17, yeah.

Proper early days. Oh, yeah. Fresh. And full circle. Yeah, I know. Full circle moment. So good. So good. It's a pleasure to have you here. It's nice to be able to have one person come in and know that Verdi's going to be exponentially better. So I'm excited for it. Yeah, I'm excited too. I'm looking forward to it. First question for you before we let the beautiful people get to know you a little bit better. What gets you out of bed in the morning? I think if I really narrowed it down, it would be just getting to help people.

Love. It's pretty much the crux of it. Have you always been the kind of person that just wants to help people? I think so. I think I've always liked helping people be better, feel better, and just uplift in general, I think. Yeah. You're always smiling and bringing good vibes. Every time I see you in here, or out of here, always good vibes. Yeah, I try to. I'm excited for the Verdi's fam to get to know you a little bit better. So tell us, what is it that you do? So I'm an osteopath at the moment. So I've got a background in strength and conditioning.

Shout out to our osteopath friends. Yeah. But more so down the sports rehab pathway that I've really gone hard at for the last two years and developed in that area. So a lot of ACL rehabs, shoulder reco rehabs, bad hammies, that sort of stuff. Yeah. What made you want to be an osteo? Well, actually I did my clinical exercise science degree, knew I didn't want to go into exercise physiology. Had a year off, had a think about it and was sort of throwing out physio, maybe EP. And then someone actually came to me and said, "Why don't you consider osteo?"

Because they sort of do everything that a physio does, or that a chiro does, and you get the best of both worlds, more techniques, more holistic approach. So I went to a couple of open days and pretty much decided from there that it was a good fit. That's cool. Who's better, osteo, chiro or physio? Oh no. Give me the tears. Well, this is hot water. I'm going to make that one up. Straight in. Yeah, exactly. Burn some bridges. I would be biased because I am an osteo. So I'm going to say osteo. However, I do think the person matters more.

Definitely. Good answer. Good answer. Yeah, I think because it's so fascinating being in this industry and being like, because obviously your job as a coach was to refer people, right? Like you find the right practitioners and obviously it's the person dependent, but so many people just don't know who to go to. Like in our industry, which to me is wild, but we deal with it every day. So, so what's the, how would you break down and sorry for the question without notice, but how would you break down like who someone goes and sees? Well, I think it's dependent on what their injury is and then what they want to get back to.

And then I would always try and seek someone who has evidence or information that they're going to be good for that area for you. Yeah. I love that. Cause I think the, if you have that almost like social proof of like someone else seeing them and you have that referral network and it allows you to go, well, you know, this person seeing them and got, had these results, which is the most important part. I'm going to go and do the same thing. But so many people go to GPs for musculoskeletal injuries or go see a chiro for a torn hamstring.

It's just like, come on, let's get you in the right room, please. It kills me. The amount of weeks that people leave things or get poor information for, and then they finally see the right person and it takes them like three to four weeks to get better. And they're like, I've just spent all this money and time on people that are giving me poor advice or not being able to help is, is alarming. Yeah. So obviously you have a, like a process that you follow, but hypothetically I'm playing footy on the weekend. I do a little ankle, like what's my process from there?

So generally people would come in to see me for a consult first. And then we'd go through an assessment in terms of what's the severity of the ankle sprain and what do we do moving forward? Some people have already been to emergency and been in a moon boot, got X-rays, whatever. If I think imaging is required, then I'll refer out for imaging. And then we'll basically go from there in terms of whether we're on crutches or moon boot, how many weeks it's going to be, what that rehab process looks like. And then I would onboard them to a rehab plan or program.

That's really thorough in depth and it ticks everything off that they need to do with intervals that they need to see me out to make sure they're progressing well. So it's a lot of support. Yeah. Yeah. Talk me through like that. What, what does that support look like down the track? Cause most people would understand. I go see a physio, I go see an osteo and I get diagnosed. And then I get that initial acute treatment, but then what does it look like from there? Yep. So I think where it generally lacks is you sort of get the piece of paper, go and do these exercises, come and see me next week.

If I tell you what, if like, if one more physio gives someone a piece of paper with little fucking stick figures, I'm going to murder you. How many you seen in your time? Too many. It's like, it's so gross. We live in an age where you can literally video someone doing it or give them a program via an app or, or send them a YouTube like list of videos. I don't care how you do it, but stick figures be better. It's fucking gross. I hate it. It makes me so mad. It's no good. And like people don't do it.

They're not motivated. They don't do it. I feel like the most buying I've got from people is with objective testing data and with a program that they know they have to follow through an app through train heroic, which you use as well. Shout out, shout out plug. But it's got videos, reps, sets, intensities. Like I can see that they're ticking off their work. They can ask me if something's not working, if they need something changed or form feedback on things, and then they know they're going to get tested at a certain time interval. So it sort of puts the onus back on them that you got to get it done.

If you're shit, we're going to, we're going to say it. We will know. Yes. And you will know. Yeah. And I think, I think that like, because we know the biggest factor of success rehabs adherence, right? So having something like that to follow, to tick it off, we get feedback every session. You get feedback every session because you, you know, put your readiness in, you put your, how you're feeling, you put your intensity level in. So you actually get like a really clear picture, unlike the fucking stick figures on a fucking piece of paper. And people just don't do it.

