Clint Greenshields - How ATG Can Impact Rugby League Players

We've got one more presentation for today. We've got my good friend Clint Greenshield. He's one of the first athletes that I coached that kind of really challenged what I was thinking about. And we had a lot of deep discussions about lots of things. We lived in the same building in France when my first kind of head role in a team and Clint really made me sort of feel at home in France. Yeah, it's really cool to have him present today. He had a really successful career as a rugby league player and now is coaching people in Coffs Harbour. Beautiful place in Australia as a beautiful young family. And he's experimented with lots of different training systems over his playing career and then after playing and he's always looking for the edge a bit like many of us. So, yeah, thanks for getting up early, Mr. Greenshields, to share with us this morning.

Thanks, mate. Yeah, sorry about the tired eyes. It's only 5am here, so. Thanks, Rodrigo. It was awesome, man. It was really good, Prezo. So I'm just gonna present a sliding doors scenario. So, yeah, my name's Clint Greenshields from Casaba in Australia. I've got a bachelor's degree in Human Movement Science, diploma in fitness, diploma in neurophysics Therapy. I own my gym and I do PT and foundation training. So I'm going to present two scenarios. Basically, the first scenario is a young athlete that hasn't been exposed to the ATG system and a young athlete that has. So the first athlete basically is with the old no ATG systems. So it's the old traditional strength and conditioning programs. Old mentality where you push through pain and you know, like the bench, the squat, the deadlifts, the chins, dips, planks, which is pretty common in most sports and especially rugby league. So, yeah, if, sorry, it's heavily focused on rugby league and there's kilograms and not pounds and stuff.

So you're all good, man, that's the point. Deliver from your perspective. It's good.

