Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
40 Rich Hunwicks: "One of the traits high performing leaders have, is one of servantship".
Rich, a high-performance coach who found his calling after an unexpected injury, shares his incredible journey
Discover how his unique experiences, cultural immersions, and passion for teaching winter sports led him to work with top teams like the Leeds Rhinos and even take on roles as head of human performance for England. His story is a compelling testament to the power of adaptability, passion, and building meaningful relationships in sports leadership.
Our episode unfolds with Rich's insights on leadership and resilience, drawing from his experiences transitioning between successful and struggling teams. Hear how he emphasizes collaboration and incremental progress, fostering humility and acceptance among team members to achieve transformative physical and mental improvements.
Rich's philosophy highlights the importance of tailoring leadership approaches to fit each team’s unique dynamics, ultimately leading to collective success and personal growth.
Rich shares personal stories of cultural shifts, vulnerability, and breaking barriers to forge meaningful relationships. Learn about the champion behaviors—effort, humility, gratitude, and resilience—that are essential for success, both in sports and life.
This episode is packed with valuable insights from Rich Hunwicks' journey, offering listeners practical principles that can be applied to achieve excellence in their own pursuits.
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Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Today, on Forging Resilience, I have the pleasure of being sitting with Rich Hunnocks, a high performance coach who helps individuals and teams in terms of their cohesion, development and their physical capabilities. Comes from a background of sport, which I'll let him talk about in a second, and now runs his own company, the Everyday Athlete, rich.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show, buddy. Thank you very much for having me An absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me An absolute pleasure. No worries, mate. It's really a great opportunity for myself, and some of my listeners as well, to get those insights from a world that, as you know, often is perceived one way can be another, but there's always some interesting lessons and insights to come from those. So I'm really looking forward to having you and getting into our discussion today, mate. Give us a bit of a background, mate, on on yourself, on your career and and what leads you to be sitting here today, mate. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm a 22 year experience strength and conditioning professional. Primarily early in my career I was a very purist strength and conditioning coach. More latterly I've become a performance coach, performance director and manager of people really, which in the elite sporting world has predominantly been rugby league, but across a number of areas including rugby union, modern, modern pentathlon, great britain water polo, so a whole diversity of athletes on that journey. And I started really in a very non-traditional sense and I'll try and snapshot that for the listeners in that I was a keen rugby player not a great standard rugby player and I was fully engaged in being a team sport player at a young age and it was really my passion. I had a really decent injury aged 18 and decided that and was told that if you keep playing rugby the likelihood is at 40 you probably won't walk on that right ankle.
Speaker 2:At the time I made a life-changing decision and I didn't realize it then and there that I was going to head off to the Alps, have a gap year before attending university and and then follow up on whatever I was going to do. And I didn't really know at that point and I was a big. I was very fortunate. It was a big winter sports fan and I was a snowboarder and a skier from my younger years and I went off. I worked in the hospitality industry. I realised that was very, very hard work. I learnt German. I worked a lot of hours and fully immersed myself in the culture in the Alps, and it was a brilliant culture. By chance, a conversation came up with a snowboard school and a ski school that said, oh, you're really, really good at this, why don't you get qualified and come and coach and teach? And there was a light bulb moment. I thought that's a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? And very rapidly I became probably one of the most sought after coaches in the Austrian Alps at the time because of my language capabilities across German, english, dutch at the time and then also my ability to relate to people. And again the light bulb went on. I thought I love this, this is what I enjoy engaging with people, coaching and making people better. I taught everybody from young that I could carry up a ski lift if they couldn't actually physically take their own weight up there to old. Yeah, from Dutch to German to English and every range of abilities. It was a real. It was the life school of coaching then and there in winter seasons.
Speaker 2:A gap year for me ended up being four, much to my parents' dismay, and I saw and traveled and did a lot of things in the Alps which were unbelievable life experiences. And this is where I came back to the non-traditional. Would I change that? No, because I learned so much about communicating and embracing other cultures that have benefited me more latterly. I then decided that physical training was something I wanted to pursue again and enrolled in a personal training course and started coaching individuals, originally at Arnold Schwarzenegger's gym in Austria, in Kitzbühel in Austria, which was kind of cool, cool back in the day.
