Sports Science with Bryce Murphy

0:00I think the myth was the first thing you said that they have it all figured out. I don't think anyone has it all figured out. I think some people have better systems than other people. A few years ago, right? Everyone was on the machine learning was big. Oh, we're gonna predict injuries. We're gonna get all this data. We're gonna say exactly when that Achilles is gonna blow up. And that's a myth. Like we still don't know. We still are not like, we don't have 24, seven monitoring. We don't know about the stresses. The other stress is going on in their life. There's so many factors that are unaccounted for that. You're just blowing some of your, you're trying to impress someone if that's your stick. Team, welcome back to the Lopson those podcasts. What hot off the press? Yeah, just a few hours ago. As a recent time. Yeah, Wednesday.

1:01We're going, we're running it back. Yeah, rumors have ceased being rumors and are now wide out in the open. Stage announcements. Yeah, if everybody was wondering what was going on, whether they had backed off on reverting our PT test for the Army to basically the old APFT that seems to be in the works. And I don't think if you have big feelings about that that you can blame any of the Army's senior leadership, it appears to be coming from higher than that. If you caught off the Secretary of Wars state of the force address, he talked about a lot of things. He talked about six primary initiatives. None of those big primary initiatives were fitness related. So we're gonna focus on the little nugget of fitness information he dropped, which is that for all services, it looks like the Department of War is going to be directing that the PT test requires nothing more than a stopwatch and a clipboard, which throws out the deadlift

2:02in the Sprint Drag carry from the Army fitness test. We even us with push ups plank run. It's cool to see innovation. I think, yeah, I won't dive too deep into that. Other than to say, I'm curious since we've never done this before, I'm curious to see just how it plays out. It's cool. Sarkaism detected. I will say, this is bothered me for a long time. The Department of War's policy on this is Department of War instruction 1308.3, which tells all the services what they have to do for fitness. And it does say they have to test strength. None of the services really test it. The only one who can really claim they test it is probably the Army with the deadlift, which we are now getting rid of. A lot of them. I will be curious. I think either we've just entirely given up on testing strength and we're totally okay with muscular endurance.

3:03Or depending on whether you consider pull-up bars, testing equipment, the only one I can see figuring out a way to squeeze in here is a pull-up and I am not really opposed to that. I think that might be an interesting idea to see how it played out in practice. You would need a good transition period there and some good training guidelines and coaching guidelines and things like that. I think it's more achievable if people realize, but whatever, conversation for another day. Yeah. We're dancing around the rabbit hole because I think we're probably gonna do a longer episode on this. There's more information comes out. But as it stands right now and granted, this is Wednesday and you'll be listening to this by the earliest on Sunday. As it stands right now, we do have the official announcement. Does that count as an official announcement? Or just an announcement? It counts as a department of war, future plans announcement. It certainly is not an army policy announcement. So we have to wait to see how. Yeah, there's nothing on paper.

4:04But there is a verbal teaser that we, say it's in. Great cliffhanger. But anyway, I don't really have a good transition. Do you think we could navigate these changes to the PT test better if we had better like athlete surveillance kind of stuff? Probably so. That's a great point. And who better to surveil our athletes than teamwork? Today's episode is a lot of fun, quite frankly, because this is somebody that we were looking for. We were connected to and you'll do the intro here in a second, but through one of the organizations that works with us, team works and they do a lot of work in the military space, but also well outside of the military space. And they connected us to Bryce and Bryce is. Bryce Murphy joined IMG Academy's athletic

5:07and personal development team as the head of data management and analytics in June 2022. He oversees the athlete management system which is used to optimize the development of the student athletes there. Utilizing his experience as a data scientist, sports scientist, and strengthening coach. Bryce is able to connect the dots between departments to maximize student development. Also in his free time, spending time with his family, wife and two wonderful children, playing soccer, basketball, tennis and grappling. Before arriving at IMG Academy, sports scientist at University of Minnesota, data analyst at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and as we discuss a little bit in this episode, applied sports scientist for the Orlando Magic for three years. Bachelor's in clinical exercise science, Master's in exercise physiology, and it's just some fun ones. 2017 Minnesota soccer, boys competitive coach of the year, and Brazilian jujitsu blue belt. Hell yeah.

6:07Where's blue in the? I was about to check that myself because I don't know. I know it starts with white and with black and purples in there. I think blue is the second one. So white. Oh, but there's a bunch of subdivisions. So there's like white with one stripe, white with two stripes. You gotta get it together and then you get into blue belts. I don't know how far into blue belt he is, but then it goes purple, brown, black. Point is, you can probably beat you up. Um, the sort of genesis of this episode, we mentioned, uh, teamwork's being involved, but really for a long time, we have wanted to talk to somebody in the sports science space, specifically because there is this, um, we'll call it a myth, I suppose. There's this myth in the military setting that when it comes to human performance data and dashboards and tracking and systems, there's this myth that professional sport has figured it out. Like all the things that we want to do in the military setting,

7:08sports are already doing it. Like LeBron is measured out of the wazoo. They know all the things. They do all the stuff. They make decisions. They win games. And talking to Bryce, you very quickly realize that that's not necessarily the case. And there's like weird nuances that you probably wouldn't have even considered. For example, like player unions and what you can and can't do, what's optional, what's mandatory, et cetera. I think the fun takeaway from this conversation is that it's way more, well, nuanced and chaotic than you would think from watching, you know, like the commercials or whatever. Um, so we go, I think in a lot of different directions, Bryce is an awesome dude to hang out with, an easy guy to talk to. And fun fact, he's connected us with some pretty interesting guests that will likely be coming in future episodes. I think the overall one for me here is people who first talk about like Good Hearts Wall and Mac D'Ameris fallacy and even Hammond's Corollary,

8:12maybe might think that we're like anti-data. No. And we are, we are definitely not anti-data. We are understanding what data can and can't offer you. We're data realists. Yeah. And I think this conversation helps understand that a little bit. Because I think, I think there's this idea back to what Drew said, like, oh, sports is using data to help with athlete stuff. If we start having data, we can do that with service members. And that's not a plan. Like that's not actually going to do anything. And one of my overarching questions has been, are we even doing what we could with the data we already have? Like, are we making the right decisions with the information we know? That's an area right for debate that we will continue to discuss in future podcasts. But another one is like, what data you plan to collect? How are you planning to collect it? And what actual changes are you going to make once you have all that information? Because if you're not going to make changes once you have all that information,

9:12you wasted a lot of time, money, and effort on collecting it. And I see the quote, like, misattributed to Mark Twain all the time. The like, data is a lot like garbage. You better plan for what you're going to do with it before you start collecting it. Mark Twain. I think it's not actually Mark Twain. It's just going to falsely attribute to him on the internet. Doesn't he have to add to where it's never appeared in his day of quest account? Yeah. Yeah. But car guy, Mark Twain was I think car guy. Yeah, exactly. I think the conversation with Bryce helps offer a framework for what structures would need to be in place. And then what data needs to feed those structures to actually help optimize performance. And I think more deliberate conversations about that are what we need. If we actually want to set up a data framework that's going to make a difference for this population. Boom. So enjoy when you finish it. Head over to team works. See what they've got. And we will see you guys next week.

