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CLARITY 2.0: TUESDAY, JULY 27th at 3:00PM EST.
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Imagine leaving your family and moving to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language or know the culture, tasked with making some of the world’s most elite athletes faster and stronger while winning multiple World Championships and Olympic medals along the way.
Now try convincing someone in that position that high level communication skills, building buy-in and learning how to adapt to changing contexts WON’T play a major role in their success. Better yet- convince Joseph Coyne of that…
Recognized as a leading expert in high performance sport, Joseph has over 15 years’ experience working with elite professional and Olympic athletes, and most recently was the Performance Director for the UFC Performance Institute Shanghai. Prior to joining the UFC in 2019, athletes personally supported by Joseph broke 6 world records and collected 15 gold medals at the Olympics and various world championships from. As a speaker, Joseph has lectured at a number of international sport science and strength and conditioning conferences. Joseph is a current PhD scholar at Edith Cowan University (Perth, Australia) on training load and performance and serves as a reviewer for a number of different academic journals.
On today’s episode we discuss:
- Sources of internal and external load in communication and leadership
- What finance can teach us about high performance
- Strategies for building buy-in and trust from day one on a new job
- How to change your message to speak more effectively to a diverse audience
Connect with Joseph:
Via Instagram: @josephcoyne
Via Twitter: @josephcoyne
His research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joseph-Coyne
His clinic: http://www.coynesportsinjuryclinic.com.au/
You’ll hear Joseph talk about it and obviously we can’t stress it enough- guys it’s not enough to read and learn about communication and leadership- you have to practice it. You have to be evaluated and do it under stress. Better yet, join us at an Apprenticeship and do it in a place that’s safe to fail and with leaders from a multitude of domains.
Chicago is up next – don’t miss your chance to sign up! Artofcoaching.com/apprenticeship/chicago
TRANSCRIPTION
Brett Bartholomew 0:01
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The Art of coaching podcast. I am here with Joseph Coyne. Joseph, thanks for sitting down with me today.
Joseph Coyne 0:09
No problem, brother, no problem at all.
Brett Bartholomew 0:11
Hey, it’s a special day for you. Right? We know that your dissertation or your thesis and then I know in different parts of the world, we talk to these differently and give them different nomenclature got approved or is in the process of getting approved? So soon, you’re going to be Dr. Joseph Coyne. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Joseph Coyne 0:28
Yeah, yeah. So I just got an email this morning, the examiners of my thesis said yes, it’s passed. With some minor amendments, I just got to fix up these minor amendments, sort of back to the university. And then hopefully, you call me Doctor for about a month until I get sick of it. And we can rock and roll with Joseph from there.
Brett Bartholomew 0:45
And listen, man, you know, we always give the bio at the beginning. But you’re very humble, right? You have over 15 years experience working with elite. And there’s a lot of people that say they work with elite athletes, but I mean, Olympic caliber athletes and people that have won multiple world records. And not only that, like, these are some of the most explosive athletes in the planet. And you’re doing this in a country that is not your country of origin. So within that, I hope our listeners because we’re gonna dive into this appreciating the fact of how hard it is one to manage high level athletes and performers, especially in the world’s biggest stage two, to do it in a country that you did not only you weren’t born in, but you don’t speak the native language, or at least you didn’t fluently when you start. Can you give a little bit more background? About that how you came to be where you are, before we dive into some more subjects around this?
Joseph Coyne 1:37
Yeah, sure. So look, basically this was in China, right. And, and I was lucky enough to work with my two jobs in China, one was Performance Manager for sauce. And I think it was a similar time is when you’re involved with that company I’ve worked in. I was over in China, this position. I mean, you couldn’t help but work with Gold Miller, that’s all they gave you. So it was kind of like by default, I got to work with these guys. But I learned a heck of a lot. And this was predominately with weightlifting. After that contract finished, I moved over to the Chinese Track and Field Federation as a physical preparation coach and assistant coach there.
And this is what the sprinters in the long jumper. So it’s basically the sort of three year period I had in China was all around sort of strength, power, speed, jumping sports, and I learned a tremendous amount. But yeah, in regards to not knowing the language, I went over there and didn’t have a lick of Mandarin. One thing that I think really helped me was my enthusiasm for learning another language is like a life goal of mine to get really fluent in another language. I’m still not fluent in Mandarin, but I can coach and Mandarin without a translator pretty well now. And yeah, look, I think that’s a massive part of it. In terms of the difficulties, it’s like anything, it’s never perfect, right? But if you keep getting and better make what you’re doing better and better. There’ll be progress. So don’t expect perfection. Just keep it rolling in the right direction.
