S1E04 · Greg Dea #ThePhys (Hacking Success)

Hey guys. Welcome to the Virtus Performance Podcast. This is episode 4. We were lucky enough today to sit down and speak to our resident physio, Greg Day, also known as The Fizz or Batman. Greg's someone who's been around the industry and around physiotherapy and human movement for a long period of time, so it was really exciting to get a little bit of an insight into what he's done for the last 15, 20 years and how he got into the industry and the challenges and the setbacks and everything he's faced. We delved pretty deep into goal

setting and success and what that looks like and all the different strategies and different ways he's been able to achieve all of the things he's achieved, so yeah, enjoy. Alrighty guys, this is episode 4 of the Virtus Performance Podcast. We have the man, the myth, the legend, Batman, Greg Day. Welcome. Thank you very much. Great to be here. Good to see you mate. How are you? I'm doing very well. It's been a good day so far. Good. Yeah, good, thank you. Very cold here in Melbourne. Paul, fix the aircon, please. Yeah, very chilly. So today

I guess our main goal is to learn a little bit about the Fizz and how you became the man that you are and also talk a little bit about success and goal setting and mindset and how we can all optimise everything we do every day to get us to where we want to get to. First question. Hit me. How did the Fizz become the Fizz? I think everyone turns a corner after running into a wall. I think if you develop characteristics or competencies that seem to be admirable or whatever they may be, typically because you

hit a rock bottom and you got spat out the other side and you made a decision that you had to be better at what you were and how you were being and so the Fizz as a persona was about striving to do things better and that's just not borrowing from the Verus family but it was about saying that there's this concept which is around happiness that seems to be, everyone seems to talk about but if it's a genuine concept then we have to build a bank of memories that we can look back on upon and

say, I remember that time, that was fantastic, that was great but to build those bank of memories means you need to act in a particular way to get a result and if you don't get the result you have to refine it until you look upon it favourably and positively so I think every circumstance that's looked upon in some kind of elevated status is related to one step at a time and building that bank of positive outcomes that are something that you can draw on and get some strength from. What was that wall that you hit? Depression.

How long ago were you looking? About 2002 but when I was diagnosed at that time you get circumstances where once it was diagnosed I thought, okay they put a name to what I had already felt some years before and I probably felt that at year 6, I probably felt that at year 11, I probably felt that first year university and they were significant moments that not being able to name it and then deal with it meant that once it was finally given some strategy and I said, yeah we can deal with this, we can beat

that, that was when it was probably the turning point because you recognise that somebody was saying it's not just you, there's something going on that says we can work through this but at the same time once you leave a certain individual space whether that be a counsellor or whether it be a doctor or whether it be a loved one it's still up to you to stand on your own two feet so that means, alright I need to find a way to be better and you explore and you develop personally and that means reading, listening, watching,

observing, acting, reflecting and that's a significant process because you have to undo what your default is which is to feel shitty and so that means building that bank of good memories, so yeah that was depression, it's the thing which is much more known about these days, obviously it's very well spoken about in the local AFL community but that was the answer yeah. How much did it help having that, I guess identification, that diagnosis, did that help you kind of realise where you're at and help you kind of look at I guess what you were thankful for and how you were going to move forward?

Yeah well you seek advice of allies, you get to people who know what the steps are to get out of that and that's just where you get around people that can give you a hand up. Sometimes you need a hand out but typically what you really want someone to say is this is not a problem so much as it is a circumstance with a solution and if you start viewing things as a circumstance with a solution so much pressure gets lifted off you and then of course there are steps in place to go ahead and do that.

So that's how it made me feel, it was no longer a problem that was insurmountable but it was a circumstance with a solution and if that solution wasn't quite right then we looked for the next solution. How do you feel as though you transitioned through those mindsets in terms of moving from I guess the depression to looking forward into that shift to positivity and to looking for those happy bank of memories that you spoke about? I guess it comes down to when somebody says something that resonates with you meaning they'll say something that you get

an aha moment and you say that really means something to me and you have to have some shit experiences to hang your hat on why that means something to you. So shifting my way from that depression through the mindsets towards positivity is based on somebody saying something that you can grab onto and if that's something that they say turns out to be false later on but it gave you a hand up. The overall outcome is better and so it was a matter of seeking out people who had something really positive to say and that meant

authors, it meant speakers and it meant people who could give you the take home messages because there's a lot of words that get floated around, there's a lot of passages and a lot of readings and there's a lot of audio and sometimes when you can't walk away from that you think what's my key message here and the key message effectively relates to that there's a process of thinking that leads us to feel something good or bad. Every emotion that we have effectively sits into one of those two categories that either feels good or bad or

as I discovered indifferent, depression brings on a lot of indifference but you've got two ends of the spectrum and depending on how balanced you are maybe a massive chunk of indifference in the centre. So everything that you think about fits into one of those three categories and then if you take an action based on that emotion whether it's a good emotion or a bad emotion then that action will lead you in a particular direction and there will be an outcome and if you look back on that outcome and you think about it, now we're back

to the think again, then how you think about that outcome is that you'll feel good about the outcome or you'll feel bad and if you feel good then you'll keep doing that action or you'll refine it to be better and if you feel bad you'll change your action to get a different outcome and if you are in this category where your thoughts lead you to feel very, very indifferent and you don't decide to take an action, well you still end up with an outcome. The outcome is that you're in the same circumstance as you were prior to that.

So then you still have the advantage of saying well to a large extent I'm in charge of a lot of the outcomes in my life and that means that you develop a lot of self-reliance and self-reliance gives you a great deal of confidence if you follow the process that says what I think about determines a lot about how I feel and then how I feel determines about whether I take action. Some people need a great deal of emotion to take a step and all of us are running towards something or away from something else or we're just sitting still.

