Sean is a strength and conditioning coach who has over a decade in the industry. He holds a master’s degree and Level 2 ASCA Accreditation, has worked with Elite, Semi-Elite and GrassRoots Athletes and Australian Rules Football has been his primary sport.
Highlights of the episode:
- Advice for running a PT business and renting a gym
- Highlights of his career
- How he learnt to run a fitness facility
- Favorite quote or life motto
People Mentioned:
- Lachlan Wilmot
- Christian Woodford
- Tim Schleiger
- Durham McInnis
- Chris Perkin
- Nick Poulos
- Jason Porplyzia
- Tex Wanganeen
- Dean Bailey
- Danny Kruger
- Trent Burgoyne
- Will Snelling
- Brett Johns
- Adrian Setry
- Ian Mckeown
- Nick Richardson
Connect with Sean
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/s.c.baker/
PEAQ Website: https://www.peaq.com.au/
To join our Coaches Academy waitlist, visit the link below: https://www.bit.ly/3xf6JNF
#seanbaker #preparelikeapro #plplivechats #podcast #melbournestrengthcoach
Interview Transcript
Jack: Welcome to Prepare Like a Pro Show, my name is Jack McLean, I’m your host. And tonight my guest is Sean Baker. He’s the founder of Peaq Performance Center based in Adelaide, a strength & conditioning coach with well over a decade of experience he’s completed his masters.
A strength & conditioning coach, who has over a decade in the industry holding a master’s degree and Australian strength conditioning association level two, worked with elite and semi elite grassroots athletes.
And specifically has worked with Australian rules football as his primary sport. Before we start tonight’s episode, our mission here of at Prepare Like a Pro is to empower aspiring athletes and staff with practical knowledge from some of the industry’s most inspiring individuals and to strengthen the AFL community.
If you liked the show, please show support by following us on Instagram and subscribing to the podcast we’re on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube. Welcome Sean. Thanks for jumping on mate, second time.
Sean: Jack mate thanks for having me on I’m pumped and ready to go. And one-on-one I’m feeling pretty special we’re ready.
Jack: I know the 10-minute, bite-size just didn’t do that to get you back on.
Sean: But no I really enjoyed it, mate and it credits you for putting that all together and, you know, great to hear from your load monitoring coaches around Australia and particularly a couple of guys there that I hadn’t really heard of before potentially you know, we’ll have a bit of inkling of, but didn’t really have a true sort of you know, in-depth understanding about what they’re about.
So to get to know those guys, a bit more, has been fantastic. So, you know, you’ve helped to develop those connections. Mate we appreciate what you’re doing.
Jack: Yeah. It was all found the same way. Yeah. Thanks man. I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed it being at an S&C naffy but it was interesting like you have your Woodfords and lucky moments of guys in our sort of generation that have grown within the social media stream and then you got Tim Schleiger, Darren McInnis. Chris Bergano, you know, before social media setting were doing big things, great things, but it was before that time.
So it was interesting to share similarities across the different experiences amongst the group and what works and some learnings as well for the group. So for those that are listening in the podcast world, that if you miss that we do, we are releasing the episodes on the bite-size every Friday, but also you can watch the full presentation, which I would recommend on, on YouTube.
Take us back to the beginning of your career Sean, at what age did you discover you had a passion for strength and conditioning and also working with athletes?
Sean: Yeah, admittedly, to be honest with you, I fell into it, mate. So you know, I was always passionate about playing footy and you know, I’m sure there’s probably a lot of scenarios out there where there strength & conditioning coaches that maybe had a crack themselves and didn’t quite make it.
I like to call myself a bit of a pre-season specialist. So you know, I’d love the running and the strength work that was conducted you know, throughout the preseason and would probably, that would be my time to shine. But when it came to time to find that magical red pill on the weekend, maybe I wasn’t quite as successful as some of the other guys that you know in my team.
So I went to uni. To sort of study well, got applied for the double degree in human movement and teaching sort of thing. I was going to be a PE teacher again, probably another flooded market. I only got the TR for you know, exercise science itself. And when it got into the second year of a degree opportunities came out to get involved or a police apply for one of a number of internships.
So there was you know, Port Adelaide, Crows, I think LA United. So just shoved my hand in the ring and was fortunate enough to sort of you know, NAB one of the spots at the Crows. So 2011-2012, I did an internship under Nick Polis, particularly in the strength power program and Nick that year, I think it was that year, he might be one like aspect coach of the year. So super, super smart guy. It was his first year in AFL he’s going to, you know, background pretty heavily in rugby. I think rugby sevens in particular had been involved in and you know, one of the most valuable experiences of my career, I think I was pretty fortunate to have that reality show pretty, pretty quickly.
You know, it’s not all sort of glamorous and you know, it’s not just simply spending time in the gym with the boys all day. There’s a lot more to it. And you know, you let me know about that pretty, pretty quickly and you know, gave me a great scope and helped me to shape who I am. Once that was finished up, we had the opportunity to either stay there and do an honors or move on and do a master degree and potentially sort of maybe get a few other experiences.
I felt like at the time honors was just going to be probably another maybe year or so of some, you know, free research. So I decided to go the masters by content, through Edith Cowan University. And at the same time, just summarized my rounds, every sample club available. Only one out of the 10 got back to me.
We’ll go Science Footy free cups. So, you know, went out there and assisted their program for a while. And that sort of is in a sense it was where Peaq you know, it was born. So when I did go out there and I’m sure it’s probably the same in the VFL, for example, or I don’t really know the logistics, but in sample, S&C that there’s little to no money really involved.
And particularly at the time that I sort of got involved, I was a little bit late to the party. You know, that there was nothing to financially offer. They said, we’d love to have you around, but you know, as a bit of a trade off, did you want to do some private work out of our gym here, feel free to bring people through and and you can use it for free.
So that was, that was sort of the agreement that we can too. So I’ll do that on the side, you know, throughout the day and early mornings. And then in the hour, those are all be dedicated to helping the sample squat. At the end of 2014, an opportunity came along to take over the Western. Club program, which is, you know, Rob will do their best times so to go over their senior program.
And we’re fortunate enough to win the first league premier shipping in 32 years. So that was sort of pretty special. And the difference right now, as, as you would know there are many pieces that need to come together to, to sort of, to you know, Alyssa performance. I think I was fairly lucky that we had a few ex AFL guys coming back towards the end of their career.
So guys like Jason Porplyzia just being delisted from the Crows. Lachlan Wilmot who had had some experience with the power. Chris who’d been on an AFL list that we were sort of getting towards the end of their crazy and coming back. You know, just everything sort of seemed to come together.
That one instance and yeah, we some, some great success and don’t get me wrong that also that you get some great juniors coming up. I think that same year we had seven athletes get drafted. So, you know, talking about Will Snelling, Riley Bonner, Aaron Francis, Tom Keogh, John Beach. So we sorta got decimated a little bit and then went from winning the flag one year to, to struggling the next.