10:16We're all right. Team we're trying to write into the middle of conversation where we thought there was a pre-recorded conversation happening. The bouncing. I did not expect this to connect to anything we were going to talk about today, but it does. So I'm going to open with saying Bryce, you have a couple publications or maybe those same publications is showing up on here twice. But you did some research on bounce characteristics of different types of trampolines. I want to hear about that and we're going to transition it because it's weirdly very relevant. I can't wait to see where you go with that. Okay. What an opening. This is awesome. So long you have some context. So in 2018, I was doing a high performance fellowship with the US ski and snowboard. Out in out in Park City in Utah at the at the former center there. There are in the off season, the skiers of snowboarders will do some of their training on trampolines and my end of foam pits and things like that to get used to rotating so that when they get to either water training or snow training, they're used to that type of rotation.

11:21Allegedly, there's only two super trampolines in the world, one in Russia, one in Park City. So we had, we had one there, right? So we want to see you. I think it's a super trampoline. I think it's like how high it can go. Like this thing. When you would see some of the Olympians, like they're getting into 2000, you know, 20 octas, the 900, like they're getting into the 2000s in terms of rotation. What? So yeah, had that there. And basically we just wanted to, we strapped a accelerometer on. Bill Sands was the lead biomechanist on the project. And we just wanted to see what different, because we had a couple different trampolines, what the different trampolines would produce in terms of force. And so I was the, I was the test dummy for that study. Nice. You do backflip. That one was just like straight up and down, but I got some good videos we can get into. So the, the weird connection here is I remember vividly.

12:21So Drew and I have both spent time in and around the Army's Human Performance Program, which is called H2F, Listic Health and Fitness. And I remember hearing the story of like how H2F came to be in the early days and how they designed it and how they built it. And shout out Kevin Bigelman, who hopefully won they will be on this podcast. I don't know how he feels about that, but you got me in bite. They were, they, like a news article had come out about trying to build human performance teams for Army brigades. And US ski and snowboard reached out and said, like, hey, interesting what you're doing. You guys should come out here and visit. And they like the leadership of the Army's Human Performance Program numerous times referenced like the influence of ski and snowboard on like picking the professionals, the belong on the team with the model looks like all that kind of stuff. So like there's a weird nexus here that I did not expect. What year was that? That would have been they were already doing pilots pre-COVID.

13:23But I'm guessing. I mean, either just before or just after like serious COVID lockdowns is probably when the meeting happened. I don't know for sure though, because it's before I got there. Okay, that's crazy timing. We had a guy there named Kellyn Butterfield, who like put me in touch with someone high up in the military. Like at that point. So it was either I was going to it was only five or six month fellowship. And then I had an offer to go to the US Olympic team out in Colorado. But I had another thing on the table with the military. And I wonder if that. If that would have been like in a parallel universe, I took that one and we were about. You could be interviewing us. What are you able to say what the military opportunity was? I don't remember those. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. You wouldn't be jumping on trampoline. So I think you made the right choice. It sounds way more fun. There's like like US ski and snowboarding low key has come up a lot in my time in terms of like awesome programs with like really cool stuff.

14:25And people don't think about that very often. I don't think. In terms of on the performance side or. Yeah, just like what the performance side of the US ski and snowboard team. Like I know, like he performance data systems. They always come up as like exemplars and then just the structure and the staff. I've never seen it, but I've heard it's super cool. Yeah, it's definitely worth a trip. I think. One thing is that it's like super competitive to get into that fellowship. And then it's just a it's a small staff, right? So. I mean. It's an Olympic program. So they're trying to find the best of the best and a lot of people that I respect have come through that. Program and even people that I didn't know like I met. Oh, no, what's his name? He was with Houston Texans. He was their sports scientist. Mark. I can't remember Mark's last name. I'm so sorry, Mark. Mark. Mark. Yeah, Mark. Yeah, Mark.

15:25You're listening from the Texans. We had like this random moment in Dallas at a well at a mold conference. And we're like and I learned that he also came through that program at skiing snowboard. So just a random, small world moment. Nice. Couple of ski bunnies. Skie. Oh. Yeah. So to set the stage for like the main conversation here, I know like you guys had a conversation prior to this, right? I think we've. You've. We've. We're going on in the military. What's going on with H2F all these things. But I looked at your bio a little bit and you you make a point of mentioning the transition from the NBA setting where you were working with like a couple dozen athletes to the IMG setting where you're working with close to 2000 athletes. And I think a big part of our conversation today will be addressing the theme of like how do you scale?

16:28Like how do you make data useful at different like coach to athlete or data scientists to athlete ratios? And I want to do some scene setting for that. I don't know if I have a question if data this or not. But the military is super interested in doing human performance data. You can see this in like recent memo is from the Secretary of War. You can see it like the military loves data to begin with and like the idea of like doing it to service numbers is very exciting to them. But you're now like the scale you're working at now is you supporting 1600 athletes. But it's a little. I want to add layer set and see if I get this correct. There's like 200 or more coaches working with those athletes. You leading a data scientist team. It's not just you you have other data scientists and researchers working with you on your team. And then in addition to that, you have like a medical staff probably some other things supporting these athletes. The scale I want to like put in your head for a second is that.

17:31One to 1600 is not an uncommon total ratio of human performance and coaching staff to military service members. Like and I'm like person by the 600 people. Yeah, like if we take like the total staff of the team, you might have like a person for a battalion, which is like 700 or a person handling two battalions, which gets you close to that 1600 ratio. So like we don't even have data science people in any human performance teams outside of special operations. They're usually sitting at like much higher echelons where there's one data scientist for like. Many thousands of service members. So that's not that's not a question. That's just like a as we address future questions about how do you make data work for you. We need to imagine it in a setting where it's going to be covering very large populations. Yes. Yeah. That's good context. Can I I know we talked about this a little bit already on the phone, but to set the scene.

18:36People in our world look to sort of the sporting world and assume that it's it's figured out like you guys have the systems in place. Super, you know, multi-million dollar athletes big decisions being made. Data is driving all of that. Like when when people hear professional sport analytics or professional sports science, like what are they what are they get wrong. What's the myth? I think the myth was the first thing you said that they that they have it all figured out. I don't I don't think anyone has it all figured out. I think some people have better systems than other people. Actually, there's no. A couple a few years ago, right? Everyone was on the machine learning was big. Oh, we're going to predict injuries. We're going to get all this data. We're going to say exactly when that Achilles is going to blow up. And that's a myth like we still we still don't know. We still are not like we don't have 24 seven monitoring. We don't know about the stresses. The other stress is going on in their life.

19:41So many factors that are unaccounted for that. You're just blowing some of your you're you're trying to impress someone if you if that's your stick. If since you already mentioned it, which do you think has a bigger influence will take injury prediction kind of stuff because that's something the military is very interested in. What do you think has a bigger influence on like an individual athletes injury risk things you are capable of monitoring or consistently do monitor or those things that you say aren't going to capture by stresses in their life and things at home with their family. I think you have to consider all of them. I went down this genetics rabbit hole a few years ago, one of my friends at the magic his name is Andy Burke. He used to work with British athletics. He had an Olympian friend that started like a gene sequencing company DNA fit.

20:41I was the name of it. They've rebranded since then. So I sent some DNA samples they gave me a free testing kit and one of the things was like your proclivity to recovery and injuries so like it said that I had a low risk factor for ACLs luckily I mean I couldn't remember torn my ACL but I'm curious like how much I don't know the answer but I wonder how much genetics play a role like is it just like everything else in life and then the other is your environment right if I was a down hill alpine skier than my risk or exposure for a gruesome knee injury would be a lot higher than if I was a roer. As somebody who's torn his ACL downhill skiing. Yeah. You feel that. When did you tell your ACL? Oh, 20, new years eve going into 2018. Oh, wow.