Some people take a great deal of emotion to run away from something and others need a great deal to run towards something. And then for others the indifference really holds you in the same place. So the mindset away from the depression towards the positivity was really based on how much do you want something, what are your current set of actions producing in terms of outcomes and then what can you do differently and if you don't know what you do differently you seek the advice and the counselling of people who have already achieved what it is

that you might be looking for and that's where you sort of wrap yourself up in like-minded people or those who aren't like-minded but you can see do some good things and who emanate some good energy. Who are those important resources for you back then? Bob Proctor was one. Bob Proctor is from, I think he's from Canada. Jack Canfield who is the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Those two were very prominent in the early days and then reading books by Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, some of the early 20th century authors who were involved in studying what people did that made a difference to their lives in terms of achievement.

And one of the great lines that came out of Napoleon Hill was that success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal which means find yourself a worthy ideal and then work progressively to achieve that and one of the other definitions was that success and achievement are not necessarily the same thing. Achievement is what you accomplish irrespective of anybody else recognises it or not and success might be when somebody else recognises your achievement and so in this current era where social media can be a lot of people's source of dopamine dumps which is that moment

where how many likes did I get, has somebody commented, you're looking for somebody else's recognition of an achievement and your achievement is the posting of something and there's no critique about that post at all, it's just saying that your post is in itself an achievement irrespective of whether somebody else recognises that. So that's one way to separate achievement and success and I think moving towards achievement is probably a better way to go and if we redefine Napoleon Hill's definition of success which was the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal, maybe we should be saying that

achievement is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal and that success is the external recognition of that achievement and I think you can get caught up in chasing success and forgetting that the real core of success is achievement and whether you get the recognition or not is irrelevant or it could be irrelevant because maybe you need to make business out of it. Correct. Okay so there are different ways to go about it but ultimately success without achievement just can't happen and achievement is up to you and it does take a few steps and you may need some people around you to help you get there.

Once you run the council of people like Bob Proctor and Jack Canfield and Napoleon Hill and then of course we could choose more modern authors like Tony Robbins, you know those kind of personal development people, you do try to get around others who resonate similar messages whether that be in your professional world or whether that be in your personal life and the simplest way to get around that is to say when I'm in that person's space or when I hear their words or when they talk, do I feel better off afterwards? Yep. That's the simplest way to work it out.

And if I feel better off afterwards then that's an interaction that's worth keeping, correct? Yeah. And eventually you weigh up how many interactions are worth keeping versus how many aren't. There's only so many times we can speak to you during the day. Yeah, exactly. What was your, you spoke about chasing that ideal, what was yours? The ideal comes, it's a really good question, my ideal is always to have the world be a better place. Good. And I think you find when you ask every single person what their goals are, I do this thing where people come and ask me and I poke them because they say, this is my goal, I say why is that your goal?

Because X, Y, and Z, okay well what would happen if X, Y, and Z occurred? Okay, well because of something else, well what would happen if that had occurred? And what would happen if that occurred? And if I could make all of those things happen tomorrow, then what? And inevitably people arrive at this circumstance where they say, because then the world will be a better place. And we say, aha, that's your, that's what really you should keep in mind, that if the world is a better place for this time that you've spent in it, and the actions that you've taken, then you have achieved an ultimate goal.

And then how you've achieved that doesn't really matter. So that would have been my progressive worthy ideal, I had to find what that was. What it did mean is that the pressure to succeed in my particular career didn't really matter. If the world was a better place and I happened to turn up to work, and come home each day, that didn't really matter what work looked like. And that took a lot of pressure off, because then you're not defining your success and work by what somebody else has said it should look like. Because if you

have heard this statistic before, apparently everybody who's going through university or high school these days is needing to be prepared for jobs that have yet to be created. So those that are teaching you about the jobs and the lifestyle and the career that they are saying this is what it's likely to be like, are already outdated. So inevitably, if you've got a progressive or worthy ideal, which is that the world is a better place, then what your work looks like doesn't necessarily matter. Well I guess you're a very motivated person, well, motivating and motivated, but

coming into this environment we see your drive all day, every day, how much of that drive comes from that ideal and how much comes from those resources and your allies, as you said before, reading and listening to those guys? How much? A lot of it for me is subconscious now, so it hasn't always been a conscious decision to draw on the words of allies, it hasn't been a conscious decision to muster my own motivation, it's a conscious decision that today, the person who's coming in front of me, I need to make sure that they're better when they leave me.

And as soon as I don't feel that, that I've got that energy to give, honestly, I reschedule people. Honestly, I'll take some time to recharge and to energise because that's an interaction that is the most valuable interaction you can get. So I'm in that circumstance where I can make those decisions and that's a circumstance that I created. It doesn't happen very often because if you get the balance right then you're not in a circumstance where you're lacking energy when you get up in the morning. And that is related to setting a balance that says, I've

got to push today and I've got to move today and I've got to regenerate today and I need to sleep more and I need to drink more and I need to get around people that lift me up rather than push me down. Because I think when you get ahead, you shouldn't be getting ahead by pushing others down, you should be getting ahead by what it is that you create and by the legacy that you leave behind, if that includes the one hour that you just had with somebody. So in the past, being able to fulfil

a full day where you hang out with people could be very draining for individuals and therefore you have to work out what it is that you loved and typically what you love doing if you're in the service industry is changing behaviour. Because we talk about the goal of communication is to inform, well I think the goal of communication is to change behaviour and if you're getting behavioural changes in the individuals that have asked for your help, then that's actually self-fulfilling in its energy. I mean you get back what you put in and that's the ultimate service goal really.

