S3E27 · Nick Jankovskis: Nutritional Strategies for Endurance Performance

All right, we are back. I am back. We kicked Tyler out. Season 4, podcast, Virtus Performance. We're back. We're back in the studio office. Season 4 is going to look a little different, but very similar. Not that Nick here is looking at me like he has any idea what we're talking about. Season 4, I've come into a lot of spare time, so lucky you guys. You're going to hear a lot of my voice, which is probably not a good thing, but we'll get to that in a minute. We're going to go down a little bit

more of a topical season where, one, we get to know our guests, but two, we're going to talk about a specific topic that our guests are involved in directly or have done previous experience with. That's what Season 4 is going to look like, so lucky you guys are sending your requests for topics, people, what you want to know about. It should be pretty interesting from now until March/April when we kick off Season 5, but without further ado, today's guest, Mr. Nick from... Mr. Nick, Mr. Nick. It's like you're introducing me like Dr. Nick of The Simpsons.

Oh, you just said 22-year-olds are old, so this is where we're at. Well, I'm getting to that point in my life, aren't I? Yes, we have Nick from Mets Performance in Mentone. Mulgrave. Mulgrave. I know it was an M. It's an M. Yeah, it's an M. It was close enough. Nick and I went to uni together through our undergrad, through sports science, and Nick kept in the sports science field where all the smart people stay, and I went to strength and conditioning where all the less smart people stay, so that's where we're at. Today, Nick, we're going to get to learn Nick again.

Actually, no, you haven't been on this one. I haven't been on the podcast, no. I've been on yours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to get to know Nick, but also we're going to talk about nutritional strategies for endurance performance and some other things around nutrition and sports performance, which will be pretty interesting, but without further ado again, Nick, who are you? Yeah, so yeah, sports scientist. As you said, we studied together a long time ago now. Studies at our reach. You studied. We did one group assignment that I reckon you probably carried me through a bit, but that's all right.

But yeah, outside of that, working in endurance performance. So primarily with, I describe it as endurance and ultra endurance. A lot of our clientele are triathlon cycling running, but then the majority of that group again, three, four hour plus events. So we have a lot of Ironman, half Ironman, triathlon, ultra distance runners, which obviously it changes things completely compared to just the typical 5K parkour on the weekend. We're now dealing with these extensive events and I mean, for the most part, the Ironman guys, they're out there for anywhere between realistically eight hours, 12 hours, 10 hours, depending on how they are.

I don't sleep that much. Yeah, it becomes a really interesting sort of space. So obviously still do a lot of work with the shorter stuff. So we do get park runners or 10Ks, half marathon, the traditional sort of common endurance, but then we get the crazy people who come in and do the silly events. Crazy is a good word. Very different character to get into one of those. Let alone stay in it actually. Yeah, yeah. And it's an interesting thing as well because of the length of it, most of them are only racing once, maybe twice a year at that distance.

So it becomes very different to something like footy, basketball or whatever. It's like, all right, we got something to look forward to every week. It's like, we've got nine months before we can get out there and actually race or compete. Yeah. And I think I see a lot of people see people that do ultra marathons or ultra endurance events and think not the training's easy, but it's similar to what they experienced and it's worlds different. Yeah. And it's one of those things that you don't know until you know. Yeah. But also from the point of view of like, yeah, your long run isn't 10K anymore.

No. Your long run becomes... Well, your 10K is just kind of another midweek run. Yeah, which is crazy. Yeah. What made you, one, go down the endurance path with sport science and two, what makes you stay? Yeah. So I think from a couple of side things, I mean, I've always been interested in the endurance sports. I raced triathlon coming through as a kid. It wasn't my chosen sport. I did footy and cricket like most kids did. But then over summer I'd go and race just short distance tries and sort of, I'd always been a swimmer as well.

So like coming out of back end of a footy season, I'd been swimming all year. I was kind of like, the running component's easy, the swimming component's easy. May as well just jump on the bike a few times and see how we go. So I've always sort of been interested in that aspect. But then in terms of then working in it, like coming back to where we sort of split out of uni, it was like I went and interned in strength conditioning initially and I worked out really, really quickly that being on the gym floor just wasn't for me.

What'd you do? So I interned first at University of Michigan. Yeah, we'll get into that. It's on my list. Yeah. End of my second year undergrad, I went over to the States, went there and then Melbourne Vic Center and the swimming. So it's now MSAC swimming, I think, because the club folded. But yeah, like SNC, I still love it and I still enjoy it. I still have the process of going in and training in the gym, but the problem solving aspect of that and sort of the day to day of it probably just wasn't really sort of where I was interested.

I'm more interested in the testing side, the physiology side. And then ultimately from my own stuff now in terms of training, like largely a bit more conditioning sort of focused in the stuff I do. So that's where I sort of naturally fell a bit more into endurance. And then apart from anything at the time, Luke who set up METS, started everything up. Perfect timing when I was transitioning out of uni, it was a good opportunity to jump in. We have a testing lab, so we do a lot of VO2Max and all of that. So it was sort of this perfect opportunity to get in the field and start working rather than just volunteering and interning.

And then obviously that then sort of snowballed into working in it pretty much full time for the last four or five years. Yeah, who knows with COVID. I lost track of years. Did you ever play any team sports growing up as well or was it just purely weekend endurance kind of stuff? No, so the triathlon stuff was kind of just like an addition. So I grew up swimming. So I've been a swimmer since I was, I don't know, the toddler stuff where you jump in with your parents all the way through to, I swam regularly until I was about 18, 19.

I had nippers in my head, but that's a life saving. That's a life saving. Yeah. I just swam like pool staff in a squad, nothing ever really serious. It was only ever sort of like once a week. I got, I got reasonably good, but it was never, it was more something that I just enjoyed the process of swimming and growing up swimming as sort of wanting to continue. But then like I played footy through winter until I was what, six, 16, 17. And then cricket in the summer, like they were the two major things that I wanted to want to do.

And like, like a lot of kids, when you sort of like five, six years of age, you're like, oh yeah, I'll play cricket for Australia one day. And then in the winter season, I'll go and play footy in the AFL. It's like, I worked out pretty quick that neither of those two were going to be something I was going to be ever good enough to reach that level out. So did you want to, even though you might've known, is that why you stayed in sport? Yeah, that's, that's definitely why I stayed in sport. That's that,

well, that's probably actually where the umpiring side of things came into it, which I know we're kind of jumping over, but that's where I worked out. Like cricket was something I always enjoyed just from the social team aspect, but then footy it just got to a point where I, I just became less and less interested in playing, playing footy, even from a social side of things. We had quite a competitive group that I grew up playing footy with. And so it just got, it just got to that point where I just, I just wasn't committed enough to want to keep playing into sort of senior, senior footy reserves footy.

And it just didn't really interest me as much, but that's where I started started umpiring like junior footy part, like a couple of years prior to, to finishing playing had a bit of potential there, saw that that was probably a more viable pathway for me to be an elite athlete, so to speak. You're still an athlete, mate. You work harder than most people do. Well, it's a, it's a type of thing. It's like I sort of somewhat look at it as my opportunity to sort of explore that, that passion I had of wanting to make

it at the elite level from an athletic perspective myself, but then external to that, I mean, I've always just wanted to work in sport anyway. So I guess that's where the, the career from a sports science sense came from was regardless of what I was doing myself, I'd, I'd be working in sport anyway. The, the umpiring stuff now is a bit of a selfish little elite athlete endeavour for the time being. It's my pet hate around the world, selfishness, because at the end of the day, it's our lives. Let's just do what we want. And

when we talk about like that selfie side of things, like we still want what we want, like a lot of us, especially in a health and fitness, just being very niche here, but in a health and fitness world, like a lot of us exist to help people make less of the mistakes that we made to start with, but also it's filling the void that potentially we didn't get to where we wanted to or anything like that. And if you still have the opportunity to go and strive for higher performing honours, then I mean, why not? Right?

I don't think it's selfish. Well, it's, it's one of those ones that, I mean, it's sort of, it, it feels like it fills that gap. Like I said, I knew pretty early that I wasn't going to play one of those sports at a pretty elite level. But it's still my opportunity to sort of stay, stay involved in that space. And it's a good just outlet, apart from anything. It's just like, get out, train, keeps me on my toes in terms of trying to improve as well. Especially with the, like, like I'm not training anywhere near the extent of some of my Ironman guys, but like, at least it's, it's one of those things I can fully appreciate.

Then you get majority of the stuff that they're going through as well, rather than just sort of going, Hey, here's a 30 hour training week, go and do it. And it's like, well, I've got a reasonable understanding of what that sort of like. Yep. Was triathlon something you wanted to dabble in as well, or knowing that you felt that cricket and footy weren't a path that you were going to go down from an athletic point of view, did triathlon fill that void as well? Or it's sort of an interesting one because once umpiring really started taking place and I sort of really got involved in that, that sort of took out, took up a bunch of my time.

And that's actually probably the reason why I stopped racing triads as a kid. You just get into longer, longer footy seasons as you get into senior footy, moving up into sort of state league footy for the last six or so years now. It's like your pre-seasons get longer, you just run out of time in the year to be able to do other stuff. But then, yeah, triathlon was something that, like, I want to continue to go and race, but it's something definitely now that I'm more, I want to go and do it for the enjoyment aspect.

I want to get better at it, but it never really turned into, gee, I could race this as my sport. I just never had the, I really enjoy it as a sport. And even when I was younger, I used to race some of the state squad kids when I was like 15, 14, 15. And I'd do pretty well, and I'd podium and things like that, but it never was, oh, I'm just going to drop everything else and start racing triathlon because I've got some potential. Whereas umpiring was definitely more that space of, yeah, I've got some potential here.

I can actually go pretty far. And I sort of took to it a bit more with a bit, probably a bit different motivation for it. So, but then I guess from an interest perspective, probably that enjoyment of the sport enough has then kept me in it from a working sense. I really like breaking it down and analysing it as a sport, but racing it, I'm also just sort of genetically, I just know I'm not quite, I'd never be elite enough. I like going really, really fast over short distances. You could still go out tomorrow and do one if you wanted to, but you know it's not going to be...

And I still want to go and race and do that, but I know it's not something that I've ever really had the motivation to strive to be elite at. I want to be good at it, but I guess, yeah, umpiring was is something that, yeah, for me, for whatever reason, and it's probably one of those ones I can't really fully, haven't really fully thought about the difference. Or no one's asked you. But, well, yeah, true. But yeah, umpiring was has always just been like, since I felt like I was good enough and I could see there was a bit of a pathway, I'm like, yeah, that's what I want to do.