No, no, it's, yeah, it's wild. And like even trainer oak, sometimes the adherence is hard to get people to do it. But if you're sitting here and you're not logging your sessions sorted out, life will change. Let's go back a little bit, little less about the day to day now and talk about like what got you into the, into the position you are now. You played footy growing up. Yep. Elite, I hear. Oh, that would be real good. Real good at footy. Jet. We'll go with that. I don't know if I can back that up with evidence, but we'll go with that.

Was it just footy? What else did you do? So I grew up playing netball and I then went into footy and did some tennis as well. So I think footy really like was what I was looking for when I was rolling through a fair bit of sport and always did like cross country stuff and running and things like that. He's looking at us like, why aren't we throwing the ball? Link's just come up with a tennis ball to add to the three tennis balls that are already up here. Yeah, so yeah, that's what really got me into, into the sports, almost like performance, SNC side of things.

But yeah, I've played footy for the best part, I think of like seven, seven or eight years, I think. Why did you finish up? Um, washed up. Washed up. Absolutely you can. I don't know if I believe you, but. Yeah, I sort of, I tried the VFL thing, which was very hard at the start. Because I would have needed to sacrifice time at uni or work income, which that wasn't really an option, to do what I needed to get better, to look forward to maybe AFL stuff. Like I just didn't have the base. See chat. Well, I didn't get, I didn't get picked up.

So take that as you want. But yeah, I didn't sort of have the time to divide. I had to decide what was more important. And obviously I was going to uni to get a degree, to develop a career. So that was, that was more important to me. And then through the process of all that, trying to do so much, I sort of lost the love when I come back to local footy. And I was like, if I'm not going to be all in, then I'm not going to. You may as well go all in on your career instead.

Exactly. And I sort of made that executive decision. Yeah. Why did you choose exercise science? What was it about that that made you like, actually first question, were you always going to go to uni? The second question, why did you choose exercise science? Yeah, I think I was always going to go to uni. I chose exercise science because I was interested in the strength training, conditioning, all that side of stuff. And then the sports, obviously, if you're involved in sports and you like sports, it sort of filters you down that pathway. It's the natural pathway for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. Everyone's like, why did you do it? I like sport. Repeat every intern ever. Literally, that was about, that was about it. Yeah. And then what was it about? Like obviously we mentioned before, like why you chose osteo, but like what, what did you love about uni? What did you not like? What, what was your experience and where'd you go by the way? I went to Vic uni for both. Vic uni, there you go. All the way out in Footscray. Oh yeah, it was far. It was a trek. It's a hike. Yeah. What was it about that that made you want to kind of dive into this industry?

As into osteo? Yeah. Yeah, osteo. But like, because obviously SNC was a big passion early on. Yeah. And still is. Yeah. What was that like going to uni? And because I guess like Vic uni tended to be from my, what I've spoken to people about, tend to be more of the sports and more of the SNC side. Then I went to ACU, which was, was, was great, but we had like one subject ever on programming and one on strength and conditioning. So there wasn't a lot of that aspect of it. So what was it about that at VU that kind of put the fire under your a little bit to get to follow that career?

I think I enjoyed most of the subjects. Like most of the subjects, I felt like it gave you a very well-rounded approach to, you know, biomechanics, physiology, even the psychology side of things. And then a mix of practical and, you know, learning based stuff that helps you, helps you progress in that industry. So I feel like I got a lot of exposure to everything I needed in saying that there was definitely some subjects through exercise science or more osteo that I thought were pretty useless. Cop that. Yeah. Which ones? Come on. Name them. Oh, I

think more so osteopathy, having to do some of like the interactions of learning how to speak to people as a practitioner and all that stuff. I felt like I'd already done that as a coach. So it seemed like a waste of time and money that you have to obviously. And it's so interesting because it's like the most important part of our job is like is the people, right? Is how we communicate and how we interact and how we build willingness and trust and all of these kind of things. So for the students, there almost should

be like a pre-education unit on like essentially psychology and how to, you know, not be a brick wall when someone's trying to talk to you. Yeah. Yeah. But it's kind of a waste of time if you're already good at it. Like I felt like I developed that aspect of what I do being in retail. And like who you are as a person is obviously important as well. Team sports, all of that kind of stuff. But being in retail, you just had to talk to people and get them to care about shit they didn't really care about.

Which is almost like the job of someone that's looking after rehab because most people don't really give a shit about, you know, ankle dorsiflexion and things like that, but they care about the outcome. So what's that process been like building that skill set out over the years? I think that a lot of people have that ability to communicate well with people early at the gates, to be honest. I feel like you can develop it to a point, but exposure to people and environments probably develops it the most. Where the good stuff happens, yeah. Yeah. Like being on the floor for strength and conditioning work, interacting with clients, being as part of a sports club.

I've sort of done the both sides of playing and then being part of staff. So you learn what you'd like as a player and then what you need as staff. You kind of can bridge in the middle. And then people's communication styles, what they respond to, what they don't is all part of exposure and just having that awareness, I think. What advice would you have for someone who's maybe going into a person-oriented career, but have that little bit of maybe self-doubt, maybe imposter syndrome about I'm not good enough to be giving people advice or to be talking to people?

