COACH'D
Join us on COACH’D, a podcast where the some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right.
Think of it as a "locker room" chat — unfiltered, raw, and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and culture.
COACH'D
BRAIN DUMP: January Recap: Managing Coaching Load vs "Just Being Busy," Session Debriefs, Being Human & Launch of Pre Run Program
Each week I'll share some of my thoughts in a mini episode called "Brain Dump" with some of the things that's on my mind.
These are designed to be short, sharp and straight to the point (maybe with some ramblings).
Exploring the often chaotic world of coaching in January, we delve into strategies for balancing busy schedules while ensuring meaningful connections with athletes.
The episode highlights the importance of structured coaching loads, effective feedback, and human interaction as key components of successful training frameworks.
• Navigating the complexities of managing multiple athletes
• Incorporating pre-run preparation into training
• The role of partner programs in enhancing athlete performance
• Creating effective feedback loops for athletes
• The importance of human connections in coaching relationships
• Insights from establishing a mentorship program for coaches
Thank-you to our sponsors Iron Edge and VALD Performance.
Iron Edge are Australia’s leading equipment supplier for all your coaching needs.
Check out their website: www.ironedge.com.au
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1YJMztpYSgnPusEXB3fWcc?si=FJsWITv7QdSCSgCt3lkElw
Join us on Coached, a podcast where some of the world's top athletes, coaches and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right. Think of this as a locker room chat unfiltered, raw and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and sporting culture and sporting culture. Hear from those who have played, coached and built their way to the top with athletes from the field, coaches and medical in the performance setting, or owners, managers and brands in the front office, while also getting an insider's view on my own personal experiences in this high-performance world. If you're passionate about sports, curious about the minds of champion athletes or looking for information and inspiration on your own journey, coach is the place for you. Welcome back to another episode of Brain Dump. It feels like it's been a while between conversations and that's because I just realized like where the fuck did January go? I feel like it has just been and gone, so it would be a good place to start, maybe a little bit of a recap of where January was, what sort of happened around the month of Jan, and then what's planned ahead for the rest of the quarter. So we'll kick it off, had the holiday break in Adelaide over Christmas, which was fantastic, and then literally the day I got back it was pretty wild with coaching loads and then with everything else that was going on as well. So from a coaching load standpoint, I was at one stage there in a single week had up to 14 pro athletes across multiple sports and multiple clubs. So just in that itself is a pretty big workload and a fair few balls to juggle and have going on on the air, whether that's obviously communicating with the athlete themselves, any external stakeholders like the clubs, player managers, all that sort of stuff. So that in itself was a big, big increase in the, I guess, the previous year, just that sheer coaching load, not only with the pros but then also with the semi-pro and the youth athletes that I had there as well. So it was really good, to be honest with you, it was almost the perfect schedule for majority of that month of January, which was coaching from that six o'clock in the morning through to about 12, the occasional afternoon session here or there, and that was four days a week during the week and then also on a Saturday morning. So, like, from a coaching load standpoint, it was busy but it was extremely manageable based on how that was structured, which, again, I think allows you to A deliver a really good quality session, but then also, b not get too caught up in just the coaching and then looking back at the end of the month, end of the week or whatever it is going like.
Jordi Taylor:What did I actually do? That moved either myself, as in you yourself, or the business forward long-term. That's that trap of getting caught and being busy but not productive. So, yeah, so that was fantastic and the group of athletes that I had some of them now have returned to their clubs just based on commitments around training and pre-season and games and things like that Still probably got eight or so of those that are going to continue on all the way through till March or May, just depending on who they are. So that's phenomenal in itself that we'll still get some more extended period of time with them, not just that six-week sort of period, which is awesome, but it sort of rushes and makes you really tick some of those key boxes. I don't want to say rushes, but rushes you to make sure that you're ticking all those key boxes, versus having more extended approach where you can layer things in a little bit more over time, all those sorts of things. So regardless, that has been really really good and that load has continued to still go through and that sort of split throughout the week is really good. So that has sort of been the coaching side of things. Off the back of that there's been a few bigger partner obligations which take up a fair amount of time as well. Probably the two main ones is the pocket programs that are done in collaboration with Lumen and then also the pre-run prep program say that nice and fast, the pre-run prep program done in collaboration with iron edge. So I'll start with the pocket program with lumen. So basically, this was just a nice way for people that have not experienced the lumen platform yet to jump on, get a free sample program.
