#35 - Solo Pod - Q+A - Why Data Does Not Drive My Rehab

Luke Pollock: Welcome back to the Uplift Podcast. I'm your host Luke and today we've got a question and answering session. It's gonna be a short one because my wife Catherine is on her way home from work and this is my podcast studio is actually in the kitchen so I need to make it quick. But it's gonna be about ten minutes, I think. And I'm gonna answer three questions that I got from Instagram today, this morning. And I've just been mulling them over in my head during the day. So These are gonna be top of mind thoughts that you're about to listen to. It's not too structured, a bit more of a casual episode for you. And a bit of a life update. I always start the podcast with a bit of a life update. I had my chump rugby debut last week, which was really, really cool. Really enjoyed it and yeah, definitely felt like a step up. It was actually much faster than I probably realized and encountered for. So the body has been a little bit sore and there is nothing To prepare you for a rugby game. Like nothing can actually prepare you that well for a rugby game other than playing rugby. So I think playing 80 minutes was a bit of a shock to the system because I haven't played 80 minutes since May, I suppose. So it's been a few months. But yeah, it felt really good to be back out there and hopefully run it back on Friday night now. So we've got quite a few Friday night games which which works really well. With the self-employed life, honestly, on Friday, I was so, so thankful to myself two years ago for starting my Instagram page, starting my own business, because it just made Friday such an an enjoyable experience that I didn't have to go into an office selfishly. So yeah, that that was really, really cool. And more recently as well, I've taken on a client for business mentorship, which people will be like, how are you doing business mentorship? You've only started your business, you're only full time recently. But I have not promised this client anything other than we're gonna take him from zero to one. So from not having an Instagram page, not having a following, not knowing what to post to starting to get the ball rolling. And the results from that have been really cool. We've yeah, had two calls already and it's just about giving him space to put out things using his own creativity and his own initiative, but then also giving him some sort of structure to follow so he's not just completely lost. So yeah, we're building him a business really that he can step into. hopefully in the next year he can step into full time. That is the goal. So we'll we'll take it day by day, step by step. But yeah, he he's saving a lot of time avoiding things that that I that I did. And yeah, one of the main things I I said to him early on was like just don't go out this half assed. Don't I call it shadow posting. So even though you might have made the account, it this is what I did for six months pretty much at the start. So I made the Instagram account. I shared it to my main profile and I thought, great, I've got business now because I've said, I'm a physio and I'll treat you if you won't treat it. But then I started to post like photos that I thought looked cool and the design took me quite a long time and it was really just a faff and I was too scared to put myself out there in terms of speaking to the camera. but I'm proud of myself for doing it regardless. So he skipped that whole stage and has managed to just jump on it and create some really good reels and really good content. So I'm gonna be following him closely and learning from him as well as as him learning from me, which is which is a good fun. so yeah, other than that, my A CL rehabbers online have have been going well recently, haven't had too many hiccups, which has been nice and they're all moving in the right direction. I've played around with my podcast setups to hopefully get some better clips. So hopefully we'll get a few more listeners on here. But I have my good core group of listeners that I get every month, every week, which is pretty cool. yeah, we get about 30 players on average on the weeklies. And then if we have a guest, that shoots right up to nearly a hundred on a lot of the guest players, which is which is really awesome. But anyway, I'm wasting time. Let's get into the episode. So, first question is A rugby related one, so we'll get out of the way quite early for those of you who are here for rehab or business. first question is like, how is the medical provision in the championship? Now that I'm in there, how is it in terms of medical scans, surgeries, etc.? And the answer is quite boring. It's different for every team. So my team, Blackheath, have just got promoted, so they've got a much lower budget than the other teams. So we are not covered medically in terms of like surgeries. The club will try and help you out where possible, but be honest, you're reliant on insurance. So I am insured up to the gills currently. I've got surgery cover, I've got self employment cover as well. And I think that's really important. If you are a semi professional or sub elite athlete and you haven't you're not covered medically, get yourself covered. But a lot of the teams in the champ will be they'll cover their players medically. But there's often grey areas with that as well, you know, like we they might get the surgery but then who pays for the physio if there's physio done with the club Is your contract up at the end of the year, et cetera? So I like to just sort myself out. I've been semi pro for this is my fourth year now, which is crazy to say. But the whole time I've had insurance and just made sure if anything happened, I would sort of be sorted in terms in terms of finances because that is the the biggest stressor at the end of the day. So yeah, that's question number one. Question number two is how did I know or at what income level did I know I was safe to go with self employed? And there's loads of different probably good, right answers for this, but there wasn't really an income that I th I felt safe to, to be honest. Like it didn't feel safe, it felt scary regardless. I kinda knew in the back of my head I was gonna be okay, money wise, but I had for context, I had made over two grand for maybe one or two months on my business before going self employed. I obviously get paid to play rugby as well, so that helped a little bit, but my theory was if I was making that amount of money on an off month, I could probably make that more consistently if it was my full time job, which my theory reigned true. They don't always rein true, but this time it did. And yeah, I built the business up to a point where I felt there was enough demand that I could go full time all in on it. And a big thing for me was just giving myself permission to do that and giving myself permission to if it doesn't work out, if it fails, then we can go back to and yeah. the person who asks this question that that sounds true I would give you, you're never gonna feel completely safe. You're never gonna feel ready per se. but sometimes you've got to back yourself, take the leap, and the worst thing you can hap the worst thing that can happen is you go back and do the same job again. but yeah, I'm conscious when I when I answer questions like this, it feels like I'm talking to someone who has arrived. but a lot of people who listen to this are physios or SNC coaches who are trying to Go self-employed full time. So hence me addressing this question. yeah, and I would say