Speaker 2:I moved back to the UK. That couldn't last forever and realised if I wanted to coach professionally in sport then I would be doing that in the UK. And I volunteered and worked full-time across a number of roles full-time in a commercial gym, full-time coaching junior teams and also as a house parent in a private school and mentoring young talented athletes in the early stages. And enrolled back at university, did my undergraduate in health and performance sports science and then moved into teams. I got an opportunity with Leeds. Rhinos was a very young coach, 23-24, and started to coach at Leeds. That opportunity was just unreal at the time and I dropped into the what is now known as a golden generation the Kevin Sinfields, the Jamie Peacocks, the late Rob Burrow era of guys that were winning trophies and I became a coach in a team and a structure that was winning week in, week out and playing in big games in big arenas in front of thousands of people. I thought that was just how it worked. You got that every week and every day, which has become something that I've learned further down the track that that's a very fortunate situation to be right at that level.
Speaker 2:So early in my career, I moved from Leeds to Salford when I wanted to challenge myself a little bit. I had opportunities to go to football and rugby union at the time, but the quality of the people in rugby league particularly and I can talk more about this really endeared me to stay, and I wasn't doing it for the money. I was doing it for the people that I was surrounded with and the value I felt in those environments. That moved into a role with England as head of human performance, and that was in 2017. We worked our way to a World Cup final and I then moved to Catalan Dragons in the south of France and spent just under five years in Perpignan coaching in a second language in France. Again a cultural experience, but one that I was ready to embrace, purely because I'd done that before. It didn't phase me. And again, it turned out to be a very life-changing experience. At that point I had my wife with me and two kids, so a different challenge completely.
Speaker 2:And then returned to Leeds as performance director at Leeds, at the very top in a big program running multiple elements of their program. In tandem to that journey I did have a longstanding partner, who has since become my wife, and she supported me relentlessly, which has been brilliant, and I wouldn't have been able to do what I've done without her. Won challenge cups, won grand finals, lost challenge cups, lost grand finals on numerous occasions. So it's not all Hollywood, private jets and champagne. And I've got two young kids who are absolutely the most important. They're the why in in the journey. And yeah, I married up my strength and conditioning credibility with the UK Strength and Conditioning Association. I became a tutor for them, I became a board member and a director. So I was very credible in the industry.
Speaker 2:Over a number of years Did a postgraduate degree which was based around the applied aspect of travel and training for overseas athletes when traveling in competition, so that was a very relevant project the 2017 world cup but it's been a excuse the pun a bit of a snowball in in sports coaching. I've met so many brilliant people and it's not finished yet. I I've latterly moved away from coaching full time and I coach individuals, I consult for various teams performance reviews and I run a business with my partner, a business partner called the Everyday Athlete, and we have a really strong online community for training and nutrition of really what we class as hybrid individuals who want to train for a better, healthier lifestyle, and we program for them according to their needs and apply a lot of the things that we've developed as sports coaches professional sports coaches into the day-to-day function of people's lives, helping them have happier, healthier lives, quite simply so, and that's quite diverse and uh and great fun, in a different way, to be part of another community yeah, wow, mate, there's, there's a lot there.
Speaker 1:Awesome, mate. I only go right back to something. You said that that spiked my interest and, uh, you, you became one of the most sought after instructors on the slopes because you're, because of your language ability. And then you alluded to something else and your ability to relate to people, which I think was probably more of it also being in a second or in a country speaking my second and third language. What do you think are some of the keys, then that you were going into those skiing lessons with? To? To make yourself available for that person, to teach them, irregardless of what age level or language they were in. Because there's no doubt, mate, being being brits, we don't learn to start speaking languages late. We make lots of errors, a lot of them comical. So even though you spoke good german, I'm not convinced, or good languages, it was, it was just that. So I'm keen to hear what else make lots of errors, a lot of them comical. So even though you spoke good German, I'm not convinced, or good languages, it was just that.