So I think it's just getting that balance of what I do actually contributes back to me as well as helping them and that's very selfish and I have heard it said that everything, there is no such thing as altruism. Altruism is false, that we all do something because it makes us feel better because of that. And if that's the case, and I'm not going to argue that it isn't, then as long as I feel better as a result of somebody else being better, I feel like if that's the best case scenario, then I'm okay with that.

You spoke about changing behaviour and it's something that I guess we do in here every day, we try and change behaviour. When does it cease being, sorry I had to word this question, when does it become, when does the onus move to the individual whose behaviour you're trying to change and off of you as a coach, as a physio? Super early. Three questions. What is your goal? Where are you now and what are you prepared to do about that? Most people have yet to define what their goal is and that's perfectly okay because we want to help them do that.

The second one is where are they now? That takes a professional to evaluate what their current competencies are and what their capacity is and where the deficiencies might be. That's answering us the second question. The third question is what are you prepared to do about it? That also takes a bit of time to tease out because people don't always know what is required to achieve what it is that they came to you for when they didn't know why they were coming to you. So pretty early on you want to create some barriers because I think that desire should be unlimited but desire should be shaped and shaping desire is the job of those people that support you.

So you should reach for the stars, reach for the end of the universe and if you fail you fall amongst the rest of the stars. So have an unlimited desire but get around people that help to shape that. So if you've started to shape the desire for people and they are not demonstrating that their desire is as strong as what you have interpreted it to be, that's when you just have a conversation because you don't judge people negatively for it but you just ask them is your heart in this, is there other stuff in life that's perhaps stealing from your energy when you come to work with me on this particular thing.

If that's the case let's re-evaluate the meaningfulness to this and maybe put it on hold for a bit or let's look at what we might be able to do to take away some of the energy stealing stuff that's holding you back from that. And that means what you end up being is still focused on the service paradigm that you're able to provide as a professional but doesn't mean that you're ignoring the fact that life happens and shit happens and not everyone has clearly articulated what it is that you'd like them to and you have to help them to do that.

So I think that's just a process of having a relationship with people as opposed to just being a service provider. How important is the environment that people come into when it comes to change behaviour? Well your culture has to leave you better than when you walked into it and hopefully you leave that culture better than when you were in it before that, when you weren't in it. So that environment is so important. Some people are more sensitive to the culture and the environment, others are more robust and more resilient to being buffered around. I consider

it to be something like if you're driving a car down a motorway and you go into a tunnel, that tunnel buffers you from all the potential interactions of crossroads and roundabouts but at some stage you have to exit that tunnel. And if you consider that some road tunnels might be more robust than others then you can be really protected or you can be exposed. And at some point we have to - I've forgotten what I was going to say - the fizz is stumped. I've gone off my own tangent and I've lost it. I think

what we were saying is that the culture is really important because you have to be in a place that you feel supported, that you can support and that you're not worse off when you leave it. And some people can deal with that in the most difficult circumstances, in the difficult cultures and others require a little bit more protection. And that's a personal thing. So now you've spent a little bit longer in the tunnel. More in the tunnel. Good. A little bit less time out in the elements. Exactly. But every now and then poke your head out and just check that the elements are clear.

They're still there. They can be safe. And that's just exposure. It's greater exposure and it's part of the step-by-step process and the progressive realisation is that we - where most people fall down and most people have failures is related to their perception that the challenges that are in front of them are way too high compared to the skill level that they've got. Anxiety and worry is related to people's perception that the challenge in front of them is too high relative to the skills that they've got. So how you overcome anxiety and worry when it comes

to everything is to either drop the challenge down, which maybe means improving the culture and the environment around you so that the challenge is more supportive, or gradually increasing your skills to deal with that challenge. And when you do that, you move away from anxiety and worry and you move into arousal towards the state of flow, which is that pivotal state where you feel like not only is this challenge meaningful to me, I also feel like I've got the skills to achieve it and it's just outside of my skill set level that I want to chase that and get it down.

And that's the experience that we want to use when people feel like they need to overcome an adversity. And culture matters in that, that we help people's skill level come up and we bring the challenge level down so that they actually walk out having a little win every day. Where do you think people go wrong with the goal setting and finding that motivation? Do they set the challenge too far ahead or do they set it too close and achieve it and then not have anything else to chase? Yeah, it's a combination of that. The other

part is that we had a really good question from Jess Ryan and the thing is that if we procrastinate it's because we stopped attaching meanings to our goal and so maybe the goal that you didn't quite articulate at the very beginning has changed. The original goal has lost some meaning and so you have a little setback and you're yet to redefine your next goal. But procrastination doesn't really exist, it just means that you don't have any meaning for what it is that you set out to do. So you need to find meaning in what it is so that you get after it again.

And in the current first world that we live in we're very comfortable to a great extent. So being very comfortable means that if I don't achieve that goal am I going to be any worse off? And for the most part most people would answer not really, we're pretty comfortable. So we need to find a way to attach more meaning to that goal and sometimes it's also worth understanding, am I moving towards something or am I moving away from something else? And if you say I'm moving away from something else you'd say well if I stay with that thing how is it going to negatively affect me now?

If I move away from it will I be better off? Or just think about all the stuff that you cut away and we always feel enlightened by that. Of course. What are the main things you find people are running away from? Well it could be so many things which means I haven't yet thought of an answer to that. People are running away from responsibility, people are running away from expectation, people are running away from disappointment, people are running away from fear, the disappointment of others being disappointed in them, they're running away from anything which fits into that negative box from an emotional point of view.

And typically they should be running towards things which fit into the good emotions. And if there's a large indifference zone then people are less likely to run towards or away from because it's reasonably comfortable. So there's a process called T-E-A-R which is thoughts, emotions, actions, results which I described earlier. And this happens whether you know it or not. It pays dividends to know that this happens. Of course. How do you deal with setbacks day to day and how do you deal with those constant things that knock you down? Like you said before life happens, shit happens.