I think you just need to throw yourself in the deep end and go through exposure and then put yourself in uncomfortable situations and environments where you have to interact with people. You know, like if we've done our retail part, everyone will know hospital or retail. That's the hard yards and learning how to interact pretty quickly. I reckon all the best coaches out there have worked in one of the two. Which I think is, I don't know, because it's just people facing, right? It's like I say all the time, it's like where people business masquerading as a strength conditioning facility, right?

It's like all we're doing is building trust, building willingness, building a space where people actively want to be. They actively want to communicate with the people in there. And essentially from there you get to do the fun, you know, teaching how to squat and testing, you know, how much force they can produce and all of these kind of things. But it's built on a foundation of good quality communication, genuine care and a want to see people get better. Yeah, definitely. And I think you can start to gauge what people interact with well and what they don't.

And then you can sort of read physical cues and things like that and develop from there. Yeah, absolutely. I've so apologised, but I've never seen an osteo. Never seen one. Oh, you're missing out. Well, I mean, a couple of the physios I see, well, this one downstairs, he has taught a lot of osteos, a lot of things. So I feel as though we get, and again, the holistic physios are the ones that kind of steal a lot from osteopathy and vice versa, right? Talk us through what your course look like and what the different areas

of study you went through, because I think maybe, and maybe this is back on the point I said before about people not knowing which room to be in and the right person to see, is I reckon a lot of people don't know the difference between, say, those main three, chiral, osteo, physio. So talk us through what are the things that you learned throughout that course, the different areas of study that allowed you to build that robust, holistic, principle-driven viewpoint that you have now. Yep. So I'm going to preface by saying the clinical exercise science helped a lot before going in.

It's nice learning a little bit about a lot of things. Yeah, isn't it? Sometimes. Sometimes. And then it built a really good base for me to sort of launch from, to then go into osteos. So there was a lot of obviously anatomy, biomechanics, physiology, and then just even patient interaction and things like that. But learning how the body moves and how everything works was definitely helpful. Another intruder. Just dogs. Hello, baby girl. Hello, say hello. Say hello. Cute. Good egg. Yeah. But yeah, pretty much doing that from the start, you go into treating people like from the get-go, from day one, it was pretty much, all right, we're going to palpate each other's glutes and hips.

Great use of palpate. You're welcome. One of my favourite words, that. Yeah. So it was a pretty broad mix of what we went through, but obviously very heavy on anatomy and physiology because you need to have the basis of understanding to then, you know, implement the techniques, know how injuries happen, how to rehab them, how to progress forward, and then all the clinical side of things as well. In saying that, there was not a lot of rehab, like in-depth rehab. I feel like some things obviously have to go down the research pathway a little bit to contribute to the course overall.

I feel like there was a real gap in the rehab component that was sort of brought in quite late to cover everything else first. That I didn't find too hard, obviously, to get my head around because of the clinical exercise science was a lot of that like rehab-based stuff. But then I still had to go out and do a lot of professional development afterwards to work in the area I work in now. Yeah, Jackie's not very good at shutting the door. Yeah, and it's exciting. So when you, so you finished in, when did you finish your degree?

I finished in, would have been 2019? Yep. Nope, that's a lie. 2021. 2021, yep. So you finished 2021, what's your pathway look like that from where you've been working to what you've been doing? So I, as soon as we could do our placement hours, so you did it in clinic at uni, but then you could opt to do it outside of clinic if you wanted to. And the kind of person I am, I was just like, I want to get all my hours as soon as I can and as much exposure as much as I can.

I was having that conversation with Jack this morning. And if you're an intern or if you're a student, go do it early and pick where you want to do it. We find the ones that come at the ends after they're like, oh, I better find somewhere. Terrible, way better if you get on the front foot and push forward early. So good from you. Yeah, absolutely. I was like, I need to learn and I'm not totally patient with everything, with some things I am, but with things like getting my hands dirty and actually learning by doing, I need to do it like as soon as I'm able.

So I actually met my clinic hours very, very early and then got a job straight out pretty much at Cranbourne Osteopathy doing pretty much traditional osteo things overseeing by the clinic owner at the time. And then I actually was asked if I was interested to do the sports rehab stuff by a performance based gym out in Narry Warren. They're like, would you like to do the sports? Axis, give me a shout out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Axis, Axis. We celebrate all sports performance gyms as well. That's it. So that was with Rod down at Axis and I was doing a lot of sports rehab based stuff, a lot of clients and obviously grew a lot from that just from exposure.

And you learn things, you know, from exposure. And obviously sometimes you miss things here and there as you're learning, just make sure it's nothing super important that you develop from there. But like anything, you get better from reps, right? And repetition and having that feedback loop where you are solving problems and figuring out why things happen and then you're just repeating, repeating, repeating and getting better, right? Yeah. What was the main difference between the clinic focused osteopathy and the more performance based? What have you found? I think the expectations of clients is probably the biggest difference and then how you manage them from that expectation.

So straight up clinic is most people come in, they expect a relatively passive treatment to fix them and then you can give them a few rehab exercises, which they're more than likely not going to do. Just drawing on a piece of paper? Yeah, that's it. And then palm them off. But then they'd come back to see you like week on week and then sort of, you know, get back to like just basic functioning and not necessarily back to like a very good level of functioning or even better than before. So I don't think I would have ever lasted very long in that industry just because that's not really my pathway or personality.