Speaker 2:So I'm keen to hear what else. I didn't realise until probably the last three to five years when I could articulate this that I've always approached my coaching with a person-first mentality Do not look at the athlete, do not look at the athlete, do not look at the subject matter. I don't particularly look at the framework of teaching any particular skill. I look at the person and then dissect the best method in my mind to get them to acquire the skills that they need. So I'm making a model really for every individual, rather than trying to shoehorn a model really for every individual, rather than trying to shoehorn a model onto that person and that can be applied at multiple levels and by engaging with them as a person, taking genuine interest in other elements of their lifestyle, for example, without prying, asking what they do for fun rather than what they do for a living. What do they like to do when they're not on the ski slope? Where have they come from?
Speaker 2:Genuinely trying to engage and then finding those commonalities and and sharing experience along the way with them in any any context builds trust and ultimately back. That's what they had to do. They had to trust some random fellow from Halifax to teach them to snowboard. And why would they trust me? Well, competency in language is one thing Not being afraid to make errors in languages or my delivery, because it's never perfect and there were always sessions and there are now on reflection where I think I could have delivered that better, that could have been done better.
Speaker 2:But that shows also human side. And being able to correct something is an absolute skill as a coach and it's a certain level of humility and I just think people can relate to that If they see there's a genuine level of care and I talk a lot about care to athletes now is that you can build a bond very, very quickly. The final part of that is if you build trust by showing them an appropriate level in any area, something that they can achieve, all of a sudden you're raising the bar, raising the ceiling, and that accelerates rapidly if they're achieving. If it's an unattainable goal, it becomes delusional about the chances of ever achieving it. It's not satisfying for anybody. So there's multiple layers to that, as I've described. But build trust would summarize it and genuine care. That trust creates tempo and there you go away away, we are away, we go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, mate, and I think what I'm hearing there as well is that ability to be present. You're not making it about you or your language or your skills. You're putting your focus on them to see what they need and then work that part of the puzzle. And yeah, obviously that builds that builds trust.
Speaker 2:Um, from that place of empathy which is probably something that which which you set you in such good stead, moving onwards in it throughout your career yeah, well, the the highest level of leaders that I've been exposed to, and have been numerous in sporting context. I mentioned Kevin Sinfield, and he's pretty much a household name across world sport now, with both his playing endeavors and his recent fundraising endeavors. But guys like Sam Burgess, an NRL icon across the spectrum, loads of guys that I've been exposed to, and there are commonalities with all of them and one of the key ones is the leadership trait of um servanship, actually asking in any environment, what can I do for you, not what can you do for me, what can I do for the team? Offering that, what can I do for the group? And being really, really humble and egoless and give to then receive, and it it's prevalent across all the highest performers and that there is no self-interest.
Speaker 2:The glory or the success or the outcome will be achieved as a collective, and those leaders run generally, and the way I try to coach and deliver in any program is that I'm always they deliver with a philosophy of come with me rather than don't follow me.
Speaker 2:Come with me, you're on my right side or my left side, let's do it together, and those are key phrases, and it is very much about providing for others and then celebrating collective success as a result and I did mention at the beginning, it's not always successful as a huge there's always. There can be quite a huge opportunity to fail, but I often reflect on this I used to lose sleep over it about losing games as a coach that I toss and turn thinking what could I have done, what didn't I do, what didn't I provide. But actually, more recently I've man in the mirror moments, go to bed going. I've absolutely tried and given everything and fully committed and can say that honestly. So the outcome is affected by so many different factors. I shouldn't lose sight of that and perspective. As long as I've given everything for the group, individual, cause or project, then there's nothing more that I can do. And that's been pretty important in terms of the level of self-care for me as a coach as well, which I think a lot of people struggle with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's something I wrote about the other day, actually the distinction between giving it all and giving your all. And you're describing there giving your all, done your best, go to bed. Tomorrow's the day. Giving it all would see you again burning the midnight oil, beating yourself up, asking for opinions, burdening yourself for something that's done and dusted. Yeah, um, which which leads me on to. I was going to ask you later on, but so you touched on it there, mate in terms of going from a team that was winning and all these incredible players already, how did you keep showing up then when you changed, uh, teams or jobs, or when you did hit those troughs of not winning? How did you ensure that as a culture, if not you as an individual? How did you ensure that you keep showing up through those tough times?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, there's probably two parts to this answer. So, if you bear with me, the first part is when I left Leeds in the golden success period, I moved to a new franchise at the time, salford Red Devils. It was a very lucrative opportunity not to be turned down, which wasn't the sole driver, but it was certainly a motivator for me at that time in my life and what I learned? There was quite simply a lot of what not to do's and I made a lot of mistakes. There were superstar players, really hired mercenaries, highly experienced hired mercenaries who were all there for with different agendas, but no common cause really. And I tried to apply the the Leeds model at the time, which was very light touch in reality, to this group and give them a lot of trust and a lot of care and and it didn't work. It quite simply we didn't get the results. We didn't get the performance outcomes we wanted. And ego at the time, you don't see that, you don't? You think, oh, this is the right way it's got to work. And actually in hindsight, four or five years later, I look back and think, yeah, I really should have driven this group far harder. I should have applied different philosophies and methodology to that context and the motivator there to keep turning up when we weren't doing well we were a mid to low table team was to try and get those structures and frameworks in place and develop to that goal. But knowing that we potentially weren't going to have the win outcome at the end of each week is in a 27 game season is quite a different mindset. And trying to convince individuals that are on a huge range of self-interest in this project that we have a common goal of just trying to be a little bit better each day.