Brett Bartholomew 3:08
Yeah, I think only you would try to say that you just kind of fell into this. And I appreciate the humility, right. And even if we did it, I think a lot of listeners that tune into the podcast, they may have found themselves into situations at some point that, you know, maybe, hey, alright, I’m in this situation before I’m really ready for it. Or maybe I got a promotion a little bit earlier in my career than I anticipated, there’s always this big thing that you kind of fall into. And it kind of contributes to imposter phenomenon a little bit, right?
Because on one end, you certainly don’t want to take credit for the individuals that you’re working with. Because these are some of the most gifted individuals in the world. On the other end, you do have to give yourself credit because it is very easy, just like I imagine that if somebody has a 16 year old out there, and they were to give them a sports car with a terrifically powered engine, right, that’s generally pretty easy to wreck compared to more of a, let’s say, a Prius or a safer, more conservative vehicle.
So on the other end, give yourself a little bit of credit, right? Like you can screw these guys and gals up. And just for a lay audience, anybody that’s not in the performance realm. Can you tell them exactly what sports you worked with? Because I know you said track and field and some jumpers, but specifically for people that don’t do this every day. Can you give more insight there?
Joseph Coyne 4:20
Yeah, so the first lesson was like you’re at an institute like like a Sports Institute. The main sport I worked with for 18 months was weightlifting. So there’s a guys and girls China as a world power at weightlifting. In my time there like, I’ll give an example of one competition. I mainly worked with a woman’s team but at the 2015 world champion, Houston, Texas. The worst result for any one of the females that got sent there was a silver medal in the world across the snatch, clean and jerk and the combined total so that is like they are just in the woman’s part of weightlifting. They just clean house. It’s just out of dominance.
And then that was my predominant role with them, but also worked with sports like swimming, diving, and a few others that are really important sports of trying to in that role. And then I moved over the track and field. And this was all about working with sprinters, 100, meter sprinters four by 100 relay team, but predominantly long jumpers. In the long jump squat their head, they also did a little bit with high jumper. So that was more sort of, at well, one realm of the strength and power, sort of scope and then moving right down to the other end of the spectrum. And look, the track and field and China is not as successful as weightlifting. So it was not a step down by any means. But it was much more challenging to get results on the world stage, compared to the previous position. That’s for sure.
Brett Bartholomew 5:46
Yeah, and thanks for this specificity. So knowing a little bit about this, right, I would have to imagine and I want you to correct me, on this day in the life. And again, just to orient our listeners, whether they’re in the performance realm or not what this is like, you’re in another country, you’re away from your wife and your two children, which I believe they’re the children’s name, Harland and Hale, is that correct pronunciation?
Joseph Coyne 6:07
Yeah that’s it. Great.
Brett Bartholomew 6:08
And what is Hale, around two years old now?
Joseph Coyne 6:10
Just turned two
Brett Bartholomew 6:11
Just turned two Okay, great. So, you know, and I’d have to imagine this from my time working with athletes, but you know, I’d never full time train them in another country. But given the specialization of the Chinese culture, and is so what your typical warm up, which might take in this case, what 45 minutes to an hour, and I know that sounds like a long time, for anybody listening, that’s not a strength coach to warm up, but, and then an hour of track work, and then an hour of weight room work, or what would this look like daily in terms of managing the life and the training schedule of that Olympic athlete?
Joseph Coyne 6:46
Sure. So this specific period, I’m thinking from sort of mid 2016, or early 2016, to 2017, a day in the life could have been, you wake up breakfast training begins at nine, the warm ups were doing last, like you said 45 minutes to an hour, that’s sometimes how long you need to warm up before you can really run fast, then it might be a technical session of sprinting and jumping work, this might last another two hours. So it might be a three hour session, then you go and have lunch, then you have a nap. In China, it’s really common to have a sort of midday nap, which is which is awesome. I love that I read that one aspect of the culture, I really got an embrace to the fullest.
And then after that, you come back to training 2 Or three, again, similar type warm up, they might be the session, just typically speaking might be half and half. So half technical work in half weight work, again, it might be around 30 to 45 minutes warm up, and then maybe two hours to two and a half hours of technical work and weight room work. And then you’re finished up by going to the pool and having another half hour of recovery in the pool. So some days we’re literally seven hours of training and dispersed by your lunch and your net. And other days might have been a bit shorter. But on average, it would have been about sort of five and a half to seven hours training per day on our double days.