But how do you deal with that and how do you think people can deal with that better? Frustrations that arise from setbacks are typically because we imagine something differently. So a setback is going to occur because we can't drive in a tunnel all the time. We're going to have to deal with other cars on a road. We're going to have to deal with roundabouts and T-intersections and stop lights. So you can't imagine going for a drive is going to be a single tunnel all the way there. That's first. Clear that up. Once that occurs you know that you're going to have setbacks.

The other thing is that every goal that you set, every achievement that occurs has an estimated timeframe to achieve. We call that a gestation period. But unlike humans where that gestation period is relatively fixed, give or take, the gestation period of what we achieve is highly variable. And to deal with a setback says that just because you didn't meet that by this particular time, just because you've been met with a hurdle, that doesn't mean that it's not going to occur. It just means that your imagination about how soon it was going to take has an error to it.

Keep that image of the plan that you've got and the process that you've got on the forefront of your mind and remember why you set it out that particular process and plough on. And take another step forward so that you can look back and say I'm now one step closer to that goal or one step further away from what that is that I'm moving away from. And when you look back on that you say well if I am one step forward I must be getting closer. I just thought I'd be there a bit quicker. How you deal with setbacks is to say we don't define how long it's going to take.

Just keep at it. Keep on track. Keep doing the little things well. Make use of the allies that boost you and support you. What do you mean by allies? Just for those guys that haven't heard the term before? In terms of goals what you do is you say what do I want? And that's based on desire. And you say well what do I have? To a large extent that's based on the people around you that give you. Whether that be the local milk bar owner who gives you your milk. Or whether that be your boss who gives you a pay rise.

Or whether that be the government who permits you to have a lifestyle that with clean roads allows you to get to work every single day. So your desire shapes what it is that you want that you've got right now. It also desires your desire shapes what it is that you want that you don't quite have but you think you're pretty close. And your desire shapes what it is that would really scare you and excite you at the same time if you absolutely achieved it. Well achieving those desire based goals about what you want needs the

help of those around you who can give you support, who can boost you, who can show you technically exactly what the steps are to do it. Or who can love you and say I'm so wrapped about how far you've come it looks like you're going in such a great direction. So an ally is somebody who works on your side and that's why your goals should be shaped by desire but supported by your allies. Beautiful, that's a very good answer. Do you still follow all that same goal setting and that same recipe for your success? Yeah, absolutely.

And what's more calming is to recognise that how the goal actually looks when it's finished and when it's achieved is rarely the same as what you set out for it to look like when you start. And it nearly always takes longer than what you anticipate or would like. And recognise we are currently conditioned towards some degree of hedonism. We want things now. We expect them now, we're living for this particular point in time. And irrespective of whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or a necessary thing or not, it does shorten what our expectation is.

So I still live that because I still think that the world would be a better place for the things that I attempt to do. And even the attempt makes the world a better place. So from that point in time I feel more content about that. And being content about it leaves me feeling better and that allows me to keep doing the things that I like to do to take me towards those goals. And so they keep occurring. Beautiful. Really, really good answer. I guess this is a little bit about what you do day to day in here as the Fizz.

What advice really or simply would you have for people who don't necessarily finish what they start or don't necessarily find that right level of goal setting or of challenge? What really, really simply would it just be to simplify it and bring it back to just the little things? I think find meaning in what it is that you want. Get around somebody who helps you to take a step forward towards that. Typically if you can see two steps towards your goal and you can't see any more than two, that's perfectly fine because as soon as you take that first step the third one will have been revealed.

So find meaning in what you do and get around people who can help you take that first step. One of the greatest stories of my professional career was a lady that I looked after in Germany who had a childhood history of polio which affected how she walked and by the time she'd had a couple of kids and would go hiking and the kids would sit on her back and piggyback ride, it would jam up her back and she ended up having a bit of spinal surgery. But at a similar time she was having difficulties with

concentration and memory and that meant that her work was affected so she had spinal surgery, had to quit work, was in a wheelchair and became dependent on her husband. So how we reversed that was one step at a time. We found meaning in what it is that she needed to overcome and we set that meaning at a really very, very low step for me. And for her it was an amazingly large step that gave her great joy to achieve it, even though it looked to the outside world like it was a small step. And it

became a series of steps that led to that particular person being out of the wheelchair walking, taking up running, not necessarily taking up running in her local area but beginning to tour the world again and run in the desert and run in other countries and to drive again and to go back to work and to go back to her family. And it was just about finding meaning and taking one step and then having somebody help them take that first step and the second step. So again, making use of allies and basing that on desire. I'm certainly someone who struggles with lack of progress and not moving as fast as I want.

And I guess you're always someone who's around here and knows what to say at the right time. You sent me a picture a couple of weeks ago. I don't know how you knew but I was just having one of those days and you sent me a picture that was basically Heather Fizz knows everything. He does, he does because he's Batman. Take a deep breath, look around and realise how far you've come. And that's one of the things that I've still got it. I've still got it saved on my phone. It's something that I try and

come back to and my goal for the last, I guess, probably six, seven weeks has just been to make everything a little bit better every day. And that's helped my perspective on everything significantly. And one of the big strategies we have here at Virtus, whether it be in the rehab world or the performance world, is that breathing is such an important part of the movement strategy and the preparing to move strategy and the preparing to regenerate strategy. And it doesn't have to be just a part of that once you're in the gym. It should be

a part of your direction, whether that be movement and performance or whether it be related to a bigger picture that you stop and breathe and failing to do that means that you are constantly on the go. And we know the physiological effects of that related to cortisol and stress and weight gain and poor sleep and all of those type of things. So, you know, some of the simplest advice that's ever been given is stop, smile, breathe, face the sun. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Do it again. Because when you come back to do the work that it is that you have to do, you're so much more energized.