Jordi Taylor:Now, the program that I did was a pre-season, uh, for the field athlete and it's a part one and part two. Part one, which is the part that's been released currently, which you can still grab, by the way is the field athlete. Five-week field athlete program strength, power and resilience for the gym. That's a three-day split designed really for any athlete from Jesus, something just fell over designed for any athlete really, that is, from moderate to advanced, I'd say basic might be a little bit, a little bit too. Uh, in there you know. So maybe 12 months of lifting experience or something like that would probably be the best bang for your buck. But on the flip side, uh, a lot of the people that have downloaded is actually coaches, um, which I'll get to shortly but a lot of coaches have downloaded that just to get a bit of insight and to see the flow of Lumen how it looks from a coaching dashboard standpoint, then also from a user interface standpoint, if they were prescribing that to an athlete as well. Part two, which is coming out, I believe, this week, is a two-day, five-week field program designed around the same sort of principles to tack on on either one of those days, one day being more acceleration, change of direction, focus, the other one being more upright running, max velocity with curvy linear running attached to that as well. So, again, a nice simple approach. That one, no equipment required. Literally some markers, if you've got them, would be handy, otherwise you never really need those. So that was part one of some of the partner obligations. Then part two was the pre-run prep program. Got it right that time, which was really fun.
Jordi Taylor:This one was something I spoke about to the guys at Iron Edge late last year. Something I wanted to do this year was, and is, put out more content that's a little bit more longer form. So things like I guess you could call this an e-book, e-books, longer form YouTubes, all those sorts of things where you can actually dive in a little bit deeper. Podcasts also falls into that. Ironically, we can dive in that a little bit deeper and not just get the surface level. Social media, quick interactions. I believe that obviously that's really valuable, but as we know that to really know, like trust, someone, you have to spend more time with them and if you can do that through longer form content like podcasts, like longer form youtube, etc, you're starting to build that trust relationship uh, quicker versus having to have, you know, so many little micro pieces of content over a long period of time and people can see things, miss things, all that sort of stuff. So trying to create a bit more of a, you know, a loyal audience that look forward to the things that I put out.
Jordi Taylor:So the first one that I noticed and I had honestly had this written down for, I don't know, probably 12 months, if not longer was, with the rise of running, whether that be longer distance or also on the field with athletes really sort of taking a liking to the speed side of things, is that there's a massive gap. I found and I'm guilty of this as much as anyone else of that gap just before you actually start. So I know that athletes and coaches don't really have a lot of time. That's usually the key factor in why don't you do any prep and that's usually the exact reason why I don't do it. I'll also just say sometimes I just can't be bothered because I'm lazy and I just go straight into the run. Yeah, even though and I know this is a fact that when I do do some sort of prep, the run itself you actually feel better by the first step, not a k into it or two k's into that run or whatever it may be.
Jordi Taylor:So, designed to do a bit of a program that was either 5, 10, 15 minutes, depending on how much time you had a couple of different variations, different protocols in there, um around how to warm up, and it basically went through a three-part series through mobility, strength and then bounce. So simple, three categories and, depending on how much time you have, a simple process to follow. That I was pretty blown away, to be honest, with the reception. So across Instagram and LinkedIn, I got over a thousand total comments for people to express interest in it, which was just a simple call to action At the end of it just saying respond early if you're keen, and that's sort of what happened there. So far it's got over 365 downloads and I haven't even gotten close to responding to everybody on LinkedIn. So I'm hoping that by the time I get around to that today, tomorrow, responding to everyone, that it'll get close to over 500 downloads, which is obviously awesome that people think that there's any value in it for starters, which is quite an explain away.
Jordi Taylor:But for me, I guess, a I really want to provide value to people, like I mentioned there at the start, and show some longer form content, and then, b also build out a little bit more of an omnipresence around where I hold attention. So email is one that I really want to hold onto this year and push. Prior to when I moved down to Sydney and my previous business, I actually had an email list of over 6,000 people, which is actually why we think about it, because one of the people that I had a you know a bit of a mentorship at the time, told me how good email was and all this sort of stuff, and then I realized that a few years later down the track that my email list was actually way bigger than theirs. So it's funny how that sort of comes around. So that's something that I really want to put a bit of focus back on. So that way again it's if I'm going right back to what I said there before, around delivering value number one, but then also be shortening that feedback loop so anyone that does have, or anyone that does get any extra information through email won't obviously well sorry, anyone that gets information through email, people on social media necessarily won't necessarily see that. So it's a bit of a you know, a closed. You know you have to sort of not necessarily pay to play. That's not the whole concept, but that whole idea is sort of behind like a paywall that doesn't exist, but a little barrier, and that little barrier then helps you take a little bit extra information from those people, ie their email, and then you can start to target and provide them with value that they really, really want, and then ultimately, you know, if then there was anything in the future that I do plan on releasing maybe just maybe not with an expectation, but maybe they might find that a little bit more interesting because they've already experienced so much free value. So if you have that for free, then what would something that might be low cost or even high cost what sort of value would they get out of that? And you'd hope that there's a correlation between seeing that this is the value of free and this is really really good. Imagine what it's like if I actually pay for something. So that's kind of the thought process around that.