So we’ll probably, I was fortunate enough to sort of see both ends of the spectrum. From there, you know, a couple of opportunities came up just through where is now this morning cause a download. We created academy. So I got to travel overseas a few times to India to work with some of their state level athletes.
Sort of circled back around to the port Adelaide footy club, where we worked with father son and next generation academy athletes inside began starting to say some great talent come out of that. So when you know, we working with a 14 year old, you know, Jackson Meads and Tex Wanganeen that are, that are coming through in our body Fredericks those sorts of guys and Trent Burgoyne
So it was like a nice Nossal experience to give them their first little introduction to the long-term effort. At the end of 2018, you know, along this journey, you we’re talking about some really cool things that happened. All of it. We’re still part-time and all of it, we’re still, you know, very lowly paid.
So all of it was still subsidized by me doing private stuff on the side, you know, for the most part, I was doing it out of the facilities that I worked for. When I ended up going to the power, obviously you sort of can’t, you know, bring, you know, a general public sort of through their facility. So I was just contracting average gym down the road.
We sort of got to a bit of a fork in the road in the 2018. I was almost feeling like, you know, I’ve done this for a while now. I feel like there’s limited opportunities for me to, to grow and progress. Maybe we, we decided to take this, you know, this problem side of things be more seriously. So we decided to jump in the deep end and that’s sort of where, where Peaq really was born.
So I was fortunate enough to have developed a bit of a following in that private sector for a few years prior to I believe facilities. So it wasn’t just out of nowhere. And then that in turn has led to connections with Crows AFLW and now Australian Lacrosse as well. So yeah, it’s been a really cool journey, a lot of luck along the way.
You know, feel very fortunate to be surrounded by lots of good people. And I guess it’s just a matter and, you know, I think like you do just continue to put yourself out there continue to network as many coaches as possible and always try to put your best foot forward because you know, a good reputation shovel fast and bad ones travel faster.
So you’ve always got to make sure you don’t get complacent. Got a little long a bit there.
Jack: Nah it’s good. I love that story, like you said, at the start typical S&C someone who loves sport loves, loves the training side even more early days wanted to be a PE teacher. I think you tick every box of S&C mate. That’s awesome.
Sean: Absolutely. Is it like talking to the same person or what yeah.
Jack: You found your tribe that’s for sure. Take us back to that stage where you’re doing the internship, Nick Poulos and you sort of carving your way for those S&Cs that are at that stage of their career, you mentioned that he gave you some, you know, some open and honest sort of expectations about the industry. How important is it to see an environment like that early on in your career do you think?
Sean: I’m super grateful for it, and I guess I have that hindsight now, particularly because I do see a lot of you know, new graduate students coming through that maybe have a little bit of a warped sense of what the industry truly is, whether they think it is going to be all roses or potentially that they believe they’re going to walk out of their degree straight to a full-time role.
You know, having that experience prior to graduating I think was invaluable and I’d be a very different person today, I think if I didn’t have in there to sort of give me a reality check. I was talking to actually on another local podcasts today, actually. And they said to me, what was going through your head, you know, the first day that you crack into this internship and you start to see guys that you’ve been watching on TV for ages and you know, potentially some reasonably big names.
And I think for myself, one of the biggest realizations early, was just probably being a little more professional and understanding that that coach to athlete relationship. So I find him, you know, I think naturally for myself, a bit of a coping mechanism really is that when I come into an environment and potentially where I maybe am not as confident or I’m trying to establish myself or maybe just don’t know guys, now, Joe, I’ll go in there and go, what’s going on legend?
How are you fellow? What’s happening mate you know this sort of, you know, terms and the language I would use. And you know, a lot of senses that’s fine. But Nick sort of pulled me in pretty quickly in the first week and said, you know, guys like Dean Bailey, he’s not your mate. He’s not a legend, he’s not a big fellow.
You call him Dean you’re referred to him by that name. You know, you are over the yard, like yeah. To an extent. Well, yeah, it was, I did copy a couple of little works about professionalism and. You know, at the time for Jesus, this is, this is a bit rough, but, but I’m very grateful for that, you know, in the long-term.
Yeah. I look back now and I was just a Spud student who was a bit excited, you know, probably they’d probably seen it a million times before with every intern that comes through. But yeah, certainly I’m very glad that I had that experience for sure. Even though at the time I was thinking, oh, it’d be hard life.
Jack: Just going to build a vibe there.
Sean: Absolutely, exactly.
Jack: I love it mate but that’s yeah, that’s thanks for being open and honest and sharing that. I think it is invaluable for S&C is to, yeah. You know, have that moment where you sort of recognize, okay, how am I going to fit in this environment? What’s yeah, like you’ve mentioned, everyone’s a bit different in, in how they yeah the carry themselves in new environments. So being aware of that, and you can, you only can build that awareness by getting feedback, which is good, that you had a mentor Nick to, to give you that feedback, to build that awareness. And for, like you said, at the time, you didn’t feel like it was helping you, but in hindsight, now that you’re a mentor to other coaches, you can tell what he was doing.
For young coaches that are going through maybe a mentor that is being tough on him, or it might be someone else in their industry, but care for them that, and it’s with their best interests. What is the best way to start to try and handle that feedback? Is it are you a note taker. Do you absorb it you know, have some ways that if you sort of use them, make the most of mentors.
Sean: Yeah. Now that’s a good question, I think. Yeah, certainly take that feedback on board. No matter how harsh you do think that it might be at the time and yeah, I think that’s a good idea. I didn’t do that, but I can see the value in, for example, taking notes and sitting down and reflecting on it..
It’s good to get your thoughts out on paper and have it sitting there in front of your face. And I think we just, one of the big thing, things would be, try to critically evaluate the reason why you think maybe they’re giving you that feedback, you know, is this before, or is this with my best intentions in mind?
And most circumstances it is. I don’t think there’s many people out there, you know, at this stage it would be doing it just to, you know, for tall poppy syndrome to try to knock people down. I’m sure. You know, there’s there’s some sort of outcome that they’re trying to elicit out of providing that feedback.
And you know, potentially if you think that it is too harsh or you don’t think that you deserve that potentially, you know, talk to other people about that in another critical sense and be able to say, you know, what their ideas are, maybe some mixed experiences within the industry as well, reach out to your networks and say, you know, this is a scenario that was in this, the feedback that I’ve gotten, you know, do you think that is correct as well, but I think in most circumstances, you know, it hasn’t been too many times that I can reflect on now and think you know this bloke has given me feedback just to be a prick, you know, there was always some underlying message behind it. And and you know, the, the more and more that we get entrenched in the industry, the more and more that you sort of find yourself potentially in some sort of way, providing that same sort of feedback to those coming through as well.
You know, I’ve certainly had many times where I’ve talked to guys and just had to think more, just give them a bit of a reality check as to where they see in the industry. I knew like trying to do that. in a constructive manner. Certainly don’t try to you know, parade those coming through, but we have instances that I would have been the same way.