21:43Yeah. It's kind of how you're doing. Doing great now got back to skiing technically I ski the next season not super well or anything but I'm totally back to like skiing better day before that and everything. Yeah. I had not to get a sidebar but I after I tore my ACL a bunch of people asked me like are you going to leave the army are you going to get a disability rating all this stuff and I'm like no man I'm watching like highlight reels of athletes who made awesome comebacks from ACL buffers. I don't plan on being disabled from this I plan on crushing it in like eight to 10 months. Yeah. That's good. That's good like self mental performance coaching like that. There you go. Who's a why am I blanking on his name. He played for the Vikings. Almost set the like rushing yards record the season after tearing his ACL AP Adrian Peterson. Yeah, his highlight reel stuff from that season. I got me through ACL rehab. I like that. Bryce we've been doing this podcast for almost four years now maybe longer.

22:43Not once is Alex picked up on a sports reference. So I just want to give him a lot of credit there. For watching football highlight videos specifically Adrian Peterson with the Minnesota Vikings. Granted, he knows you didn't know his name but I'm proud of you. I watch army football. That's not I'm talking no offense to West Point. I'm talking like NFL type. You're talking about real athletes. No, because no, I don't want to get you know ex communicated necessarily but I'm proud of you. That was price. I'm glad you got to see that. That's huge. Yeah. I'm glad I'm glad I have good witnesses. That was that was big. Okay. Next question for you. With with like the tech side of things in professional sport like do you. Is the tech itself make the difference and it doesn't need to be like the wearable or the ring or the sensor but just the whole suite of information behind that like does does that make the difference or is it like the people and the processes.

23:45Sure answer that is definitely the people in the processes but I think another thing that people get wrong like going back to your first question is that they believe it's the tech or the data or the metrics that make the program. And so it's an arms race to keep up with the Joneses like I remember when in 2015 1617 when catapult first entered American football. No one knew like sports science wasn't even really that big back then it was it was niche. It was some people had it some people didn't it was like a side task for the strength initiative coach or an athletic trainer. But once teams started you started seeing those brawls and I was like what why is that dude wearing a bra like I want a bra. So now like now everyone's out now everyone's wearing brawls tracking their numbers around and no decisions were made off of it right I think we miss the behavioral change aspect and the decision science of like okay we have these things what's the plan now to make meaningful to make a real change or impact the decision.

24:50And I think now 2026 like we're getting people are like oh light bulbs gone off like we need to get to that point. That okay so that brings up a question because again this is I don't know if I want to make the whole episode comparing like one world versus the other necessarily but like that that came up and something I was reading recently it's like you do all the things you measure all this stuff. But is it actually influencing any decision making whether it's programmatically from the perspective of a strength coach or more broadly from the perspective of like organizational you know coaching staff like have you seen situations where the data drove decisions or does it tend to be more performative. I feel like I've seen all of it right and an ideal world is that it informs decisions it doesn't necessarily drive all of them like you still need a human in the loop.

25:56But it but you also don't want that human to just like defer to what they were going to do anyway so you want to use the information to help guide your decision. One example my first year at the magic we had a guy named Nathan Spencer he came from Australia he was in the NBL and don't get I'm sorry Nathan I get this wrong and I believe the NRL prior to that which is the rugby league nice. And so they had all their decisions set up like they met with the coaching staff they met with the general manager sporting director whoever was they were like okay if we see 20% drop I'm just making the stuff we see a 20% dropped on a force frame back those called the growing bar if we see on a squeeze right like add up to strength is down. We're going to reduce high speed running value and buy X amount and that was like everyone knew it the players walked in they scanned their cards they did it by themselves like they knew the expectation like they went they did their fourth frame they filled out their survey they went out breakfast.

27:03No one had to tell them no one had a guide on no one had to hold their hand to these things coaches got the information right away maybe there was an in person checkpoint like I saw your. Your growing score was down my is is it pain are you sores a fatigue did you try like the one of the follow up questions to why it's down and then the decision would be made if the context was provided he was in. I feel like he was in total shock when when he got to the NBA because the players didn't walk in and do that stuff. They didn't want to do that stuff like there was a lot of assumptions I think that he made from the world of Australia doing things like people that's just what athletes did. And there were no if ands or butts about it now the NBA guys are making. 100 times more and they're like well you're not going to tell me what to do. I've already made it here like I'm making I'm making millions aren't even listening to you so it's just a different.

28:09Even even in the same world of sport it's a different world. If you're if you're comparing across the leagues is what I was trying to get it. It's funny say that because I so I did my master's degree in Scotland and so like Scottish Institute of sport Canadian Institute like all the Commonwealth institutes of sport Australia being one of those. For folks that don't know the commonwealth is the that's what used to be under the former British Empire guys yeah there you go. There's a commonwealth games actually interested but I say that because I was kind of exposed to some of that this this presumption on behalf of the athletes that you walk in and you do the thing and there's some testing involved it was much more in my opinion like data driven and I didn't really do any time at all in the American sports scene. And maybe the question here is like with the glitz and the glamour and the money at stake in this sporting world is it harder to integrate data science because to your point like they don't they already made it so to speak.

29:19This is the world's worst answer is it depends but it depends on the sport right so if we if we stick if we stick with basketball specifically in America and NBA. It's still majority of the majority is still American players right and you think if you think about their background it's probably start playing there young the plant the parks they hit the AAU scene. There are phenom in high school they do one year in college they get to NBA and in that whole time no one has ever put a bra on them no one's ever put a GPS strap on them no one has ever talked about statistics to them and so it's a it's the first time they're seeing it and hearing it so if you're not getting to know them as a person gaining that trust helping them understand why you're doing this. You've already lost them especially if they get a vet in their ear that's like I don't put that stuff on like they're going to use it against you.

30:20I was like no one I got you if you keep missing shots on game night they're going to use that against you when I'm like I don't they don't care what you want to practice which are healthy. This is not the question I expected to ask but coming off the back of that is are there any settings where you've seen sports science being used lower in the developmental pathway like at like colleges are certainly using it more now as it touched high school at all like how how integrated is this thing I know it depends on the sport and the place and all that stuff but like is that starting to happen. I mean shadow I'm just Academy like we probably have. I was going to say I'm. We probably have the best monitoring system of. Comparable to any college or professional team in the United States I would say what is that but so if you guys are kind of a one off like you have. Yeah yeah yeah.

31:20Yeah so other big high schools look to us as like what are they doing what's the what's the goal post and I think if they see what we're posting they try to copy. Okay what this is like maybe the broadest question of ever asked on this podcast but like what are y'all testing. Like what are you what are you trying to figure out. Who. No it's good it's broad I could take it anywhere I want to go crazy with it. So in the last year we've been really intentional about building our athlete development model so you mentioned like the Commonwealth. Organizations right even T USA like every Olympic NGB national governing body has some sort of documentation for how they're going to take. A youth athlete through that pipeline to a gold medal and so those are out there open open source from nature and the world where you can go look at their models right so we.