As long as I can and as far as I can get with it, that's what I want to do with it, athletically. When did you realise that was a possibility? Or how did you realise? I guess it's probably a better option. I'm sure there's a lot of kids on the weekends that go boundary umpire for their 60 bucks a game or something like that. Maybe. I don't know what the pay is anymore. That's what I used to get paid. Well, yeah, pretty roughly. I never boundary umpired. So I'm going to be a bit of an umpiring story.

Oh, here we go. But no, so like early on, I remember doing, I remember the first ever game I umpired was like a practice match, like a junior practice match. We were like under tens or twelves or something. And I finished, I finished the game and the feedback I got was like really, really positive. And really naively, I was like, oh, well, that means I'm like really good. I guess I'll keep going with this. As it then progressed though, I, I did start to move through grades pretty quick, which is not an uncommon thing. And

I reckon for the first, all the way through my junior umpiring career and then into starting to do senior footy locally, you sort of, you sort of think you're probably a little bit better than what you are because local footy, they really want to try and get you up to the top one because they're just short on numbers. You're young and youthful. Correct. But then too, it's also like, I mean, the, the more they can sort of keep younger umpires in it and sort of promote and get more going, like it just helps the league out.

So you sort of go through like getting a senior footy and then once you get up to state league, you realise that you're just the same as the other 50 guys that got promoted that year who all thought they were the best like in their own leagues respectively. And you'll come together. But I think it was probably that point of getting up to state league was one step that I went, yeah, I've definitely got a bit of a career here, but my first couple of years at state league, I definitely sort of knew, alright, I

know I'm at a level that stacks up with all these other guys who are coming out from local, from other leagues, if not outperforming and sort of had that feeling that, yeah, I could definitely make it if I, if I really tried hard enough, it's going to be difficult, but yeah, I sort of, I sort of always had that inkling that I've got, I have enough natural talent, which is a strange thing. It's like who has natural talent for umpiring? But I always sort of had that feel that a lot of the things haven't been

really difficult in terms of picking up all the positioning stuff, like the laws, knowledge and all of that type of stuff that we have to do was never real struggle, but then working on it to keep getting better was the process part was like really enjoyable. So in combination of that, I go regardless of then how far I get to, like I know I'm probably going to be able to go a reasonable way. What's the, what's the progression plan look like? Yeah, you're, you're a little Nick. What does someone come to you and go, you know, we see, you know, talent in you, we see, you know, a future, something like that.

Like what does that whole process looks like? Cause I'm sure very rarely someone gets exposed to that pathway. I'm sure we've all heard of cricket, footy, athletics, et cetera, pathways, basketball, whatever you want to call it. Like we know someone that's been through pathways, but I don't think anyone really has any idea if I can, I'm buying pathway. What's that look like? It's a really interesting one. And it, it's changed a lot since I went through it and it, it changes, it changes every couple of years, to be honest, because they come up with a

new system of what's better, what's not the progression of like the women's game now has changed our pathway slightly compared to when I first came through. And that wasn't really a thing yet. But yeah, like, so in terms of right at the beginning, you just start doing junior games, start working through the grades. So you start at 10s, 14s, 16s, like ultimately trying to get into like senior footy's where you want to be. So I did a couple of years of senior footy at, at local level, did a division two grand final at the time, which most probably like going, going through typically you kind of want to be doing division one before you get up to state league.

But I was sort of still at that point where I'd only really done like 20 senior, 25, 30 senior games, and then did a senior grand final, which, which is a pretty quick progression. At that sort of point, it then comes down to like, yeah, you, your local coaches then sort of nominate you based on who they think has enough talent. So I was pretty lucky. I had a couple of like ex AFL umpires who were my coaches coming through local footy. So they, they also gave me a good amount of confidence. Like, all right, they know what they're doing.

They've done AFL grand finals. They've done 200, 300 plus games. Like they're putting me up saying, yeah, you're good enough. Like I must have something. From there, you get to, you get to state league. So VFL level, which encompasses VFL football, the old TSC cup, the NAB league now, boys and girls now. It was just boys when I came through. We also had like the VFL reserves or the development league comp, which doesn't exist. And then the the VFL W's within that as well. So first, first year up is pretty much under 18s. You want to be in the 18s.

Like it's, that's where it starts to split in terms of you get your opportunity in the 18s, you do really well. You stay there if you're not doing great. Is it a similar pathway to being a player? Kind of. Kind of sounds like it, yeah. We have a couple of squads. So we have like a senior squad, which will do the VFL senior footy. And then we have like a development list that there's opportunities to do senior footy, but you've got to be really good. Like if you're coming straight out of local, like very rare that someone will come out first year out of local footy and go straight in the ones.

Like it, it just doesn't happen. You got to sort of do your time a bit. But yeah, a couple of years of 18s and then you work your way into that senior group. Once you're in that senior group, you then got to fight for your spot and keep your spot. Outside of that, then once you're in that sort of senior football space, then it's, you're starting to get watched from an AFL perspective. So they'll like, our coaches identify who's, who's doing well. Who's worthy to be looked at. AFL then come around, they invite you to talent championships like I did down the 16 national champs, 2017.

They start looking at things like that. You start getting selected for AFLW. That's then part of our pathway up to AFL men's football. Of which, yeah, done that couple of seasons now. And then from there, it's whoever's the best in the country. Which is, which is one of those difficult things for us. It's, we're competing against the Victorian umpires for the spots in the AFL list. There might be one or two that open up each year, but then you don't really know, you know, a few guys from like going and doing those talent camps, like you know guys in other states, but we have no idea who's going well in WA halfway through the year and what that means.

And it's different football and like South Australia have a few different rules that changes the game style. Like that, that's where you sort of just got to keep putting your best foot forward. And then hopefully the phone call goes your way. Yeah. What are your KPIs? What are you measured on? So we get measured on a handful of like really core competencies. Most of it is like for us from a field umpire perspective, decision-making is our first and foremost. How do you measure that? Well, I think this is a challenge that every business face. How do you measure decision-making?

Let alone being an umpire. I'm just, I'm correlating the two over here. Part of it is objective because we have a really clearly set out law book. The other part of it is very subjective because we have interpretations of those laws. Yeah. So something quite objective is like, for example, a high contact is a high contact. Yeah. Like if you're hit above the shoulders, it's high. The interpretation to that though, is if you go and pick up the ball and you run into a stationary tackler, it's not high anymore. Yeah. But so we get assessed, like we'll have a coach, VFL senior footy is great.

Lower down than that, we actually don't have a coach at every game. So that's where it gets hard to get feedback. So at this point it it's a bit easier. So every game we have a coach who goes through, they're basically sitting in the box, writing down every decision at AFL level. They use the arc. So we say the score of your TV is a room next to that. Someone's job is to sit there and call out every decision. Yeah. Like code all of it as you would with like kick samples and sounds like champion data, but like I'm pouring decisions.

Then there's a third person who goes back and watches every decision and assesses them correct or incorrect. And then why? Yeah. And then they correlate it with the coach. Whereas our one is a bit more manual, so we don't have the arc system, but they code pretty much everything. Go through, most of the time you're able to have a conversation about it later and sort of, if you don't agree with what coach said, cause you had a better look or a different look, a lot of the time you get caught out by reverse camera angles.

If I'm on the centre of the ground here, I can't see the far side, but the camera's over there and the coach goes, well, why didn't you say that? It's like, well, yeah. So like we, we get largely graded on decision making, but then within that, even that example there of where am I positioned, like our positioning is everything. You get yourself in the right spot, you get the free kick and you'll get it correct. Work rate is another one. Like if you're in the right spot quick enough and regularly enough and consistently enough, you're going to make more accurate decisions cause you're more relaxed, calm, composed.

Is this like a minute per minute thing? Not really. That's, that's a very subjective work rate. Okay. It's more of a, it's more of a coaches feel like, and it's, when I say it's obvious, I mean, if I was to go and watch, if I was to go and watch, you can tell who's working hard and who's not and who's working enough and who's not. And then other things is like match management. So how are you communicating with players? Any volatile situation that pop up? How'd you deal with that? Like if there was a report, what was your process with that?

Things like blood rules and all the little bits and pieces. So there's quite a lot of things going on. Is it like a reporting thing? You get given a report after a game or is it more? The process of that has changed a lot at state league level since I got there. It very much was, it used to be a basically a point system. So you would start at like 140 points and you would lose points. So if you had a recall bounce, it was like minus, minus two points or something. If you had a straight bounce.

Well, this is the thing. So it's like umpiring has always been very negative. And cause everyone from a football perspective expects us to be perfect. So it's like, that's why we had this point system. They've changed it now. So we get ranked on these competencies based on like, it's like, I think the ratings were excellent. Very good. Solid requires attention. Solid's not a great description, but it is because I've just never heard that used in a scale system before. So solid means you're at the standard. Yeah. Which well, not, not me. So if you're getting solids in every game of the VFL, you're doing, you're doing your job.

If you want to be in the finals though, you've got to be very good or excellent in those categories. Cause that's our distinguishing factor. If you're like a needs attention, that means that you probably didn't have a great game, but then within that, so like decision-making wise to get it, to get a solid at VFL level, I think it's like three to five errors in decision-making, which could be, you paid the wrong free kick. You missed a free kick. So you didn't pay anything when you should have. Like those are assessed similarly. So, but then based on the kind of error, like if it's a major or a minor, so someone's head gets ripped off.

It's a major free kick. So that then gets graded differently. But so we get, we get those competencies as gradings and then we get like two to three points of feedback. Outside of that, we then get game vision. So within that two to three points of feedback on areas to improve positive things we did, we'll then get those key points as part of our game vision at the end. So we'll get like 10 or 12 clips usually. Yeah, huddle clips. And it will be, if one of the areas to improve was, say, holding the ball

for the day, you might get two or three holding the balls that you just got to think back through the process of what you did. Here's the correct outcome. Here's what you processed. Like where's the missing link? And it's a lot more positive now in terms of we're trying to help you get better rather than back in the day it was, well, you just lost all these points. So you're going to get dropped. There's still a bit of an element of that. Like if you're not performing, you don't get games, but is there an element because the numbers are so thin that that's hard to implement as well?

So at our level, it's still pretty competitive because we're at a point where we've got it. We've got more than enough numbers to cover our games. Some circumstances, we have a few injuries like it gets a bit tight, but there's always someone pushing up. So like our development list, like if we got a lot of senior injuries and guys aren't performing, someone will come up and take a spot. But like at local level, like guys are doing like two, three, four games a weekend because they just don't have the numbers. So it's at that level, it's like you could be underperforming, but still getting good games.