Brett Bartholomew 8:17
And what I appreciate about you going in depth there is we had a listener one time that reached out Joseph that was in finance. And they had asked a really good question. And this was a conversation I’d actually had with my father at one point in time who was in finance that, you know, how is your industry and you’re talking about the performance industry, you know, different with respect to finance, aside from the obvious and I said, Well, you know, it’s interesting because I actually see them more in common. And this alludes to what you were talking about
You know, in training, you went through them, that’s a massively organized ritualized schedule, right. And so you’re always trying to organize everything to maximize an adaptation, we need this person to get faster, we need this person to get more powerful, those two go hand in hand to a degree, and we need to minimize the risk of injury. And so what I tried to tell this individual was, hey, it’s not that different in finance, when you want to maximize the returns of your investment, and minimize losses, but there’s all these other variables and relatively some of them might seem simple to understand.
But also many of them are unpredictable and collectively these can be referred to as internal and external load, which I know is another huge specialty of yours. One, do you see that congruency between, you know the financial example and and you having to manage these high asset, you know, high class athletes and then two, can you elaborate a little bit on some of these variables for again, any lay audience that’s listening, that contribute to that whether it is internal or external load?
Joseph Coyne 9:43
Yeah, sure. There’s so many parallels with the sort of finance world like I actually borrowed a lot from sort of quantitative analysis and share trading for my PhD and analyzing training load, which is quite interesting things like all the different moving averages they use. There’s a lot of parallels with what we do in Sport Science. Like one of the just what is a good return on investment? That’s a really big thing. So just like efficiency, you do as little as possible to get as much as possible with what you’re doing. So if you can do two sets, and that will give the same results as five sets, why would you be doing five sets, that would be like spending $100, when you can only spend $40 to get the same return on your money.
So those absolute return I’ll say absolute return, not percentage return, I’ll just clarify that.
Brett Bartholomew 10:31
Thanks for clarifying that.
Joseph Coyne 10:33
Yeah. But that’s a massive concept that’s always stuck in my mind. And there’s so many sort of variables there around, say, and this is where it does kind of distinguish itself is that you can have a set amount of work. So it’s, you’re running 5k, there’s a really simple example, you run 5k, on one day, it’s maybe it’s 20 degrees Celsius, I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, but 20 degrees Celsius, there’s no wind, it’s really prison on another you run 5k, exact same distance, so exact same external load, but now it’s windy, it might be 30 degrees Celsius, this time. And you’ve just had a argument with the coach or wife beforehand.
And the one 5k versus the other, they’re going to be have completely different responses in the body based on those external factors and the internal load. So how your body responds, that train is going to be different, you might be running slower, you might be running at the same speed, but working much harder to maintain that speed. So all these things, it’s a really simple example. But all these things go into what you might have to be thinking about when you have a set session designed for athlete, and they might come in. And you’ve got to start thinking on your feet, and reading their body language and mannerisms, how much they’re talking, what how they’re conversing with other athletes, how they’re looking at the start of the session, through the warmup, all these things might be factors that you might have to be accounted for, as you go through the process of training this individuals throughout the sort of two hour block or two and a half hour block.
Brett Bartholomew 12:16
Yeah, and I appreciate you going through that the reason I touch on it is we think of internal and external load as factors that, you know, obviously impact human performance. But I think sometimes people forget that this applies to communication, management leadership, and what have you as well. Right, there can be the breakup with the girlfriend, as you alluded to, or boyfriend, there can be factors related to the training, maybe the training session was too strenuous. And I’ve always thought of this, although maybe I’m crazy, you know, we have our own forms of internal and external load in leadership, right?
Like what role conflicts at work? What is the workload you actually want to have? Some people need to be busy, right? They’re very type A and neurotic, and they want to have a lot of work to do other people might not want as much administrative work. What if you have an issue with somebody at work? What if somebody doesn’t take you seriously? What if there’s a communication issue? I know, I’m kind of throwing you to the wolves here. But given that your dissertation is on internal and external load from a training standpoint, could you maybe talk to and now we’re going to go away from a lay audience, and to maybe a young performance coach.
Somebody who feels like, I know, I need to grow in the art of coaching and communication. But I feel like I need more understanding of training first, can you maybe explain where they might be missing the boat? Have a careful there, because if you don’t understand communication, you’re going to be ignorant to various forms of internal and external load. And that’s part of it, too. If that doesn’t make sense? Let me know. And I’ll try to clarify the question.
Joseph Coyne 13:41
Not, yeah, I think you’ve alluded to this prior. But there is, and this isn’t saying you don’t have to be or don’t want to be eventually a master of your craft, in terms of the technical aspects of it. And whatever discipline or sub discipline you go down, but you definitely have to know, if you want to coach somebody or communicate with somebody, you have to know how to influence that person. And I was, at least with athletes, I can say I’ve been very lucky to have done I considered lucky at the time, I just did it because I got a actually a $10,000 scholarship to do a Diploma of teaching like a post grad diploma thesis. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after I finished my like PE degree which you can actually teach with.