Jordi Taylor:I thought I'd actually write down a couple of the key things here, because I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of time that goes into creating a document like the lead magnet that I made. It in its entirety is about eight pages of like a PDF with all links clickable links that take you to the youtube videos, which have a video that's recorded on a professional camera by myself and then a voice overlay over the top. Now it's about I'm looking here about 12 steps I haven't numbered them involved in creating it. So what I actually did was to hold myself accountable, because it was getting close to the end of january and my goal was to have that out in the end of january and I was a couple of days behind. But I actually just posted pre-interest about it. I hadn't even finished the ebook yet, hadn't even finished recording the videos, actually hadn't record any videos yet, but I put out a pre-interest and that pre-interest then a kept me accountable to actually finish the thing, but then also b gave me a little bit of a gauge on how many people I may expect to actually download it and, as I sort of said there before, I was pretty blown away. So not only that could provide me with a bit of motivation, it provided me with a bit of motivation to make it really really good. Even though I planned to make it good, I wanted to make it really really good. So that was a bit of an idea around the pre-rollout the concept, the idea that sort of creation can take any sort of time. As I said, my's just from talking to athletes being around the industry long enough, seeing trends, all that sort of stuff of things that will provide value.
Jordi Taylor:The next part is actually creating the program or the content needed to go into that. So I just did that through my notes in my phone. If anyone knows, my notes are full about 14,000 notes, so they're full of them From there. Creating a document just did a classic Canva, so I made the document, found the layout, all that sort of stuff within Canva. Then from there, it's simply about filming the content. Now, if you've already got the content laid out, again, it saves you a bunch of time in actually going through and thinking, geez, what do I have to have. The actual filming took me all of 20 minutes to film about. I think it was 12, no, it'd be more than that about 16 exercises in 20 minutes, because I had the list there. I just ticked and flicked, ticked and flicked, ticked and flicked and then it was done From there.
Jordi Taylor:Once you've got the content, you then need to upload it and edit it in any way, shape or form. This is in the classic CapCut. So I created a template, added the overlays of each one and then add that up to YouTube or anywhere that you want to host the videos From there. You need to create a landing page on your website specifically dedicated towards this particular product. Again, it needs to be really simple, really basic, so it doesn't confuse people. It's like hey, here it is. Here's one of the two, one, two, three key benefits you'll get from it. Here's one way to download it. Here's another way to download it, and simple as that. You then need to link your file to that in some way shape or form, and then you need to follow up with all the comments.
Jordi Taylor:Now, I did mention on Instagram about last week at some stage that, yes, there's ways that you can create automated responses. So then if someone was to comment on the post, they'll then automatically get sent a link into their DM to download it or to send them to wherever you want to send them to, whatever it may be. There's plenty of things called like many link sorry, many link, many chat, and a few other ones as well. I actually preferred well, and I didn't think I was going to get so many comments, but I still prefer to do it manually. The reason being is I actually jotted down and got so much value out of going through and seeing, a, the type of person that commented, and then B what do they do? Are they an athlete? Are they a coach? Are they a physio? Are they whatever it is, and that really helps me think about. Okay, well, out of my six or seven other ones that are left over for the rest of the year.
Jordi Taylor:What will have the best impact or land the best post? This one based on the type of people that I've interacted with and understand who has downloaded it. So that was really valuable for me to do that. Yes, it's not very scalable. No, it's not good on time. As I said, I still haven't responded to everyone on LinkedIn yet, so that's kind of the downfall to it is, you know, you could potentially miss out on some people because you don't have the automated approach. I look at it the other way the old glass, half full approach and thinking, okay, well, well, there's so much value that I get out of learning and seeing what sort of people commenting on it if it is a little bit late, and getting back to them. That's just sort of part of the double-edged sword.
Jordi Taylor:From there I now have that. All those emails for an email list. I have um. When they download, they have to tick are they a coach, athlete or other? That then allows me to split my um email list so then I can provide content specifically to those that are athletes, specifically those that are coaches, and when I mean email lists and providing content like it's nothing too crazy, I might send an email here and there, but the first one that I'm going to send is after seven days, just to check in saying, hey, how'd you go? Is there anything else I can help you with in regards to that? Is there anything that you want any clarity on? Any feedback, any videos, all that sort of stuff? So it's not about being salesy within email. It's about creating a really natural, automated process and, again, just creating that opportunity for them to reach out if they didn't know that they could. So that's a bit of a recap on that one there, really happy with how it went, especially for the first one, especially the first one under the new business.