Our level, if you're really underperforming, you just won't be in. So there is, like it does mean a fair bit. And then even more so at the top end, like we lose from when I say we lose, the AFL dropped down for you guys every week who aren't in the AFL, who are still running to keep them going. Like for those guys, like, yeah, if they're not performing the AFL, they'll be back in the VFL, which no one wants to be. And the same for us. If we're not in the VFL and we're in the 18s, like you want to be in senior footy.

It's normal team selection. Normal team selection, normal team selection. But and that's where I mean, like any other team, like one of your more experienced umpires, maybe if they underperformed the week, they're not going to get instantly dropped because you back them in to recover and go again next week. Whereas someone who's a bit younger, typically actually something that's been really good for an umpiring sense is that really typically if someone gets promoted, though, someone comes up, generally speaking, you're going to get two games in a row. So even if you have a bad first

man, you get the opportunity to redeem yourself the next week, which might still mean you get dropped, but at least you get a second crack and you sort of know that going in. Very rare that you're one game in, one game out. Let's say volatile. Yeah. Where from a playing sense, like you might be, like some of those guys might be the sub one week, come in for a quarter, have a blinder and then they get dropped. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ours is a bit different because From a sport perspective, like cricket comes to mind when that happens.

Yep. Yep. I mean, it's quite a volatile X's and O's, I guess ones and zeros. Is, before I get into that, give me your top three, top five games moments that you've been a part of specifically. Number one. It's all good while I talk about this stuff, but I'm imagining for people not imagining you out in the middle of the ground. Cause if you do a good job, we don't notice you. Yep. Plain and simple. And it's, it's, it's a, yeah, it's a really strange feeling cause we don't win or lose either. No. So I come off the ground and I know if I've had a good game or not, but well, that's, that's the thing.

And I guess like, so in terms of top three, I'll go three, two, one, cause that's what comes to mind, but three AFLW Grand Final last year. Yep. The reasons that that sits at three is cause the next two games are pretty special. See, I know this cause I know I pay attention now, but prior to that, not a clue. But yeah, so three AFLW Grand Final and interesting, like part of that is, so we flew in on like the Saturday up to Brisbane. We do the game on a Sunday, come off the field. That's great.

We have, we have our own sort of pretty quiet sort of celebration in the rooms. We were back on a flight that night, straight back to Melbourne, landed at one 30 in the morning on the Monday morning. So we're, we're, it's like the player stay on like the celebrating even losing team will go out and do something like that. It's yeah, it's a bit of a different feeling. You come off the ground and go, well, Grand Final's over. Clock out. We're like, we just wait, we, we finished the game. We're just waiting on the interchange bench for the presentations.

Like one of, one of our arms goes up, collects all the medals, comes off and then we just disappear in the room. So like it, like it's, it's when I say it's just another game of football. It definitely isn't. But I mean from a day perspective doing a Grand Final is always special, but it's one of those ones that, yeah, it's, it's not like playing where like you are like you have a bad day and you're like, I didn't really feel it. Yep. Like, you know, emotionally it's like you just sort of move on to the next one and why do we have a bad day or why do we have a good day going to the next?

You've got to have an absolute howler to remember it, I can imagine. Yeah. Number two, I didn't actually umpire in, but I was on the bench for, I was on the bench for the Jamie Elliott goal against Essendon. That was unreal. I actually think I saw you on camera that game. If you watch, they played at Brownlow Night and I got really excited. If you watch the reverse angle of that goal that you just see on the bench, I'm standing on the bench, because obviously Siren goes, so as the emergency umpire on the bench, our job is to make sure the guys stay off the ground.

Cause if they run on like all hell breaks loose, particularly as well if the game's not officially over yet, which happened in a W game. So it wasn't a game I was part of. If it happened, it was a mess. But I'm on the bench, like trying to keep the Collingwood boys back. Cause they obviously know, all right, if he kicks it, and then trying to keep the Essendon team and staff and like you got like 30 or 40 people you're trying to keep off the ground. No one sees you in that moment either. And

then, I mean, you've got, like, I can't remember what the crowd was that day, but it was like 60, 65 plus thousand at the G. Hell of a game. Like bombers played out of their skin. Collingwood probably didn't play great, but like came back in and he kicks that goal and it just goes nuts. And you're like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Can you step back and go, yeah, yeah, I was here for that. Which, which I mean like, it's pretty cool going and watching those games. And like, I've definitely been in the stands, like

watching good games of footy, but to be on the ground being like immersed in that moment and then just having a bulk group of people rush past you and being like that, like that's a pretty cool. It's like one of those movie scenes where you're just kind of standing there. Just that like 30 second period. And I mean, even the lead up play to that, you could see it happening from a mile away sitting on the bench. And I've got game, I've got the game clock right next to me, so I know exactly how long is left.

It's a nice thing, isn't it? So I find at the AFLW games is I want to sit there, I can see how much time is left. It's a nice power position for me to have. It's pretty, it's pretty cool. But then I'm calmed up as well. So on the bench, we're all calmed up, ready to go just in case. So I can hear what the guys are saying to the players on the ground. I can hear him sitting like Jamie Elliot up telling him to go wider in the boundary line to get on his correct line.

Get in the second row. Yeah. Like, so you're fully, you're fully immersed in it. You're not just another spectator, like you're right in the game. So that was pretty cool in terms of just experience of what that feels like. Number one though, was coming on at halftime, round 10, Geelong Gold Coast 2021. I actually watched that game for some reason. I'll draw shit in that game. I don't know why. I don't know. It might be a good luck charm. I don't know. Oh, maybe. But yeah, it officially counts as my AFL debut, my one and only.

If we never make it any further, I hold the record for the only person ever to wear the number 48 on an AFL field, which is an exceptionally high number for an umpire. But yeah, I like, that was an unreal experience because, was it a havey? No, it was a calf. So I unplugged the VFL the night before down at Frankston. Yeah. Ran 18 and a half K, 19 K. Go golfs? Go golfs. I don't know if they got up actually. I couldn't tell you. Hell of a game though, cause it was like 35 minute quarters, like ran like 18 and a half, 19 K.

Got home at, I don't know, 1230, one o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Wake up, got a one, one 10 game down Geelong. Yeah. Sitting on the bench and I go, cool. I'm just going to go sit down. Feet up, have some ollies. Funnily enough. So I was like, you go down, I'm like, all right, cool. Guys are feeling really good. Like not a problem. Like I carpooled with one of the other boys and we were just like chatting about it. He's just like, Oh, you'd hate to get on today, wouldn't you? And I'm like, no, come on.

I'm like, no chance. These three guys, like they fit, they're fine. First quarter, one of the boys goes, Oh yeah, calf's not feeling great. And I was like, cool. Like to be completely honest, this happens regularly where guys say, and it's for them, for those guys to come off the ground, it needs to be pretty serious because when I said they don't really want to put us on as like being rookie listed, they don't really want to have to put us under the pump like that. Haven't done a game the day before. Yeah. Half time of that game, Gold Coast are only down by like eight points.

So it's a tight game at that point. I mean Geelong blew me out after that. But in terms of like, they don't want to have to put us in that situation. They don't want to like let the game down as a result of someone coming on fatigued and like, who knows? Like I could come on a cramp or whatever, like all sorts of issues. We get to half time, we go in the rooms, the other bikes, Danny's calf gets on a bike, spin up. Our head, our newly appointed head coach was the game day coach that day.

He comes in the rooms, he goes, Oh, just warm up. Just in case, like you get asked to warm up every couple of times you sit the bench cause you never know. Yep. Warm up at half time. We go back out. I'm still in the tracksuit, walk out on the guys. That's all good. They get to the middle of the ground, takes two steps and he just says on the comms, he's like, nah, I'm done. At that point, I don't like, that's probably the first real time in my umpiring career. Is that a stomach drop moment?

Yeah. I was physically like shaking going, it's actually happening here. And the worst, I want to say the worst part about it was I'm in the middle of GMHBA. So I got, and like our phones get locked away like an hour and a half before the game. You can't tell. I can't tell anyone I'm about to go on. It's my parents had no idea. My family had no idea. It was just a mad scramble. Maybe she put up a post about it. Yeah. My girlfriend posted and then, um, it was just a mad scramble of like people sending text messages.

Like all the, all the boys who had umpiring VFL that day had no idea. So they're like jumping on their phones going, what the hell is going on? I'm sitting there in the middle of GMHBA pants from my ankles, like match kid on underneath, but I couldn't get my tracksuit over my boots. So I'm there pants around my ankles, boots everywhere. I've got, I've got a match, our match com guy cause our vests get hooked up to broadcast and us. So I've got my shirt up like this. Like if you're listening to this, it doesn't make any sense, but I've got my shirt up pants around my ankles.

He's trying to switch, switch it all so it stays permanently on rather than click on, click off. And then I'm like, I actually have to umpire here. Yeah. And so they're like, Oh, like park yourself down one end for the first couple of minutes, warm yourself up and then get into the game when you feel ready. Came into the game like first, first stint in the middle. It was a pretty surreal thing cause you go into, I had a boundary throw in and I remember it's so clear. You go ask the nominations for the rocks and like Tom Hawkins is coming in.

Joel Sellwood there, like all these guys that I've grown up watching on TV play football, you're now in and amongst that. And it's not practice. This is a live game AFL footy. So that was so great. Visually appealing ground to be out to GMHP. When you stand in the middle, we go, yeah, this is cool. Especially now the new stand. Yeah. Was the new stand done? No, no, no. So this was, yeah, this was before they even knocked it down. So it was the old stand. But yeah, it was a pretty, pretty unreal feeling. And then I only had to pay one free kick for the day and I got it correct.

It's a really obvious holding the man. Bounced at 100%. I had three bounces. All three went straight up. So again, if I retire, I've done one AFL game and I'm efficient. I bounced at 100%. So the best bouncing record in the history of the AFL. It was just really, it was just really cool. You're going to pay for that one later. 100%. But we'll take it. But yeah, it was that, that's by far, I mean you set out to want to umpire AFL footy at like age 15 or 16 when I was like, all right, I can see this progression here.

Like I want to try and see how far we can go. And then to be what, uh, 10, 10 or 11 years later out on an AFL ground. Yep. Actually I'm pouring an AFL, a live AFL game. Yes, it was only a half, but I mean pretty like, pretty ridiculous to sort of like think, think about it afterwards. Um, and it just went by so quick. That was, that was the fastest half of football by in terms of perception of time. Um, physically actually much easier than the night before. You know where the ball's going. I was hiked up on 200 milligram of adrenaline.

I had so much running through. Um, and they're like, Oh, you ran really well. Like you recovered really well. I'm like, I actually don't know how I was real sore the next day. Um, but then just from a timing perspective as well, like the, like the thing after that. So they were going to give me the week off the next week from running completely. Cause they're like, you've just done two, like one half full, full games. They're going to fly me to Darwin to sit the bench just as a bit of a nice, like, well done, like bit of a reward.