And so the government at the time, there’s a shortage of male teachers. And I was like, right, sign me up for this. I’ll say another university, it’s good times here. And I did a teaching diploma. And look, it’s helped me so much, which is underneath understand the pedagogy and transfer of knowledge from oneself to the people you’re trying to impart that knowledge to now whether it’s knowledge or whether that’s just trying to influence other people in certain ways, not like in a negative fashion, but to positively influence other people. And so you have to have a combination of these things.
If you have the best technical skills but don’t understand pedagogy or technical knowledge. But then on the skin, pedagogy or communication, it’s very unlikely those technical skills will be transferred to the athlete or the other people you’re working with, that knowledge probably won’t get passed on to those people. So you have to understand how these things work. And that’s just another skill, people should consider another technical skill that you should master, as well as the actual nuts and bolts of their industry.
Brett Bartholomew 15:30
Yeah, and I’d be interested to get your thoughts on this, where this narrative comes from where people think there’s got to be a dichotomy or a choice, you know, I think about a business owner, and one of my neighbors owns his own business. And, you know, this idea that people think that there has to be one before the other, this person has to understand the hard aspects of their trade. In this case, he does computer programming and code and what have you. But he also has to understand the interpersonal side customer service, we think of somebody that, you know, is the CEO of a massive company, they need to know the hard elements of that job, but they also need to be able to speak to many different things.
I’m curious as to why and I’m sure it exists in other fields, but we’re going to focus on sports performance right now. Why there seems to be this hierarchical or this process. I have to learn this before that, especially when coaching is such a social based thing. I mean, think about your experience, Joseph, right. You live in China, right? And what kind of political realities and I don’t mean like geopolitics, right? I’m not going to ask you to speak on that. But like, what kind of political realities or communication based interpersonal barriers, however you want to phrase it daily got in the way of some of your programming, or at least in the way that you presented it?
So there’s two questions there. Where’s this narrative coming? That there’s a dichotomy? And where is the detachment in observation coming from where people think that they have days at work, where they’re just going to work on programming, and they’re never going to have to worry about the actual face to face interaction, then because it just perplexes me where these thought processes have came from in our field?
Joseph Coyne 17:07
Yeah, yeah. Look, Brett to be honest, I don’t know where this the economy has come from. It’s, something like I’ve always considered that you have to develop like yourself, maybe renaissance man type idea, if you’ve got factors that are successful in your industry, you should be developing all those factors simultaneously, or at least doing a like an analysis of where you’re really strong, and where you’re really weak. Some people might already have or be above average, in certain areas, their communication. And this is like, I don’t want to throw this out there. But I’m thinking like, I started off as I did some personal training work, when I first started, I can think of guys that didn’t really know their craft, but man, they were good communicators, and they were always, always busy, always bring food home onto the table.
Other people that knew their craft really well, but weren’t good communicators, they were struggling to put bread on the table for the family. So that really stuck with me. And I’d say you should be developing yourself and understanding where you’re strong, where you’re weak, and then basing you’re just like you might do with an elite athlete. And you might say, Okay, we might need to work on aspects of the can’t move, and jump is strength levels are already awesome. So let’s really focus on this for our next training block, let’s just have a little analysis, what we’re good at what we’re bad at, personally, and then devote time to improving those facets. Because all those facets will be important to what you want to do in whatever industry.
Brett Bartholomew 18:31
Yeah, so I mean, getting this idea of, again, looking at asymmetries and something you’re incredibly knowledgeable and and I won’t allow you to use any faux humility here is power, right building power. And I remember you talking about on one podcast in particular, that oftentimes we can get too caught up on strength based numbers, and we need to focus more on power. Now I have a follow up question to that. But just again, for our audience, and a chance for you to really show your expertise because I enjoy listening to the way you break this down.
Talk to me about why whether we’re training athletes, or if it’s a lay person trying to get faster and a 5k, we should really be more focused on on power base numbers, as opposed to just go into a gym and looking what load is on the bar. Now, I know, there’s obviously interplay between the two, but just give a little bit of a distinction between strength and power and how you view that if you wouldn’t mind.
Joseph Coyne 19:19
Yeah, so like all sports, the lens, I look through sports through a power lens normally, so whether it’s running 100k, that’s work divided by time and workers, the 100 meters, the time is how fast you run. So if you run it in 10 seconds versus 12 seconds, 10 seconds, obviously is going to have higher power outputs. The same thing with jumping the displacement would be an indication of the power in the time you did it, and would be an indication of the power. So everything we look at, whether it’s a one off effort, compared to say a 5k or a marathon could be broken down into terms of power terms.