Yeah. So most, most teams would have these as benchmarks. Like you bench, you squat, your deadlifts, chins, dips, plants, as I've said. So you're looking at 150 bench, 180 squat, 180 deadlift. Your chins are 20 reps of the body weight and dips are 20 reps with the body weight and plank, usually with 20 kilos, for how long you can hold for. So the hardware, the software, conversation. So the software dominant is this scenario one. So as a young 17 year old gets drafted to The NRL and has benchmarks to hit, which was on the previous slide, does his best to achieve the benchmarks. All the benchmarks are software muscle dominant and has no emphasis on connective tissue development. So this in turn causes injury. So I know a few of you have probably seen this MRI before, either yourselves or your clients or athletes. It's not a good picture, but yeah. So the young athlete gets a minor ankle surgery, heel spur, and this leads to weakness in the right leg, has no focus on connective tissue strength in the rehabilitation. First ACL surgery with a hamstring graft, plays four games, re ruptures the ACL and has a second surgery, the patellar tendon. So if you have a quick look at the timeline, just the basic timeline of this young athlete, has the first ACL surgery, has second ACL surgery, does the standard rehabilitation, gets another chance at the NRL and makes debut in 2004, plays 15 games, has a third knee injury, which is a bucket handle tear. Sure, a few of you are aware of those too. So plays 43 games, then 150 Super League, plays internationally, comes back to NRL, plays locally and retires at 37. Okay, so this is a big one. This is the old system. This is the old way of managing pain. If you look at it, you've got your voltaren, you've got your benzos, your stillnox, the sleep alcohol obviously and your cortisone injection. So this is focused on the old way of doing things without any ATG influence. Okay, so career and income. So you look at this first athlete, he's had 10 years professionally, played two years semi professional and has a total income of 1.75 million. Okay, so onto scenario two. So this is athlete that's had ATG influence. You know, this is hypothetical, learns about ATG from a local coach and social media, starts implementing hardware dominant exercises, understands long range and short range strength, gets drafted into NRL team and has an ATG mentality which is the pain free ability. So if you have a look at these new benchmarks, it's a lot different to scenario one, which is software muscle dominant. Obviously when the young player goes to an NRL team, he's going to have a qualified ATG coach in the future. So ATG split squat, the slant board squat, Patrick step up, the nordic hamstring curl, the hip flexor raise, weighted shins with full extension, weighted dips with depth dumbbell, external shoulder rotation, dumbbell pullover. Obviously these are going to change with the benchmarks, not the actual exercises but the, you know, like if You've got a netballer or NFL player. It's going to be different with the weight obviously, but yeah, you have a look. It's a lot different to scenario one with the old school way of doing things. So have a look at the timeline for this second athlete. Player leads NRL benchmarks, focuses on strengthening connective tissue, has no major injuries requiring surgery, plays 20 years professionally, represents at the highest level and receives every award possible, Retires and moves into strength and conditioning, leads the connective tissue dominant conversation. Alright, so a bit of a timeline. It's a lot different to that first scenario because you got plays one season and then makes NRL debut, plays 150 games straight with no injury, which I don't think has ever been done. Plays state of origin. For the guys that don't know, state of origin is the pinnacle of rugby league. Plays for Australia, receives daily Ann, which is the highest award, wins five grand finals and retires after 450 professional games. So have a look at the pain management for scenario two with an ATG influence. Looks a lot different. Obviously no pharmaceuticals, so you've got no anti inflammatories, no sleeping tablets, no muscle relaxants, limited ethanol, cold therapy, heat therapy, breathing therapy, light therapy, massage therapy, meditation and nutrition according to gene and microbiome profile. So it's a lot different, a lot healthier, obviously. So this scenario two is 20 years in the NRL, plays 450 professional games and has a lot different income. 17.5 miles. All right, so why me and why now? Scenario one is a brief version of my career in life as a rugby league player. So it's 100% accurate. Even the pain management stuff, which wasn't awesome. But yes, scenario two is the career that I could have had if I had an ATG coach or I knew about the ATG system when I was, when I was a teenager. So, you know, when I went to the Broncos it was had to lift really heavy. You know, my form wasn't fantastic. You know, I was apparently under the best strength and conditioner in Australia at that time. You know, it's no fault of his, but he didn't have any of the ideas that Ben and Keys are putting forward now. And I think if I had have had that, things would have been completely different. You can't look back. But anyway, the world in elite sport particular need ATG coaches. I think this is something huge. I really believe that and any age or ability can improve with atg. So I'll show you some slides of my clients in the next couple. So Look, I trust the process and I'm getting great results in myself and my clients. And I trust Keegan as a mentor and coach. And I also have a gym with 95% of the equipment needed to get started as an ATG gym. So the bit of the journey, my journey over the last. I've only been working with this for three months and I've worked through the zero and dense programs as a student and a coach. And yeah, after three major knee injuries, I never thought I'd be able to even bend my knees in this, this position. Look, my form's not fantastic, a lot of improvement to do, but the fact that I can do this with no pain, you know, after three months, imagine what I'll be able to do in three years. You know, like, I'm pretty excited. So this, I'm just going to show you a couple of clients, 30 sessions a week with my clients. This is one of my clients. He's a professional surfer. His name's Billy. He's one of the strongest in the lower, the lower limbs that I've seen. You know, he's, he's been able to do this quite easily. You know, no pain, he doesn't have any lower body injuries. But if you ever see some surfers when they get, especially that back leg and they get that back leg and they got to get really, really low, like he's very, very powerful in that position. You know, there's, there's obviously other areas that we're going to have to work on with him other than just the knee ability stuff. But this is just giving you an example of the spectrum of the athletes, and not just athletes, but people that can benefit from atg. So this is another client, she's on the other end of the spectrum. So she's 58, she's had one knee replacement on her left side and we're trying to avoid the right side. So she's basically. I've been working with her for two years, but she was scheduled in January to get her right knee done. Okay. So I've tried to get her to put it off now and just give me a chance to try and get it back to where it needs to be. So, you know, like you're looking at the reverse sled pulls here. Like, you know, she's a 58 year old lady with a lot of knee issues. Ankle issues, Ankle's fused as well. So, you know, it doesn't mean a lot when you're looking at the 1% athletes, but when you have clients that range from A grandma who just wants to be able to get down and play with her grandkids without pain. And you've got a pro surfer who's trying to be better. Get that 1% gain. So I just put those slides in because I wanted you to see the range and why I'm so excited about it because it doesn't matter whether you're a professional athlete or a grandma, just trying to get out of pain, it really, really is effective for a lot of people. So I just have a quick look into the future. I've finished level one, Level two is in progress. Level five by August. That's the goal. I've set myself level eight in two to five years. The Nordics are going to be pretty tough. Yeah. So. And once I'm fast tracked, I want to be able to run or advertise that I'm doing knee ability zero in my gym. Like as a class. I've got a pretty good idea to be able to try and run that as a class. Working one on one with the clients and athletes to progress them, obviously for them and for myself and hopefully work with an elite team, not just NRL in 2022. Okay, so just some final thoughts. This is just. I put up a study from. It was published in 2019. It was done on 60 athletes, 60 rugby league players for the Newcastle Knights between 2015, 2017. So there's a two year period there. There was basically 37, sorry, 60 players and 37 knee injuries. Okay. So that's well over half the squad, you know. And out of the 37 there was actually 89, 89 injuries. So you basically there'd be blokes that are having two, sometimes three, three knee injuries. You know, there's 61.7% and this is only one club in one in NRL. So can you imagine the clubs throughout the world, you know, soccer, NFL, NBA, whatever you're into. There's a big, big need for, to try and cut these numbers in half and that's only knee injuries. Every other joint in the body can get injured obviously. So yeah, if you want to have a look at that study, it's a pretty good look into knee injuries and yeah, Australian Rugby league too. So yeah, look every, to finish up, every sport needs an ATG coach. I'm super excited about the ATG journey for myself and my clients and all of you guys too. Look, I think we're at the pointy end, you know, like this is gonna be something huge and we're all gonna be needed in some way, shape or form. In the future. So look, I'm really excited to be part of the journey and part of this community. So thanks heaps for letting us present and yeah, sorry about the tired eyes and whatever but appreciate it.