Yeah. Yeah. It'd be frustrating kind of, you'd be like Groundhog Day, seeing similar people or similar type of people, same things. And like that was, because I did a year of ex-vis masters and quit because I was sitting there one night and being like, this is not what I want to be doing. I want to be training people who want to be better, stronger, faster, higher capacity, all of that kind of stuff. And it was that weird crystallising moment where you're just like, this is not what I want to be doing. Did you have that

early on in the clinic or was it something that like a couple of months in you're like, this is not, I'm not long for this. Yeah. I think I always knew it probably wouldn't be a forever in that sort of setup. And I was encouraged by a few of my clinicians whilst I was still at uni. They're like, you're probably going to move into the sports side of things anyway. But then it's obviously when Axis reached out or when Rod reached out to me, I was like, I'd definitely love to do something like that. And

then the difference is obviously people who are playing sport instead of being like, it's going to take as long as it's going to take and trying to be passive and things like that. They're like, I want to get better. I want to get back to play. I'll do what I need to do. And the motivation level is just totally different. And how much you can push them is a lot different too. And they expect probably less hands-on and more objective clinical data and testing and movement capacities and things like that to push them forward so they can get back to doing what they want to want to do.

Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. And how's your, I guess, your balance between, say, the manual therapy aspect of things and the rehab, them performing the exercises, them doing the actual training? Because I guess, you know, that's the best physios and osteos and karas. Karas can fuck off. No, I'm sure there's some wonderful karas out there. I just haven't met them yet. No, just don't give me a fucking x-ray and then go, all right, here's the next 14 weeks. Anyway, not important. I digress. I digress. Jackie's sitting there like, what the fuck is he talking about? Yeah, the best, and this is the best in any profession, mailed the best parts of all of the different things.

But how have you found that balance between like dialling into the manual therapy side of things and then dialling into the performance side of things and then kind of finding your balance between the two? Yep. So I'll generally do an assessment with them in the clinic. So if something's like tight or restricted, and I know it's going to take me two minutes to loosen that up and free that up so they can move a lot better, I'll just do some manual therapy on it and then we'll get into the other stuff rather than take them downstairs, let them do all the work to open it up, loosen it, free it up.

It's sort of just easier if I get in and do it and then on the flip side of that, I will just say to people, if I feel like they're tight or restricted, I'll be like, do you need some more manual therapy today? Yeah, because some people just come and want a massage, right? Yeah, yep. And I don't know if anyone's had an osteo massage, but it's not relaxing. It's effective. It's just not relaxing. Yeah, yeah. And we need to find the balance between the two. But I guess there's like the, there would be an

element of giving people what they want versus giving them what they need and almost like initially you're like, all right, I'm going to give you the fish right now, but I'm going to teach you how to fish because like that's essentially your job and my job is to go, well, here's how you look after yourself so that you ideally never have seen me again. You'd like them to keep seeing you and keep levelling up and keep building that understanding. But ultimately you give them a massage, teach them the exercise and then you would like to see the next time they come in, they're able to do those things that they weren't able to do the first time.

Yeah, and that's like what I generally say to people. You know, you don't want to have to see someone twice or three times a week every time your quad gets tight. Like you're going to have to be a bit self-sufficient about this. So here's the tools to, you know, to fix it. And people, you know, sort of like, well, why is it happening? Why is it getting tight? Thinking it's a problem. I was like, you train three times a week in the gym and you're playing footy. Of course your quad's tight. That's normal. And then it sort of clicks with people that, oh yeah, that is expected.

You're right. Then learn how to manage themselves better. Yeah, yeah. How do you, what's the process you follow in terms of educating people on that? Is it, you know, giving them a test that they can do themselves to figure out what, where they're restricted or is it more of a, you know, well, you know, this is going to be tight, so here are the exercises that you do. Generally, if someone's come in and I've done a full assessment on them and they're, or they've even been in rehab for a period of time, I will give

them mobility and structure around how to loosen things up based on what I know is probably going to be tight and restricted ongoing in, in the future. That's, that's probably mostly my approach, but I will also say to people like, you know, if you find you can't get down full depth in your squat, then you need to open up through your hips. You maybe need to do some stuff through your ankle and then free up some stuff around the pelvis and lower back potentially. And we'll give them some exercises to approach that based on their movement capacities and where I feel like they get limited or restricted.

Yep. Yeah. And then it's essentially just hoping that they adhere to it, right? Yeah, that's it. And I'm like, if they don't, if you feel like you need a treatment area now and then it's not the worst thing in the world, it's just looking after yourself. Yeah. What do you like, like, what do you like doing? Like, what's your favorite part of, of the treatment rehab process? What do I like doing? All of it? Really? Yeah, all of it. So I feel like I like the treating part to keep my skills fresh and it's actually quite impressive how much you can do some manual therapy and it totally changes how someone moves and how they feel.