So everything through my mind just the way I think I’m like, Yeah, let’s think about this as power. How are we going to influence that equation? Whether it’s the force times velocity side of things? How are we going to improve velocity to improve force? Or whether it’s the work divided by time? How are we going to make more work and the same amount of time? Or how we’re going to do the same work and less amount of time? Or maybe even it might happen that we can do both?
Increase the work and decrease the time, but how do we influence those factors? And then stick that back, make our performance model, which has this power model, make our preparation framework for that performance model impacted? So whatever we look for in performance, how do we stick that back and actually influence that so that then we’re getting things working upstream and actually improving the performance of the athletes that we’re working with?
Brett Bartholomew 20:46
Yeah, I think, you know, when you mentioned that, we know that power is an expression of force over time, right. And I think I was talking to an athlete about this today, who he just has a tremendous bias towards maximum strength training. And I have to remind him, hey, that this is great, you’re very strong. But if we don’t learn to express this in more of a ballistic manner, or rapid manner, whether that’s Plyometrics, or med ball throws, or even just lighter weights with bands and chains, it’s really going to have trouble transferring in any way, shape, or form to your performance beyond a point, right, there’s this point of not sunk cost fallacy, but point of limited returns, right,
Joseph Coyne 21:27
We’re menacing returns it’s all finance again, right?
Brett Bartholomew 21:31
Well, yeah, and we talked about that. But we talked about, you know, power really being like force over time. And then I think about buy in, right? Well, that’s trust over time, we got to build trust in and you don’t want to rush it, and you can’t rush it because sometimes people aren’t going to be coachable, or they’re not going to be open until you know, a life event has happened that that makes them want to hear a message or what have you. But I think about you going into another country and you having to build trust with the Chinese Athletics Association, or Joseph, you can use literally any example you want.
But when did you come into a situation as a foreign agent, either into a new country, or into a new job period. And then you had to deal with colleagues and co workers and building trust and buying with them, not just the end user, in this case, the athletes? What, in essence, if I’m new, and I’m listening to this show, and I’m thinking tomorrow, I start a new job? What’s the most efficient way to go about building buy in? And I know, it’s very general? So have fun with it? What do they need to consider? And what have you learned?
Joseph Coyne 22:35
Yeah, look, that’s interesting. I think it depends on the person and depends on who you are, as a person, I come from, like a rural background where we’re almost I wouldn’t say suspicious of other people. But there’s like, we keep a pretty close shop up to a certain point until we get to know somebody. So if anybody comes in, and is immediately too friendly with me, that immediately raises my red flags. And it’s maybe it’s something that I’ve been brought up with my dad, for instance, you could have a conversation with somebody, and people would walk away and go, Oh, that guy’s a really nice guy. But I really know what he does, or I don’t really get much out of him, because he keeps the cards close to his chest.
And so maybe that’s how I am, I always like going into a situation and making sure that like, first and foremost, getting to know the other person first, before I’m trying to impart any of my knowledge, or you know, what I mean, to getting them to understand me, but getting to know them first and foremost, would probably be the thing that I’d say, is the number one factor to getting buy in from people. And then And then obviously, getting them to trust you which is might be synonymous with buy in is affected, it’s built up over time, some people take longer, or there might be more roadblocks or building that trust in.
And you just have to work on that over time, like relationships, whether it’s your marriage, whether it’s a relationship with an athlete with your co workers, they shouldn’t be one night stands that are great for one day, and then over the next day, but they have to be something that grows and matures over time. So yeah, first and foremost, I’d always say it’s taking the time to know the person. And then different people have different strategies. And it might be a slow burn approach. Other people might be more open. And it’s one thing I’ve definitely found in settings, some people are definitely more open to new ideas or working with other people.
Some people are really stuck in their thoughts. And it’s really hard for them to change the way they think. And being able to recognize that and maybe it’s even like an archetype just like you have in your book. The conscious coaching route cycle basically is is archetypes of colleagues as well and who might be more open to different approaches who might be less who might take longer to build trust with and know how far to go forward with versus how far to keep yourself held back and wait for them to come to you. So, yeah, long answer. But I hopefully that answered at some degree.
Brett Bartholomew 25:12
Yeah, no, it’s very helpful. I found here’s the thing when I reflect on it, right, I think that there’s no shortage of messaging out there, for coaches, in performance and otherwise, right, no matter what the field is that relationships are important that we need to listen that we need to take our time. I think what I’ve learned, especially in running our workshops, and doing courses, as long as we have now is that it almost doesn’t answer the question for people because they still don’t know how to do that. It’s kind of like saying, hey, how do I build explosive athletes? And you say, well, listen, you have to have, you know, strong underpinning of fitness, their ability to perform a task and in general physical preparedness. And then you got to build a foundation of strength.