Melbourne went to lockdown on the, on the Thursday. So I got to, I didn't even get a phone call. I got an email saying, you're not on the flight anymore cause we don't know if we can get you home. Um, so it went from this massive high to then I actually don't know what I'm going to umpire. Well, VFL dissipated as soon as we were locked down. So that stopped. Um, couldn't, it wasn't in any AFL game. So I then did an umpire actually for a couple of weeks. So it was this really weird sort of feeling.

But yeah, that's by far career highlight. What's, where are you at now? Well, I know where you're at, but where are you at now? And the second coming off that, what do you need to do to get back to that? Yeah, so right now going back into another VFL season, um, came off AFLW last year. Um, obviously we had two seasons last year. Um, season six, season seven. Don't remind me. That was a hell of a 12 month period. Um, yeah, so went through that. Season six wasn't great for me. Got injured. Um, first major, first only real injury of my career.

Um, which then meant I missed the first nine weeks of AFL, which really hurt me from a selection perspective. So I was going really well with 2021. Um, how, how do I been able to put together a full VFL season last year would have been very close. Um, phone calls didn't go my, my way end of the year in terms of promotion. Um, so it was actually in terms of timing in hindsight, I was starting to get to a point in the year where I went, it's been a hard year cause I got injured. So I haven't been umpiring a lot.

Did 10 rounds of AFL, VFL final had to go straight the next week. I got, I got a phone call on Monday saying, yep, you didn't make it to week two of AFL finals. Like you basically needed a miracle cause you did 10, you did half the season. You needed something pretty good to happen. I was like, yeah, fair enough. Um, the next morning I got a phone call saying you're on a flight to Perth to go and umpire AFLW. Um, so again, this sort of like roller coaster of ups and downs. Um, but leading into, I think it was the last round, we've been around 10 of AFLW had the Friday night at icon park Carlton Bulldogs.

The day before I got a phone call saying I wasn't getting promoted to the AFL. So that, that was pretty rough. Um, so having had what I thought was maybe enough, um, uh, of a year and going to forum in the AFL next year meant there was quite a few spots up for grabs. Um, so that was pretty disappointing. But in terms of opportunity now it's just get back in and just have a full VFL season. Um, so that's sort of where I'm at and not to say as long as I have a good season, I'm going to go up, but it's the type of thing.

It's like it just gives me more of an opportunity. Continuity. You get a full season. But then I saw, look at it a bit selfishly for me and go, a lot of those guys that I would have normally been competing against did get promoted. So I'm sort of moving up in terms of the order anyway. Um, a lot of old guys at the AFL we've been around forever. Um, there's going to be opportunity. Um, just got to sort of do my time a little bit, but, um, plenty, like plenty of good stuff in this next 12 months.

Like I'll take over 50 VFL games, I think around five or six, which is pretty cool. Um, so yeah, sort of an interesting sort of phase, but yeah, to get to the next level realistically, it's just like, get some really good footy over the next, um, the next six to 12 months. A lot of it's in and out of your hands. I mean, if they want to pick you, they want to pick you. Um, which yeah, I'm heading in the right direction. I just got to get a little bit more consistent and have a good year.

What's before we dive down more sports science things, what's, what's a normal week look like? What's a pre-season week look like? What's a in-season week look like? What game of that week? Yeah, so pre-season at the moment, um, a lot of conditioning. Well, that's just normal anyway. Define a lot. Um, I'm running, I actually had a look the other day on average, I'm about, you're looking at data, shock me, shock me, especially my running data. What a surprise. Um, running about 40 to 50 Ks each week. Um, yeah, for heading into five sessions this week will be the first time I do five.

Um, so that's just running generally then have a bike, uh, bike session, just a steady state bike, just as a bit of a break a week up, go out for a coffee shop ride, um, on a, on a weekend, got to swim in there and then three, three lifts at the moment plus like a field session, which is a bit of change of direction stuff. Um, so pretty busy week. Um, I'm like in terms of what that looks like, it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday lift, uh, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday run, Saturday bike, Wednesday swim after lift and then Tuesday or Thursday, depending on what my working weight looks like with that session.

Once we then get in season, um, as, as a bit, when I say a bit all over the place, cause we then start getting a bit dictated by what the clubs do. Yep. So we'll go back. We're actually going back first week of Feb, uh, as a VFL group. So we'll start training together. Uh, no, we're at a Victoria park for VFL. Yup. We go back as a group, um, beginning of Feb, Tuesday, Thursday nights is our main conditioning nights. So we'll do our running based stuff and then we'll do some, when I say skills, like we're not going around kicking footies.

We do sometimes, but we're more looking at from setting it up from an umpire perspective. You'd be surprised, we zip it round. We're pretty bloody good. That's just one of those shivs I like to just twist. No, we, we, we fly it round. Um, we quite often say we get, we get a game in the eighteens, we wouldn't get a game in VFL would we? We get a game in the eighteens as like 25, 26 year olds. Um, but yeah, so we have our key, key nights and then pending on what happens during the week. So we'll start going out and doing, we call them club visits.

Yep. So we'll come out and it might be a lighter session with the club going through some new rules. Um, fun nights cause everyone asks a thousand questions. Yeah. Which is, which is great. Like that's what we're there for. Like we, we go into those wanting to help clubs out. We've had a few come down and everyone just asked some questions. You can see they're just getting worse. Yep. And like that, that's, it's a type of thing. It's a good and bad place to be. Yeah. Some, sometimes it's good. Um, but then from a conditioning sense, our week is dictated by what happens in those.

Like from a club perspective, you guys decide, nah, we're doing a couple, like we're doing three 15 minute match sim blocks. That's a very different conditioning load to us. Just coming down, answering some questions and doing a little drill. So we then have to adjust and shift to that. Obviously in practice matches start coming in, that's our main conditioning on the weekend and it like realistically we end up looking a bit more like what a footy club might look like except our additional sessions instead of being skill sessions or whatever are looking at vision assessing decision making stuff and then just some general conditioning.

Does it keep things sticking along? Um, and then that really carries through throughout the rest of the season. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Is if you were in charge, is there a change you would make knowing from a sports science background? Cause you probably, I don't know what the other jobs that umpires have, but I'm sure you are a little bit more informed than some others. Yeah. There's definitely moments where I go, I probably, I probably wouldn't have done that. Yeah. Having said that though, do you have to get over that hurdle yourself or do you just, do you try early on?

I did, but then I'm more in a position now where I go, I'm here to try and I'm here as an athlete. Yeah. An old soul. Not, not necessarily. It's not my responsibility to worry about that, but handing off the responsibility of programming and all that has is actually really good. It's a nice way off your shoulders too. I can just come in and just focus on what I need to do. Um, yes, there's some things I might agree or disagree with, but at the same time there's a lot of biases that I have with

my own training cause I, cause I have that next level comparative to the average in terms of physiologically what are we doing in the session? Yeah. I also then really know physiologically how that matches up with my own athletic profile. So I know going into it, I'm like, this session is going to suck. It's not going to suck for everyone, but I know it's going to suck for me cause of where I'm at and what I'm good and not so good at. So getting past some of that and going, well no, I understand what we're trying to achieve from a programming sense here.

Um, like there's definitely times where I'll have conversations around like more so just trying to understand how someone else's programming. I think that's a really useful tool. Yeah. Um, but which makes up a large proportion portion of the decision making anyway. It's just our own biases of the way that we like to do things. A hundred percent. And I mean also from a side of things that my professional work is in a very different physiological profile to what I actually train and compete for myself. Yeah. Um, I'm not going out there and doing a four hour plus of it everywhere.

Like yes, it's two hours, but it's intimate and there's change direction. It's very different demands. Um, so that's where I'm more than happy to trust someone who's got more experience from a professional sense in that setting. Um, but more than anything, it's like, I just want to go on train. Like I just want to be an athlete for a bit. Yep. Which is why you've just hired authority. Yeah. So finally it was like, I need an SNC coach. Yep. Like the conditioning stuff, I still have a lot of control of particularly this time of year. Um, but even then I've sort of said I just need someone to set it out.

Yep. I'll come in and put some input in like any athlete wouldn't be like, Oh, like can we try this? Whatever. But just handle that responsibility off. Um, cause it's the last thing you want to get to sometimes at the end of the week is all right, I've written programs for however many athletes for this week or this month. I've gone in and just done a bunch of testing recommendations, all of that type of stuff at work on. Now I have to write my own program for next week. Yeah. And it's like you, you got biases, you take shortcuts.

I'm like, nah, I just want someone to tell me what to do. I'll come in and get it done. Yep. Um, challenge me, but, and I'll challenge you back. But like, yeah, again, scrap that responsibility. And that's been really good. Like I don't reckon I've trained for quite some time this well, particularly in this sort of off season pre-season block. Yep. Um, and recovered really well and got as much total volume in for quite some time. Um, purely because I know that if I don't, like I'm booking in and going, I'm going to be at the gym at 6am on a Monday morning, wake up this morning.

I was like, if I wasn't like, if someone wasn't not on my back about it, but if I don't feel, um, if I'm doing it myself, like I'm probably waking up this morning going, nah, I'll sleep in a bit more. Yeah. Whereas it's like, no, this morning I got up and it's like, I just got to get there. I just got to get, get it done. Um, which has been great. What are some of the blind spots they've covered in your training that you one didn't see or chose not to address? I reckon a lot of it's just taking, taking my strength programming to a better level.

Like I know enough, but I don't work, I just don't work in it. Um, so that side of things in terms of being a bit more creative with what that looks like, um, has made it more interesting. Even the last little while, like I've never really properly front squatted for any length of time. Yeah. Um, but like my entire last block was front squat and like I've never really sort of had that as an emphasis or a focus. Um, but last block been really, really good. And then even just the like trusting that someone knows

that like from a load perspective, like going into the gym and knowing, all right, I feel confident enough to lift heavy today cause it's not going to be an issue rather than me sort of calf questioning it going, well, I know it's probably going to be all right, but have I actually got the balance right? It's just, again, palm off responsibility. But like I know like this morning, for example, it's like I go in and do a reasonably heavy lift. I know I'm going to be fine to run tomorrow, which previously I'd never, I'd be questioning that.

And so now I'll just go a bit easier in the gym today where it's like a pretty solid program. So a lot of that side, um, which probably also came from getting injured last year and going, what I was previously doing wasn't enough. Um, so that's been a major one outside of that then really not nothing that that's probably the biggest part. It's just like strength, power, speed development just isn't what I do for a job. So find someone who's really good at that and get them to fill the gap. Yeah. What's what have you enjoyed most about it besides being able to kind of release control of it?