And then it just makes it that much better to go into their rehab stuff. And then I like programming the rehab stuff because obviously I have an understanding of where things go, how it needs to be structured, how it needs to flow to then progress. But then when you see it on their testing, like even sometimes when someone's been super adherent to their program and then they come in for testing, I'm always like, oh, that's even better than I thought it was going to be. Go you. Yeah. Oh, there's a funny thing about following the process and ticking the right boxes.

Yeah. And I think this is it, is you, we probably underestimate how much progress someone or we can actually make in a period of time if we do all the right things. Like, I find that so many of our athletes that, like, if we just dial in sleeping properly, hydrating, like eating good food, it almost doesn't, like, there's an aspect of, obviously it matters a lot, but there's an aspect of like, if you tick those boxes and do an okay training program and somewhat adhering, you're going to make progress, right? But if we dial in our training and fuck up the other stuff, you're probably not going to make the progress that we want.

Yeah, exactly. And like, you do find that in clinic, you know, people can be doing all the right things in the gym, but if they're so depleted and they don't have energy, they're not going to be working at the intensity that they need to or the volume that they need to, and they're just not recovering and their muscular system's not recovering, then their testing's actually not good, comparative to how good someone's is when they're meeting both sides. Yeah. Yeah. That's super, super interesting. So how long were you at Access for? Access for? Seven months, when I had a pretty big patient list there.

And then the guys at Infinite Fitness Peninsula asked me if I'd be willing to come over and have a meeting with them and set up a performance and rehab program as part of their business. Huge. Yeah, which is huge. That's pretty fun. Shout out to the boys at Infinite. Love you. What was that like? So what was that kind of step? Because essentially it's like you're working in a system to them being like, hey, you've got, you know, you've got a full, almost full autonomy in making your own system, building your own system, what it looks like, you know, where you put your focus and where the importance is and things like that.

What was that like stepping into that, you know, relatively fresh after only a couple of years in the system? Yep. It was challenging, but also very rewarding. I think it's good to have exposure to someone else's system first, so then you can obviously choose what works really well and then what maybe you want to change little bits and pieces of. And then obviously coming in to IFP, the boys are sort of like, what do you need to make it successful? And then I'd made a list of what I felt like we needed. But then I

feel like I could build out the performance side of things and then tick away at the rehab side of things, how I thought it should look from both an athlete perspective and SNC and a practitioner perspective. So I felt like it was a good blend of what I thought people would need, obviously with some of my own biases there. Yeah, the human experience is littered with biases, but I mean, you having that and you kind of being able to have the athlete hat on, the SNC coach hat on and the, it's not physio, osteo hat on.

So I'm so used to physio, the osteo hat on, the practitioner hat, right? You get to go, well, this is because those three circles aren't a perfect circle. It's a Venn diagram where we're like, let's try and find this happy medium in the middle. What was that like picking and choosing and kind of developing that over a period of time? Yeah, it was a lot of work. And obviously there were some kinks to work out in terms of like what was going to be their cycle of testing? What were we going to focus on? Blocks of the season in terms of like a volume heavy versus strength and power development versus maintenance in season sort of thing.

And then going into different sports. Obviously my background's really big in footy. So I have a very good understanding of footy and most of our affiliate clubs were football clubs and most of our athletes were footballers. So it was easier to work with that niche. And then we started to filter in like cricket, basketball, tennis, and then had some really left field athletes too. And I was sort of like, had to pivot and research and look into things. But if you have a base understanding of biomechanics, physiology, what you need to achieve, what that sport looks like, then you can build it out that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, the longer I coach for, the more I realise it's all the fucking same stuff. Like we have so many different athletes come in from different sports and they're like, how do I train properly for karate? It's like, go do karate. I'll deal with the foundational strength and capacity work, right? And I think that that's a big area that I've found that the whole industry as a whole is getting better at, is that realising that, you know, all we, like essentially all we do is GPP being a general physical preparation for those playing at home.

But essentially, like your sport is your sport. If you want to get better at your sport, play your sport. If you want a bigger container, more capacity to perform at your sport, get in the gym, go see them, do your rehab properly and make sure you follow all of the stick figures. Yeah. That I don't give. Exactly. Exactly. So how long, how long did you work at IFP for? I went there late November, 2022. Yeah. Wow. So that's almost two and a half to three years. And just finished up last week. Yeah. Good. What was that process like?

Or not the process, but what was that? What was your growth like? Where do you now reflect on and go? Well, I grew in these areas over the two and a half year period in that environment. I think obviously doing it myself and then trying to implement my own systems that I thought to me made sense. And sometimes if you're talking about in practice, you realise parts that work or don't work. So even like the big groups filtering in like the team testings and things like that is like a big day. And then we were trying to sort of take testing equipment out to make it more convenient for the clubs and stuff like that.

And then quickly realised that wasn't going to work because, you know, it's dependent on the day, right? You do speed gates on a day where it's pouring rain and there's like 20 kilometre winds and then do it on another day that's dry, sunny, dead still. And everyone's like either improving by a lot or not improving at all. But you're like, all right, we have to pivot and realise how can we make this testing actually valid and repeatable. So we can get some good data to then provide to coaching staff and things like that. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool.

Has your, the process or the principles you follow in clinic changed over that time? It would have changed a lot from when I was initially in clinic to then when I was at Access. And then I've done a lot of professional development from being at Access into IFP. So yeah, I would say my systems have changed a fair bit in terms of like, what I use in prep phase versus SNC phase. Like I think I was very biased, which I think a lot of coaches are. They're like lift really heavy, just move as much weight, slinked in.