There’s these guys that maybe you know, still studying, for example, that maybe have had some experience in some success in the private industry, for example, which is certainly very different to the pro sector where you’re, you know, observed under a microscope, but a lot more closely and they potentially get a bit of a warped sense of where they may sit and you know, how good their abilities, you know, that all of a sudden think that they can’t do anything wrong and their program is perfect.
And, you know, they might’ve found one principle that they really abide by, and that’s what they stick to. So just saying, you know, look here’s a million other things that potentially that you would be judged by if you had a contract with a professional club, just remember that, you know you’ve had experience in this area, but maybe like lacking experiences in all these other areas as well.
And I was referred back to that Dunning Kruger effect. I’m sure you probably use that, that grab a few times where, you know, you’ve got the graph of knowledge versus time. And as soon as you get out of uni, your knowledge is right up here. And the more and more you do you just realize that that or actually, oh my God, on the fell off the pace, and actually the more you surround yourself with really knowledgeable coaches, the further off the pace that you realize.
Jack: I’m with you mate. It’s a long journey. Brett Johns and Fi Noggin are commenting on the chat. So Brett’s these are your mates, any better than sets and Brett’s, that’s when I think you’re talking about footy.
Sean: Yeah, so I need to give you a big shout out to those guys.
They’re out there. They’re Port Adelaide legends. So so I guess where, you know, I started my journey transitioning from being a Spud player to getting stuck in the industry was at the pullback football club. So essentially you know, probably I think, I can’t remember when I was there, whether it had just happened or whether it was in the process of you know, the magpies and the power amalgamating.
I’m not too sure how much of that you’re over at sort of over in in Vic, but you know, that that sort of happened, but
Jack: Super successful club
Sean: Yeah, absolutely. I think 36 premierships are they seven brand new ships and they had a bit of a golden era, you know, through the eighties and early nineties.
Particularly, probably just before I sort of really followed it, but Adrian Setry he had a bit of a legend in there multiple premiership player and really heavily involved in boxing and had a passion for strength & conditioning work. And one of the very good friends Brett John, Susan Australian record holder power lifter you know, they were doing a lot of work with the pies in both those areas.
And they sort of took me under their wings you know early on in the piece and I’ll let you know a massive amount from there. And it’s funny, you know. They’re completely honest in saying I don’t didn’t necessarily that I have exercise science degrees and all those sorts of things, but essentially, they just have a great deal of experience under their belts and a lot of the forcewheeels that they, you know, that they were pushing essentially in some sort of context is still applicable in today’s S&C as well.
So probably that they will be laughing about that. Look, I can’t see his comments about probably the biggest thing that they ever taught me is when I was a young I reckon 17 or 18 year old, I think I rocked up to one gym session and look, I’m so sorry to say this, but we’re rocked up to a gym session with a set of gloves on and they absolutely berated me.
He’s taken out of me and I can promise you, I never did that ever again in my entire life. And
absolutely. You know, it so that they will yeah, they’ll take a lot of credit for that, for sure. But now great life absolutely.
Jack: Yeah, that’s awesome. Valuable lessons. And the other side of that I took from that, that I think is invaluable for what you’re doing now, and you mentioned how you develop that, you know, in hindsight, you’re developing an audience, whether you knew it or not.
And then when you opened up that gym, it, it allowed you to really flourish. So throughout the time of getting your Australia conditioning experience across different sports, mainly AFL and cricket as well, but you’re also developing your business skills and, you know, not working outside the industry, but actually honing your coaching by running a personal training business whether it was with football clubs or renting a space.
For those coaches that are working in sport and they’re strength & conditioning coaches, but they haven’t built that. Or they haven’t taken that plunge, I guess, of running their own business. And then they’re making ends meet in another industry. But they want to take that plunge at what would be your advice for renting a gym or running a PT business?
Sean: Yeah, look, I think that the first thing is, and probably one that again is another common one that we come across is I’ve probably started the majority of the clientele that I was working with at middle league was, you know, some of the players partners, to be honest with you, just wanted to simply turn up a couple of Madhya similar sort of sporting golf triathlons and things like that as well.
But really I was at a stage in my life where to, to make ends meet. I just had to say yes to everybody and anybody. So I couldn’t really be selective in you know, who I trained with, and met some amazing people and actually found. We’re seeing a lot of gratitude for working with, with, with all sorts of people, as opposed to, you know, just sort of exclusively saying athletes.
And in saying that as well, we try to treat every opportunity, even though whether you’re working with a general punter or somebody who wants to, you know, get benefit default, you know, church, nimple on weekend, try to use every hour that you have with those people, with an opportunity to sharpen the tools up.
So, you know, If I’m working with Jane, who’s the mom of Johnny, who’s a sample player. And he said, oh, look my S&C coaches just doing some PT sessions down there. Can you get down supporting, you know, how can you add some for, you know, movement assessment to Jane? Can you potentially, in your movement prep, you know, adding maybe like a little marching through a loss, you know, a little, A-skip just to get her moving, say, standing here, Cornell, the schools are looking at how people move.
How can you start to still, you know, in our last podcast we talked about developing the big tenure. How can we hit as many of those young foundational members? That’s can we still get Jane, you know, the, the mother of 35 year old mum, can we get to squatting properly, hinging properly lunging properly, pushing, pulling in, in vertical and horizontal directions, bracing and rotating really well.
You know, if you can do that with somebody who maybe doesn’t have a great deal of confidence in their movement then it’s going to be easy. Once you get to somebody who’s a footballer. So if you are just starting out, don’t be selective. Just grab onto anybody is willing to pay you money to come and try and just imagine that they’re training for some sort of sport or, you know, I imagine it’s another opportunity to hone in those skills.
And then from there, you know, the busier that you get that usually become that comes from, you know, word of mouth from those people, it comes from you developing content from, you know, recording those people and saying, look, Jane, couldn’t squat 30 kilos when I first started but she’s squatting 45 now, like this can be you and you know, all those sorts of things.
So it’s just sort of ends up being a bit of a snowballing effect. People want to generally go to people that look busier as well. Cause it’s just a funny mentality we have is just as human beings. And then it’s, when you fill up your schedule, then you can start to hone in and be a bit more selective and then say, okay, look, if Jane was keep training and you know, maybe it’s a more premium price or potentially you know, you, you take the little trainer underneath you and you, here’s your opportunity and your Steve-O to have a crack and work on your skills.
I’ll take a little percentage of that, of that as well. So it’s just your, I take on as much as you can and always use it as an opportunity to learn and grow and that’s yeah. You know, that, that word of mouth and that social media will grow as well. So I think that’s, you know, there’s, there’s no better promotion and then, you know, getting your hands dirty in the industry.
And now we are fortunate enough to be reasonably selective with who we do work with. And every, everybody that doesn’t quite fit into that category you know, can jumping was one of the other amazing coaches that we do have as well.
