[00:00:00] Josh Kennedy: Welcome back to the Cricket Matters podcast, and today's subject is all about the Cricket Matters Athletic Performance System, which is a very fancy title, isn't it? James, before we dive into exactly what the Cricket Matters Athletic Performance Pyramid is, do you want to give us a bit of background about the, the origin, the story behind it, if you will?

[00:00:20] James Breese: Yeah, so I think if you listen to the podcast, we did about the 10 components of fitness for cricket. I think that gives you a good idea of where it started. In, in Australia and how we had to come up with the idea of defining the names of what the components were. But then we had to come up with a system of applying it on which things ranked in order.

[00:00:38] We touched on that basis, the idea of layer one, layer two, layer three, where earned the right to be powerful, earned the right to have anaerobic capacity, which is short, sharp, intense bursts and to be agile. But you've got to own the basics of mobility, stability and balance and coordination first. But then there's an overarching theme to this, and this comes back to the system because a lot of [00:01:00] people in athletic development, whether it's any sports, they just, you know, take a shotgun approach, shoot and hope it works.

[00:01:09] But it doesn't breed consistent results and it doesn't breed constant feedback and improvement like Kaizen, you know, the Japanese word for continual improvement. Okay. Kaizen. Okay. Thank you. It was in our blog the other day actually, about the benefits of hiring a cricket coach. But this is what we're looking for.

[00:01:30] We're looking for this idea of, you know, a system that we can go back to for anybody comes with us, and it's not about doing everyone the same, you know, giving everyone the same training plan. Far from it. It's assessing them, seeing where they need. So we make less mistakes as coaches. But then we can know the find the weaknesses and errors.

[00:01:49] or the technical deficiencies or in their movement capacity and their strength and their cardio, so we can help, help them become better athletes. So we [00:02:00] have the performance pyramid, which is the layer, the 10 components of athleticism. But before that, preceding that, we have our pyramid, right? This is our kind of like pyramid of vitality almost, because.

[00:02:13] Health comes first. In everything that we do, we find that health comes first, particularly for cricketers, because cricket's a hard game on the body. They have to recover well. So, I'll share my screen in terms of what you see as the performance pyramid. Let me know, Josh, when you can see it. For those on podcasts who are driving, please don't look at your screen while doing this.

[00:02:39] Whatever you do, there we go. Can you see it? So again, it's another pyramid. We like pyramids. We like hierarchies in what we're trying to do. So you can see with us now. When we start working with cricketers, we want to look at their health, what's their body competition, what's their likelihood of mortality.

[00:02:54] It sounds morbid, it really is in some respects, but we want to address these things, particularly with [00:03:00] older cricketers. And then we're looking at their lifestyle needs because you can't outrun a bad diet. You can't outrun a bad diet. bad habits. If poor sleep is in play, if you're not getting hydrated well enough, or if you're not eating the right calories in sort of, you know, it comes top of the pyramid, but we're going to look at all these different things first.

[00:03:22] And body composition, I would say, is the fastest way to improve performance for any cricketer out there. But yet it's the one that they least want to do time and time again. 

[00:03:32] Josh Kennedy: Remember the, uh, no names on it, but we had a guy come to us a few years back. He was wanting to, I think his goal was to like do double body weight, two times body weight, deadlift or squat or something like that.

[00:03:45] And we were like, okay, cool. Well, let's put you through the assessments first. And it came back that he had. What was it? He had sky high blood pressure or something. Do you remember? I think you work with this guy. Do you remember James? You were like, well, hang on. It's all great. I've in this goal, but health [00:04:00] comes first.

[00:04:00] Mike, we think you might need to go to a doctor first, which is really important. Right. Cause if you don't assess your underlying health. You don't know where you're at, do you? 

[00:04:09] James Breese: Yep. And it was a guy from Texas. It was a guy who was trying to enter a powerlifting competition, when we were doing a lot of those type of athletes, many, many, many moons ago.

[00:04:17] And he came to us with sky high blood pressure, resting heart rate of over 80. Do you remember that? Yeah. And we said to him, hey, before you do anything, we can't work with you until you go and see a doctor. He went to see a doctor, they rushed him into emergency surgery the following day to have a heart bypass.

[00:04:33] That is what happened there. 

[00:04:34] Josh Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:04:35] James Breese: Crazy, right? 

[00:04:36] Josh Kennedy: Exactly. 

[00:04:37] James Breese: Crazy, right? And he came back to train with us actually nine months later, saying, I want to focus on health, I don't want to focus on strength anymore, I want to focus on health now. So it is, we look at these things because there's underlying issues that may be present that we're not aware of, particularly cricketer, right, who's still trying to compete and still keep playing at the highest levels.

[00:04:55] Yeah. whatever, whether it be club or even a lot of the master stuff we're doing with people now. [00:05:00] So yeah, absolutely. So we look at the health side of things first because a healthier athlete is a happier athlete is a better performing athlete, right? And that's what we're looking here now. That's the, that's the middle first section here in terms of basic health.