Probably just the confidence of pushing a bit harder. Yeah. Like I've, well, like I said, very rarely, if any front squat ever. Um, but like, so like what, uh, last week hit 67 and a half. Yeah. Uh, what fours, I think. Um, which I'd never got anywhere close to, but again, it's one of those things that at this time you're already going, Oh yeah, I need it. I know I need to go heavy, but like, Oh, I don't really be too sore. Yeah. And it's, it's one of those things that was like, as we know with strength training, like it's an accumulation to X.

Like if you try and do that session in six weeks time off and not having done anything for five and a half weeks and yeah, it's going to hurt. But the consistency and we'll come back to continuity again of being able to do it and not have to think about it necessarily turn up and do it makes you better in the long run. And I guess, I mean, speaking from here from a point of view, like lots of people have just come off Christmas holidays, um, new years, everything like that. And you know, you have a little hiatus from the German.

That's what I've been saying. Well, I find myself saying a lot in the last kind of two or three weeks is yeah, the first session is going to hurt. It's, you haven't lost anything. It's just your body's ability to adapt to the stimulus has just changed slightly. So it's going to hurt. Yeah. You'll be fine after it. You're going to be okay. Pretty much suck it up. You're going to be okay. Yeah. It's just this little period that you got to get back. But now that's been, that's been really good. Um, and then ultimately that's like just fed back into running again.

I mean, I was pretty, when I say I was pretty cooked off the last 12 months cause it was a long 12 months. Like yes, I wasn't, I'm pouring a lot, but just the emotional and mental lane of going, well, and this is the insight into the outpouring world. I was driving to see my own physio cause that was the only, like if I'd rocked up to training on a Tuesday night, we've got 75, 80 of us at training one physio. Yeah. So you're waiting. I waited an hour to see a physio one night. Um, just to check in to make sure that things weren't going backwards.

Um, and in the end didn't say the physio, so I booked my own appointment outside of that. Um, so like I was driving, like I live like bay-side way. I was driving to Heidelberg every Wednesday for like 10 weeks to go see a physio. Um, plus then going into the city twice to go to training even I wasn't technically training. I was doing my rehab. Um, like all of that I was just cooked and then just trying to come into a VFL men's season having done no pre-season and work and be a good partner. Yep. And got COVID through that and like all the other things that just add up.

Lucky you. But yeah, like I just got to the end of last year. I'm just wrecked, but yeah, I feel amazing now. Um, and it's only really been a month since, or just over a month since I actually technically finished the season. Yeah, I feel, yeah. Um, I'm sure if I feel the same way, you know, I'm not an athlete anymore. No surprises of course, but just like the whole, I mean obviously for the last two, two and a half years, like the mental load and strain of just living, I guess like takes it out more than what you think.

And I'm in the similar boat recently of being pretty quiet for the last kind of four to six weeks. And like, I don't think I realized that I didn't feel cooked or exhausted in the moment. And even looking back now, I still feel like I cope with it. Okay. But now having playing golf three times a week, you know, it's not a bad lifestyle. I guess that part of it, like that's filling the void of like an escape that I didn't get the opportunity to have, which I think people underrate like highly and even just little things like spending some time down the beach, like having a bit of a paddle around, you know, anything like that.

Like it's one of those things that I think we get exposed to it more during a holiday or Christmas, new year, January period that I think we miss from February to November if we just want to generalize and call it that, which I think takes a bigger, bigger toll and pushing you in the right direction more often than not that I don't know if there's a way that we can bring it back to that by the way that we can kind of tick those boxes or do those little things more often in the middle of the year that helps us not feel so bad at the end of the year.

I don't know. I was just saying what I was thinking about the other day, which I don't know how you do that, but yeah, I don't, I don't think there's ever a perfect answer to it, but, but yeah, I mean just getting apart from anything, I just like setting up, even just setting up the good hat, like little habits. Like, so I've gotten to this routine now where it's like, cause I'm lifting three days a week and like Monday, Wednesday I was like, you know, I've got the option to lift later in the day. Let's lift at 6am cause I know I have to work.

I know I have to work 6am, but I know I have to work 6am on a Tuesday and a Thursday commonly. Yeah. So now instead of being like, Oh no, I'm sleeping a bit here and there, it's just like, no, I have this really consistent sleep routine just as a byproduct of the fact that I'm getting up and training. It just makes me feel better for the day too. So everything else is now snowballing out of the fact that I've like got this good consistency. So many more hours in the day too. A hundred percent. Like I'm a huge advocate for morning training.

You feel awesome. Yeah, I can't. Not anymore. I mean, I don't know how I used to do it. Like drove up in the city three, four times a week for cricket. Like I don't know how I used to do that after school. Like especially now, like you started when I start my day at 6am every day besides Monday. That's when I get to Monday and I'm like, you know what? I think I just want to get up early today and like not knowing me and like I do my programs on a Sunday and it still takes me X amount of hours and I still finish it, you know, stupid o'clock.

But I got up early on a Monday, like this morning I went for a walk, didn't really do much. Just kind of like no phone time. And I was like, you know, I feel way better getting to like Thursday for an example. I start a little bit later and I get to get up kind of seven 30 and I'm like, I feel like shit. That's, that's the bit that like, I don't necessarily like looking forward to going back as a group to train is like we have, I have to run Tuesdays and Thursdays at night

in the city after being in the car for an hour, we then sit in a coaching room for an hour and then we have to warm up and try and run and we have to run hard. So it's like that, that for me, it's like one of the motivating factors to get the AFL is they have much more flexible schedule. They can train when they like. So, but yeah, that, that's probably the part that over the next, well heading into next month, that'd be, that'd be a bit sort of frustrating and sort of break that routine a bit.

But then once I've got that okay, then it's kind of like, all right, we just change and adjust. It's just a new, new way of going about it. Excellent. Before we touch on nutritional strategies, we give me a little insight into your experiences in the US and maybe a little bit of Mets as well, like that sports science side of Nick. What's what did Michigan show you or open your eyes to that you didn't have previously, especially being over here and still quite a youthful industry, but also kind of what's your life look like at Mets?

Who do you look after? What's a week look like? How do you work that in with your own training, your own life? But I guess, yeah, start at Michigan and then we'll work towards Mets and we'll wrap it up. Yeah. So Michigan was, Michigan was a while ago now, 2016. That came about just as a trying to get experience in the industry. And at that point in time, I definitely did want to be a traditional SNC working with Jim Flor. But that was also the biggest turning point in terms of understanding that that's probably not what I actually wanted to do day in, day out.

And learnt through being there as well, that the conditioning side was definitely something I was more interested in. So that was a, like when I say semi internship, I wasn't there for a full semester because it clashed with the footy season. So I was at a point where initially I was actually going to go to Iowa. They wanted me to go in August and go for a full semester. Glad I didn't because in the end I did the Tac Cup granny that year, which is a famous one because Amarti misses the goal after the time. So another clip that I'm in the background of, I'm standing right behind him.

But in terms of heading over there, that was with Olympic sports, so everything but football and basketball. I met Jim Harbaugh's dad. That was exciting. Who is that for anyone who has a holiday? So like Jim Harbaugh was the coach. No, he's the coach in Michigan, but he coached the 49ers in the NFL and his brother coaches at Baltimore. Didn't meet him, but he met his dad, who's also like a very famous name, particularly Michigan. But yeah, so that was a really just interesting experience in terms of how they go about it over there in terms of athletic development performance.

Seeing their facilities and I guess just the resources that they have. Space. Unbelievable. I went back a few years later and they built a new facility. It was like $350 million. Crazy. Absurd. Someone just donated the money too. Oh, that's dumb. But yeah, basically like five days a week, some occasional Saturdays, but Monday to Friday, it was 6am to 8pm. Get in, it lifts like first thing in the morning and then you'll go and do your conditioning box with teams mid-afternoon and then come back and then more teams lifting in the afternoon. Good exposure sports I hadn't been involved in as well.

Like I did a lot of work with softball, lacrosse, things that you just don't really get here. But that's where largely like going and doing, being in the gym and doing the lifting stuff, like learn a lot there. But again, that was something that really sort of went, this just isn't like going over. I was like, yeah, cool. I want to maybe one day go and work in the college or whatever. I was like, maybe I'll go back and work there, but just not in that role. You go out and do the conditioning sessions and I go, this is so much more enjoyable.

This is much more what I want to do on paper for a lot of people. It probably goes, oh, that's probably the lazy boring programming side of things. And it's like just guys running up and back to cones or whatever. It's like, no, the in-depth part behind it as to why we're doing it. It's the part that makes me interested. And then also I just saw the opportunity there too, because over in the US, like they very, really good coaches, really good strength coaches. I mean, probably extrapolate that to a lot of the world. And the conditioning is just like, what are you doing?

Yeah. Strength and conditioning my ass. Yeah. You're a strength coach. Strength or conditioning. Yeah. So that sort of started that, I guess, progression of me coming back and almost like for a while I was like identifying myself as a conditioning and strength coach in my own head, like not publicly, but in my own head. Cause it was like, that's what I'm really good at. That's what I enjoy. Apart from anything, that's the type of stuff that I largely train as well, even in an upbringing sense. So then like, but I mean, learnt a lot. Even just going in, I mean, at that point I was still living at home.

So like going and living somewhere completely different, having a fair for myself, learn a lot out of that experience. Nothing tying you back here necessarily too either. Yeah. So that was a really sort of interesting, good experience. And then yeah, coming back, it sort of set me up to have a bit better perspective on being a bit more resourceful too. It's like, I don't have all the stuff that we had there now. Don't have the luxury of just going, all right, what equipment do I need and all that. 600 barbells. Yeah. Try and learn to be a bit more creative.

But then also just sort of chase that opportunity from a conditioning side of things, which then led to inevitably met. So Luke and I actually met through umpiring. He got to state league level and I rip into him about it. It's like, I've gone past him. I'm better than you. Yeah. I'm sure he likes that. Yeah. But yeah, he always just turns around and goes, oh, I retired early, retired early. Yeah. But yeah, from met sightings, he was starting everything up and sort of went, oh, like you're interested in coming over, doing some VO to max testing or sort of start up a bit of a lab, work with triathletes runners.

And I was like, what fits his conditioning thing that I'm really interested in perfectly. And also it's flexible. Like he understands what I do for an umpiring sense, which that's always been the hardest bit in terms of the industry is finding things that are like, I was coming through uni, I could never do a placement cause cause I was already at VFL level at that point, I couldn't do a placement in a footy club. Yeah. I found that because availability, I couldn't do it cause they're like, oh, we want Tuesday, Thursday nights. And then we want a weekend.