32:27We took a few different models that we liked USA Australia Canada and we adapted it to the high school athlete. With some some nuances right like we're dealing with puberty right so okay how do we take a. Pre-pubescent during puberty what are the things happening and then post obviously and what does it look like to be a really good tennis player at 12 at 14 at 16 at 18 on the tour. And so we're testing things at each stage along their journey to make sure that they're progressing. To hit their goal. And to really what we want to do is beat the base rate of if you did nothing at all where would you land up or if you just had like regular training where would you end up we want to beat that base rate like we're trying to aim above that. So so we can completely say if you come to our academy so the thing not now I'm spending the thing is we get about 20,000 campers per year as well and so these campers are the best.

33:37What's the word proxy the best control group of like these are just regular regular people right these are just can anybody become to a camp. So that's our control group and then we have our boarding school students that they're with us year round. So if we get campers and they usually come back every year if we look at their progress over the years and we compare it to our boarding school progress over the years are we beating. Mother nature and maturation. That's what that's I know I didn't say what exactly measured but that's the reason we measure and that's what we're trying to beat we can get into like all the cities if you want. Yeah, I want to I think this will get us into the specifics because I want to connect that back to what you said earlier. You said it's really the people of the processes that make the difference. What I want to know is how do you make the data support those people in those processes like what data stands out as useful.

34:38What have you like dialed in like this is worth collecting this is how we present it to somebody so that they can make a better decision. How do we if we acknowledge this the people in the process is that make the difference how do we set up. Data collection structuring filtering and presentation in a way that makes those people processes more effective. Look readiness data is only useful when it's connected teamwork. Unifies every domain of human performance into one platform giving leaders a complete real time picture of their people. Learn more today at teamworkstactical.com. Look as you all know this train heroic is the platform we use to deliver all of our mobs and mobs training programs including the world famous long and strong. Whether you're training for tactical performance strength endurance or just trying to become a more capable human. Train heroic gives you your workouts tracks your progress and keeps everything in one place. It's also super easy to use. The best part is if you're a coach train heroic isn't just for athletes. It's one of the best platforms available to build, manage and scale your business.

35:45If you're still juggling spreadsheets and PDFs it's time to make the switch. Check out the link in the show notes today to start training with us or see how train heroic can level up your coaching at train heroic dot com. The first step is to really get to know the person you're setting it up for. So if coach Alex likes graphs and coach drew likes tables. I'm not going to give coach drew a bunch of graphs. I'm not going to give coach Alex a bunch of tables like I'm going to meet them where they're at. I'm going to meet them statistically where they're at visually what they want to see. I'm going to pick their brain on. Why do they make decisions anyway like if we why did you pick this player over that player and start to get some of the subjective art and feel of why they did things and see. Okay, do to my objective numbers match up with their subjective feel so.

36:46I know that's not it's kind of like another it depends question, but really you need to get to know the person that you're helping make the decision for. And then that like that changes the way you approach it. I want people in like military leadership positions to hear what you just said. Because I think one of the things we bumped into a bunch in military performance as essentially the Pentagon has gotten really excited about human performance data sport science kind of stuff. I don't think anybody at that level has had a conversation with the type of people who would theoretically use that data to make better decisions about what they need to know and how they need to see it. Because I realistically were talking about either a strengthening conditioning coach or like a squad leader or platoon sergeant. And I don't think the conversations have gotten to the place of what do those theoretical like data end users need to see and how do they need to see it in a way they would actually improve day to day operations.

37:48What's what's a good day to day operation decision you'd have to make if you're one of those people. So I we should back up and explain like what the status quo is today. And I think in you know, lot of military units. If we're being honest, they show up in the morning to physical training at 630. It's still dark outside. Nobody really wants to be there. And they just like point at somebody and say you're waiting for you today. Go do. And like Mondays tend to be a long run. Tuesdays tend to be calisthenics and 30. And there's days tend to be rock marches and you just do those things. I think in theory, step one is we have a little more structure to that, which is starting to happen in programs that have human performance staff. And step two is, could we do a better job of like smoothing out the bumps in training volume and intensity. If we could see like everybody's mileage over the last three weeks.

38:48If we could see how recovered people are. If we could see like maybe if we had better monitoring, we could track like how fatigued they are from training that wasn't necessarily strengthening like if they were out in the field yesterday with a rock on how fatigued are they from that. That that's like a very nebulous idea, right? Like what what would a squad leader need to know to make slightly smarter decision about like how far are we going to run Tuesday morning. Like does everyone have the wrong time distance. I think that's actually something we've talked about a lot here of historically. Yes, that's what it's up happening or like that's not quite true. You tend to split into like an A group of B group in a C group. A group runs both the farthest and the fastest B group runs somewhere between C group is people who are struggling with running. I think I think we're getting a little bit better about like more flexible prescriptions, more individualized prescriptions in places where coaches are involved in that.

39:48But that's exactly like what I think would be possible with a little bit better monitoring because that's the reason we have such a high injury rate right is because we make people at hilariously different ability levels run together for the same distance and the same pace sometimes. And we might surprise Pikachu face slower west condition people end up with overuse injuries like yeah that's what we're dealing with that's I think that's a really good you might if I jump into a go tangent. Yeah, I think in sport that like an analogy or a synonym for that would be a conditioning session for a soccer player right like say you have 10 reps everyone has 20 seconds to run down the field and 40 seconds to get back. Well, if you're slow and unfit that 20 seconds is rough and like your high like say you know I don't know. 8 10 meters per second is like we don't do meters per second is America say 18 miles an hour is a is your max and the guy next to you his max is 22 you're going to be running at a higher capacity than him right that might be a jog for him.

41:02Whereas like that's a all out sprint for you. So you're doing an all out sprint he's doing a jog you get overloaded he gets under loaded nobody gets fitter it's exactly a problem yeah. So so I guess one way you could use data is to understand what I just said like okay what what are the capacities that we're dealing with and then how do we make. A plan for you for you for you that maybe it'll last the same amount of time so we're not on different time schedules but your volumes and your intensity will be different but to push you for what you need. Are you saying that kids that I am J are jogging 22 miles an hour. No, no, no, no, no, no, you are. I want to I want to know what data you're collecting what's in the water. We did have some we did have some raw GPS data though where guys were hidden 23. She's up there that's like our national football kids you know I think it's but to kind of like.

42:08Riff on what you guys were just talking about there seems to be this assumption that because. You know presumably we go to war everyone's doing the same war we're all fighting the same fight like your your capacity i.e. The work that you do in training should be the exact same across the board because bullies don't care is kind of the you know i'll translate this a little bit because I think there's like a more frustrating version of it even that I ran into a ton. When I was like teaching squad leaders in put in sergeants how to do physical training program design kind of stuff which is that the military loves establishing standards. Everybody should be able to run four miles and 32 minutes and everybody should be able to rock 12 miles with 35 pounds on their back in three hours and everybody should be able to like. We have these like very clear markers you pass it or you don't. And and people in positions of leadership love to just beat people over the head with those standards like if that's the standard we do achieve cool on Monday we're going to run four miles and you better do it under 32 minutes there's no we haven't quite figured out.

43:18Meeting someone where they are and getting them to the standard. Well I think the standard is fine I think to your point it's. It's it's the mismanagement of individualizing the train up to the standard. And so I guess you know because this is a podcast and we ask questions and prices are guest maybe the question for you Bryce is like. Across all the different sports which feasibly have some standards baked within the things that the athletes need to do. How do you scale the sort of individualized nature that some of these folks need to meet that standard. So we stay on the if we stay on that soccer example that I was giving one to miles per hour jogging kid. Yeah yeah the jogger the fast jogger speed walker. It's it's almost like the same thing right like we're not going to war but everyone's got to play the same soccer match and it doesn't matter if you're fast or slow or fit or unfit like if you're in the match you're in the match.