And often for a lot of people, it's I don't have time to do that. If you UCLA head basketball coach John Wooden said, if you don't have time to do it properly the first time, when will you find the time to do it when you have to repeat it? Yeah. So breathe, smile, face the sun, repeat. And that's how you overcome the perception that you are not getting there fast enough. That requires you to actually stop and look back and say, well, yeah, progress. The gestation period for how long it's going to take is your imagination.

And your imagination doesn't always get it right. So recognize that from the start and say, well, don't be attached to your imagination. Yes, use your imagination to form your desire and use your allies to shape that. But recognize that, you know, the world gets in the way. It bumps you off course. It causes you to slow down at roundabouts. That's just life. I'm really very good at waiting in queues because I don't really care. I've got nowhere else to be to get that job done. It takes longer than I'd like it to be, but where else do I need to be?

And if I need to be somewhere else, I just get out of the queue and I reprioritize what's meaningful. It's definitely a lot more exciting being on the road, going around the roundabouts and sitting in the tunnel, looking at the sides, waiting for it to end. And it's something I'm definitely winning the battle with at the moment, just enjoying the journey and enjoying all the little things, all the little wins we have with everyone that comes in here and around me. Going back a little bit, you obviously didn't start with physio, which probably not a lot of people know.

I did not. After school, what did you set out to do and how did you get into physio? I was super energized by track running. I lived next door to Lee Friedman, Melbourne Cup winning trainer. Two doors down from my house was Bark Cummings Stables. Behind my house was David Hayes' Stables. And so my whole street was filled with thoroughbred champions. And I would jog down the end of the road and I was at Flemington Racecourse. So I would take my dog and we would run laps of Flemington Racecourse. That's cool. And this was in the days where security was much more laps.

And I could, if it was a Wednesday midweek track meeting on Tuesday afternoons, they'd set up the hurdles because the hurdles were the first race of the day. And my dog would jump over the hurdles. And we would come back and it would be so energized. And so running for me was really a great thing. And I really enjoyed horse racing because you see a horse overcome something. They come from back in the field and it's just exciting to watch. So we had horse vets in our streets, so I did some work experience with horse vets.

And I said, "This sounds like a pretty cool thing to do." So I decided that I felt really comfortable going to do veterinary science. And that meant that I needed to do a first year of a Bachelor of Science degree, which I undertook. But in the middle of track running during the exam period, I had a burst lung. It actually collapsed. I had a spontaneous pneumothorax, which meant that I missed the final two exams. Now that meant that my results for the end of the first year could not be counted towards the veterinary school. So when it came time for me to finish my exams and submit results, they'd already filled the placings out.

Okay. So I went back and did the second year of science and I missed out by a couple of percentage, fractions of a percentage point to get an average grade. And so I went back and finished the third year. And by that stage, I had spent three years studying human health. I had switched to a track coach who was exceptional, and I was really enjoying the preparation as a human being for excellence in athletic pursuits. So it made sense for me to follow that desire and say, "Well, I feel more inclined to use the human health knowledge that I've got in some way."

And I was asked to come and do an honours project in Alzheimer's disease. And I just couldn't picture myself being in a lab doing scientific research. I wanted to use the benefits of other scientific research. And so that took me to apply to the chiropractic school and also the physical therapy school. And it came down to simple numbers. Chiropractic school said, "We won't pay any attention to the three years that you've just done on pure science and human health science, and you're going to have to start a full five-year degree." And the physio school said, "We'll absolutely recognize that.

You get the first year off and start in the second year." And that shortened it down to three years. And that's how I ended up doing physiotherapy, was just due to a couple of setbacks that were related to really pushing the envelope in track athletics that made me miss some exams, stayed in the science course, ended up doing human work, and stayed with the great track coach that allowed me to achieve. And I guess that original goal shifted and it remained in the performance world. It just happened to be humans as opposed to animals. So the goal looks different, but it's taken me all around the world and I don't regret it one bit.

Tell me about that journey from uni to Virtus, Moynton Peninsula. Okay. In a nutshell, it's been about 17 years. I grew up in Melbourne and moved away from Melbourne after I graduated straightaway. I did a couple of years. I've done about seven or eight years working as a consultant for military in Australia, Germany, and England. So I worked for the British forces in the UK and also in Germany, and I've worked in two states for the Australian Army as a physio. But I was always inclined to be in a circumstance where the tactical athlete whilst highly valuable was not the love that I had.

The love that I had was in performance sports, in achieving on the sporting field. And so there came a time where I got back from Europe and I felt like I had unfinished business and I wanted to be back there and I wanted to move more into sport, which meant I needed a particular type of visa. And that said, get yourself a master's degree and that will qualify you. So I did that and the Europe deal fell through and I stayed in Australia and eventually took a more local direction and that was recognised and I

was invited to come and work at the Northern Territory Institute of Sport after spending a couple of years with the very successful Northern Territory Thunder Football team. And after being the head sports medicine coordinator at the NT Institute of Sport, I was approached by EXOS, which is formerly Athletes Performance and asked if I would come to Beijing to be head physical therapist for the Chinese Olympic to me. And that deal changed and a good friend of mine, Chris Spring, was shifted within the EXOS system out of Shanghai Institute up to Beijing and he took that

role mostly due to being in the system in China a little longer, speaking Mandarin and also being a great clinician, but it left a gap in the Shanghai Institute, which was very much a developing athlete school. And so I headed there and worked full time with my good buddy Rhett Larsen, who when I finished in Shanghai said to Rhett, if you ever need some help, give me a call. And he gave me a call one day and he said, I need you to come and help with the China national volleyball team. I said, great. He said, how long, how soon can you be there?