Jordi Taylor:What else happened in January? So I kicked off the mentorship program, which was really good. We had the first chat last week, which is all around performance testing, benchmarking and profiling bit of a mouthful again to get out, which is really good again. I think when you go through mentorships, if you're looking for something new, you're probably looking at the wrong area. What you want to be going through is being told something you're familiar with, but in a way that's specific to your context and a new way that you can then apply it. I think that's the key to a mentorship, especially after you have achieved a certain amount of experience, and that was probably the feedback out of the first call with all the attendees who were on there, which was awesome to get their feedback straight away. The information was super applicable. Maybe one or two things in there that I hadn't thought of, but the main thing was the way that it's applied and the way that being a coach and apply it to the private sector not professional sport, not semi-professional sport, not local sport it is purely to the private sector in a one-on-one or a semi-private sort of model. So that was really cool.
Jordi Taylor:To get that done, to get that kicked off, is obviously a fair amount of work as well in the background creating the presentations, getting all the content, lining everything up. The thing for me that I've really enjoyed so far is for someone who's not very systemized and not very good at getting their thoughts out on paper, because it just sort of just happened off the cuff. It's been a really good way for me to start to sit down and actually map out some of my thoughts a little bit more clear and concise, which has been really good, and it's a really good challenge Again once you make something like that. Once it's a bit of an evergreen thing, you can always go back, reuse it, rejig it around for other presentations and other things that you may have in the future. So those 12 presentations that I built out for me, I'm looking at that. They're almost like legacy pieces, evergreen content that I can always go back and reuse. So, yes, there's going to be a lot of work involved in over the next 12 weeks. Yes, it'll probably break me at some point, but I know that long-term they're things that I can.
Jordi Taylor:Then, once you've got the groundwork, you basically built the foundation. You've got the framework of the house. Every time you go through and then you reuse them, you're just tweaking them, modifying them a little bit to make them better, based on the feedback that you get, based on what people really took out of it. But then also you know what you then may add or tweak or change as you start to. You know, change what you do or if there's a new way or a new understanding of how you want to apply things. So that was the mentorship. I got the numbers that I hoped for for that, which is really awesome. I will hope to potentially look at doing another one in May. So if that is something you're interested in, please reach out. I think it's quite unique in the way that it's set up and the way that it's delivered. So if you do want anything more, just send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn and we can sort of break that down and go through whether that's a good option for you.
Jordi Taylor:One thing that I do want to stress on that and I had a really good chat to someone who I really respect, who's been in the industry for a very long time, and he didn't necessarily have a stab, he was just more curious. It could go across either way, depending on how you sort of interpret it and he just goes. You know, everyone seems to have a mentorship these days, like how do you show your value or what deems a good mentorship, and I sort of went through and explained to him that I basically started with what it's not. It's not for senior coaches that are way older than me, that have been doing this for a long time, unless they want to learn the business and put the business to the performance side in the private space. It's not for people that are in professional sport. It's not for people that are working in semi-professional sport. It's purely just for this tiny niche within our industry that is the private coach or the private trainer, and that is the target market for me and that's where I believe I can add value.
Jordi Taylor:Because if you were to say, go and speak to a coach who's working here and it's around high performance sport, that's not me, that's not what I do. I'm very comfortable in saying that I'm not the person for that. And on the flip side to this, something else I said to him was that I've actually probably told five to ten people that it's actually not for them. Either they bounce from mentorship to mentorship or, you know, course to course. They never actually take a moment to apply anything. So they're the classic, just chronic learner. They just want to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn and then hope that one day that the next thing that they do will be the thing that'll actually make them do something. So I've told there was a fair few people that sort of fit into that category. Um, that I just sort of said look, it's probably not the best thing for you. You're better off to go and you know, apply x, apply y, uh. And then there was a couple of people that were probably in sport that I said look again, this just isn't the right thing for you. I don't think you need to get as much value out of it as what you think, and I explained that. So it's also not who you accept. It's also who you turn away to hold those values and hold those truths, not just make it a money grab or something that's high ticket so you can make some quick cash on it. For me, that's not what it was about.