Speaker 2:Fast forward that to then moving to Catalan Dragons post working with the world's best and going to the world cup final, which again was very different. The Catalan's team were very poor when I arrived and that was half of the. The Catalan's team were very poor when I arrived and that was half of. The enticement was that the only way these guys can go is up, and I'd learned my lesson and really worked hard to try and create a model that worked for that playing group and those individuals and their attitude collectively and individually was one of, ultimately, a lot of humility and acceptance that they were where they were and they wanted change, which helped massively so to instill change physically and psychologically, in terms of being a highly competitive, religiously determined and committed group we had to change behaviours and that was a drip feeding approach.
Speaker 2:We couldn't do everything at once. We was identifying easy wins and taking those and then being patient and reflecting and reviewing on the week-to-week progress with looking at the overall strategy and and it was as simple as this. Initially, they were too fat and they were unfit. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? And you go right, so rich, get them thinner first and then get them fitter. Can't do it both at once, as much as we want, and it's crazy. And but by evidencing the changes. Um, I was very, very cautious in that concept not to come in and go look, everything you've done before is absolute rubbish. Forget that. All you need I've got all the answers didn't do that because that that's eco-driven. I haven't got all the answers. I've got a lot of modalities and methods that I think will really help us, but it's not you and me, it's us, and they embraced that.
Speaker 2:And it was a rocky start. In terms of the strategies and body composition change, we could evidence, measure, perfect, really impactful over an 8 to 12 week period by changing some dietary behaviors, some training, loads and exposures, and then, once we got that, we could also evidence the fitness improvements and the improvements in performance came directly off the back of that and movement capacities, injury rates reduced, et cetera, without getting too sport heavy. And that didn't happen in a linear fashion, it wasn't takeoff, it was speed bumps every couple of weeks, every week. Compliance results. We lost in the first 13, 14 games. We were three from 11 um and that's not a good return and there was a lot of doubt, probably around seven or eight, nine in there, both internally and I was living with the head coach at the time, so we had a really close relationship where we were literally shouting to each other at night yeah, we'll do that tomorrow at 9 20 on session one. Yeah, good night, good night, you know, across the bed. A bit weird, but um it.
Speaker 2:That level of communication and trust and care really reassured us. Are we doing this right? Yes, let's keep the process. We understand we're not forging blindly, we're being very critical of our, our own practice and we trust what we're going to do. And that turned then by having faith in solid scientific principles, applying logic, dealing with the person rather than just the athlete, understanding the bigger picture and we ended up Cup winners four months later, which you know.
Speaker 2:To put it in a snapshot, we turned up as heroes from the world cup or I certainly did on a chariot and they were lording it. 14 weeks later, they were booing me out of town with rocks being thrown at my car and then, eight weeks after that, they were creating a statue outside the stadium with our names on. So it's that fickle, but the morals and and main learns from that are sticking to the process, trusting that, being critically reflective about what our practice is and managing the variables. That it's not linear in terms of change in any context. It will take time, and then I'll close with a sentence of what we had to do and I use this to the day all the time, I'm using it currently is keep turning up with the right attitude, that's it, keep turning up and when it goes a bit peatong, keep turning up. Uh, and these most people do things pretty well in high levels of anything, but the ones that do it for longest are the ones who are really truly successful.