Jack: Yeah, I love that, mate. That’s really sound advice. Whether you know, you’re trying to be the best coach that you can be, like you said, coaching is coaching whether you are coaching an Olympic athlete or coaching a mom, you’ve got a, they’re all got different movement competencies, and you still should go through your screenings and be as professional as you can and go through your processes for movement and don’t disregard anyone.
I think that’s a great message. But then also the business progressions as well, by doing a good job, getting results, it’s going to pay back later on for the future of your business. And it’s probably something that you’ve touched on. I know I felt that we don’t really know where we’re going with our career.
We keep doing a good job. Things start to fall into place like to have with yourself. So thanks for sharing your gratitude made it. It’s obviously good success leaves clues, and I think that’s a good notion for S&Cs is to get as much experience as you can, like you said early, and it starts to build momentum.
Sean: I’m not saying this to sort of blow wind up your ass. People will probably look at Jack I know, certainly I’ve talked to a few people recently where we talked about, you know, when, when we come on to your podcast and they go fuck far out, you know, Jack is really like, sort of exploded onto the scene and you know, the last few months by, I wonder, what’s he doing?
You know, but, but it’s, it’s you, you created that, you know, it’s the fruits of your hard work and the fruits of you putting yourself out there and the fruits of you contacting people and getting involved in, you know, making those strong connections as well. So you know, I would never look at somebody like you and say, Jesus, he’s lucky.
You know, you’ve, you’ve created that yourself as well.
Jack: I appreciate it. Yeah, it’s definitely like said if you, if you put in the work and, and you’re passionate about it, which I think you know, everyone who ends up staying in this industry for a long time, they have to have passion and that, and they have to work hard.
You, you mentioned we’ll go back to that notion as well. How your sort of full-time work isn’t that often in the industry, did you deliberately move different sports like you now in lacrosse. So, you know, feel based sports team-based sports, I’ve received stuck with those themes, but you’ve got some good experiences with, with different sports on the ability over the last decade.
Is that being an intention of yours or is that something that’s sort of just come on?
Sean: Yeah, good question. I think it’s something that actually has just sort of naturally occurred. Well, I know there’s certainly when I did have of set and, and being turned down from a thousand interviews, I’m sure I, and all I said, those are the instances where you get told they were more experienced or people with more diverse experience with you or you just missed out.
And one of the things that I do get pigeonholed with a bit earlier on in my career is that my experience wasn’t fast enough, which I completely agree with you for the first part in your internship with the Crows and then Center of Excellence and a system work with, and then running the, you know, the footy program of Port Adelaide was just like six years of football, for example, and didn’t really have much else to show.
The cricket opportunity simply came through a call and and our referral. So the guy that had the position prior to me had just moved to India to work in the RPL. He, it was also a physio who was sort of like a bit of a combined physio S&C at the time.
And they were looking to bring a bit more of a football ideology to they’re creating programs just because you know, traditionally cricketers had got to wide little bit with being quite school-based athletes and with more and more forms of the game available, and those forms were being shorter and sharper and more explosive, you know, the focus for S&C really ramped up.
So, you know, that was just a fortunate word of mouth call. The lacrosse that was pretty cool. That was exciting. When we first started with Peaq, you know, we, we had to vision our motto is closing the gap between local and elite. Yeah, we always just thought that it’ll be taken, you know, those pro football methodologies and principles and applying them and adapting them to, you know, your, your weekend worries is what we started to find it.
Something that we did naturally sort of anticipate is that there are lots of elite athletes from lowly funded sports coming to come and sort of search seek us out. So, you know, we know that sounds fine. So we had a chunk of Australian lacrosse athletes that a pro prior just been gone until I get a group training studio to again, on a 45 sort of set up but then wanted to train and be treated as they were elite athletes, even though they had to self-fund everything, same with ultimate Frisbee.
And you, I know when I certainly, when I first heard about that and you know, most people sort of, you know, snuggle a little bit. Oh, frisbee that’s cool. But probably during spring, you know, these dudes, you know, he’s take himself seriously and they’re representing the country and they’re pretty athletic units.
They train really hard and we’ve got some, you know, some women that play roller Derby as well. So all these sort of unique sports that are lowly funded, but people at the top of their game, even for, for example, this might not make as much sense to you, but in south Australia, like rugby or if league and union is, is really small, it’s barely heard of.
So, you know, some of the top south Australian rugby athletes would come and do us to say that they wanted maybe potentially make the moty in states. So we started to mingle with all these people that, you know, we’re high end, but we’re self-funded because there’s just no money in their sport. I was talking to a few of the lacrosse girls and essentially what had been happening with the Australian program up until probably late 2019 was they had just hit up a coach from an American college.
Obviously lacrosse is massive in the US there’s this sort of dialogue between them and most of the countries. And that would just give in a big PDF form, you know, with all the running and strength & conditioning drills on there, because there was a lot of issues with. First being, you know, like it sounds like a very simple, easy issue to, to transfer over, but, you know, athletes probably don’t, you know, don’t really want to spend that time and maybe don’t always have the capacity to sit down and go through about all of the programming was written in yards and pounds and you know, these athletes, blah, I don’t know what that means.
I’m going to give you a crack. And the foundations of the end of the exercise selection was really good, but some pretty complex stuff in there. So, you know, there was some, some claims as slang snatches, and it goes to saying, look, we’ve never done this before. Just don’t know how to do it. So as opposed to, you know, giving it a crack, they just weren’t doing it all.
So completion rates were very low. The other thing that we’re saying is that we’ve got contingence of athletes in WA, South Australia, Victoria, and then also over in the states as well. And by lumping them with that PDF program of conditioning, for example, depending on which part, stage of the season and what their covenants are like you had.
Athletes with loads that were all over the place. So in WA they might be in seasons so they got, you know, to, to get two trainings and a game. And now we’re doing their PDF conditioning on top of whatever they were doing. In South Australia, they might, you know, there might’ve been one training session per week, and now we’re doing the PDF stuff.
And then playing and Victoria, they might’ve been on lockdown for example. So they’re not doing anything except for that. So all of a sudden you’ve got some, some girls massively over training, some that are bang on and some that are massively under training and nothing in between. So they’ll find a lot of issues with that.
That led to an introduction to their coach. May we have a chat about, you know, ways that we would address those issues? One thing led to another, we were fortunate enough to take over there the women’s program. And then probably after about three or four months, I think that the men’s program there is perked up because they were doing something pretty similar and I’d seen a pretty sizable shift in their ideology and completion rates and just the language around this S&C stuff that goes programming. They organized a zoom meeting and all of a sudden we took on by program.
So yeah. So it’s been, yeah, it’s been awesome. They’ve been a really gracious community to work with. They’re not having those opportunities before. They’re pretty receptive to most things you say which is awesome. And again, this is by sheer luck you talk, you know, talking about that chance is that when we first took them one morning early 2020 you know, there wasn’t much going on with lacrosse and the discovery of two years, I’ve just been recognized by the IOC to be competing in the 2028 Olympic games.