And then it sort of moved more towards, well, how can we close the gap for sport specificity and what exactly am I trying to implement to change certain testing metrics to then get them back to play sport? And the difference is like chalk and cheese. It's phenomenal. Just get more jack. That's the answer. Yeah, yeah. But I think that's that's so important because there's like, and I've found it personally, like I've trained for performance for the last decade or so, right. And I kind of, you know, been a bit injured in the last year. I, you know, joined a regular gym just to do something a bit different.

And I'm just like, just training to like look good and feel good again, which, you know, we're working on it. But it's like, it's so interesting the difference in and some people only know that way, which I think is really interesting because, you know, there's how do we optimise hypertrophy or how do we optimise our physique or whatever aspect of it that is. And then there's how do we train for performance. And I think the further you go into the rabbit hole of how do we improve force production, how you improve, how do we absorb force, how do we improve force transference, we realise that they're poles apart.

Yes, there's transference between the two, but they're poles apart in terms of like the outcome we're trying to elicit. And I think the higher level the sport, the more important it is to understand those shifts. I wasn't going anywhere for the questioning perspective. I was like a little bit of a rant there. But I was waiting for the question. But I think like, like from a fundamental programming perspective, because I almost look at your role as like clinician is kind of your like the foundational role in terms of diagnosis and then a treatment plan. And

then the coach aspect of like, how you build that trust and willingness with your athletes, but then the almost like the technical foundational programming that then you've got to go because it's so interesting because you don't have hands on all the time in terms of you're not in front of the person all the time. You're not dialling into, you know, all of the little tweaks in their technique or the sets and reps or the weight changes on the day if they show up feeling tired or sore or anything, you've kind of, there's an aspect of your rehab programming that you've got to be like, all right, the ownership's on you now.

So how has that changed and developed, you know, I reckon especially over the last 12 months? In terms of me having to provide exercises that achieve the outcomes that I want with that. Yeah, because we know the whole like, there's a perfect program, right? Like we can sit there and go with everything we know here's a perfect program, but then the adherence play and this human psychology comes into it and you're like, well, you know, the shitty program that gets adhered to is maybe better for progress. How do you bridge that gap? Yeah, longest question ever, by the way.

It would be great to have one way and one program and be able to say this is my ACL program and I'm going to apply that to every ACL. And this is exactly how we're going to do it. I cannot stress how much that does not work. Like everyone's a unique snowflake. Yeah, it depends on the person, what their adherence is going to be, their training background. Like I've explained this to someone else before, which I've got a pretty weird way of explaining it, but I'll throw it out. I'll give it a go. So in terms of your athletes, so say if you're following a cooking recipe to bake a chocolate cake, right?

So I've got an oven from 1970 that's small and all my equipment's old. And you've got one from 2025 brand new perfect equipment. Like the tray sizes are different, but we're following the same recipe. We're cooking for the same time. Do we think that there's going to be different outcomes? Exactly. So then why would a person who has really poor training history, just joined sport, does their ACL. They actually have very minimal strength and conditioning or movement competency versus someone who's been in a high level system, maybe like AFL, VFL, or played local level footy at a good level and done their SNC for years.

You're going to approach that differently, right? And you have to meet in the middle and personalize it to that person to make their testing outcomes relative to them and then relevant for what you're trying to achieve for that person, which is not going to be the same between people. Yeah, yeah. And it's so important to, and this is like, we, because we obviously run an internship program in here, new interns every 10 or so weeks. Like it's so funny because we bang on first three or four weeks, just get to know our people, get to

know our people, get to know our people, because then you actually can create a, you create context around this person, what they need, what they want, how they're going to show up each day, what they've got going on outside of here, right? Like the, you know, as young coaches or practitioners, we go, everyone's got 24 hours in a day, but then the, the single parent with three kids and you know, a job and all of these kinds of things probably ain't going to be able to spend two hours doing rehab, right? Whereas like, you know,

you're uni students, you got it lucky if you, if you're working 10 hours a week and you got 10 hours of contact time, you got a big chunk of time to do your rehab. Yeah. And it ends up being almost like one of your jobs, but you have the capacity to do it. Like the three things I look for in programming is adherence, enjoyment, and are we making progress? And if we're ticking those three boxes the majority of the time, we're going to be okay. Yeah. Do you have like a, and again, question without notice, but do you have like a framework or a checklist that you go through similar to that?

My framework and checklist is based off their outcome testing that I need them to achieve. Now I'll have macro cycles based on where I think they should be in that point in time, but that's all person dependent. As you said, like I've had uni students that are going through, say like hamstring rehab. Can you spend four hours tomorrow doing rehab? Absolutely. Sweet. Let's get it done. Two hours a day, no problems. They can recover. They can go to, you know, the beach, they can be in the boots, they can be in the sauna, ticking all the boxes, 10 hours sleep a night.