Good man. Yeah, that's great topic for conversation. The two scenarios. Ben sort of did that YouTube video talking about how might have changed his path and I think most of us, almost everyone in ATG has a story, something along these lines. But with yours it was really clear, like you're super talented kid and then you just got thrown into a powerlifting type program. You broke and you broke again and you broke again and then you know, you ended up playing in France and having those amazing experiences that you know probably some of the most life enriching things. But it shouldn't have been that way from a physical, you know, physical perspective and you know, accidents happen in high contact sports and whatnot. But you know, it was clear right from your ankle thing that you weren't, you know, it's a common scenario that you get an ankle injury and then the hamstring's weak and then the ACL goes. Or the hamstring goes. Case the hamstring goes. Worst case the ACL goes. Yeah, really good presentation and it's cool to hear like it's already, you know, because you've done a bunch of different courses. It's cool that you can sort of see how user friendly this is as well to be able to like apply it with pros or apply it with you know, an elderly lady that wants to, you know, a middle aged lady that wants to get a self going against it. Love it.

Thanks mate, appreciate it.

So we've heard those three presentations. It'd be cool if you guys have any questions you can unmute and ask questions directly. I can always, I always got questions. But it's a good opportunity for you guys as well. Yeah, you can see how varied this is. You know, three really different scenarios and all really powerful and all really clear application for what we're working on and how we can make a difference with it in our communities and flow on effect. So you can either unmute or you can ask questions into the chat box. If you've got some there, I'll give another second or as I'll jump in. So Clint, like now as a, you know you experienced strength and conditioning in teams for a long time. Now you're doing these programs like what would you have thought if you had have been given this training? Like how do you think you would have gone into games and things like that or just felt about your weight training sessions if you were given ATG type sessions rather than, you know, what I gave you and what other coaches gave you.

Yeah, look, I think being exposed to it before you actually get to, you know, NRL NFL system as a young, a young guy doing those things, getting a base, I think, you know, would have been super handy. But if I had have actually went to Broncos and they were doing some of these exercises, I think you just adapt to it because, you know, same as like I did with Dan Baker when I come in and he's like, you know, as a 17 year old kid, you gotta lift 180 squat, 180 deads, like that was just the benchmark and you'd do anything to try and make that happen. And that's obviously what broke me early. But I think if he or someone influenced like yourself, if you were there, it'd be like I'd do anything you tell me to. Because you're getting paid to be there, you want to achieve and you want to stay healthy. So yeah, I honestly think that every single club will have someone, either a consultant like yourself or any of these guys on the chat to help them out. Like, you know, the funnel's too big for yourself and Ben to handle. So you know, like maybe not all the exercises will get into every single NRL program, but I definitely think that going to be especially for knees and stuff, man. Like there's going to be a big focus on that patellar tendon strengthening especially because there's a lot of those injuries. You know, the MCLs are probably the big ones within IRL. They're the highest knee injury. So yeah, anything you can do to strengthen it. So I definitely think if there was an opportunity for me to have someone like yourself or an ATG coach, it would have been different journey, that's for sure.