Speaker 1:Just on that last point, that really speaks to me. How long do you think people can keep turning up, even they're getting slapped in the face or rocks thrown at their car for?
Speaker 2:I think that's a great question. I think it's different for every individual and there has to be a point for each person's scenario where we evaluate and I'll be quite candid here we evaluate versus our health and well-being whether that is a beneficial situation to be in. And my personal scenario in that tough period I've made light of it with that analogy, but was running in parallel I was putting my children into French school every morning and my daughter, age six at the time, was in floods of tears every morning going to school and the effect that that had on my mental well-being. Watching her visibly upset and anxious about going to school because she couldn't communicate at that stage had me questioning everything that I was about as a dad, as a parent, as a husband, and whether I'd made the right decision for my family which could have been viewed as quite selfish to put us in this scenario where I was not. I could felt I could manage the burden and stress of whatever was coming, but to see a six-year-old who wasn't in control, I'd, I'd, I'd made that choice. It was a very, very different circumstance and that strain psychologically was huge and it got me to that point around eight months into my tenure in France where I questioned quite seriously with my wife whether that was going to be our long-term outlook or we needed to make a change for all of our benefit and our health. And that was not manifested in anything as serious as depression, but there was certainly a level of anxiety and I firmly believe that our psychosocial pressures although I don't have research to prove this manifest in so many different ways in the human body. You see it all the time with players in that if they move house, they have a baby, they get divorced or they fly in from overseas, there is generally a really higher chance of soft tissue musculoskeletal injury.
Speaker 2:For example and I was looking back at this time going well, my back was chronically tight, a fit, healthy 30 yearold. At that point, I was training regularly, exercising healthy weight, et cetera. Why was my back tight? Why was I getting toothache? And it was a manifestation of all of these other elements. So go back to the start there.
Speaker 2:There has to be a point where you decide I'm either going to see this will come good or I'm going to make a choice to change it. Do we? When, do we know that that's the right time? I don't have the answer to that. But what I would encourage anyone to do is in that situation is seek support, open up to friends, colleagues of which, which I did, and had two or three key confidants that really supported me through that journey. And you know more latterly, I was running with one of them last night.
Speaker 2:He refers back to it. Do you remember that time you rang me and I was almost in floods of tears, going I don't know what to do here. And that was a crunch point with the self-doubt and the self-worth and the health element that you go. How long do you keep forging on with, keep turning up? Well, you know it got critical. For me, don't let it become critical would be my advice. And seek support. And then, if it gets to that level of extremes, there is nothing in life, and certainly not in footy I use the Aussie phrase of rugby league that's that important. Your health is worth suffering for and that's really something that I've developed. As a younger practitioner I was a bit more oblivious to it. You know I'm completely bulletproof, but I now realize I'm absolutely not and you, you need to take that level of self-care yeah, yeah, so hopefully that gives clarity on that 100.
Speaker 1:It does to me, mate, and I think, yeah, what resonates there is again going back to, yeah, what you said, like trusting the process but treating each individual in terms of the team aspect. You were, you had the ability to self-reflect and in that case, have discussions with your wife and those other people. So I think there's some massive key takeaways in there for people. Listening is ask yourself questions, have people ask you questions and build that support network before you need it, because, like you, my kids are really important to me and when we see them suffering and we make the assumption is because of us. I can only imagine that, especially moving to a new country, the, the pressure that you must have put yourself under, and there's no doubt we drag our stuff from from home to the when your case, the field, but well, the office, you know um so, yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that, mate.
Speaker 1:That's, that's massive. When you went to your uh, the leeds rhinos, as a young coach, what were some of the things that you were trying to do to get buy-in? Whilst I've not worked in elite sports, I've worked in certain organizations where, as a new boy, there's a very set place for you, um and and I guess as a coach, you are almost. You have to step up. There's certain things you need to do and say and and I guess, with surrounded by a couple of uh legends and extremely good players, capable managers and people that have been in the game a long time, that that can be borderline overwhelming how do you get that buy-in from, from the guys, and how do you manage now, on reflection, I guess, yourself stepping into or so far out of your comfort zone?