And then I've had, you know, someone who does have three young kids, like wife or partner is studying. You know, they're trying to cover bases in every direction and it's just not possible to get them on the same timeline. You just got to have a bit of, you know, open communication and conversation about what that looks like for them. And that, you know, it might take a little bit longer, but you're taking on more, you have more responsibilities. Yeah. And if you have that conversation early on, you almost like pre-frame, these are the things that

are going to be important and these are the areas that you're potentially going to fall down because of the extra curricular activities you have being a partner and kids. So like, let's just move the goalposts a little bit. We push them back a little bit. We take a little bit longer, you know, and they actually allows you to get the same outcome. It just looks different. Yeah. And, you know, always ask those questions. Like, what's a reasonable amount of time for you? And there'll be some back and forth where they're like, I can only get in two days.

I'm like, well, that's not really enough. When you want to be back playing footy, two weeks. Well, this is a six-week injury. So, and you've got all these things, so it's probably going to be eight. And I think that almost like you allow, you paint a picture of the future. We create a thing that we're working towards. And then you mitigate the risk factors as you go. Yeah. And it's all about managing expectations, you know, like say they expected six and you say, I think you should probably allow 10 and people are never happy about it at the time.

I can tell you that much. But then if they get there in eight happy days, like that's a bonus. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Even me as a coach, I still justify it and go, well, I've done all these boxes, but I'm probably, I'm probably a week in front of where I should be. I'm stuck. I'm playing, I'm playing. Let's pivot a little bit. So you're obviously moving on now because you want to create a business for yourself and build a thing for M, which I love. So the performance rehab code, talk to me. Shout out, by the way.

Shout out. Sounds like potential. Yeah, good. A bit of Ted Lasso. Yeah, good. Important. Told you I wouldn't go off the rails today. We were close. Oh, that was the start of one wheel off. No, carry on. So yeah, I think I just, you know, I've developed as part of someone else's company, then sort of built, built an arm of a company for someone else. And then I thought, you know, I really want to branch out and make something for myself and make it work for me and, you know, build it to look like what I want it to look like and have a bit of like freedom and independence as well.

Yeah. The autonomy's kind of the best and worst part about it, I find. Yeah, I, yeah. I like to say that I'm not going to, you know, overbook myself, but as a human, I probably will. I'll, I'll help you with those, those boundaries. I promise. And I think this is like, cause I don't know, I'm a big believer that if you're, if you have an inkling or have a little bit of a fire of like, I think I want to run a business, you should run a business because like, first of all, it's the greatest thing ever.

Second of all, it sucks. So you get like, depending on the day, and I'm in the sucky phase at the moment, I'm like, I just need to get a week or two down the track. And I'll be like, this is the greatest thing ever again. But I think you, if you've got that itch, you need to scratch it. So first of all, proud of you for doing that. Thank you. And I'm stoked that you decided to do it out at this place because, you know, we get to, I get to see you grow not from afar anymore.

I can see you grow face to face and you can, I told you this morning, give me the shits as much as you want. Any questions and queries you've got, but what is it about building this that gets you most excited? I think that I have the potential to build it into anything I want. Right. So there's always like gaps in market or, you know, things you want to build and create. So I'm, I'm building this out, but I'm trialing to do something in the background, which I won't say too much on it until it actually looks like it's gonna achieve something or get some traction.

But yeah, I think I just get really excited to be able to look after people really well and then get them back to playing. You know, I love those like messages or like first highlights of first games back or competition or anything, you know, just seeing people get to do what they love and like the difference from when they first come in and they're so defeated to when they get to go back and they're just so happy and so grateful to be back doing what they love. Like, I love that part. Yeah. I mean, that's

psychology of being a, like being a guide to someone to go through that process to see, and this is the hardest thing about injuries because you would see someone early on and they're flat, they're defeated, they're grumpy and you get to be a big part of their process going forward. Like, what is it, what would you say to the people that are in that, like, this sucks headspace? Would it be to sit in it and then, you know, let's work out a plan and then move from there or would it be like, suck it up, you'll be fine?

What day is it? What day is it? Yeah, exactly. No, I think. Person dependent, right? Yeah, that too. But I think have your moment. Yeah. You don't ever want to take away from someone else's experience. Like, yes, it does suck. Yes, it is shit. No matter how big or small the injury, you know, it does limit you for a period of time. It is inconvenient. But I think then there's also like, you can deal with the suck, but then let's make a plan. What do we want to work on? What are we moving forward? What does that look like?

I think if you take away the unknown, it really diminishes people's anxiety. And they just think about, okay, well, this is the first goalpost I'm aiming for. And as soon as you have aim and direction, you can feel like this sucks, but you know you're going somewhere with it. And I've had multiple conversations with people who've like, and young kids who have done like ACLs and stuff, and they, you know, they're so defeated. And I go, well, how about, you know, what do we think about? What do you want to improve on in your game? And they sort of go like, oh, what do you mean here?

Here are the opportunities. Yeah, I'm like, do you want to get faster? Do you want to jump higher? What do you lack? What's going to build that bridge for you? And they get really excited because they get to make a performance goal. And I said, you know, it starts from ground zero. We can actually change your running mechanics. We can make you quicker. We can make you more efficient. And they get heaps of buy-in from that. And it's nice to see that all the way through into fruition where they sort of go, oh shit, it happened.