[00:05:13] Then we got the pyramid and we look at the performance, right? In terms of athleticism, then we're looking at the stuff, how well they move, how fast they run. How, what's their endurance, what's their recovery like, how strong are they, these type of things, the sexy stuff that people always come to us for.

[00:05:27] Josh Kennedy: So this, that, this is where the, the 10 components come in, isn't it? This is the, the level of 10 components come in. 

[00:05:33] James Breese: Absolutely. This is where you break it down into there. Now, we've also discussed that on the podcast before, go and check it out if you haven't listened to it before. But only then do we start looking at nutrition when we've got these other pillars in play first, because nutrition is one of the hardest things to correct.

[00:05:47] And do for any athlete because everyone has their own unique ways of looking at things, doing things like foods they like, habits, etc, etc. There's so many different things and there's no one size fits [00:06:00] all approach to nutrition. There's good basis and solid foundations, like we can all agree that we should eat more protein.

[00:06:07] It helps us recover faster, repairs the muscle tissue, helps us put on lean muscle, makes us feel fuller for longer, and then the rest of it is, it comes down to personal preference and how we do things. So, that is more complicated. So from a very 40, 000 foot overview, This is the performance system in place.

[00:06:24] This is what we're looking at now. Now we're not even talking about technical stuff with the cricketer. That falls in under the performance pyramid, if anything. And we have, we will do a podcast about our approach to batting and, you know, not just batting coaching coach, cricket coaching in general, in future episodes, but the technical element of cricket falls under the performance aspect, and even then nutrition comes on top of that after that, once we get those things right, and once we're cooking on gas with those things.

[00:06:53] Josh Kennedy: Absolutely, absolutely. And briefly before we wrap up, do you want to just talk from a more of like maybe a coach's [00:07:00] perspective? Or this does apply to clients as well. It's like why it's important for us to have a system that we all follow. 

[00:07:07] James Breese: Yeah, it comes back to the idea of like, again, when we were working as coaches and, you know, on our own and I started building a team of coaches around us to develop and do the training side of things.

[00:07:18] We're all working on our own. We, we kind of roughly had the same ideas. Well, so I thought for a lot of the coaches. But it quickly transpired. They didn't. So a lot of our athletes weren't getting the same level of service from all our coaches. They were great people. However, they were doing things on their own, in their own way, in their own style, which didn't adhere to an overall strategy.

[00:07:40] And the key thing for any athlete development is you want them all to be in sync. Singing from the same hymn sheet when they're coaches to help this athlete improve. So for example, we created the system with the, uh, the height, you know, the peri athletic performance pyramid, because we wanted all our coaches, our therapists, uh, cricket coaches, even as well, not just strength [00:08:00] coaches.

[00:08:00] Just to know what we're looking for, what we're trying to do. So it all means you're talking in common language and the athlete, irrespective of where they go and work with me, with you Josh, or somebody else in our coaching setup, they have exactly the same experience. They go through the same format, same system.

[00:08:18] So we can all go together and come together when we have issues with an athlete. So hey, we can come together and go, Hey, this is what we're seeing. Oh, cool, cool. Let's work on this. Or even more likely, it's a system that helps us improve and refine it over time because it's an ever evolving system of assessment, teaching, all this stuff because we've gone down to the basics and we can all agree on the same thing.

[00:08:40] So that's kind of why we do this and have a system for coaching at every step of the way because it allows us to make better decisions. More informed decisions and more consistent results with our athletes. 

[00:08:53] Josh Kennedy: Exactly. That word is exactly what I was going to say. Consistency. Cause what's the most important thing in training?

[00:08:58] Consistency. And as you [00:09:00] say, whether I'm training them, you're training them or one of, uh, you know, somebody else that we work with, you get the same, same thing wrapped up, wrapped up slightly differently. Cause we all have our own ways, but it's all about consistency. 

[00:09:12] James Breese: It's the consistency of message. That's what we see with a lot of coaches.

[00:09:15] A lot of cricketers struggle with the consistency of message from different coaches, right? You will go and see one coach and they're telling you to do one thing. They're going to see another coach and they're telling you to do another thing. Now sometimes that's right, sometimes it's wrong. Whatever you do when it comes to cricket coaching, you've got to trust your gut feeling and what works for you.

[00:09:31] Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't work. But you always should take the best bits of every coach and mould them to your style. And that's really important when it comes to your cricket development. Okay? But for us as coaches in house, we've got to make sure that we're all talking the same language and thinking on the same lines, otherwise it will confuse the athletes.

[00:09:49] You know when we're working with them. If they go to somebody else, that's fine They've got their own system. They'll they'll be working in their own style of doing things but for us in house at Cricket Matters Me and you, Josh, are going to speak the same [00:10:00] language as do all the other coaches. So that's what we're trying to do, is this consistency of a message.

[00:10:04] No matter if you work with me, Josh, or anybody else, they have that consistent message. 

[00:10:09] Josh Kennedy: Exactly. So there we go, guys. That is the Cricket Matters Performance System. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you would like our free training plan, then go to cricketmatters.

[00:10:19] com forward slash train.