44:22And so that's I guess if you could call like that's the standard is the method you've got to be able to play 90 minutes you got to be able to ball with one. There's a. Researcher named Martin Bouchit who invented a test call it's called the 30 15 intermittent fitness tests. It's one that I really like but basically what it'll do is give you your max aerobic speed and then you can go. I might be sorry Martin if I get this wrong and you watch this for some reason Mike don't be martin. Shout out Martin a lot of shout outs. But separately you get your max sprinting speed right so that could be from a 30 or 40 whatever it is get your max spring speed get your ms from there you can calculate your anaerobic speed reserve and then I can give every single person their own individualized program to help them. Get closer to their standard without absolutely crushing them on day one.

45:23So that's how I like to do it. That's what we did with the magic as well. We so they have a basketball version of soccer version and I think ice hockey version of that test but that's one that I really like. So in coming into this conversation I don't know if you ever read the sports gene by David upstein. Wow. I know this is forever ago that I read this book but he gave a TED talk I think it was a TED talk. It's one of my favorite TED talks of all time one because whatever PowerPoint technology he's using is frickin sick but regardless. He uses the example I think of like the 100 meter sprint and I think he compares. You saying bolt to one of like the early 20th century. Like so the point he was making basically was like the biggest difference in performance across this 100 year timespan was like the technology and the track surface.

46:23It wasn't the sports science it wasn't the nutrition it wasn't the training like when we got right like the difference in finishing time was like a half split second. I think that's maybe that's who it was. But you see the same thing in swimming obviously with the whole conundrum around the like super suits that guys were wearing and the times so the question baked into this is. Are we like are the IMG kids are athletes today are we better off. Objectively because of the amount of information we have access to. Or have we not really come as far as we think we have. So I think we separate those example your first example was like the pinnacle of human performance like sure those do they get the genetic lottery they that's the best of the best like they're. They're tapping on the ceiling of of human limits and for like if we go back to the population that I'm working with.

47:24And we think about that base rate of humans right like the average human is here and they're going to do I'm moving my hands up slightly if you listen to this they're going to they're going to escalate a little bit right like they'll get better because of puberty and some test. They're on the way they'll naturally get bigger faster stronger what I'm saying we're trying to do is beat that little curve now we're not we're not pushing people to the limits of human capacity. But we're we're beating what they would have done. If they just were sitting on the couch or just training at your local gym or. Yeah essentially. I want to take this in a weird direction. I think inevitably elite performers end up getting the most access to stuff like this they get the most access to great coaches great resources great food great medical support and great sports scientists. But do you think the sports science tools that are getting kind of shaped with elite performers.

48:28Do you think there's an argument you made that they have the potential to have a way bigger impact in like less elite performers or like Jen pop communities were like if we took all the lessons we learned squeezing the last like 0.1% out of elite performers and applied them to folks. There like a much more normal level of performance do you think we could actually get way more out of those people by applying the same workflows and tools and principles. 100% I also think let me split this into two different questions first question was access you talked about access is like elite performers having all this access. I think there's a gap between. Access and utilization. It's there. That doesn't mean they all use it or take advantage of it. I just wanted to point out voluntary. A lot depends if the NBA is 100% voluntary for like almost everything that they do it's in the CBA.

49:32So anything that we want to track on them. They have to agree to. Interesting. And that goes back to your relationships and you know being being a good human. To your other point though like a long long time ago I was a personal trainer at this like a local fitness 19 type gym. And because I had my. I think this is after undergrad. Yeah so after undergrad I had my clinical exercise science and like physical therapy pre-rex. So I was doing that work and the gym manager was like marketing me as a physical therapist basically. So I'm working with all these old people trying to come back and I don't know how many I took from like. Trouble walking like couldn't stand up good to like really good mobility. So to your point I think there is really low hanging fruit and just basic nutritional knowledge, basic strength training, basic cardio.

50:35That people would just never aware of. So the knowledge gap exists across the spectrum. It just may be bigger for someone that's never been exposed to anything. So I think that's a big thing. I think. Can you like okay to kind of come back to the subject at hand like is there. In the management of all of your athletes is there a decision or a series of decisions that are like routinely made. Or I guess I should say routinely driven by data that you're collecting. That informs you now data driven. I know I'm trying to use the right words. Is. One thing. So this goes back to the ADM I was talking about that athlete development model. And so now. roster management slash creation slash team placement was really subjective in the past. And now we're using all the day that we collect to inform our parents and families right because they're paying a lot of money to be on the everyone's meal and national team.

51:46But now we right away we have objective measures. It was over Amy towards just to say. This is the team that you're going to be placed on. These are all of the reasons why if you if you don't freak out and you stay here's the growth path that we have in the plan that we have in place. And then we have to get you where you want to go. You're just objectively not there yet. But we know what to do to get you there. So that's. I would say like before that I'm not sure if we had. If I could point to one thing that said yep. Like every time we see that number of this is the change we make. But we kind of as an academy all went in on this concept. So you're testing it this school year. You must I don't want to get you in trouble but I have to ask you must get some insane parents. You can plead the fifth. Yeah.

52:47Except the point is you can always please. Do you so okay back to questions that won't get in trouble. We may have talked about this when we spoke on the phone but like the most seductive word in our ecosystem is readiness. Maybe lethality is like a close second but like readiness right. And I think my hunch is that when when people at all levels envision that. They envision like a matrix style dashboard with all the things and certain people are green and then there's some yellow and some red and maybe. You could even it maybe it's even a touchscreen and we can like move them around and do thing. Does that exist. Does that exist like is there a world where we can make readiness decision like they're ready. They're not and we know that because we measured these things. I think we're I think we're trying. I don't know if we're if we're there. I think we take a lot from academia in different fields and try to grossly apply it in sport.

53:53So one that's been. I mean we all still use it. It's been very popular. Since. It became more portable is force plates right like force plate readiness. Are they ready. And there's some there's some recent papers coming out that. Maybe pointing at like that's not really what that's telling you but you can you can come up with different strategies to achieve the same output. So are you ready or you're not ready. You you change your strategy but you got the same output. And so I don't know if is that the right question for that type of technology. There's some other things in the past. That I really liked that I would actually if you get Roman Fulman on here to talk about. He's the. He's the director of sports science for the UFC PI out in Vegas. He's also the inventor of the Omega wave which. I love the way super popular and like.

54:541617 18 like that maybe late 2010s. I used to slap those electrodes on myself first. I was all in on the Omega wave. I loved his papers too. Did you feel ready like when I said you're ready to do you feel ready. Man here's the thing and I don't want to like whatever we'll do it like. All the tech right I won't name names I won't name brands you've mentioned Omega wave there are a watch you're wearing right now. This is like a version of a loop. Oh you are tracking data right now I was about to. Drew's gone on like a little bit of a data detox. It's not a little like I've been detoxing for years but but but to your point. You lay there with these electrodes one I think was on your forehead. I think the other one's on your on your palm right. I don't know if I felt ready or not but I felt pretty cool in that I think contributed to like man I'm going to do the thing today like whatever the thing is.