And that strength helps Express force in congruence with explosive exercises, whether it’s sprinting, what have you, but Right, like that wouldn’t help certain people because they’re like, whoa, okay, well, where do I start and what rep range. And what I’ve had to do is I’ve had to slow down Joseph, and almost remember that or remind myself that people need the same kind of coaching and communication, because they may hear you or I say, hey, you need to go in and build trust. And they’re like, Well, shit, I don’t really know how to do that, you know,
Hey, you need to go in and ask people questions and seek to understand, well, you know, they’re there that first day, there’s a lot of stuff going through their heads, people are looking at him. And they’re like, what question do I? So where are you from? You know, and they’re like, Ah, that’s a stupid question. You know, I’ve just found that it becomes so much trickier when people have to actually apply it, you know, we don’t get training on it. And I have to ask you, you’re very socially astute. We’ve had many conversations.
And granted more, some people are better at this stuff than others. But I’m a firm believer that social skills can be trained. How do you practice? How do you refine? How do you make sure that you’re not asking people general boring, stiff questions, and that you’re not coming off as overbearing, or that you’re monitoring your your tone and the tempo of your speech? Right, given a certain environment? How do you look at evaluation of your own use of communication?
Joseph Coyne 27:08
Yeah, look, I guess it’s just reflecting on on certain situations that you might have had with athletes or with colleagues and ask yourself, What could I have done better in those situations depend on the outcome? What what did I do? Well, what could I have done better? Where could I’ve taken this had been a different situation. But that turned out negatively. And then also that reflection, and then also, I guess, asking other people and telling other people that might be third parties and telling them about the situation, your views on them, asking them, Hey, what could I have done better in this fashion? Or in this moment?
And I really identified with your comment about slowing down, and stepping back? And that sort of question. That’s definitely one of the things I’ve learned over time as to do that. For me anyway, and maybe I think a bit differently. But I’m a real early adopter of things. I really like always be in forward motion, even if it’s not perfect. And I’m just like, let’s just keep making this thing better and better and better day by day. Even if it’s not perfect. We just keep making it better and better. But for some people, that might be really, really hard for them. And so let’s look at it’s trying to recognize when those situations might be arising and trying to work with them as best as possible.
Brett Bartholomew 28:34
Yeah, I mean, I think you give a good insight there, especially when you consider your background right. And this is something Admittedly, I didn’t know about you that you serve as a reviewer for a number of academic journals you speak I know that you have a keen interest in business as well as coaching. So you talked about renaissance man, I mean, that’s, that’s clear in that that’s part of your DNA. There’s a lot of different forms of communication in that, right, reviewing academic journals is one form of, you got to get used to some drudgery there, right? Depending on the journal you’re reviewing for just different levels of assumption of knowledge.
Is it okay that this person did or did not cite that how many citations that they use getting really granular. However, sometimes when you’re a lecturer, you have 60 minutes to get really complex ideas across and you have to walk that tightrope, being a science based professional of not oversimplifying so much that you’re a popularizer. But also not getting into the weeds too much where you’re trying to literally teach somebody everything you know, in 60 minutes, which we know of course is not going to work.
When it comes to that context, switching for you putting the hat on of academic reviews, and then going in giving a presentation or having to, you know, just have a conversation with your son. What are some things that you do to kind of allow you to switch that context, a little bit more cleanly right to put just head on and make sure you’re not speaking to your wife as you would your athlete or your kid. Like, you know what I mean? I think it’s something that’s taken for granted. But it’s harder than most people think if you wear a lot of hats, is it not?
Joseph Coyne 30:10
For sure, for sure. And I’ve probably done that I’ve probably spoken to my athletes as, like, I’m reviewing an article or my wife as if I’m speaking to an academic or something like that. So guaranteed, I’ve done that. But you always got to remember who you’re speaking to, and their degree of expertise in the subject matter. And then making it more black and white, the less expertise they have. And this is something I picked up, or at least, I kind of understood the concept, but it really reinforced it from local Grant Jenkins, in Australia. And just, hey, if you’re speaking to a beginner, make it black and white, we know there’s so much context around things.
The same goes for athletes, but make it black and white. If you speak to somebody really advanced, they already know about the gray as well. But it helps them build, gain trust, I guess, with you, if you do provide some of the context. So it’s just like continuum of where things need to be black and white, where things need to be gray with your communication styles to certain people and try and understand what their audiences first and foremost, before you decide on, hey, look, you need to do this, versus, hey, we’ve got these factors at play, we might need to think about this before we do any of them. And this is a sort of pluses and minuses of each approach. So that would be definitely the sort of black and white to gray continuum. And sort of communication is definitely something I think about and think about.