I'm like, well, I trained Tuesday, Thursday nights and I don't know where I'm going on the weekend. There's no adaptability. But then also it's conflict of interest. Like if I go out in the weekend and I've got, I don't know, San Diego dragons and Oakley charges, but I'm working at Oakley during the week. Like, yeah, you just can't do it. So that then limited me largely in terms of what I couldn't, couldn't do from a work perspective. And that's where, yeah, Mets was perfect. Cause it's like, I've got this opportunity where I can go and explore the conditioning stuff and really sort of take it whatever direction I ended up wanting to do.

Cause that point, like even Luke didn't really fully know where the business was going to go. I mean, do any of us know where any of the businesses are going to get coming from experience and not in a hostile way. No one knows what we're doing. Lucky he just walked in the room. He's not going to hear us, which is not going to matter. Oh, Nick was just discussing that he has, he had no idea where Mets was going and I said, we still don't know where we're going. So, you know, it's not, it's not a bad, not a bad spot to be in.

But yeah, so that sort of gave me the license to sort of do what I wanted to do professionally, but then keep this umpiring thing going. Which has then worked out really, really well. So as I said, rather start largely, it's now a lot of endurance, ultra endurance, and that that's probably gone from having just a more broader, like I want to be working in the conditioning space, like coupled in with some of the lab testing and the physiological testing, bringing all that together. But now more so it's really refined into not exclusively, but I

write programs and things like that for a lot of different endurance type athletes, but almost exclusively the guys I coach really closely are long course triathlon. Like that's 70.3 Ironman. That's where I want to spend the bulk of my time. That's where I like doing the research in and really going in depth with. The other stuff's enjoyable, but like really niche now it's like long course triathlons, what I want to work in for a long time. What's what's of the niche aspect interest you about that? Everything changes after three hours. And, and this is probably where we can maybe lead into like the nutrition side, but it's like, you, that's kind of where I was going a lot.

Like triathlon is a progression in terms of pathway. Most people will go and do like a sprint distance or a short distance tri. They build up to an Olympic distance, they build up to a 70.3 and then they might go and do like an Ironman. What's the difference between those just before you go? So a sprint distance, like sprint distance can change a bit, but commonly a sprint distance is something like a 500 metre swim, 20k bike, and then a 5k run. Olympic distance as it says, is what they do at the Olympics. Usually a 1500 swim, most of the time, 1500, 40k bike and then a 10k run.

A 70.3 is now considered long course. So short course is Olympic unless long course is 70.3. So that's a half Ironman. So a 1.8 or 1.9 k swim, 90 k's on the bike and a half marathon. And then Ironman, a full distance is a 3.8 k swim, 180 k's on the bike and then a marathon. So yeah, it's a pretty ridiculous, like the average age group in the full distance is somewhere between usually 10 to 13 hours. The pro guys are 8 and less, which is absurd because you think about what that actually outputs to be.

One of my guys at the end of last year came fourth in the professional field, ran a 2.48 marathon after doing 180 on the bike and he came fourth. Knowing what the feeling is like coming off a bike on a run too, that just freaks me out. Well, I mean the benchmark from an amateur runner's perspective, most amateurs, if you're a pretty decent runner, want to try and run a sub three hour marathon. These guys are doing that after doing 180 on the bike and after doing 3.8 k swim. After six hours of work, yeah. It's a ridiculous type of event, but that's what makes it so interesting for me.

The other part of it as well is we just don't know enough. Like the research is nowhere near advanced as it is in say football or strength science or like look at the explosion like velocity based training over the last of a while. Lots of research coming out. How do you research anything unless I force someone to be in my lab for six hours on a bike and then I start testing them? Like it's hard to recruit, but then also like I can't test them mid race. Yeah, your pool is tiny and your availability for someone to do that just because they want to.

But like even if you go, all right, I'm going to test some things from a race perspective. Like the rules of the race state, there's no outside assistance. Like you get the aid sessions on course, but like I can't go just take a lactate sample. Yeah. A hundred k into the bike while they're racing because apart from anything, they're going like 44 k an hour. But then like we just, I can't go in cause it's outside assistance. So they're DQ'd. So from a research perspective, there's not a lot there. And that's the part that I go, there's a lot of opportunity in the space, but also the exciting part is like kind of got to figure stuff out.

Work your own shit out and create your own research. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you find a few people who are finding ways to make it work and you sort of test those out and go, well, it didn't actually really work. So like why didn't it work or why does it work? So that's, that's the kind of cool part. Whereas like there's a lot of marathon running research, much easier. Like the elite level, they're running two hours, two hours, 10. So that's probably where I've really sort of niche down. Like that's the part that I guess excites me about it is like there's so much unknown, but there'll be so much I'll work out as I keep working in it.

Yeah. And then as the sport of like the last 12 to 18 months, it's just gone bananas. Like there's people doing some pretty ridiculous things now. Yeah. What are your metrics use apart from obviously just global time or absolute time? What are your metrics? What are you working with? So like really simply break it down sport by sport. I mean, ultimately it it's a start line to finish lines there. We got to try and get there as quick as we can, but within that we got to break it down sport by sport and go, where are the opportunities?

So a lot of the triathletes who come in from a running background typically are a bit weaker on the bike. Yeah. What are the fixes there? So bike wise, we're looking at things like normalized power. So normalized power is a better version of average power. It's like we take a 90 K segment and a half Ironman and I look at their normalized power. It gives me what their actual physiological effort is. What's the difference between the two? So average power would be like if you're riding along, it was purely calculate the average. So take like your power is gonna be volatile.

So there'll be certain section you might go up a little hill, descend, surge, whatever it might be, go around someone. Your power profile is going up and down, up and down, up and down. It'll calculate the average of that. So you have a look. Typically the normalized power will be slightly higher than that. And that represents what the actual physiological effort is. If you stayed at a perfect steady state the entire way, what would that actually have been? So like your average power might be 250, but your normalize might be 270. So all right, if we set you on an ergometer and rode at 270, that's the exertion you would have had.

So something like that's really interesting over time. It's like, are we seeing an improvement in that? We look at things like decoupling as well, which is just a fancy way of saying how volatile is your heart rate for your power output. We basically want that to be as low a variation as we can. So you have a really consistent effort. That's good from like a pacing perspective too. And then again, like we're looking at individually from a sport perspective, like we know towards the back end, second half of the run, you're going to start to, you're going to be starting to fatigue.

You're half eye memorized, like you're three and a half, four hours in. Eye memorized, you're seven, eight, nine hours in. What did that look like? Where did that occur? We're then balancing things like, what's your perception of that too? Like, did you experience any gastrointestinal upset? Was it like, did you just start to feel flat? So is it something we could resolve with caffeine? Is it something we can resolve with fueling? Were we just not conditioned enough? Did you cramp? Was it because of the conditions and hydration or was it because you just didn't do enough work?

Like all of that starts to become apparent based on what we're then seeing are those general trends of the data. So there's a couple of key things to look at, but you then just got to start breaking down bit by bit. Where do you start? I generally will start with, like I said, you commonly know where the weaknesses are already. If someone's come from a running background, okay, I'm going to start with the bike and go, how can we get this up? Because if we're looking at diminishing returns, they're going to have more to gain on the bike.

If they haven't done as much, they don't have as much experience. From that perspective, particularly in the age group guys, like the pros as well, but pros, it's more so like 1% or optimization type things. But the age group guys, I'm looking at the actual exertion part and then I'm looking at what was your aerodynamics like? What skin suit did you buy? What helmet did you buy? Are you actually fit correctly on your bike? It's one of those sports that tech plays a really, really big role. You might be producing more than enough power, but you're slow because you've got a horrible position and you're not slippery enough through the air.

That's a really easy way to gain one, two K an hour on average. And that's where it's so individualized in terms of like, you might have two athletes who are very similar profile before they start, but they race completely differently. In which case you then got to start to look at just what are the opportunities for that individual? Like, was it something back into the run? Was it partway through the bike? Was it something to do with equipment or was it actually a physiological thing? You've really just got to sort of just go through a process of just ticking every box.

What happened in the swim? Did we go out too hard? What did we have in the half an hour before the swim? How did we fuel up the days before? What's the wetsuit like? Was it too tight so you couldn't get a full extension? Did you have your tri-suit up under your wetsuit or down? Did that help? Did you get kicked in the face when you jumped in the water? I mean, it's not like swimming in a pool. They don't do the mass starts anymore, which is a little less chaotic, but like old Ironman, they used to set 1500 age groupers off at the same time.

They'd call it the washing machine. Like you just have feet, arms going everywhere and no one cares. They'll grab your foot and they'll pull you down. It's free for all. There's kind of no rules. There's no way to not mandate a duty kit. I was going to say, which is hilarious because then you get to the bike and you don't want to sit within 12 metres but put a person in front. How dare you draft? How dare you? But you could drown someone. Yeah, exactly. It's a bit silly like that. So yeah, it's just a process of ticking the box and just going, alright, what have we already ticked off and what do we still need to work on?

Once we tick all those boxes, like we're probably at a point where we need to completely reassess because majority of these guys aren't just satisfied with getting a PB. Really good example of that. Like guy I worked with over the last couple of years and I'll shamelessly plug our Mets podcast. We sat down and had a chat about the last three years and he started out like not even in triathlon. He was clearly endurance inclined, but he hadn't done anything. Went and raced. Then came and saw me and was like, I like this triathlon thing, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

The following year he dropped 50 minutes off his time, which is like in a 70.3 is a lot. He went from like just over five hours to like 4.17. The following year after that, he only dropped a couple of minutes. And so then the challenge there was he'd seen such big improvement and he's getting to this point where it's like we're now looking at incremental gains. But those incremental gains had to come by completely changing everything we were doing. Because the simple basic stuff just wasn't working anymore because he's just not at that point. Our next like six or 12 months was all just nutritional.

We changed a few things from a physiology perspective, but he was going into those races like not really worrying too much about what he was eating in the days leading in. What he was taking during the race was kind of all over the place. We optimised that and he brought time down a little bit and went and did his best time ever. And he finished the race and he just was like, that wasn't like not good enough. He was proud of the effort. But I remember I got it clear as my mind. He ran through the finish shoot of Melbourne 70.3 last year and he went, he's running through and I was like, he's not enjoying this.