like just go for it. If you if you feel that the demand is there, if you feel that you're learning every day in terms of the the business, the content side of things, that's also really important. There were times where I maybe had a good month, but I didn't know where the money came from. I the content was quite stagnant, et cetera. But on the lead up to going self-employed, I was really dialed in with it. I'm really trying to learn as much as possible. Had a business mentor on at the time as well, which which massively helped. So yeah, I would say there's never gonna be a perfect time. The worst that can happen is you go back up and pick up more work elsewhere. But yeah, it's it's been pretty cool the the leap from being full time employed to being self employed. So I would highly recommend if you can make it work, which most people can. Just give it enough time, learn the skills, dedicate a little bit of time to it. But That being said, has not been easy. There it hasn't been an upward trajectory and I haven't arrived. Like I had a pretty rubbish month in terms of finances in August. September has been my best month ever, but it is quite up and down and I'm still working that out. I'm still massively unsure of what the next twelve months looks like business wise. Me not massively unsure, but it isn't it isn't as consistent as I would like it to be and I'm still working that out. And I remember talking to a good friend as soon as as soon as I went self employed and he said, Meh, I've I've been doing this for three years and only now have I got some consistency. Three years full time that is. So for the first few months full time, I'm I'm pretty happy as is at the minute. But by no means am I saying, you know, it's been all sunshine and rainbows and I've arrived and everyone just needs to go self employed. It's worked for me because there are certain stressors that I'm happy to deal with that other people wouldn't be happy to deal with. but in terms of security, in terms of knowing exactly what what's coming in every month, that still has yeah, I still have to do a little bit of work on that. But we're getting there and building towards that now, which is nice. I'm gonna have talk about a conversation I had with another physio today. He messaged me saying, Look, I like your stuff, et cetera, et cetera. Can we talk about how you treat people online? Because I don't know how to do it. And he's a high level physio, he's been working in elite sport for some time. And this is quite a common question I get asked. How does it work online? How can you test people? and ultimately the question behind the question is how can you still provide an elite level of care which is data backed and data driven if it's online? And the answer is we have become so this is what I said to him, we've become so obsessed with the data and numbers that we rely on them too heavily, especially in elite sport. The data and numbers are nice to have, but if I see someone jumping and I think that looks terrible, but the data's telling me it's good, I'll go with my coach's eye and and think that looks terrible. Let's address that. and obviously you have to understand what's normal for each person, but we can become so data driven in terms of we need force plates, we need numbers for this, we need numbers for that. And I understand it is a business and the numbers do help back up our theories. But a really good example is Paul who I posted this this week, who's back at Touch Rugby fully. We worked together over eleven months. Paul works full time as a lawyer, so he's a busy guy. but we had a really good time working together. And I didn't jump test Paul at all until the last the last few weeks of our working together when he was going back to play. And this was obviously not ideal. I would have liked to have jump tested him earlier than that. But when we jump tested him, he had his His ACL leg was six percent better than his non-operative operated leg, which was really cool to see. So obviously we didn't have any baseline numbers for him, but his numbers he was producing weren't bad at all, for a guy in his mid 30s, and his ACL leg was actually performing better than his non ACL leg. And this just showed me that like we can become so obsessed with testing here, here, and here, and be so fixated with the numbers. But actually, We didn't have much testing twenty years ago and the results weren't actually that much worse in terms of what the data is showing. We're still seeing twenty-five percent of people under the edge of twenty-five rerupturing within two years. So although we like to be data driven where possible, and I will get all my online guys where possible to get tested, using Valb Force Blitz, using my jump app. is something I'm exploring more and more. but yeah, we I would say don't be don't become too bogged down if you're a physio or an S and C coach with the data. The data is really good, but we have more data than ever. And I wouldn't say the results are better than ever necessarily. So data can also we can hide behind it and we can rely on it too much and we can not develop our coaches' eye as well. As physios, as SNC coaches, we can rely on the data to tell us what we need to know. Rather than you just looking at the client and thinking, What do I need to know from that? Is that is there quad wastage there? Is he actually positioned force when we're asking him to do that in the extension? Does it I'm I'm asking the client or the patient, how does that feel when you're doing that movement? This is something I will talk to my clients about all the time, my online clients especially. When they send me a video of them running, first thing I'll ask, How does that feel? 'Cause it looked quite good to me, but how does it feel to you? He says it feels it feels weird, then I'm gonna believe him that it feels weird. And I'm not gonna say, yeah, no, no worries. The the jump testing says you feel fine. So we're gonna crack on. I'm gonna believe in it, it feels weird. And then we're gonna keep rep rep and out until it doesn't feel weird. So yeah, that's just something, some thoughts I was having from a call I had today that that is not the be all and add all. It's a nice to have, but we shouldn't let it replace us as physios. There's enough AI replacing us as is. And if we are solely relied on data, then we we could just be computers sending them exercises, saying, Well, the data says this, so we just need to give them this exercise and then refed them into the data. But we're dealing with humans, we are not dealing with computers. So we need to use the data as a tool, not use the data as our North Star all the time. That is really helpful with SEL rehab, but it has its place, so we shouldn't be too obsessed with it. So that's me going off on a little spin, a little tangent, but it was top of mind because it was the discussion I had today. That being said, valid force plates are golden when when you need them and they can be super, super helpful to get clients bought into the process as well. so I'm not knocking it at all. I'm just saying everyone now is so obsessed with it, and it's kind of doing my head in because we forget that we're treating people. We're not treating machines. so it's not it's not numbers in, numbers out computer. we are treating people at the end of the day. But that's all for now. I hope you have a really good day, good evening when whenever you're listening to this, a good Wednesday. And I will catch you next week on the podcast. Thanks for listening.