Brett Bartholomew 31:39
Yeah, I was just gonna ask you, I’m glad you did that. Because sometimes it can be tricky for our listeners, when we talk about something conceptually, and we don’t give an example. So thanks for doing that with a black and white, you know, just to give another example to strengthen it. I remember, you know, today again, when training, an athlete was doing a heavy squatting session, and they’re at a point in their life in their career where, you know, they’re continuing to how do I phrase this, maybe going a little overboard with flexibility, right? They feel like I’ve just been in the NFL so long, I need to do more yoga, I need to do more of this.
And we won’t get into the whole concept of why they perceive that and how there’s yoga elements and their warm up and what have you, this is just what it is, right? So kept on wanting to do intensive, intensive stretching for the quad and hip flexor in between. And it’s always important, right that if somebody is doing movement, we can do little things here to kind of enhance the quality of that. But this was overboard. And I had to explain to him and I’ll call him. Dave, for the sake of the conversation, I said, Dave, listen, like that’s all well and good. But you know, simply put, you stretch too much. And your next set, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble, right? Being too loose is just as bad as being too tight in the context of this.
And I just kept it simple right there. Right? Yeah. And I think me in the past, I’d wait for their response. If they didn’t buy in, or listen, I’d kind of talk to them about, you know, muscle spindles and this and that, and then you’d lose them. And you’re like, dammit, I tried doing well by educating them. And then I just came off like a jackass. Now, it’s just, you know, you try to be as simple as possible. And not because people are dumb, and not because they can’t get it. But you need to have a starting point.
So I always tell people start with something very simple. Or in your case, like what you said, just keep it black and white, have them understand that we could go this way we could go that way. You know, what have you, but then kind of blend in the gray, you know, and so the next day I talked to him, and I just remember saying, hey, you know, if you feel tight talk to me, especially when I asked you how you feeling today, that’s the time to tell me. And we can spend some more time on the front end, where it’s not going to put you in such a compromised situation as it would mid session. If you’re overstretching something, is the example I gave me hearing you correctly did I grossly misinterpreted, I’m just trying to be as tactical as possible for our audience.
Joseph Coyne 33:50
Not that there will be an application, there will definitely be an application of it for sure. And whether it’s starting off with a black and white and then progressing to the gray if you feel it’s needed in a certain situation with an individual, or even trying to assist that individual beforehand and gauge, okay, this guy, he might be an experienced athlete, but he might not have much technical knowledge about the physiology or muscle architecture, things like that. You’re not going to speak to him in gray, you’re gonna you’re gonna be Hey, Mike, don’t stress too much. You won’t be able to produce enough power your next set full stop period.
Versus somebody who might be a PhD and muscle physiology. You might have to go into a bit of gray with a bit of like pluses and minuses and say, Well, look, you could do that you could be stretching between sets, your power might be down a little bit in the next set, or might be decreased in the next set. But these are the sort of other things we might consider. What do you think or where do we need to go with this? Because one thing I definitely think is that he’s speaking too much great to people that might not have a technical knowledge or just entering of this You’re not really overly concerned with the mechanisms behind why things work, is you’ll just come off sounding like you don’t really know what to do. Like, there’ll be all the single Oh, we could do this, but in the these factors, and then basically, blah, blah, and they’ll just come away. That guy didn’t really know what he’s talking about. Give me an answer.
Brett Bartholomew 35:20
Yeah, without a doubt. And there’s always constraints, right? That’s, that’s another time that I appreciate about performance when we’re looking at actual agility and decision making and leadership and the same. And one constraint we have in this podcast is time. And so I’m gonna ask you one more question, because then I know you have to go. And it’s unfortunate, because man I have probably like, 15 more questions I want to riddle you with, but we’ll have to do a part two.
Joseph Coyne 35:45
Let’s go, I love it
Brett Bartholomew 35:46
The way I’m gonna form this question is going to be a little bit of a playful jab, right? So it’s me kind of asking, I’m role playing here. But you have a background, let me think out of phrases, you no doubt have a performance based background, you know, a good bit about leadership models and differences between business and high performance teams. What would you say to somebody that looked at you and said, hey, you know, you by and large, worked in a weight room, or a track or, you know, whatever, setting training athletes, and maybe they hear you talking about business and leadership models, and they say, What the hell do you know about that stuff?