He knows he could have given more. He was three minutes off his target time. That's probably why. But ultimately, for these guys, it's like, well, how do we just find that extra little bit? Not to say that it's ever good enough. For some guys, it is age group wise, but when you're at that top end where you're sort of starting to push, could we go professionally here? Like, it's how can we just keep getting better because someone else will keep going and getting better and better and better. Yeah. And I think even with nutrition, like

in that, and obviously I'm not in that space, but I think it's one of those things that people don't realise how beneficial or positive it can be towards your outcome until you realise that it is, if that makes sense. Like it's one of those things that provides such a huge benefit, but you only realise that until someone gives you a kick in the ass and goes, Hey, what are you doing here? Like, yeah. And even finding that from just people doing long distance running. Cause again, that's more my aspect of my area. It's just like

getting someone to take a gel like an hour and a half in like makes a world of a difference, but you don't realise that until someone tells you to do it. And nutrition is one of those things. And as we know, like we all eat food, we eat three, four times a day. Like it's one of those things. It's just, it's obviously essential for us. And it's just part of our makeup. But when we're talking about sports performance, like that's a whole different ball game that can lead to such a positive outcome that I think a lot of people miss.

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And that's where it's like, again, just by duration, something like a half marathon or marathon, or probably more so half marathon for the typical person who might run 90 minutes or two hours. We know we've got a like a reasonably finite carbohydrate store. You can get through an event less than two hours with not much fuel intake. Like it's probably not great, but you could get through two hours worth of continuous running with not taking anything in. Your intensity is going to start to dip, but you'll get through okay. Same with the game of footy.

Like you might top up here and there, but you don't have to take excessive amounts. Past that point though, we know it's just like, if you're not taking anything for 90 to two hours and you keep going, which you think about these races, like they're going 50, 50 odd hour, hour and 10 in the swim alone in a full distance Ironman. And they're not taking anything cause they're in the middle of the ocean. So unless you're going to stall, yeah. So you're going through that first bit where you're not feeling it all. So a lot

of depletion going on in terms of fuel and you're trying to minimise that, but like intensively going out, like you're going to be burning through fuel. You get on the bike and it's like, we have to start topping up now. Otherwise you're going to hit a flat spot really early and you've still got seven hours to go. So a lot of that is, yeah, part of it's just educating people to eat. Like the number of guys I've come in like age group wise and they're like, I had a guy last in the last year doing 70.3 racing.

Like when I say big, bigger frame compared to like the real like light guys who are like 60 kilo. Yeah, like pretty, pretty much. Yeah, he was going, he was going on like 50, not even 50 grams of carbs an hour, which is really quite low. And like the old school recommendation, like 60 to 90 grams an hour for endurance type stuff is that body weight or is there some relative measure of the really, the really old school like why it was just like, well we know we can uptake 60 grams of glucose now. Yeah. The extra 30 comes from another transport.

So fructose and now another sucrose, another carbohydrate source. So, and this is where the long course, like I guess research isn't quite there cause guys are doing 120 and I'll get to that in a sec, but we don't really know how they're actually able to do it. Um, scientifically we only really know up to about 90. So like just educating, it's like, well, if we take an extra 10 grams of carbs, like that's still in the very low end of what we can actually do. Um, he went and he's just like, I've just felt amazing. I just could get right.

I was writing and writing, writing. This is great. Um, cause he was just taking such low intake, but like big guy, he's going to burn through a lot of fuel really, really quickly. Um, so a small little adjustment like that was just getting him into the general recommendations are not even further optimising. I want to keep lifting him up, but it's a process of like, we can't just, I can't just get him to go into that race after racing on less than 50 grams an hour. Um, which if you think, if you want to sort of practical insight on that, that's kind of taking like two gels an hour ish, depending on what your gels are.

Um, which is one every half here. That's not too bad, but that's just not enough. Trying to get him up to say 90, which is kind of like taking three and a half gels, depending on what your gels are. Um, he's not, it's just not going to happen overnight. It's a long process of getting him to be able to first tolerate it. So he doesn't get gastrin on set. What gels are we using at 50 grams an hour? The jelly is currently using the brand he's using might be okay. Once we start putting in more frequently and quicker, that might not be okay anymore.

So do we now start putting carbs in our bottles instead? Um, because we're now taking more gels, is it practical carry them all or do we pick the ones up on course? Like you now start going through this decision making process of how do we actually get in practically. Um, but then you also got to train yourself to actually absorb it. Like you can stop pumping gels. You start pumping gels and you're not used to it. You're going to get sick real trouble. Yeah. You're going to get sick real quick. Um, so, but then even outside of that, like you might then have a really good tolerance of it and be able to absorb it and that's all fine.

We've got a high intake strategy. You get to three hours, gastrointestinal upset sits in, sets in and you're like, I can take gels like no tomorrow in training. Like this is weird. Like I still can get the gels down, but I still get in these problems. Yeah. Well, it probably came back to what did you eat in a couple of days before in terms of type of carbohydrate that you're taking in. Was there already some damage through the test and from the types and sources of food you're getting in? Not bad damage, but just enough. Like how much five were you taking in those couple of days?

Like that might be normal for you week to week, but in a race circumstance where you elevate the intensity just that tiny bit more and do it for a bit longer, it's like now we're in all sorts of trouble and it had nothing to do with your like during race strategy. It was everything in the few days prior. So that's a huge area from a optimization perspective in endurance now. And long course endurance is like you get in your trip, like most guys are fit enough to do what they want to do. They just don't have enough fuel to be able to power the word.

And I think people get stuck in the, I need to increase my capacity, not my ability to use my capacity. And I think that's when we talk about, you know, people struggling with nutritional and not having an understanding of how beneficial it is. I think it's easier for us as humans to think, train more, get better, get fitter, can do more. Yep. We forget that there's things that actually make us a little bit better at doing that. Whether that from a movement perspective is clearing up an ankle or a hip or a shoulder or something

that makes our movement more efficient or from a nutritional point of view of better utilizing or increasing our fuel storages so that we can actually utilize it. Yeah. With, I guess with nutritional strategies, if we're talking about like, let's say someone wants to prepare for a marathon, it doesn't matter what it is, anything, whether that is weekend warrior or that is from a professional point of view, what are you kind of blanket starting points or rules for engagement, I guess you could say three or five like non-negotiable things in your, your eyes that you need to be doing.

Purely just nutritional? Yeah. Yeah. Purely just nutritional. Number one, what's your day to day hydration like? Yep. So getting into a, like we know, we know roughly like if you dehydrate about 2%, so you could look at that as like jump on the scales. If you're down by about 2% body weight, you're going to lose about eight to 9% of your performance at threshold. The threshold's a theoretical 45 to an hour. So when we're talking marathon running, running sub threshold to that percentage decline will actually be a little bit smaller at marathon pace. But if you're going into a race already dehydrated, we're in a bit of trouble cause it's only going to get worse.

You're not going to get to a point, like you can dehydrate yourself pretty well and still be running at the end of an event. But if you're going in a bit dehydrated, that's a problem. Biggest thing is it's like, what, what was your hydration like the five or six weeks before the marathon, not just the few days leading and we're like, Oh, it's going to be hot in the weekend. I better drink a bit more. What's your minimum standard for hydration? Very blanket rule. I typically go, if you're about, if you, if you're at least

getting into two to two and a half litres a day for most people prior to what you're then losing from a training sense, you're probably okay. You don't need to be going crazy with it, but that's a very rough rule that fits most, most runners. Some guys are going to be higher and lower based on what you sweat, but that's where it sort of factors in like, like today for like tomorrow, for example, like I'll go out and do a run, like I'll try and get throughout the day, my standard two, two and a half. But then if I've got like an hour run, if I were to weigh myself before and afterwards, see what I've lost.

If I need to put back another litre and a half or two litres on top of that, well that's appropriate for that day. But today I don't have to run, didn't really sweat a lot at the gym this morning. So I might just go a little bit higher than my standard two to two and a half. Is this still like blanket, excuse me, like 1.5 times what you lose? Typically. Yeah. 1.2 to 1.5 again, pending on what that sweat rate was like. I always then go like in key sessions in the week, a little bit of sodium within that, particularly the recovery side of things, just helps you want to drink a bit more.

If, if anything, it's like, yeah, it's the sodium replenishment. The sodium replenishment is great. I mean the one that I'm, I just use a hydrolite tablet, like one hydrolite tablet. Like I, you don't need to go, again, don't need to go overboard, but if anything, something like pretzels, the salt in it's great cause it, once you want to drink more, even just the taste, like hydrolite wise, like it's got a little bit of flavouring in it. So that naturally promotes a little bit of extra hydration. Great. You're going to uptake that fluid a little bit better cause you're going to want to drink it.

We don't want to get to the end of a, end of a run. You've been drinking water during the run or whatever it might be. And now we get to the end and you go, the last thing I want to do today, cause it's been hot and I've been drinking water all day, all through my run is now drink more water. Sometimes that can just be a good change up and then we get back on water later on. Hydration is really, really key. Number two, I'd be going really looking at, it comes down to how long you're out there.

And this is the thing I think a lot of amateurs miss is that if you're a, if you're early kipchoge, so if you're running two hours for a marathon, that is a very different marathon or very different event to somebody who runs four hours and somebody who runs six hours. If you're running four or six, you've got to be more conscious of what you're putting back in than kipchoge who's running two hours. He doesn't have to put a lot cause he vents over short duration. He's just covering ground quicker. He's actually depleting probably less. That's where the longer it goes, the more conscious you have to be.

Something small and reasonably regular is not a bad way to go about it if you're completely new to it. Whether that be gels and then within that find what works. So if you like gels, great. If you don't like gels, find another gel. If you don't like gels at all, eat something. I genuinely personally don't really handle gels too great. So like from a football perspective, like half time I'm just on the lollies. But even like when I go and race like a 70.3, I get to the aid station, I'll pick up a couple lollies or a cup of Coke at an aid station cause it gives me a bit of caffeine as well.

Some people handle the caffeine great. Some people don't like the caffeine. Different doses of caffeine do different things. So you got to practice it and then like find what you like, but then go and practice what you are attempting to do well in advance of the marathon. Like you want to be practicing that schedule pretty well. And I guess probably the last thing to follow on from that is practice above what you're trying to take during the race. So that might be if you're like in a marathon, you could, if you're someone like my size, you can probably get away with sort of 60 grams an hour, 70 grams an hour if you're running like a three-ish hour.

So it's not a lot. So like a couple of gels here and there, maybe some cups of stuff at aid stations. If you're only trying to take in 60, like when you're training runs, try and get 80 back in. For general, what, how much is generally in a gel? Just 20 to 25 is typical. Some will be higher, some will be lower, some will be more watery. You got to factor in what's exactly in them. But practice higher than what you're expecting to take during the race. Cause then when you get to, and in more difficult sources.

So if you're expecting to, in the race, just be on fluids, well take gels in your training cause that's a harder source for you to get down, but then take more of it. Again, to the race day, you're at 60, easier source body just takes it up super quick. From a running perspective, you probably, most people probably aren't going to be on solids. But from a like, I'm in perspective, like that's where we're looking at for some guys, it's like doing gels all day isn't great. We're now taking 15, 20 gels potentially. We got to find bars or bananas or something different.