So you’ve gone from like nothing to a thousand pretty quickly. So I’ll be heading over to Alabama in July with the crew to play in the world games, which is the, the second biggest multi-sport event on earth, which is essentially sort of like the, either those sports that are just on the cusp or maybe are in contention of making the Olympics as well.
So you, over there, it’s gonna be a lot more tired lacrosse, American football. Yeah. All those sort of just on the edge games that aren’t quite in the Olympics just yet. So really excited.
Jack: Yeah, that’s awesome mate, and another great gem for coaches listening that there’s nothing like good work that to create future work.
So that’s, you know, like you mentioned start, you know, you get that foot in the door and then you do your work. And it starts to pay dividends by starting with the women in our work and cross for the men’s as well. And I can imagine once you’ve got that momentum as well, the buy-ins just set from the men’s from the get go, because they’ve wanted you, they’ve seen you to be at that club.
So that’s, that’s super exciting mate and good timing both for yourself as well as Australian lacrosse. So bring on 28.
Sean: Yeah, absolutely. They’ll keep me around for that long anyway. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: That’s true long-term athletic development, right? Looking back over your career and then we’ll get into the business side of opening Peaq, but throughout this stage of strength and conditioning is there a particular highlight of your career as an S&C that you look back on fondly?
Sean: Yeah, that’s really a hard question. I think it’s hard to go past those, any of the championships you’ve been involved with him no matter what level, I think, as we told you before, probably the most special one from our point of view, is that the sample premiership with the West Adelaide footy club, you know, being the first opportunity for me to take over the range and truly true, like I was, you know steering the ship, you know, for at least that aspect of the program.
In a sense it’s been a launching pad for a number of other opportunities that are, that have sort of followed on from then, you know, it was because of that, that the down and creed academy call and, you know, and then there’s floating to, you know, work with the parent, things like that too. So was, there’s been many highlights, but I would say probably that’s probably one to pinpoint it simply because I think it had such a great impact.
Jack: Yeah, it’s a massive achievement and it would have been so rewarding to be a part of that after 32 years.
Sean: We were just coming out of the woodworks. You would never seen before. I think we always joke. It’s funny cause it, and I love the club dealings still follow them. Unfortunately, you know, in these sense of being away from carbon, again, this is certainly not that didn’t do it, mate.
There’s a number of factors that we talked about in terms of, you know, athletes being drafted in and staff members moving on and all those sorts of things. Is that like a little bit about, we always joke and reel it back. It is that I don’t think that they were ready for us to win the flag. I don’t remember, you know, we were the big underdogs going into the grand final, even, you know, it was a surprise that we’d even made it that far.
You know, all of a sudden, you, you sort of fast forward into the game and we’ve won it and you sort of get instructed to go back to the club and we went back there for a big dinner and, you know, facing some of the worst food I’ve ever had in my life. Lucky. I just didn’t say that I’ll prepare any sense of the sloppiest new tools.
I think there was a vegetarian and I just literally picked up a bag of frozen veggies, checked them in my plate. Yeah. We’d never really cared cause everybody was thinking to be Sigrid bees anyway and celebrating. But yeah, that was a, yeah, some fond memories of some, about some terrible food.
Jack: And what about on the flip side of it mate? What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced and what did you learn from it?
Sean: I think potentially I know I’ll be completely open. And honestly, there’s been two instances in my career that have probably been the most challenging. So number one, and these are both very similar instances. Number one was would that work at the power?
And I’ve talked about you know, us not, not saying, or having the opportunity to, to grow and, and sort of op opportunities drawing up from a professional sense. We’ve got to, you know, towards the end of 2018, I remember talking to the high-performance manager in McCowen at the time, we’ve still got a really great relationship with but he just had to sit down and on a chat and said, you know, we’ve loved the work you’ve done.
You know, it’s been an awesome experience for those young, those junior athletes coming through. And we really can’t bother you, but unfortunately the soft cap is tiny up and, you know, we don’t really have a space for your role moving forward, and we’re going to condense it down and split your role between other, you know other professionals.
It might be, you know option for you to start exploring other opportunities out there. So that was big gut-wrenching to be honest with you you know, it probably would have been even, it would have been easier to swallow if I’ve done something terribly wrong. And then fast forward again, through the gym facility, we had a few of the Crows AFLW girls coming down and doing their off season with us that led to a connection to the head coach and getting a call at one day to say that one of their staff members had moved on to GWS.
Would I be willing to jump in? So worked at the Crows AFLW for 18 months, which was an incredible experience. And that would wonderful people. We got to midway through the 2020 season. And you know, COVID struck pretty badly. I know there was a time when we were sort of joking about it. And I remember we got on a plane too, so we flew to Tazzy, for example, to, to play against the Roos.
And there was a family on, there was masks I like come on these guys are crazy like that. It’s like seriously. And then, you know, fast forward to a four and a half lighter and we’re playing in front of that crowd against GWS. It has to be a serious now and then fast forward another weekend. And the cop pulls everybody and says, there’s the season’s done, we’re finished.
So Jesus stuff, but then sort of, you know, I do a heap of prep to sort of try to keep the girls working through and send them your external programs and catch up with them out of parks and that sort of stuff. But then to be sat down against they’re looking at it. Has had a massive financial impact, you know, on on all of sport, including the, you know, the club we’re getting rid of that portion of our female only staff, and we’re going to be passing it back over to the men’s program.
And yeah, sort of, you’ve lost another opportunity, unfortunately, it’s time again, but no touch wood. You’re not as far as I’m aware and that they would never was made aware of any wrongdoing, but unfortunately just sort of the nature of the beast in two situations there you know, financial issues, impacting clubs cutting off, you know, the fringe guys like myself who potentially would try and get the resort to work their way up.
So certainly two challenges. But again, you know, I’m a big believer in everything happening for a reason and still super grateful for the experiences we had at those clubs. And certainly, you know, no bad feelings from my end and still am very close with the other people that I had those conversations with.
Jack: Yup. Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it. And it wouldn’t be an S&C that’s been an industry for 10 years. That experience I can only imagine. So I’ve certainly been in that situation and it’s definitely, like you said, if you did something wrong, it’d probably would be a little bit easier to swallow because at least there’s a learning there where trading that, where you put your heart and soul into something and it’s out of your control.
But I think it’s a good message nonetheless, to hear the things that work. And then also just the nature of the beast of the industry as well. Particularly now COVID, so that probably moves is a good segway to business and opening up a space. Take us through when did the light bulb moment happened when did you think of opening up a space? What was the situation?
Sean: Yeah, it all happened really quickly and probably something that I haven’t touched on too much was during that time, went out when I talked about, you know, when Mac has said explore some different options. I literally, I think jumped on sportspeople.com or the own the S website and was just flicking my email out to every situation available.