I think there's, I think some of the clubs are playing around with it. I think the warriors are going, you know, pretty far with it at the moment. And I know some of the players that I've introduced it to now do it on their own on the side of their strength training session. Like they'll just go and do the exercises just because they know that they feel better with it. But I think you could keep guys a lot fresher as well. Like that's one of the, the benefits of it. Like as Clint's coach, you know, when we were in France, you know, you, you were one of the players who was conscious of like this probably isn't exactly What I need like this. There's something else that I need other than just trying to, like, I was trying to get people doing full squats. And, you know, there was. There was some positive aspects to the way I trained guys, you know, 10 years ago. But if I had have understood this sort of stuff, like, I think it would have been. I think you would have bought in more at that stage, because by the time I was working with you, you'd already had multiple injuries, but then you'd also had a lot of success just, you know, with playing as you were and, you know, just staying on the field, not smashing yourself in the gym and getting out there on the field and getting the job done kind of thing. Um, I think you would have gone into games, you know, you would have been able to work quite hard on these exercises and still gone into games fresh. Um, which would have been, yeah, a different, different sort of experience.

Um, this one would be more for, like, I know Clint was working with older clients some. So, like, working with older clients, Samantha was trying to hit on this. Like, how do you regress certain exercises and stuff? My question would be more for, like, if you're working with someone who maybe is like, near a knee replacement or something, like, really out of shape, do you play around with like, just doing ROKP stuff, or what's the balance between regressing the other zero exercises versus just not rushing into any of them and just working on the real basics?

So I know with. With a couple of my older clients, I use all the 00 program. One thing that I have found useful is using bands and stuff like that, especially with the split squats like you saw in the video, just to take that little bit of pressure off. So that's another way to regress, to assist them with certain things. But I haven't really. Especially the sleds and stuff like that. I haven't really shied away from using. Not using any of the zero program. I don't know if anyone else is like that, but there's not too many exercises that you can't do in that zero. So, yeah, I've had plenty of success with a lot of my older clients, especially the ones that don't have a great deal of mobility and can't put too much resistance into their systems. Hopefully that answers your question a little bit, Wayne.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I just. You can play around with them. Just regress them to their ability, basically. Don't be too shy with the stuff.

Yeah, look, I've had no issues with any of my clients a little bit. With the Nordics, you've got to be pretty careful because you can flare up some. Some. Some tendon stuff. I know with a couple of my clients, I was trying to get them to push from the ground and come all the way back up. I've now stopped doing that because I did flare a couple of hamstring tendons up. But you can just regress that to get up to a chair or even like a little box or something that they can just push off. But try not to come all the way to the ground and push their hands off. But that's not so much in the zero program anyway. But that's the only thing that I've really had any issues with, to tell you the truth. You know, with myself, I probably went a little bit too hard every day, and I. You can overdo it sometimes, but if you just be careful with spacing out your days, I can't see any issue. I don't know how anyone else feels about that, but that's my experience with it, for sure, dude.

A lot of people talk about being able to tolerate more volume and being able to bring in some plyometrics. I think one of the biggest weaknesses in the system was the hamstring, with people trying to get that full Nordic and sort of kipping out of the bottom and that sort of stuff. I think adding in the inner range hamstring work has made a lot of difference. And then, yeah, just being smart with that, I think just recognizing super high tension exercises. Yeah, we can't do really heavy high tension exercises by slowing things down and just the subtleties. You know, this stuff is easy. You know, it's quite simple to make work for anybody. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense what you're saying, but yeah, it was great to have everyone on today, and I really love these shares. I think there's. There's so much value in hearing how different people are applying it and just making those connections as well. You know, please, you know, drop your Instagram links in there. But you can also connect with each other through mighty networks and see each other's profiles and whatnot. I think a lot of the great things that will come out of this network will be through the relationships that are built and people just going out and making changes. The majority of people have never heard of atg. Still. Most athletes still don't know what. What it is, why it works. Maybe some people have seen the account, but they still don't have any idea what it's all about. So it's still very much like day zero for this. And even those of you who think about Charles Poliquin and he covered a lot and whatnot, fact is it didn't get out to 99% of gym goers. They never heard of him. They don't know why they're doing some of his movements might be there or whatnot. But it's all still ahead of us. This is day zero for making a real change in the way high school athletes are trained and the way strength coaches are thinking about their training. And yeah, we have a massive opportunity. So I love this chance to connect as a community. Makes it all the more real. And hearing these real life scenarios, yes, you can feel free to drop your insta in there and catch up and connect with others. Patrick did a really good job earlier in the week. I don't know if we've got the recording for that. Patrick, if you can help us out with it, but did a presentation around the BFR training which was really cool. You did a great job presenting that. I think that does have application. I think it crosses over quite a bit with how we attack the sled work. I think that there's, there's crossover with those theories and the way, you know, west side barbell attacks, the belt squats and the sled work and those sorts of things. I think there is crossover with that and the blood flow restriction. And I've got some cool stuff coming up for you this week. You know, things I've been thinking about. But yeah, thanks guys.