You know, and this is somebody from outside the field, what would you say, in essence, to somebody that thinks, because we don’t work in the traditional corporate environment daily that coaches like yourself, or those like you, or what have you, I don’t know a thing about leadership models and a bigger picture. Do you think that’s valid? or what have you learned in that space?
Joseph Coyne 36:44
Yeah, look, I guess in my last position, I devoted a lot of time sort of learning about leadership models, like the sort of theory behind a lot of them. Whereas things like transformational leadership, things like that. And it is, just because you work in a certain industry, per se, doesn’t mean you don’t know these things. So for instance, you might say, Okay, this guy is a CEO of a manufacturing company, but he doesn’t know about leadership in an automobile company. So it’s the same thing. It’s just transfer of industry, and leadership of people just like pedagogy, is the same, like, I believe, I can coach any sport, even if I don’t have the technical knowledge for this sport, but I know how to set things up.
So people learn things with what I want to deliver. And once I understand more and more of the technical knowledge, I’ll become a better coach in this sport, same thing with leadership, it can be, I would say my knowledge of it is that leadership might be very specific to the context that person has put in. So there might be and correct me if I’m wrong on the theory of this, but there might be people that are really good leaders in one situation, but not in the other. But they are some sort of common traits across these people that should transfer through different situations. So although there is this sort of like specific context of where you might be good at as a leader.
I would also say saying that just because you worked in a weight room or on a track, and so you can’t be a leader in another environment. It’s just like saying, Hey, you’re a leader. And like I said, the manufacturing industry, and you won’t be a good leader in the automobile industry. It’s the same idea, same scope, or just different industries. But the skills of leadership communication, hopefully remain pretty constant across both.
Brett Bartholomew 38:36
Yeah, it’s something that I really hope that more coaches take to heart because I still think there’s just way too many people in the performance industry, who get into this and then think to be a coach means you got to die on the floor. And I really think it does our industry a disservice. Not saying that there shouldn’t be people that just want to coach and that’s all they want to do is stay on that floor. But I think not understanding the definition of the term coaching expands beyond that. Right? Coaching was a term that existed in the lexicon, way before sport, and certainly way before performance.
And that’s why we’re big on you know, the art of coaching is the art of dealing with people and getting things done through people. And, you know, you’re somebody that I greatly admire and respect and how you do that, especially the fact that you’ve done this across the world in many different contexts. Before we let you go, you know, want to just invite anytime you want. And of course, once the world opens up, officially, we’d love to have you as our guest on the house to one of our apprenticeships, because no doubt you’d have a tremendous amount to teach us we do a lot of role playing.
It’s a lot of fun. I think your personality is well suited for it because some cower of like, oh, I don’t want to look stupid, where you know, we know that looking stupid is where growth occurs a lot of times so I can’t thank you enough. Where can our audience go to support you read your work? Anywhere that they can go to interact with you we want to honor that so how can we best support you?
Joseph Coyne 39:52
Sure, look, I guess. Like I’m on socials, Instagram and Twitter @josephcoyne, which is my last name is spelt c o y n e for the other people that might be unfamiliar with it. That’s an Irish last name. But yeah, look, I guess it’d be the best place to contact me. In terms of my work. There’s a website, I’m actually moving back to Australia coynesportsinjuryclinic.com.au come check that out if they’re interested. And you’re always welcome to shoot me an email through that website. And I’ll get back to you if you have any questions or want to touch base.
Does my research on ResearchGate as a website, if you’re interested in that, I don’t know. Too many people that might be except for the training load nerds. But if you’re interested in, that’s ResearchGate search by name that’ll pop up. And there’s a few few things up there as well. So more than welcome, check it out. And if there are any questions yet, please get in contact. I’d love to chat more. Thank you so much for the offer to come along to the apprenticeship to bid on. As soon as it does open up. I’d love to be on one of us.
Brett Bartholomew 40:55
Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m just still bitter. We had five scheduled in Australia before COVID. And then we had Do you know how some for now and I hope the rumors are not true that Australia decides to hold off reopening until mid 2022 have way too many withdrawals. But that’s what I had heard any news on that front before we let you go?
Joseph Coyne 41:14
Yeah, so I have friends that work in the Australian Government, thus saying that international travel won’t probably won’t be back to normal until 2024 for Australians
Brett Bartholomew 41:25
Won’t reopen the border until 2024?
Joseph Coyne 41:27
Maybe like pre COVID Travel won’t occur
Brett Bartholomew 41:33
Listen we’ll talk off the air. Maybe I can, you know grease the palms a little bit you can let us in a little early. Well Until next time, and I can’t wait to have another conversation with you, everybody. Thank you for dropping in on me and Mr. Coyne here. This has been Brett Bartholomew in the art of coaching podcast. We will see you next time
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