And there was a contact that we had sort of developed through some of that traveled to India and so on and so forth. Then I went through a few different processes and didn’t quite get quite through a one really. You know, when, when right to the end to, to sort of getting it happening. And again, with hindsight is a beautiful thing.
There was an opportunity in Beijing actually to go work with some basketball over there and a Glock would Daniel come back, he would come, come across sort of throughout the journey. And he was part of the interviewing and recruiting process. And essentially there was a big drop to get, I think, Western coaches over into, into the sort of Eastern S&C programs.
I think there had been a tendency to, because of their vast numbers of people. For example, in China, that S&C was probably under down a little bit. You know, that would just train and train and, and train and train and train. And if anybody brought it down, there was so many wedding in law that, that would bring those in.
But I sort of ran that timeframe. There was a push to get some Western S&C coaches over to get involved. And I was fortunate enough to get to go through the process and get offered a position over there. And this was right at the end of 2018, we sort of, all these things were happening. And, you know, at the time it was like, you know, this is my opportunity.
Let’s go, let’s, let’s make it happen. You know, this is going to be, this could be pretty cool, but from a family perspective, it wasn’t great timing. We were just about to get married on Easter for two or three months time. And probably I just didn’t have a solid enough I don’t know a set of evidence to suggest that’d be a great idea.
I reached out to a lot of that other S&C coaches that I’ve met in my journey that had been over to China and I heard really mixed reviews. Some of them really loved it. Some of them had some horror stories where you know, that clashed with head coach and maybe potentially didn’t get paid what they needed to be, or, you know, that were fired for no reason.
So I was like, yeah, it’s a big risk to head over there. You know, I was guessing that the work commitments were pretty intense and it’d be bringing my partner, Jamie over to a non-English speaking environment by herself, no family I’d be out outside for like, is this really worth it? And that was when we decided to take that plunge and go, okay, let’s meet up in a private facility instead, this sort of everything pointed towards it.
And, you know, thank God that we made that decision now that we know what’s happened over the course of the last three years. So we’re going to make this decision. Let’s just start, let’s just jump on real commercial and see what’s out there. We found this 400 square meter warehouse, just nice empty shell.
If that was a nice sort of balance of giving yourself some space and not putting ourselves into too much debt that was it was unachievable. Like, we didn’t really have an understanding, you know what, we’re just making it up from a business point of view, to be honest with you. We lent on my mother-in-law, who has a bit of managerial experience in recreation, but for the most part, you know, it was just dive in and go for it.
So reached out to recruitment companies and, and probably had a limited time to get it done, because we thought that timing was of the essence. We thought, particularly in this You know, in this nature of an environment, if we didn’t get hope in by January, but miss a big chunk of our market for pre seasons, you know, good weather news, resolutions.
So we pushed this out as we could work all the way through Christmas and new years didn’t really sleep very much in and managed to get open with a pretty like now look back around a pretty empty facility on January the sixth, 2019, and then, you know, the rest is history. And I know there’s probably a story I’ve told her to a few people, but one of the first instances, I really, really understood that I was a business owner and not a, just an S&C coach anymore.
It was the first weekend we were open, like back-to-back bookings. I was pumped up and ready to go. And so, you know what, I’m living the train. Now, this is it. I’ve done it. I’ve made it. We get through the first couple of sessions everything’s gone well. And one of those sessions was, it was a. Ran in through, you know, had the, the session perfectly sequenced down.
I thought, you know, this is, this is brilliant agribusiness. We finished up with Cindy and doing a bit of recording on the coach, hands up and he goes, where’s Emily. Well, I was thinking in my head who cares? You know, this is brilliant, but right now I’m on cloud nine realized a couple minutes later, Emily going to the bathroom.
And she feeling a bit sick from some of the conditioning. And she had vomited that tore completely. She disappeared all over the floor. I was at that point, I realized I had no cleaning products. Oh my God, what have I done? So first weekend I’ve got clients backing up. I don’t want to hands and knees with paper towel and a fan, just trying to claim spew off the grounds where this is not how I envisage it, but you know, it gives you a, it gives you a bit of perspective anyway.
Jack: A hundred percent. Yeah. Cleaning the gym. When you’re paying rent, you don’t have to worry about that. That’s absolutely
Sean: Definitely.
Jack: That’s awesome, mate. Talk us through Peaq performance. What happens in the center? What’s a typical day for you? How hands-on are you now that it’s been a couple of years? Well, three years Talk us through for those that haven’t been in the facility.
Sean: Yeah. So now I’m really, really fortunate that we’ve had a pretty sort of explosive growth over the last three years. Despite sort of everything that’s going on. I think that, yes probably the, point of difference, our niche a bit, and also just that community engagement has been able to help us through, but essentially Peaq you know, we’re a 24/ 7 performance facility we’ll have to sort of call ourselves.
So our members get 24/ 7 access to this wire key tag. Yeah, all of the S&C equipment that, that you really need to sort of facilitate you know, those principles that we talk about that we manipulate and depth, you know, adapt all the elite experience that we’ve had, we made an appropriate to everybody’s sort of circumstances.
The levels of sort of engaging or membership that we have we’ve sort of got our basic performance model where, you know, essentially you’ve got your program and you come in and you do it at your own time, at your own leisure and go for it. And we do run a few because there is demand for as well, a few generalized classes, we call those, but still with the scope of the periodization in it.
So we’ve got like a, a strength class of which we run in 10 week blocks. So the first three weeks will be a bit more volume in the next three weeks will be a bit more sort of like a, whether it’s a strength accumulation, or a strength integration, where it might be a bit more pyramid based training where we’re teaching them to how to add a load appropriately and then do a three week block of maximum.
So that, you know, might be, you know, doing some four by threes or, you know you know, five or five, those sorts of things. And then we work into it, you know strength testing in week 10, where there could be one at Max’s free RMS. We could do some force pipe work. And then we sort of, you know, repeat the cycle every 10 weeks. We’ve got conditioning classes, central thing, or endurance for the first three.
We’ve gotta be more sort of like in the work, the next three. And then we’ve sort of got like a bit of a semi basketball court area. We, we get out and do something change direction on there as well. So try to integrate those general classes into those, for those who want it. But generally most people come in and do their own team buildr programs.
The next step up is we do have a athletes academy as well. So that’s just another level of sort of individualization. So we’ve got set times where we’ve got three coaches out on the floor. You all up in a small group setting, you’ve each got your own team, but a program that you’re working through and you get coached in small groups you know, similar to sort of what you would see in like an athletes authority style set up. Just sort of like one come over there, have morning and aloe sessions from there.
And then we do have the opportunity to come and do one-on-one coaching, if people are really hungry to get that little extra you know, level of care and love with them as well. So those are the sort of the three options that we wrote through. We’re actually sort of in there in the midst of signing a at least for a bigger facility, which is exciting. We sort of looked at, you know, what is the expansion look like for us. We were probably at a capacity at the moment.