So that's probably the, that's the biggest thing. It's like the actual input strategy you have, like, yeah, it's important, but you've got to practice that strategy and practice above what you're aiming to take. So you, you're going to get into that race and like, we just eliminating that aspect of guts are just struggling cause you're putting so much back in. Yep. Let's say someone does a, I'm just trying to think of some reasonable times like a four hour marathon. At what stages would you recommend they take an intake? You want to be having something just before we going around in like one 50, one 45 through a half.

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'd be saying, um, if we go right through the day or like right through to until you get to the end of the race, I'd be going, you want to be getting a pretty solid amount of fuel back in about two hours before. So, okay, got to wake up a little bit earlier if your ice starts, but it doesn't have to be huge, but like get a, get a breakfast in the number of guys I chat to just I'm like, come on, like eat. How do you get over that barrier before you go into like some strategies in that four hour marathon?

How do you get over that barrier with people that go, I don't like to eat before I perform? A lot of it really is just setting a good routine. Like if you like you want to have a good day, like get up, get up that little bit earlier. Like some of the guys I've said, get up early, have something to eat and go back and have another 45 minutes. Um, if that makes you feel better. Um, alternatively it's just small, small little increments as we lead in. So you want to like half an hour before you want to be having something small.

So some, some might do a gel, some might do half a banana, music bar type of thing like that. Just small, quick little top up. Obviously you want to eat well day or two before as well. Um, but then in, in a marathon, typically I say try to get to the 45 minute mark as best you can without really taking too much. A lot of people who are used to gels and know taking gels once you take them, you'd feel like you can't stop. Um, because your body will be like, Oh, this is nice. Start up taking it.

The further you get more depletion or want to take it up quick. If we're just taking gel, gel, gel, gel, gel from early, like again, it's just hard to keep that right up and you start to pay for it a bit later. But that's why I say if you can try to get the 45 to an hour mark first before you start really having to dip in apart from anything like just settle into the racing, get comfortable in the race first. But then at that point, like an event like that, you spent an half an hour getting out of traffic anyways.

Yeah. A hundred percent. And so that's where it's like you just want to be settled before you start taking on nutrition and worrying about that. At that point then, um, it's going to be different in terms of schedule. I don't necessarily recommend specifically, Oh, you have to take something every half hour. It's not a part of it is a as need, like you feeling like you need something, take it. If you don't feel like you need it, how long has it been since the last one? If it's been 45 minutes? Yeah. Okay. It's probably a good idea.

Yep. Just make logical decisions through a marathon. Like something like again, four hours, like, and probably a weekend at the intensity pay. So it's like three and a half to four hours is very, very common. Um, that's in that sort of five minute K pace sort of category around either side of that. I can do my math. Good. But that's where I go. Like just something semi regular is going to be fine. Like you're not getting to the end of that. You, the intensities you're running out, as long as you are taking something which could be just a joke, you might take a gel every 45 minutes.

Like that's going to be probably enough for those paces. Um, marathon running an event like that. You can generally get away with it. It's as we start getting longer than that. That's where it's like, but then also from a running perspective, like how many gels can you actually carry? If you want to take your own nutrition, how many gels can you carry when you run? Yeah. Like are you going to try and carry 10? Good luck to you. Cause how many pockets you got? Most people don't have any pockets running. Yeah. So then you go, Oh, am I relying on what's on course?

Is that giving me enough? Like, okay, I'm not taking as many gels, so I'm going to save them for every 45 minutes. But then every aid station in those 20 minute increments in between, I might just have a seat and do like a little mouth rinse of carbohydrate. So I just pick up a Gatorade cup, mouth rinse it. You can swallow it if you want. Or you can spit it back out. Like that's going to give you a bit of an effect. We know that mouth rinsing works. Um, and it's just a small little dosage to get you through to the next gel.

I mean all of these things are going to be highly, highly individual cost like how frequently and stuff. Um, but, and like what that source is like, I have guys who just like get the Ziploc bags and just pour a bunch of honey in it. Interesting. Um, those like I've had people freeze honey, the fuel belt, um, little bottles. So when I say fuel belt, for those who aren't familiar, it's a very triathlon thing. It's literally a clip on belt that has little bottles in those little bottles. It's a triathlon bum bag. Um, those little bottles.

So Lionel Sanders is one of the best, like leading triathletes, long cause triathletes in the world. He does maple syrup and salt. Interesting. Yeah. He's Canadian. Yeah. Mac checks out. But like something like that, like if you like maple syrup and you don't like gels, like maple syrup's a really easy source to get carbohydrate. Yeah. I've had people like freeze like honey and water, like make a brittle kind of thing. It tastes good. If it tastes good and you like getting it like those, all these variations, but like having a thing like that, you might be able to load it up a bit thicker and just sip on it.

So you're not taking the whole lot down, but then in between you're taking some other stuff. So I generally say as long as you're getting something in semi regularly throughout and just gradually little top up to you and that you're going to be fine at those paces. Just once we go and start going significantly faster, you get yourself into trouble cause you burn through the fuel hell of a lot quicker. Yeah. So we've got hydration number one, gradual intake number two. What's maybe number three. I reckon number three is back on what I was saying with like practice, you practice your fueling prior and practice above and practice more difficult than what you're actually going to do.

I think it's very personal. Yep. 100% 100%. It's like, and like you look at it from a training sense and go, well for like something like half marathon, I go, typically you want a few more Ks in the legs than what you're actually going to be running on the day or at least more time in the legs. So we do it. We conditioned a bit over so that the under on race day is much easier. Same with nutrition and same with hydration. Yeah. Yeah. Is, can we take a little pause? Yeah. We're done in like five.

Can you hold? I've been sitting here a while. I've been getting through this. I got one more question and then we're done. My last question is what a, for someone who's looking to get into medium to long form endurance, what is your recommendation? Come and see me. We'll take that one. So my, my, the reasoning, the way that comes from, we had a board on our whiteboard, we have a question every week. Um, what was the question last week was what do you want to achieve in 2023? And I'll have a lot of people, 5k run, 10k run, half marathon, marathon, IMX, et cetera.

That was a lot of the common themes last year. And as we know the 2023 new, you knew me kind of thing. A lot of people start this time of year is a killer. Yeah. A lot of people start like that, which is great. But what is for someone who maybe has already started doing a little bit or, you know, hasn't, but wants to, what is your recommendation in that space? It largely depends on what that goal is. I mean, it's very different to a 10k. Um, my first thing is go and speak to someone

who knows what they're talking about, whether it's a coach, an SNC coach, like someone who has a, or gone and done one of those events, like someone who has just that extra little bit of expertise than what you already have, mainly just to see if it's realistic or not. Yeah. The number of athletes who come to see me and go, yeah, you knew me, I'm going to go into an Ironman. First question I asked you, you had a triathlon before. Yeah. If the answer is no, I say go into a sprint. Yeah. Cause even if, even if they want me to coach them from the outset and they go, you're going to be the best person.

Like I know you can, I know, I know I can get them to there. They might hate triathlon. Like if they haven't done one before, they might hate it. Have you swum an open water? No. Probably go do that first. Cause if you get out there and you get like Geelong 70.3 is coming up in a couple of months like that, that course out at Geelong in the bay is basically a triangle. You go out by like you go out good five, six, 700 metres just into the middle of the bay swimming. If you're not comfortable there and you have to get rescued, so to speak, cause you're uncomfortable, you panic, whatever.

And or you can't make the cutoff time. Race is done. So why are we doing nine months of prep if you, if you're not gonna be able to actually handle the demand? So a lot of that, that sounds harsh, but it's, it's, we just got to be realistic about the timeline. Like maybe this year is not the year to do the Ironman. This year might be the year to do half Ironman or let's go and do an Olympic distance. That progression might happen really quickly. Cool. We tick that off really fast. Now we can build. Great.

Like that'll work for some people. So I think the biggest part of it is like set your goal and get really excited about it and then be willing to have a really realistic conversation if it's achievable. It definitely can be particularly if you put down the goal is Ironman, the cutoff 16 hours and there's cut offs throughout the event. Personally for me, I would rather you get into that race and you might be a 12 or 13 or 14 hour. That's fine. You're well under the cutoff, but like if you're going to deliberately have a 14 or 15 hour day because you just want to make yourself hurt, you're a crazy person.

But I want you to be able to get through that race and feel like, yes, I've achieved it, but I achieved it really like I did really well. Like maybe in my mind I thought I could just complete it, but I did 11 hours like that well above my expectation. Like I would rather we do that because we've built a really good foundation of gradually moving through the distances. Then we did it when you're ready for it rather than jump in and you just have the worst experience. Because again, from my side, it's like I want people to come and race triathlon.

It's a great sport. It's really great community. But it's the type of thing that like you just got to be realistic about what's the timeline, the expectations of where you're at now, where you can go. Outside of that, largely then it's just set as much of a foundation as you can. You want Ks in the legs. Don't have to go overboard with it, but just gradually just build just general volume. If you're looking at a nine month timeline, like as we sit here, a lot of people who look at Ironman might be doing Busselton. So that's first weekend of December every year.

We've got 11 months to prep. These few couple of months, even the guys that like I coach and things like that, I'm just like, we just got to accumulate. Like I'm not really fast. Like we'll have some high intensity in there to mix it up, some variety. The volume's not massive just yet, but it's just, we just have to get two, three, four months of just really consistent. You get out there, you get it done. We nail it, we go again. You just want to be bulletproof to be able to go, I can handle bigger training volumes.

Not a problem. They're the two things. Yeah. Time is crucial. Yep. A hundred percent. Cool. Any more for any more? Appreciate you coming down again. All good. You've been down here a few times for a little lift here and there, but it only took me four seasons to be on the podcast. Hey, don't blame me. Blame the other two. I'm the new guy now. You're the host, aren't you? I'm now. I'm taking over. I'm taking over this place now. Too much spare time on my hands, you know, just like to talk to people. No, I appreciate you coming down.

I'll put the Mets podcast and things and your Instagram in the description. Well, Georgia Wilkes, you know, she's a star and that's what we pay her for. So no, no, I appreciate you coming down. I'm sure it was highly valuable to a lot of people. One, just learning about you and what the umpiring side of life is. You know, lots of people are football fans, but also from, as we said, this year, January, everyone wants to do something endurance based and you knew me. So, uh, some very important tools and strategies for people that they can utilize, which is fantastic, especially for our members clients, but also people in the wider community.

So I appreciate you coming down. No worries. You too. Have a good day.