This was a Monday morning. And I said, possibly the weekend. He said, can you be here Thursday? So within Wednesday I was in Honolulu and spent two weeks with the team. And it was a, from their point of view, they were really content with what we did during that two weeks. And that was another step forward. They invited us back and then I spent time with them through the World Cup and they went on to win World Cup gold and then Olympic gold. And I didn't go with the Indian Olympics because I had been away from my wife for a long time and I, it was a no brainer.

Of course I was going home to her. I wanted to be back at home with her. And that took me back to Australia. And then she eventually had a little goal shift and of great meaning to her was to come and work at Tourette College in Mount Eliza. And when she told me that it was Mount Eliza prospect that she was looking at, I said, we have to go there. The Mornington Peninsula is awesome. Is this true? It's not really Melbourne. Melbourne is the world's most livable city six times in a row. But the Mornington Peninsula is better because we have wineries, beaches, and we are 60 k's south of the hustle and bustle and breweries.

So it was a no brainer. And I knew that all of the teaching that I would continue to do and the prospects of future work in sporting environments and sporting teams was still on the table irrespective of the fact that I was no longer in Beijing or Europe or the US. So that's the abbreviated version. Good. How'd you end up here? Why'd you pick us? That's a really good question. I asked my buddy Rick Nolan, son of the galloping gasometer Nick Nolan from North Melbourne. I said to Rick, who do you know in football down in the Mornington Peninsula?

He said, well, my brother's associated with Mornington Football Club, but we've been trying to get Lucky Wallace to play footy for St. Mary's and Lucky's got a great gym down there. Apparently it's going gangbusters and he's looking for a physio. So at that stage I was chatting to Andrew Reid about doing some work with him out of his performance training facility and the facility was not really in a space at that time to take on that kind of service, which was fine. And so I decided that I was in a circumstance of needing a performance training facility.

So I contacted yourself and here at Virtus and said, hey, do you still need a physio? Let's have a chat. And we obviously start off a couple of days and when I saw what the culture was here and where the direction was, it was a no brainer to say, yeah, we're in. This is the culture to be in. It's been a very fortunate acquisition from our part, having you come in and I guess, I don't necessarily believe things happen for a reason, but I think if you put yourself in the right position, things will happen and you'll end up pretty happy with them.

And I think it's a bit of a sliding doors moment. I did a couple of years there, I was hoping to go out there and play football, but work was just too busy and I remember speaking to Rick on the phone and he mentioned he had a physio and yeah, sure, give him my number, we're still looking and we'd been kind of looking for a little while and hadn't actually spoken to anyone and you were the first one to apply, so probably lucky because you didn't have anyone to compete with. Very fortunate. Well, I think the combination has been productive for everybody.

I'm embedded in Virtus in the last six months, but when I step back and look at what Virtus has done and how it's changed, it has been an amazing last six months particularly. I know the last two years has been a big change, but the last six months has been very, very changing. And I would challenge anybody to say that it's been in the wrong direction, it's been an amazingly forward direction. We're definitely moving. Yeah, so it's been a very strong direction. So yeah, I'm glad to be here, it's been a big journey and that journey doesn't stop for me all the time.

We stopped here and we're staying here, but the goal is still to make the world a better place. And we're climbing that mountain one step at a time. And you do that in here every day. For everyone listening, what would be your, if you could explain your role at Virtus and as a physio, how could you explain it simply? Apart from just making people better. How do you fit in with us? Everyone that comes to see me needs a diagnosis and the best medical professionals in the world do three things well. They communicate well, they get a diagnosis right, first time every time, and they have a treatment and an exercise strategy that addresses that diagnosis.

Now given this is a performance facility and looks after everybody across a wide spectrum, people are aiming for outcomes that take them closer to where they want to be. And sometimes those outcomes have barriers to them. And sometimes those barriers are emotional, sometimes they're energy driven based on regeneration strategies like sleep and food. Sometimes they're based on pure capacity to generate work. And sometimes they're based on medical and health reasons and sometimes they're based on movement competency. So my role is to say, if there's a movement competency, we need to clear that before it becomes an issue, once you start loading that personnel.

So my role is to say, you got a barrier to performance that's not changing. We need to have a diagnosis that's not my opinion. It needs to be clear cut. And then we need to effectively move the needle. That's what performance training is about, is moving the needle. And sometimes there's a barrier to that needle moving. We need to exactly know what it is and get rid of it. So I like to think that that's my role, which means I'm not just helping that client, but I'm helping the Virtus coaches. Because the Virtus coaches do a great job.

And if there's a barrier to their great programming causing an outcome, it's my job to step in and say, let me take that barrier off the table so your great program can now be effective. So it's very symbiotic. And I guess that ability to work together in this multidisciplinary environment helps us get people from point A to point B where they want to get to. And I guess that's probably a disconnect in our industry at the moment is physios don't talk to doctors. Doctors don't talk to strength coaches or PTs. Everyone's kind of got, this is my scope and kind of go a little bit outside of that.

My question for you is how do we improve that on a wider scale? I know we start with one person at a time, but how do we improve that? We get away from having a clinic and we get involved in having a circumstance that forces people to interact. Whether the response comes back that that's not practical or not is a choice and with choices there are consequences. So the choices that I have made and the choices that you have made and the choices that others have made lead to the consequences that we deal with. Well, the choice I make is to be in an environment where I can go to the coach and say, "What do you think?

This is what I'm seeing. Does that marry up? How can we solve that together?" And as quickly as possible that person is broken through that barrier. There are other ways to go about that same process and it can be a phone call and it can be a meeting and it can be a letter. And I don't judge that on anything other than the outcome. The outcome takes as long as it takes or it takes quicker or longer. So I just choose to be in an environment where I've removed those barriers of a phone call and I can be upstairs or downstairs straight away.