55:56I don't know if there's a question maybe the question there is like how much of this do you think is just like you like you're putting on the suit of armor and you're going to go do the thing like just feels cool. So then it produces results. I mean placebo is a hell of a drug. Man we keep coming around to that it's true. Yeah I remember so we tried it with a few guys at the magic we did it you know over multiple games and. You know if you got a game you got a game you got to go play so you know if the numbers were down take a look at you know I didn't never show an iPad you take a look at that. Hey you crushed it today like high score you're about you're about to put up 40 tonight and then maybe all jacked up like yeah I do feel good don't I yeah. Is it is it a Ohio state it like with their whole wearables program refuses to let the athletes see any of the data on game day is that. I think that's a. Oh my god. Josh Hagen. Josh Hagen.

56:56He would know he would I can't ethically promote anything Ohio State being for Michigan but. That's a good point what's what's what's Michigan's data sweet look like Michigan feeling pretty good this year. Michigan's the target of serious controversy yeah yeah we're going to. What happened to you game oh it's oh oh the last second thing yeah hey listen man if the number. Not watching sports when you can't. Well listen shout out to my commonwealth friends I was watching rugby this weekend so I did see the highlights of the Michigan game. You guys might have different opinions I think college football is just in shambles right now. And that was kind of the icing on the cake. To LSU is true that's it the SEC is trying to kick LSU out I saw that and then from from a rugby thing I just saw. The the Rams was it the Rams they hired like one of the best rugby tacklers to come teach miles Garrett how to hit you.

58:02I saw this yeah and he. He's an Australian I don't know this guy I've seen some of this stuff I think he plays Aussie rules or maybe he plays rugby league anyway just getting reamed by shirtless miles Garrett over and over and over and over and over. For tackling practice which yeah and actually the Baltimore Ravens just hired the head of performance from the New Zealand all blacks this guy was there plus years yeah Nick go yeah which was cool to see. Sorry Alex more sports try to check it is back on the rails is that yeah we were off there the last question I don't remember but I will ask you a direct question what percentage of the data you guys collect ever gets used in decision making. Okay we can.

59:02Unpack a few different things so our athletic and personal development department contains strengthening permissioning performance nutrition mental performance sports medicine. Performance science and operations. So from a strength and conditioning standpoint our number one most collected piece of data is velocity velocity based training system so every rep every weight so every exercise gets tracked through that and then a hundred percent drives. Programming right like are we seeing improvements in the things that we want to see over time depending on the phase or strength block we're in right so we're gonna. If we're in a max strength block for easy sake and try bar deadlift is your primary lift is that number going up over time right like that's a that's a really simple easy example mental performance i'm just gonna go i'm just gonna.

1:00:02Go down the list here mental performance has to. Big things that i want to shout out they the athletes do goal setting when they come and so they will they do it in the survey and in teamwork AMS we have that all. Set up for them they do it at check in. And they'll put it in all of their different types of goals and then they'll also do their mental performance assessment which. Looks at focus resilience handling pressure. Commitments. And confidence so five different factors it's like 50 different questions has construct validity through mexico state university went to that whole thing. And so we'll pull they will pull will pull that data down for them and give them them a ties like hey this group is really low and handling pressure this group is really low in resilience this group. That way they can cater their either group or individual sessions to what those students need.

1:01:08Performance nutrition. Because that department is smaller we. Focus on more. Like eating disorder type thing so if if people have reds or low energy availability will make sure that they have which which we get from. Biomarker collection and through survey collection so we'll use the data to help like drive the team to the athletes that need that care. Obviously that drives what they're going to do with their groups. And then sports medicine. Probably the biggest one is we have our like availability trackers we have. 100% available ready to go modified for training like these are things you change modified for training and competition and then like can't go like a no go type score.

1:02:13And so that changes what everyone does with that athlete on that day right so that's like the first thing they're able to see when they log into their dashboard. Who's available for a training session. If they are available what modifications do I need to make. So I think there's a I don't know what the percentage would be but we definitely use a lot of that one out of the part because the thing I'm worried about with the military setting is we can collect all the same data and just have no way to use it. So modifications will be made because there's not enough individualized attention or ability to adjust to those things. But I think that that gives you a pretty good picture of like the reason the things are being collected is because there's a decision algorithm that they feed into. And I think that's like a fundamental lesson that like other organizations trying to copy what sports settings are doing. So I think that's why we need to learn. I do want to ask what might be a dumb question, but you mentioned trap our dead left is your primary lift and you were talking about velocity based training you're talking about like high school age athletes all this kind of stuff.

1:03:24I hear all the time that trap our dead left is safer than straight bar dead left. Not theory but like actual evidence the fact stuff that claim like do you think trap our dead left actually is safer. Where's that just a thing we tell ourselves. I think from a physics standpoint you could say that right so like if the. I'm not going to forget on our channel versus where the bar is. Yeah, yeah, exactly right like if that's out of the theory. Yeah, sure. I haven't seen any like there's lots of mechanisms out there. I haven't seen anything compelling because there's there's other factors that play too right like a trap our can tip one way or the other if you're using low handles. You have like rotational issues now depending on hand placement and balance like. But like nobody actually knows like we just say you can align your center of mass a little better so much safer. I don't know. I guess you could say I mean for like if you took it up if you took a higher up the chain to like your cervical spine instead of your lumbar spine like if I put a.

1:04:26I put a 20 pound weight here versus a 20 pound weight here. Yeah, that's changing the angle right like that that might break my neck this one will just compress a little bit of that's no big deal. So I think changing the angle and where the forces. Is a strong theory most things are theories. You ever seen anybody power clean a hex bar. Power clean a hex bar. I never seen no open back no open back just from the inside. See, okay, there's a story here for years for years. I've been throwing that out as a challenge seen if anybody could power clean like a trap bar basically closed like the clothes were not the open one. Alex sent me a video of somebody doing it, but they cleaned it from like outside of the. The middle part, which I hadn't even really conceptualized because in my mind we were using the normal handles and. At some point you have to let go of it and then re grip it and like push so anyway.

1:05:28I maintain that it still can't be done, but I've seen it now done from a slightly different angle. Did he flip it over his head like so if you're on the outside you pick it up like the city. I honestly don't I remember I remember sitting in the video. I do not remember what I think he had it from the outside through it up and then sort of caught inside. Like he he went under the but it was yeah. I was pleased to see that somebody's out there trying trying the interesting stuff. Can I go back to the decisions that were making off the day, they're like yes, ignore my power clean question. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're good, good sidebar. The decisions that were making off the data. happen over what I want to emphasize is it didn't happen overnight right like we we said down we had a conversations okay actually last year we went through every sport so every we have 12 sports every

1:06:29sport has a S&C lead and so we we help them with some of their testing all their testing collection and they had to say why are you collecting this data like what are you doing with this piece of information and we basically like trimmed all the fat so if there was no strong defensible claim for why we're collecting what we're collecting we dropped it we dropped those tests and we moved on and then this year they had their director of S&C will town'sley had them each defend their programming decisions throughout the year what why they did it at the time with the information that they had looking back at what they know what would they have changed and where they gonna do looking forward so I thought that was really good I kind of love that practice the programming audit yeah how often I've got two questions in my head based on what you just said and how often how often do you guys as an organization change what you would consider to be