Jordi Taylor:A couple of other quick things, just some of the things that I like to recap on and riff on sometimes in the brain dumps here, some of the threads that go really well, uh, and the two that sort of went really well, which sort of go hand in hand. Um, which I wanted to elaborate on ever so slightly was session debriefs. So session debriefs is something that I heard um dan path speak about. He actually put a name to it. I was doing it already, but he actually put a name to it. I was doing it already, but he actually put a really good name to it. So, as all good people do, we steal and we manipulate and we take. So I've manipulated and taken his approach of session debriefs and literally just called it session debriefs as well, but obviously it's my own take and own spin on that.
Jordi Taylor:So and I heard Les Spellman speak about this before as well that taking away from your sessions and if as well that you know taking away from your sessions and if you're doing too much coaching and too much talking and too much review during the session, you actually miss out on the actual goal of the session, which is training. So that's been really powerful for me is the session debrief. So after the session, um being able to give the athlete feedback through video. Um breakaway has been huge in be able to deliver that, because we can see the the actual, tangible changes, not just the subjective um subjective opinions or views or that that we see. We actually see some um hard, objective measurements off the back of that as well. So that's usually 24 to 48 hours after a session.
Jordi Taylor:Once an athlete's had it with me, well, that's in the gym or on the field as well. Field probably applies a bit more because there's a little bit more going on, probably a little bit more nuanced in how we approach that versus the gym, a bit easier to to do, but nonetheless we still have some some debriefs in the gym around some key poshes and things like that, just seeing them through, just some clips, some videos, quick breakdown, quick summary what went well, what maybe we need to work on the next time, and then when we come into our next session, what are our key kpis or focuses. So that way when they turn up and we say, hey, remember we spoke about X, y and Z, they're like, yep, beautiful, we know exactly what we're doing. So that's been a really powerful thing for me. I found the athletes really, really buy into that approach. They appreciate taking the time to send them the extra footage, send the extra comments, all that sort of stuff. So debriefs have been absolutely huge and the the last one, which is just sounds stupid to say out loud, but just remembering that our athletes that we we work with are also human. They go through things that we go through and whatever else.
Jordi Taylor:And one of the best things that I've been doing lately with a bunch of the, the pros, after our last gym session in the morning which I'd get a coffee anyway is just sitting down for 15, 20 minutes having a coffee, having coffee, having a muffin, having a chat that there has. Again, if you're talking about like feedback loops, close that feedback loop of just coach to athlete but then also making it a bit more relatable. You know, what are you up to on the weekend, then you're here on Monday. How'd you go on the weekend? It's like it shows that you care a little bit more, even though you may always care. It just shows because you're listening. It's a bit less formal, it's a more relaxed environment. It's not that coach-athlete relationship, it's more that human-to-human interaction.
Jordi Taylor:So again, if you have the opportunity I know that not everyone does and I'm not silly in saying that but if you do have the opportunity to have a coffee with the athlete, sit down and have a chat away from the gym, it's always, always a good use of time. It's never a bad use of time. Despite what some people may say that that's not a really good ROI and you're not utilizing your time effectively. I will completely disagree on every level. So that was meant to be a five minute podcast. It's already at 22 minutes, so I'll stop rambling now.
Jordi Taylor:But on the back of that, I made a bit of a judgment call or judgment error. Over the month of January around also booking people in for podcasts, I had a lot of cancellations, partly myself and then partly the guests as well. So February is a lock. This will come out obviously today and then for the next four weeks. I've already got the episodes pre-recorded and ready to roll, so we're absolutely firing. There's going to be a combination of in-person which I've spoken about before, is still want to be my bread and butter, but also understand that sometimes in-person can really restrict your ability to get A really good guests, then also B. Just from a time standpoint can be really difficult, sometimes timing during the days and things like that. So I've got a couple of very great international guests already recorded and ready to rock and roll, so they will start dropping as of this week. So again, hopefully there will be some consistency back in the podcast, because I already learnt from my mistake.
Jordi Taylor:If you say something once and you can't fix it, you need to actually come back with a plan. So instead of releasing podcasts here, there and everywhere, I thought, hang on, I'll just hold off for a week and a half, two weeks, get on the front foot and that way always have something in the back pocket. So it's ready to roll. So looking forward to that. Any feedback good, bad, indifferent please drop me a message, let me know I'm all ears and we'll head. It is Super Bowl Monday. I have got Kansas City Chiefs by 10 points. Paddy Mahomes to throw 250 yards, one rushing touchdown. Travis Kelsey a touchdown. Jalen Hurts rushing touchdown, throwing over 200. And Shaquan Barkley two touchdowns, rushing touchdowns. That's my bet. I think it comes to a thousand and something dollars. So chuck a couple of bucks on that if you've got any time now, but otherwise enjoy and we'll.