Speaker 2:I think this is very, very relevant in so many contexts, whether you're a junior coach or a senior level practitioner in any industry. When you go into a new environment, having the emotional intelligence to absorb, first of all absorb by listening, the the forgotten art of communication, actually listening, and then being patient enough and humble enough to acknowledge the circumstance and demands of the people around you. Again, asking that question what do they need from me to add value here as a young coach? It's really easy and I've seen it over and over and over you get your degree and you do ukca. You think you know everything. Well, in the reality is we all know. As we get older, generally, we we actually know less and less. There's more and more to learn is that we don't know a huge amount, and it's not how much we know anyway. It's what they need to know.
Speaker 2:And in those early days what those players who were uber professional needed from me was consistency. They needed an alternate viewpoint and lens strategically placed. So that was at the time around the sport science area of GPS, load monitoring and technology that they hadn't seen before. But I didn't parade on a big white horse with a computer going. Look guys, these numbers will give you all the answers. I was quite cute about trying to influence behaviors with small nuggets of information, both individually and collectively and that was the same to the coaching group that were new to the technology as well at the time and try and add value in that way. What I didn't need to be back then was the entertainer, the energizer, the go-to guy. I needed to be the process guy and that was, in that time, really valuable. Rob Burrow would always come and thank me periodically and I remember it vividly. Thank you, rich. You gave me my vitamins every day. You even gave me them in a bag to take home and you even messaged me to tell me to take them on the day off. I would never have done that if you hadn't been that consistent with your delivery. Appreciate it, and it was such a simple thing, but it was so impactful. That was what he needed. He didn't need me, although I did get the luxury of coaching Rob Burrows from speed and evasion work. His natural ability in speed and evasion was like unreal. How much better was it actually going to make him? Not a great deal by reciting a bit of theory in some videos I've seen, so understanding that not everyone needs everything from you and fitting in accordingly.
Speaker 2:More latterly, when I returned to Leeds as the performance director, I really had to be the thermostat, not the thermometer. I had to gauge what the whole vibe of the organization, the staff, the coach, the players was and try and energize and elevate or tune up and tune down accordingly intensity, intent of sessions, tone of messages, type of messages. And that was a completely different skill set which, if I'm honest, back in 2007, I would have really struggled with and that's how I'd evolved and I knew that that was what it needed. But in turn in the staff structure, I'd realized that I didn't need seven others of me. I needed the process guy, I needed the numbers guy, I needed the strength nerd and they're lovely. I don't mean that, uh, any kind of there isn't at all in there. They're all brilliant minds and dudes, but they're all very different and that's go. Go to the message you get the right people on the bus.
Speaker 2:I think that's what was why I was put in place back then and then, more likely, when I've had the power of recruitment and the retention, that you try and get the right people on the bus and then move the parts accordingly, but having that emotional intelligence as an individual to sit back, look, listen and ask the question what do I need to offer these guys to be better?
Speaker 2:And the final part of that is taking feedback and criticism. You know, criticism is a strong word, or critique, because it's actually a gift. If you think you've got all the answers, you're going on a very, very rapid road to implosion. If you're willing and able to take critique and feedback, then you can become a very, very skilled practitioner in any aspect of professional life. In my opinion and that's what the world's best players and coaches are able to do at any level, and I could use numerous player examples where all these things I'm describingvin simfield really personified that and he was one of the go back to consistency and basics. One of the most consistent individuals have been able to deliver that relentlessly and just keep turning up.
Speaker 1:And there was no hollywood stuff, it was world-class basics done repeatedly yeah, I've heard that expression used a lot and I remember that on the first day of a couple of my military courses as well on that. So it stuck with me as well and we'll get on to that. But I think it's really interesting there for me to hear, mate, is the fact that Rob in this case Rob Burrows was acknowledging you for what you've done, so that's probably going to fill your bucket in some way, shape or form. So guess what you're going to do more of, and that that sort of culture of yeah, that's self-fulfilling, pro, pro, pro. There's a good word, help me out here self-fulfilling Prophecy. That's the one.
Speaker 1:I speak so many languages, mate, I can't remember if it's in Spanish, you can relate, but yeah, so there's no doubt. Well, was that a generalisation of that culture as well, mate, at that time of.