1:07:36your like core suite of metrics because I find that in our world there's so much debate about what we're gonna collect it has to get signed off on some of the different levels and then by the time you actually have an ecosystem you're kind of married to it because policies are literally built around it like how frequently do you guys change what you're looking at we we try not to change anything within a school year for sure like once it's set in the fall like this is what we're rocking at least for this year we had one philosophical change where when I first came in the initiative was to create a normative data set which meant like every athlete across every sport basically did the same tests and that was like my first two years or so and then after that we kind of came back together and had that conversation of like okay do we really like are we what are we

1:08:37gonna do with this stuff are we are we here to publish it do we want to get into research like why why do we have to do that and so we said well we don't really have to do that because we haven't published any of that yet I don't know if we need to like we have it for ourselves now let's move okay what's best for the sport in general unless you just test all those things we'll keep some things overlapping like everyone gets a 10 yard split because they have some kind of sprint test everyone gets some kind of strength metric some kind of aerobic metric but it has evolved from everyone does the same thing to every everyone does what's good for the sport to now everyone does the things that are actually gonna drive change in a program I mean it's almost like you mentioned sport in our world it's like MLS in a sense military occupational specialist

1:09:37like the job that you do in Alex and I have talked with ourselves and then with other guests about should everybody be doing the same tests or should it be slightly more job specific should we just be pursuing the same overarching proxies in terms of aerobic development kind of choose your test strength kind of choose your test you know whatever it's going to be how do you avoid setting up your programs in such a way that the things that you do are easily testable you avoid setting up your program like you mentioned the reason this came to my head just to give you some context as you mentioned velocity based training I'm a fan of velocity based training I recognize though if that's the approach you're going to take it it favors certain movements things you can measure velocity with I think in a sport setting is fine but when you get into you know quote unquote our world like strong man type movements become attractive weird weird implement moving odd objects just doing weird things and I could see that being challenging

1:10:43to strap a VBT device to we've we've developed our own VBT vibes based training I don't know if you've heard of it um but I'm curious as you kind of went down that only half joking we're pre-muriused by vibes based training see and we got a shirt coming out soon no big deal um like you'll get one no more um like how do you how do you I guess how do you how do you weigh and measure hey we're gonna focus on things that we can usually capture data on versus we're gonna focus on the squishier stuff that we know is important but we can't necessarily measure it one thing that our volleyball coaches was like beating us over the head with was they just want to know how high kind of volleyball player touch like that's not the only metric they care about but it's very high on their board right so they don't care

1:11:46even though all these other things relate to that right but they don't necessarily care how strong they are or how fit they are it's like how can you touch 11 feet and spike the ball straight down like that's their number one goal so we didn't have a great way and you know you can get a vertical but that's kind of clunky um especially if you have a hundred athletes to get through in a short amount of time with one vertex um so right now uh one of my performance science analysts her name is Wendy Gwan she's working on a computer vision model where we could just set up cameras or use the cameras that we already have and throughout training you can just get their max touch height like repeated overtime like how high did they get up on on that spike on that block um so it's almost like bringing the lab to and creating the tech to answer the question that is actually meaningful for the decision makers that makes sense yeah because once you once you

1:12:49throw them a bone and and build what they're asking for and not give them what you think they need then you can start to sprinkle in the other stuff that you actually want to do i also love the trend of making the data collection as transparent as possible like when when data collection becomes like super disruptive and you have to go to like a separate different machine a separate different place to do the thing now you're looking at opportunity cost of like was that worth collecting because we sacrificed what we could have done with everything else um I think that's something that gets forgotten in this space so because the military loves to treat service members like guinea pigs that like exist to generate a bunch of data because like every we're like yes we like work in military treatment performance but there's also a million other programs that would love a bunch of data to help them make perfect decisions and if every program got to collect all the data that they wanted to collect the military has like an actual very deliberate filtering process if who's allowed to send out surveys technically um not everybody

1:13:52follows it but because there's so many programs that would love to send out surveys that service members would be drowning in surveys every day there's a serious risk of like collection saturation kind of stuff that said we are over an hour we appreciate your time we i have a couple of coolest questions we'll see it how far this goes but we'll start with uh one we've used a lot before i think you just based on the conversation we've had so far we'll have some really interesting answers to this it's a two-part question the the first part is what is something you have changed your mind on as you've gone through your career in this space and the other half is what is something that you double down on as you've gone through your career in this space like discovered is even more realized. I was in uh I was in a call it was called co coaches for COVID it was a bunch of like NBA performance practitioners back when when COVID first happened we were all shut down and that was

1:14:57what that was 2020 obviously someone asked what is the number one thing you would collect in training like how would you use it what's the number one thing that helps you make decisions back then and my answer then which i think is still defensible but it was it was connects on which is the local positioning system right so we get how far they run how fast they run how many times they jump change direction all that stuff and we can slice it up a million ways and i think i was the only sports scientist on the call everyone else was in traditional SNC coaches and they the guys after me were like I don't maybe I think it was my that was my first season so right so like all these people I've been in the league for for many many years and I think I was like why are they all looking at me like i'm crazy and the guy the next guy goes you just got to build relationships like

1:15:59just right you just got to have vibes did you just got to have good vibes and build relationships and i was like yeah that's a good point but i don't know like that to me that's almost that's a non-negotiable like that's not even something that i feel like i have to say out loud but i think you know in the last six years seeing a lot of people with low vibes i would say you need high vibes or people are not gonna tell you guys based training is gonna become a thing if they don't want to do it they don't want to do it but like i i feel like i got good vibes you know gv yoga vibes only i still have from our rest of the director um so it comes natural but it doesn't come natural for a lot of people so if you have to focus on something do that first and then get him to all your hard stuff otherwise no one's gonna put your connection chip on i'll weird sidequesting i was not super familiar connect

1:17:04on i'm aware of the concept but i didn't know like the device well connect on also has huge contracts in like the manufacturing and warehouse operations space yeah i don't know how to work work or movement they work with like bmw airbus yeah pretty sweet was that apt so in during covid lockdown we all had to wear them to for contact tracing so we couldn't get close to each other and they would be really loudly interesting i did not know that that sounds very frustrating it's like some big brother stuff yeah stay away um was that a change your mind or a double down i think we still have that that was that was changed in my mind or maybe like more aware of yeah what did you double down on since the beginning that was since the beginning of the career yeah in the beginning it can be recent too if you want yeah could be today um

1:18:08i think i had really good experiences with doubling down on alignment like making sure that people really understand why we're doing what we're doing when we're implementing it a really a good example is back at the uso pc out in in calirado we had um we had the wrestling athletes do a survey on what they thought it just rpe on how hard practice was one through ten kind of thing and so they would always they would do their score and then we we added the coach so the coach had to do their score too and we just we let them go for a few weeks and then we came together at the end of it and we showed the results of the coaches every time the coach thought it was an easy day like his his one through three was the athletes eight through ten and so i've always tried to be really intentional with alignment like making sure that

1:19:16what you think you're doing that that's what the athlete perceives the coach perceives the administration perceives and it's not people doing different things in isolation and expecting different outcomes hmm it was a little more tangential but that's what came from the guy seems very vibes based very vibes just yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna bring your head back down to earth with two more before we let you go favorite upper body exercise data aside i don't care about the velocity yeah you can ignore data right now like what do you what does Bryce do for funzies right now i'm gonna pull up kick nice uh yeah i'm trying i want to get i just want to get to 20 salt i'm 190 like full extension like i'll long arm you know plus four gorilla index long arms i want to get the 20 solid a very a very data guy answered to point out his eight index