Walkie-talkies. Yeah, or we walk up and down. Exactly. What advice would you have for strength coaches and physios and people in our space who are just getting into the industry in terms of what to focus on and what to spend their time doing? If you're a clinician, have a better return to sport discharge criteria. If you're a strength and conditioning or a fitness professional, have a better intake criteria. To expand on that, we're in the job, we enter this industry because we wanted to put our hand up and say, "I will change outcomes. I will help people get back to sport and stay in sport longer."

And I'll replace the word sport with family life and replace the word sport with industrial circumstances or tactical environments. But we're in here to change outcomes and move the needle. Now if you're going to do that and you're going to be someone who leaves the industry and puts your hand up and says, "I did that," the only way you can be judged on that is to prove that you did so. So that means move the needle, which means that when you have barriers that stop people from achieving that, if it's a modifiable barrier, your job is to identify it and do your best to get rid of it.

That's called a discharge criteria. Now as a clinician, when we do that, the strength approach receives that client with very few or many less barriers to performance, which means that they have a cleaner slate to deal with. And so if the strength and conditioning or the fitness professional sets a criteria that says, "If you come to me with these issues, I've got to be a bit stricter before I start programming for you. I'm going to have to get you seen by somebody who's going to take those barriers away that's beyond my scope." And the simplest

thing is if you're in pain and you're a fitness professional and your client comes in pain, you get it diagnosed because pain that appears to be a movement issue or a musculoskeletal issue can actually be a medical issue that you can't stretch out and you can't strengthen out. And there are numerous worldwide stories of people that looked like they had an ankle pain or a back pain that turned out to be horrendous tumors that you can't stretch away and you can't train away. So the intake criteria has got to be stricter. If you're new to

the industry and you're working out how to be better, and if you're a clinician, your ability to put your hand up and say, "I identified things which are going to cause this person to come back and get another injury. I identified them and I took them off the table." There's no way that people who go through a professional rehab service should be at more risk of getting injured than those who don't. And that's currently the way that the injury data says. If you had a previous injury, you're more likely to get a second one, which means we either got the diagnosis wrong or we got our discharge criteria wrong or we didn't have one.

Exactly. So I think that's the best advice we can give to people who straddle that side of capacity versus competency. To finish off, I've got a couple of questions. Some will have nothing to do with what you've spoken about so far. Some may. First one, who are you currently reading about? And this is actually your question that you gave to Katie and Maddie for the first one. Who are you currently reading about? Who are you listening to? Who's doing cool stuff? I am currently reading a Jason Bourne book. Good. And the reason I'm reading that

is because we - it's really important that getting a good sleep matters and having a book that's a page and not a screen is super important. And I love the Jason Bourne movies, so that's what I'm currently reading. If I fluffed around that, the people that I'm reading about happen to be those who are less talking about what they're doing and more talking about the people that they look after, what they're achieving, as a result of what they've been doing. Because that takes ego out of it and it takes success out of it and it takes achievement into it.

And so I scour news for achievement rather than for individual people. Because the cliche is that the only news that's worth a news channel playing is that which causes drama. Well, I prefer to see achievement. I love the story of people like Derek Redmond from the United Kingdom who tore a hamstring in the middle of a 400m final and was told that he would never compete again. He would never run again. And what he did was to overcome that particular setback and still go on to achieve. And his achievements were that he played basketball for Great Britain and he sent a signed photo from his team to the surgeon.

Then he played Division 1 rugby in the United Kingdom and he completed trials for the England Sevens. And he went on to work for UK Athletics, he won a TV Gladio series, he raced motorcycles, provides motivational speaking and owns a superbike team. So there's achievement in spite of. And so what I'm currently reading is to look for those episodes every day in a post, in a feed, in a newspaper. I think I had a second question. What am I reading? And who's doing cool shit? You know, this is, Virtus is doing cool shit. And you're doing cool shit.

And I'm not just pissing in your pocket, but the other people doing cool shit is my wife, who's doing amazing stuff at Turak College. Shout out to CJ. And she's creating an environment where they don't have a boarding house, they have a boarding home. And that matters. That's about a culture. The other people that do really great things from a cultural point of view are people like the guys, the buddies that I worked with in Shanghai who worked for Exos. Now Rodrigo Arrea is in Curitiba in Brazil, you know, doing great things with an organization that really reached out for help.

And Mike Minthorn at Flamengo FC in Brazil, they reached out for help and it's really difficult to take in insiders and really trust them and they're doing some great things. And Rich Husseini has moved away from full-time professional sport work and he's looking at a holistic approach to helping people. And of course, Rhett Larson, who is juggling the development of a youth performance development culture in China with his endeavors to still work at the pointy end and change outcomes, and he's now working with Netherlands volleyball and potentially again with China National Volleyball. So in that

profession, the people that make a difference are those who go in and say, "Yeah, I can help and I'd like to help and it's not easy, but I'm going to be judged by my outcomes." And these people are judged by outcomes and it makes them humble but exceptional. So of course that happens at Virtus as well. Appreciate that. You're welcome. If you could give teenage you one piece of advice, what would it be? Stay off social media. Have they had social media back then? No. No, we didn't have electricity or running water back then. Carry on.