It gets really chaotic there in the arvo which is, you know, I love when you that Bobby’s up and it’s public, but we also don’t wanna make people feel, too uncomfortable if it is overwhelming as well. Not everybody loves to place to be burning. So we sort of thought, you know, what does that look like for us?
Is that multiple locations? We think that that probably just spreads you thin a little bit too much, and you lose your quality control. You know, we want to make, still, always have that facility where I can come in and, you know, say, get out to the members and interact with the community and sort of have a bit of an idea of what’s going on with everybody.
So at the moment, we’re in 400 squares, we’re in the process of negotiating 1,500. So it’s going to be a big step up, but our goal and our vision is to sort of, you know, almost be running that American private facility. So it would be a full-sized basketball court, potentially a bit of a, you know affective area, just a more extensive gym set up and those sorts of things too.
So that’s probably let’s be honest, like 12 months away because it is going to be a brand new build and things are being built quickly in the moment. I know another part of your questionnaire was in my involvement day to day. Certainly it’s being less and less coaching now and more and more development.
I still do pop out and coach your net. And we’ll do, you know, a couple of sessions, you know, every day or a couple of every couple of days. You know, it used to be back to back, try to squeezing eight to 10 hours of coaching everyday, but now sort of bob in and out and make sure that we’re developing those staff members.
We’ve got 19 staff members on board now, which is exciting and hopefully providing pathways for coaches that you have may didn’t have when we were coming through the ranks as well. We do provide you know at the moment, you know, we, we started with the classic subcontracting agreement for everybody that was on board, just because we didn’t have the resources.
We’ve now progressed that up to now casual employment for us with the view to turn that into, to permanent and full-time you know, in the next 12 months as well. So just taking those baby steps up to being financially viable and making sure that we, we nurture those great coaches coming through as well.
Jack: That’s fantastic mate. I love hearing that it sounds like a great space growth, both for coaches to develop, but also for athletes, like you said, that don’t have that access to elite coaching and programming and facility as well. They now do so. Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing to know. No surprise why you thrive in the last few years. One cause the demand, but also two, because all that hard work that you’ve done and now that people are coming out and grows to train with you and get involved.
So that’s awesome mate. In terms of the business side of things, who do you model of? How do you go about learning those sides of things? Like obviously as a coach, we do our degrees. We learn off our mentors and then suddenly, now you’re running a facility. Is that learning as you go, is it listening to podcasts? Is it speaking to mentors that are doing, like you mentioned, athletes authority, take us through for business owners, what’s the best to learn that side do you think? Yeah.
Sean: Probably a blend of all those things. Certainly at the start, it was just making it out to be honest with you. As I said, I was fortunate enough, so my mother-in-law, she worked as a manager at a swimming recreational facility for 20 years.
So there were certainly aspects of that, that she, we really leaned on her to sort of assist us with. But for the most part, you know, running a gym, we didn’t really know anybody at that time. That was, that was doing it. Just a great network of people in different professions. Yeah. One of my example athletes, his dad’s was involved in IT so I reached out to him and he set up our back end systems in our surveillance systems to allow us to be able to be 24/7 as well.
I was saying he’s been incredible and still is involved in the business to this day. We had you know, we talked about Adrian Setry and Brett Johns before. Adrian Setry, as well as being a Port Adelaide superstar. He runs a painting business. So, you know, he organized painting the walls for us. Another guy, you know, pretty much if you are involved in a footy club, there’s, there’s a good chance you know, every single trade when, you know, every single something you’ll, you’ll find a connection somewhere to assist, but, you know, from then as we started to become a little bit more established and be more balanced and had the opportunity. Definitely. It was the same tip to podcasts and some of those real strong, skilled business leaders. Probably are some of the cream on the top now.
So I’ve literally got, I probably hadn’t modeled too much off of Athletes Authority until we went over recently and went to the play let in Sydney a couple of months back now and I really, really liked their rehab model.
I think I’m feeling really confident in what we provide from a performance point of view, but what they showed us and what they’re doing in their integrative approach, you know, traditionally, and probably admittedly, what we had fallen into the trap of doing is that, you know, if the physio will have an athlete come to them, physio, work with them to a certain extent and then get to a point and they just hand it over and then we go for it from then, is there, there wasn’t too much of that sort of integrated approach.
So over the last six weeks we’ve been w we’ve sort of elicited the help of a guy called Nick Richardson as well, who worked at a sports injury rehab clinic in Ireland and sort of using both of those models to develop what we think will be best case scenario in South Korea. Even as recently as today, catching up with, you know, external sources to talk about referral pathways too.
And I think what she’s space in the, in the rehab model for south Australia, you will see a very, you know, I’ll have to restart, you know, very similar outlook as to what athletes are 30 yet, but just adapted appropriately to Sudan, mark, a little bit about our market a little bit more as well. So certain stages definitely, always try to be, you know, whether it’s being as an S&C coach or as, as a business person, always be a big funnel, you know, taking everything absorb as much as you can.
And then, you know, you’ll end product at the end is what you feel like you need to filter it out. And, and what you think is appropriate at the time. Just cause you know, there’s this, there are many ways of doing it. There’s no one way to go about it. If anybody tells you that there’s one way to go that business, or one way to go that isn’t C programming.
It’s time to run away as quickly as. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah. I love that. The funnel, it’s a good way to, to approach it because we’re all on our own path and you just take bits and pieces from different people along the way. And I think that was also a good thing to note is be honest with yourself and whether it be business or coaching about your chinks in your armor and working on those areas, whether you call them what you use this or whatever, but noticing, okay, that’s an area I need to work on, or whether it be finance, marketing, programming, what rehab, whatever it is.
So that’s awesome. But we’ll get into the lighter side of the podcast now that they get to know Sean
Sean: Baker this will
Jack: be a bit of fun, which, which movie or TV series has impacted the most and why?
Sean: Oh, that’s a, well, that’s a tough one. I’m a real documentary, like a Netflix documentary sort of brighter, you know, classic luck.
Yeah, last dance and all those sorts of things. I think a classic spot, which says the most impact you going to challenge me here or reckon. Cool. Now, look, I’m not, I’m not a hundred percent sure on which impact you guys. So you probably a lot of stuff that I do watch is, is very drastically different to anything that I’m doing in real life.
So potentially, you know, that’s the, the switch off you, you could say the last dance, but, you know, inspiration and those sorts of things. So I watch it and you know, this is probably sounds a bit like, you know, murder, docos and all that sort of stuff. I’m sure probably will be watching them. So I would like to say that none of those have actually had any impact tomorrow.
I’m going to let you, gentlemen, I’m sorry. I don’t, I don’t really put one that I can now, but yeah, definitely a, a documentary real life know Louis Farrow love his work. Just real life stuff that makes me think Jesus, I live a very sheltered life.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a, Netflix is going to hate to them.