I did all those things. And I think there's the good stuff as a practitioner to be able to be like, all right, shitty situation, sit in it, create some perspective around like the opportunities that are now arising from it. And like, you're right. No one likes getting injured, getting injured sucks. But, you know, most, some injuries, just bad luck. But a lot of injuries happen for a reason. So it allows us to create a space. And I'm not saying the universe is telling us a certain thing, reason. I'm saying like, you know, it might be a deficiency somewhere.

It might be a handbrake we're running around with somewhere. And hopefully, it allows us to clean that up, improve our performance overall. So you come back a bigger, stronger, more resilient, more robust athlete. Back on the business front for a second, what are you most afraid of? Where's the most anxiety and apprehension coming from? Because I think there's like, scary and exciting is why business is so wonderful and so difficult sometimes. So like, yeah, I want to hear the other side of it from a, like, you know, essentially like first day. What does the future hold?

What am I worried about? I think it's the same for everyone, right? Failure. Like, I think everyone that's in business would say their biggest fear is failure. And, you know, part of me goes, who cares? You fail. You just do something else. You just get another job. You just try again. But then also, it means so much to you that you want it to be so successful, which you would know. I mean, what was yours? I was just an ignorant 23-year-old when I opened this place. So I was like, and that's almost it. Like, there was almost the aspect and like, there's two types of failure, right?

There's a failure that you stop trying and there's a failure where you fall over and you pick yourself up and you go, well, this is why I fell over and you redesign what you're doing to hopefully not fall over again. But you're going to fall over again because there's going to be something else that trips you over down the track. And I think there was never going to be this failure of the I'm not going to do it or I'm going to stop or I'm going to quit. Like, there were, don't get me wrong, there's been moments where you're like, fuck, do I want to do this?

And I think of the alternative of like, you know, maybe going for work with someone else or not having a space like this that people can congregate and help themselves be better and create and, you know, have the team here and things like that. And I'm like, well, and now there's so much more at stake, which I think is, it's probably scarier now because there's a couple of mortgages, there's a couple of kids, there's, you know, KP I want to support, there's our community that I want to make sure I keep showing up for. So, yeah, that shifts a little bit over the years, but I think initially it's just like, well, I know I'm going to fuck up.

And I think that's almost the most important thing is like, I know I'm going to fuck up. I know I'm going to make mistakes. I know I'm going to do stuff that doesn't align with where I'm going, but you want to have that feedback mechanism that allows you to go, well, this is where I need to be better. This is what I need to change. I didn't communicate with this person that well. Here's what I learned for the next time. And it's just creating that almost like that deliberate practice feedback loop to go, well, here's how it wasn't great.

Here's how it gets better. Do better next time. So, yeah, I think the, like, you're not going to fail. You'll be fine. I know you're not going to do this aspect of it, right? If you decide in six to 12 months that, you know, running your own thing isn't for you and you want to go work for someone else, that's not failure. That's just you going, well, this is, this wasn't the right thing for me. I think the only way you fail is if you go now and you never try it because like you probably wouldn't have managed sleep with sleep, sleep at night or live with yourself if you'd done that.

I think. No, I definitely, I knew I had to do it. Like I knew that I had to at least try it. And if it wasn't now, it would have been three months. It would have been six months. It would have just been like kicking the can down the road and not doing it when I should have just taken the leap and done. Yeah. The best, best time in planetary was 20 years ago. Second best times today. So congratulations on planting the tree. Thank you. I look forward to helping it grow. See, you like that? That's a good analogy, that.

Yeah. Some of my best work. I'm pretty, I'm very happy with that. Awesome. Before we finish up, I want you to tell us, so if anyone's thinking, oh, maybe I want to see Emma. I like, I like what she's about. I like kind of her jib, like talk us through what your process looks like, obviously outside of all the stuff we've spoken about already, but like someone wants to see what they do, how they do it, what it looks like, how you can help them. Yeah, cool. So elevator pitch. Elevator pitch. The Performance Rehab Co. Bam.

So basically, I have a booking link on my Instagram, on my business Instagram page. There's a little QR code downstairs. At the front of the gym, which we love. Which we love. Yeah, that's it. And a website. So you can book in through the links there in a time and date that works. And basically what we would do is if you were you to come in, have an injury, we'd organize a thorough injury history. So, you know, if you've come in with a hamstring where any injuries previously hip, knee, ankle, any of that in the

past, we'd go through a thorough assessment in terms of where's your range of motion at, where's your functional capacity, and then your overall forced output and testing to what you're capable of at the time. And then if we need any treatment to free things up and then get things feeling good so we can move forward, we'd do that. And then there's a plan developed in terms of, all right, what does it look like in terms of start to finish in an ideal world, how then I would facilitate that for you, what I think your best option is, and then an alternative option if that doesn't work.

And then we organize moving forward how I'm going to support you. Huge. Yeah. Yeah, go see her. She's a star. It's very good human. Anything else you want to add before we finish up? No, I don't think so. I think that's pretty much it. It's a couple of bases. I'm excited. It will be available before this comes out. So we don't have to worry about it. Get in, get around her. We'll be pumping her up on socials and you'll be able to follow all her stuff there. But thank you for coming on. Thank you very much for having me.

Pleasure. We stayed on tracks, didn't we? Mostly, yeah. Fit well. I love it. Have a good day.