The other piece of advice I'd say is be genuine, which means when you feel - pay attention. When you act, believe in it, and own it, and when you feel the need to grow and expand, get the hell out there and do it. No one's ever worse off for - I say that incorrectly - there are people that have passed away and there are people that have failed massively and there are people that have lost a lot of things. So there's obviously always exceptions, but you need to honour the inner child in you that says,

"I get a buzz of energy when I consider this or think about this or plan that," because Jim Rowan said it really well that if you don't plan your own life, someone else will plan it for you. And guess what they've got in store for you? Not much. So the best bit of advice for my teenage self is to plan your own life, even if that means today. Mark Verstegen, the owner of Exos, took on the German national team and rebuilt them to win the World Cup. One of the strategies they put in place was

a set of threes, that in the fields of mindset, movement, recovery, and nutrition, when you wake up in the morning, you have a strategy for your nutrition, for your recovery, for your movement, and for your mindset. Three hours later, revisit that strategy. Make sure you're on track. Three hours later, visit again. In three days' time, rewrite that strategy, re-evaluate whether you're on track. In three weeks' time, recheck on that. In three months' time, in three years' time. That way, it doesn't get away from you. It's broken down into areas that are important, that are meaningful, that you can take a step towards.

So be genuine. Find what's meaningful. Have unlimited desires. Seek out allies that shape those desires. Hold yourself accountable to those outcomes, and when you get excited about doing something, get after it, because that's what makes life worth living. Awesome. Ripper answer. Now, my next question, you've already answered it, so I'm going to give you another one. You are an FMS and SFMA instructor. How did you get into it, and why do you teach? As a track runner, I was watching people that would break down, and I wanted to see if there were things that could be identified prior to that occurring that made them more likely to.

This happened from the very start of track running. It's no good when good people break down. Of course. So I looked for ways to evaluate what it is that I do, and how people moved, and when I saw that there was a system in place that you could effectively capture a lot of things. Some things were left out, but it was better than what I'd seen previously. So I said, well, that seems to be a very valuable tool, potentially, and I can see how this could influence the way people are going about operating from a tactical point of view, whether that be police, fire, military, professional sporting, or indeed our junior developing individuals.

So it made sense for me to learn more about it. Luckily, I was strict enough to say, alright, if you evaluate somebody using a system that I was screening, or testing, or assessing, you still need to know what you can do to change what you found. So you have to have a skill set that allows you to change things, and then you need to have something that identifies whether you did change it, and that's called a metric. It needs to be reliable. It needs to have some discriminant validity, which means that if you're going to categorise somebody as being a X or a Y, that category should be more related to what it is that you're trying to stop.

If you're going to fail somebody on a movement screen, it should be for a reason that says I failed you because you have pain, because you have limited movement below a minimum standard, and that puts you at an increased risk according to a body of research that, for the most part, is relatively robust to an extent. We call that discriminant validity. Or I'm going to put you in a group that doesn't have those criteria, which means I can discriminate between you on those bounds. So it needs to be reliable. You and I need to be able to come up with the same observation.

Therefore, it's not based on opinion. It also needs to be easy enough to administer once you've trained in it and be portable so that it can be not costing thousands and thousands to do. And of course, once you get that information, can you change it so that you flip from one category to the next? When I understood that that was doable, you started seeing outcomes that were very, very different than what you were getting before, and you started to shift in towards a better medical professional, better fitness professional, and inevitably, that helped the world be a better place.

So I knew that this was a process and a system that was being used in parts of the world that didn't include Australia, and I made a request for that to be taught here in Australia. And so my good buddy Mark Chang came and produced, delivered the first course, and there was a time where I sat down in front of some of the senior people and said, "Hey, what would need to happen for you guys to consider for me to assist with this education process?" And a number of steps occurred later, and I now assist

in that process to help people to discriminate on those grounds and to reliably provide evaluations that are meaningful and to assist them to change those outcomes. So I now get to help the world to be a better place, not necessarily one client at a time, but one clinician at a time, and the ripple effect is larger. So there's definitely an altruistic way, but there's a selfish part of it in that I still achieve my goals, but a little bit better. And you know, I like to think that when the crunch time comes, and the greatest

story here is where the Chinese women's national volleyball team, they're starting seven, all broke down with shoulder pain, disabling shoulder pain three weeks out from the World Cup. And head coach Long Ping came to me and she said, "Greg, tell me what's happening. I haven't changed anything with the training." And I said, "Don't worry, coach, we've got it under control." We didn't have it under control because we didn't understand exactly why, at the extent, but we knuckled down and said, "Let's be objective, let's check it." We found what was causing the issue, we didn't do

a typical approach, we honoured what the assessment revealed, we treated it, we changed it, and they all went very quickly to a resolution and won the World Cup and then eventually won the Olympics. So the ripple effect of having a system that meant this doesn't matter what I think, this matters what I can prove. It matters what I can reveal, I need to be good enough to change that, and I need to have something that proves that I can change it. And we had that system and I felt proud, not necessarily what myself and Rhett

did, and the other clinician, Brittany, what we did as a team, I felt proud that we honoured a system that was robust enough to get an outcome. And that continues to deliver, and that's why I continue to teach the FMS and the SFMA. Beautiful, good answer. Now, this is a list of favourites, so let's keep it short, attempt to keep it short. I'm not fast if you keep talking, but let's keep it short. Favourite quote, and you're allowed a minor. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve." It rhymes too. It does rhyme.

I like that. Favourite movie? Back to the Future trilogy. Why? Huey Lewis and the News. Michael J Fox was very cool. He was. Favourite recording artist? Ben Harper. Good. Favourite song? Burn One Down. Favourite resource? For sure. The Ocean. Good. I feel so at home when I'm in the ocean. Same. I love it. Hobby? Favourite hobby? Favourite hobby would default running. Good. And last question. What is your best dad joke? It's been requested from a few people. Yeah. An oldie but a goodie. You've got something on your shirt, a person looks down, you flick them in the nose.

Good. It never fails. No, you're correct. If I had to pair that, it would be the tap on the shoulder but stand on the opposite side of them. I do it for my own entertainment. And everyone around you and everyone else around. Any more for any more? No, there's enough surely. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. You've done excellent work. Get to Burtis if you haven't been here. It's an amazing place. It's lots of fun. Thank you very much. Love your work. Good job.