1:20:21flex i could scratch my feet without bending over okay lower body exercise my favorite is probably a snatch that's my favorite to do i love i love the movement it's just fun makes you feel athletic barbell snatch or a different variation barbell power snatch power snatch okay since you put i'm gonna i'm gonna see i'm gonna test your ball no or knowledge here you you said snatch is your favorite lower body exercise what are the greatest Olympic lifting shoes ever made the rom laos rom laos is a good that's i'll give you that one i've i've always been partial to that old school of datas with the split soul and their wooden you know i'm talking about i don't know that one but i do have a pair of adipers yeah old school of datas wooden soul i will say when i like the one time i trained in the Olympic drink center here in colars Springs i'm not pretending i know

1:21:24anything about Olympic weightlifting but i was lucky enough to get the chance to go train there i did not own Olympic lifting shoes at the time the coach said you can't you can't train your stupid shoes i'll be right back and he came out with rumble ails rumble ails i have rumble ails they're adi stars old school of datas adi stars with the wooden soul oh adi star that adi appears the soccer league adi star yeah i think if you were talking about adi stars like i need a real one he gets it that's funny um well sir it's been an absolute pleasure thank you for introducing us to your world anytime i'm glad you guys had me on of course man uh team welcome to the after party vibes are high um i had a great time hanging out with price this was an episode that was intended to kind of showcase the difference between well i don't know similarities and differences between data collection in the sporting world and what we experience

1:22:32here on the military side of things i don't i don't know if it's safe to say that we're like so far behind the curve necessarily certainly several years ago that might have been the case but i do find these conversations interesting as we get closer to i think what we're kind of all assuming is the final solution on data architecture and metrics and these things and for me at least it's important to recognize that even at the highest levels they still haven't figured some of this stuff out um i think it's i think it's 100% true to say they haven't figured everything out but i do think there was there was more applicable stuff in there than i might have expected is like i cynically approach some of these conversations um i i do want to highlight a couple that i thought were like interesting and valuable right um one is the conversation about

1:23:32that data audit where they had like a very one-size-fits-all data structure and then they went back and like trimmed out anything that wasn't useful to like the coaches that make a decision based on the data there's i want all of our audience to listen to that for different reasons right because i think in an organization the size of the u.s military we run into some scale issues where decisions are being made and we are different stovepipes and agencies all over the organization that don't talk to each other but like designing a data collection framework without having a conversation with the people you think are going to make better decisions based on the data you're making available it's kind of crazy um so we we do need to bridge some of those things achieve alignment think you described this is double down i think i think we could do a lot better at striving towards some alignment between like the research folks the human-formance data folks the higher headquarters the actual coaches the commanders the platoon sergeants like i don't know if those echelons are talking

1:24:37to each other the way they need to be um my my other kind of wacky one is did you catch the the like indirect reference to the map camera engine crystal ball thing we talk about with assessments i'm not as well vers and apologies christopher sorry this is this is a reference to an old podcast episode and it was an episode i got set up in it like shameless plug for future products but we're building it into some educational materials we're trying to put together um but when i say map camera engine crystal ball i'm referring to our episode with christ franckel and the different purposes of assessments um whether they're designed to like encourage training a certain way whether they're designed to predict injuries or predict performance that would be the engine in the crystal ball respectively but he was very much talking about map assessments like what what information can we make programming decisions based on and i think being very clear-eyed about like

1:25:42why are you collecting it and does it help you with the decisions you thought it would help you with super valuable yeah and now i'm like regretting not asking him some of these things more directly but i got the sense from talking to him that the data decisions or i should say the decisions about the data are a little bit more bottoms up like the coaches and some of his examples wanted to know a certain thing and so then his team came in and like captured the thing yeah and i i think that that approach lends itself a little bit more to what you're talking about which is auditing re-evaluating changing and as you're sitting there talking through that i'm sitting here thinking like man that our systems are not good at that like and this isn't a knock on anybody but

1:26:43to my memory like from day one certainly with the army programming but now you're also seeing it with the other branches the first question being asked by people up top is what metrics are we going to collect and then there's a lot of arguments and debates about should it be this or this or this and sometimes that takes the shape of a pt test but then there's surveys and there's the thing and when it's top down and it's institutionalized i don't see a lot of opportunity for re-evaluation like if you're literally building a database and an app and a system around whatever it's going to be 12 metric you know whatever the number is you don't necessarily set yourself up well to change those so i mean the follow on at this point i'm just going to complain for a second and say and this is this has been true since the army was on the apft i don't think it's

1:27:44as big a problem in other services other than the army but in the army at least we say like literally in the script you have to read before every pt test oh yeah the results of this assessment will be used by you and your commanders like and like identify your physical training needs how are we going to train you based on these results and one i don't think we do that and two lately we change the test so much we can't even really track want to tune in to anything of interest because we're scoring on different scales or we're literally testing different events like well i don't know the counter argument the framework around the data we already collect well the counter argument would be that the changes in the pt test you would hope come from some sort of audit you would hope i don't know what you would know well that's the thing you would hope so anyway i mean you know we've said this a lot if you're collecting stuff are you doing anything with this stuff do you know the garbage thing garbage in garbage out now date is a lot

1:28:47like garbage you better have a plan for what you're going to do with it before you collect it i like that where'd that come from i don't know who i stole that from why haven't we put that in any of our briefs that's a good one i just i just used it just really quickly before we let you guys go it's attributed to mark twain i just finished a mark i'm not sure i just finished a mark twain book i've never read well i guess i read hook found i think i've looked up an article before that said like it's not the way mark twain wrote i forget let's see well i just read a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's court did a mark twain for you guys he's a great writer who know i think a lot of people probably know anyway the word data is more common in twain so okay i have a word in the word garbage they could find only three iterations of using the word garbage across twain's entire body of public and private writings so it wasn't unlikely that he actually said those

1:29:52words but here's the thing we can say it was him and put it on an instagram post and people will believe us really quickly just to give you some context here those addy star weight lifting shoes 2008 you can buy a pair online team today for $1,200 that's how much people love them so i didn't i never thought of shoes as an appreciating asset well you've clearly never worn a pair of 2008 addy star weight lifting shoes anyway team thanks for hanging out bris thanks for coming on and we'll see you guys next week hey Alex let's cover our ass real quick all great idea drew all right guys the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent thanks for tuning into this week's episode before you go please rate and review the pod on the listening platform of your choice you can also visit us on our website at www.mopsinmos.com that's mobs

1:30:58the letter in moz.com you can check out the library of podcast episodes our latest blog entries any helpful resources and also sign up for our newsletter drew nailed it just to underline a couple of things the podcast entries have in-depth show notes on the website so if you missed anything or you want to read any of the research we talk about it is all there can at the bottom of the website sign up with your email and we receive future updates from us the blog posts go a little bit more in-depth and kind of written form on a couple topics we get questions about all the time but most importantly i just want to ask all you guys our best way the word gets out is absolutely word of mouth so tell your friends tell the people you work with anybody you think would find it useful thanks for spreading the word if you have any questions or comments feel free to shoot us an email at either drew or Alex at mobsinmos.com or there's a contact form on the website thank you you can optimize one part of a service member and ignore the rest teamwork springs every pillar

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