Isn’t it like the district rabbit hole. Some people are doing some crazy things. What about favorite? Inspirational quote and life?
Sean: Look, I like to, I’ve actually got this telling on my chest. I’ve got to tell you my chest a long time ago panties temporary glory is forever. I think a lot of transfer to that where they you take that in its literal term or, you know, metaphorical, you know, there’s been many circumstances that we’ve talked about even in today’s podcast where there’s been a short-term instance has provided a bit of pain, but everything happens for a reason or, you know, everything has its purpose.
And I think if you stick to the process and, and you know, don’t give up one on whatever it is you’re chasing, you know, if I’d give it up in those two circumstances where I’ve been told that, you know, they’re the soft cabs are up and we can’t be doing any more than, you know, we wouldn’t have a business or, you know, wouldn’t be pursuing these pretty exciting contracts we’ve got coming up as well from that from a pro point of view.
So, yeah, I think that’s the biggest one that we, that we bought a lot for sure. And what
Jack: about pet peeves in your work life? What makes you angry?
Sean: I think people that constantly gone about how busy they are, you know, I think, I think like, to an extent you, you a business owner, you’re an S&C coach and you’re a dad, you know, I’d never heard Jeff say, oh man, I’m so busy.
I’m so tired. I’m so busy. And you just get shit done. You’re sitting here on a Friday night you know, podcasting and making it happen. You know, you probably got bumps tucked up in bed and yeah, they do meet a lot of. People or here, a lot of people was that I don’t necessarily think , they might be, but you know, it can be a bit of a, you know, a, a mindset at the end of the day as well.
You know, we all get the same amount of time. And I know it’s a bit of a cliche. Everybody says, well, Oprah has the same amount of time as you, but just don’t, don’t be so busy telling everybody how busy you are. It’s not like it’s not a, it’s not a cool, it’s not a cool thing bug. I don’t think you’re a wonderful person because you’re super busy though.
Worry about that. Yeah.
Jack: And I reckon that resonates may matter. I can, I’m going to put that in the pit pave toolbox, just get on with it. And no one wants to hear that you’re busy. It’s
Sean: good. I love
Jack: it. W in a COVID free world, which we’re pretty much in now or a new norm anyway, once you find a way to spend your day off,
Sean: Look, I, I feel like most of our days you know In some sort of context, like socializing, you know, being out on the floor and coaching and, you know, being very Barbara never have asked.
So actually are really thoroughly enjoying days off, just very quiet or the bombing around home, or we’re pretty close to the beach down here, which is nice. I just go and jump in the water. I’m a terrible swimmer, but just, you know, just splashing around to keep myself in flights. I’m having a little bit dense, but but yeah, no, they’re very, very low key spending time with my two girls, my wife and my little, a two year old daughter and yeah, just just came a location and not being, having a little time.
I’m not like other about recharging, absolutely recharge your batteries. And then when it’s on the gym floor it’s Gaitan. Yup. Yup. Yup.
Jack: And then what about a favorite holiday destiny? Worldwide.
Sean: We have been fortunate enough to, to do a bit of travel before everything kicked off. Really loved it. And I was close to home, really loved Queenstown in New Zealand.
That was a beautiful place. And that’s actually where I proposed to my now wife, Jamie, very picturesque and lots of cool things through, you know, we went skydiving horse-riding and jet boating, all sorts of things that you do while you’re in Queenstown. Only thing I didn’t do was bunch of junk. So I thought, you know, if I jumped out of a plane with a dude strap my back, who wants to give himself a lot, like, I feel like that’s a bit safer than jumping off a bridge with a rope.
So yeah, I love that, but also like traditionally being too American and New York was pretty cool too. And, and watch the next versus is trailblazers at Madison square garden. So, you know, that was a pretty crazy atmosphere and pretty iconic as well. So that’d be.
Jack: But awesome. I had great experiences.
When we’re at the point, he ended the podcast. Thank you so much for jumping on and sharing with us, your journey made. And it’s only the very start. There’s some huge things that you’ve talked about that are really exciting, that that are coming up. And for anyone listening to podcast, coach or athlete, what’s the best way to get in contact with you?
Sean: Yeah. Look, guys do answer all of our Instagram, Facebook and emails. so it’s pea queue performance, Peaq performance on Instagram, or just PHQ on Facebook. Want to get out there. It’s not that I’m dyslexic. It is a little acronym for personalized evidence-based applied and qualified condition coaching.
So yeah, feel free to, you know, do that or feel free to email me at info at Peaq.
Jack: Well, I had those all in the show notes for those listening and what’s on the horizon for AMA for, for this year. Anyway, what are some big things that get to.
Sean: Yeah. So I think for the time being, I’m pretty laser focused on heading to the states in July, really excited for that.
I think there’s a lot that probably rides on that. If we can get a good performance in particularly in the net world gas point of view and SCC six competition, if potentially we get a metal pricing, I think that sends a strong message to the Institute of sport. And if you are considered to be a medal contender, and that’s generally where when funding will come, you know, being a metal contender can be the difference between money or no money, essentially.
So really trying to do everything that we can to, to be beneficial to that program and make sure that we leave no stone unturned and hopefully you know, the, the guys and girls both have a real red hook. Continuing to sort of solidify that the work in the background in regards to the new facility, we’re looking forward to being out to officially a net set, but just, you know, making sure that all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed before it kicks off.
And then yeah, sort of say there’s, there’s probably there’s one or two other things that way we can’t talk about just yet, but, you know keep your eyes pure because it’s exciting. And we’re really grateful for the, for the support of everybody to, to elicit this.
Jack: Yeah, plenty happening in a, in a bigger space as well.
So it’s also my, all your, all your hard work paying off. And I’ll definitely be down there whenever I’m in Adelaide next to check out the, either the current space or the new space. But yeah, thanks again for your time. Thanks again for sharing. What we know what’s worked for you, your learnings mentors that you’ve had along the way, and all the different experiences across the string, the initiating industry, whether it be lacrosse cricket and a state league and professional football, and now also opening a space.
So you’ve done it all, mate. And thanks for sharing all your wisdom with
Sean: us. I see opportunity and keep doing that wonderful things in this industry. I’m looking forward to having a down and out, make sure we bring Bubs as well. We’ll just get them running around the basketball court or organized babysitter who pops to mind. Yes, that’s good.
Jack: And thank you, Ben brown. It’s tuned in. If, if you tuned in late, make sure you listened to the very start. Sean, I provide gems all the way through so you can watch that on our YouTube. We’re also gonna release it to our podcasts, which you can find on all your podcast directories next Tuesday.
So there’ll be the 12th of April for those listening in on YouTube for our next prepare like a pro live chat show. We’ve got Ben Stanley, the founder of enhanced football. You can tune in. There’ll be on the 15th of April next Friday. And at the same time, 8:30 PM. Australia is the 10 times. I’ll see you guys then.
Thanks for listening.