Speaker 2:Leeds as well. That quite an aware leads as well. That that quite a unaware. Yeah, there's four traits actually that, uh, really prevalent in high performing sportsmen that I've and sportswomen that I've seen and been exposed to, and I call them champion behaviors, and I can list the four and tell you a little bit of context on each one. And and it's so simple and you can apply these, anybody can apply these.
Speaker 2:So the first one is effort, or you could term it work ethic. The very, very best just turn up and give absolutely everything every time, whatever it is. They don't question or they don't succumb to mood or even if it's a tough day and this is a sidetrack in a second they make the choice to work hard and give everything they've got. That returns its rewards, because hard work is generally rewarded and it's endearing to the people around. You see someone's working hard, you want to work with them, you want to be in part of it. You see someone you know take an easy route. You generally you know, do you want to be associated with that person? Just digress for a second.
Speaker 2:We're very privileged in the sports world and coaching world that we have choice, and there's often an easy choice and a hard choice and I'm going to quote a military guy in a second who I respect highly the easy choice generally leads to a less than positive outcome. Maybe not negative, but and a simple analogy is you go and choose fast food, you're probably going to get higher cholesterol. Eventually you're going to get body composition change. That's a negative. You're not going to get any nutrients, your immunity is going to be reduced. You get the idea that's the easy option and the outcome is not positive. The hard choice, or the possibly more difficult choice, would be to buy fresh food, make fresh dinners, take your time preparing, planning, etc. But the outcome of that is really healthy immune system, really vitalized and nourished in terms of physical capabilities, positive body composition, etc. Etc. So and we can, can. There's everything we decision and option in life. We have an easy and a hard. So and the hard road quoting Anthony Stazica, former SF hard road takes you home. It's as simple as that and that's the journey that we're all on as pro coaches and athletes and individuals.
Speaker 2:So go back to the four traits of champion behaviors. The second one I've talked a bit about it already is humility pro coaches and athletes and individuals. So go back to the four traits of champion behaviours. The second one I've talked a bit about it already is humility. Having the ability to receive and absorb, critique others' opinion experiences from the group rather than looking a siloed, blinkered vision of my way is the only way there will always be someone or something that can benefit you and have the humility to accept that.
Speaker 2:There is a one percent occasion, in my view, where humility really goes out the window a little bit and you should be uber confident, and that's when you're dealing with your own capabilities. For example, if you're on the field and you're about to keep the winning drop goal, you have to be be 100% confident that you're going to you, don't be humble about it and go well, he could do it. I'll pass the ball to him If you can kick it. Kick it and win the game. That's the same for me as a coach. If I know I can get the outcome you need, I will tell you this is how you can do it, this is why you're doing it this way and you will get outcome, because I am completely confident, but still humble, confident in my capabilities. So there's that slight exception. There's no arrogance there, because I would accept that that's not always the answer for everybody, but I believe from my practice it's the right way.
Speaker 2:The third one is gratitude, and I gave the example of Rob's story more latterly at the Dragons, players like Sam Tompkins, israel Folau a well-known name were all to a man very, very gracious in defeat and also very gracious to each other in terms of the way they behaved. And myself saying thank you after games, from me as one of the senior staff to the kit man who was picking up the sweaty jerseys off the floor. Thank you, the power floor, thank you. The power of a thank you is massive and if we reflect on our day-to-day, there's probably 10 to 15 opportunities. I'd guess a day where we maybe miss the opportunity to say thank you sincerely and show gratitude, to say thank you sincerely and show gratitude. No one's ever, I would imagine, and think about your own context, being thanked and then going oh well, that'll do, I'll put my cue in the rack, I'll never do that again. The natural response is oh, thank, you know, appreciate that. I'll keep doing that if I know you, you know felt benefit from it. So just saying thank you is massive and having that ability to display gratitude and that's energising, it's really energising, having that level of culture, and these guys do that frequently.
Speaker 2:And then the fourth behaviour is resilience. There are challenges all the way along these roads. First, two Challenge Cup finals I went to. We lost and the easy thing would have been to roll over and go. I'm never doing that again, don't want to get back there. It hurt too much and it's not life or death.
Speaker 2:But we have to go back on this journey and turn up and give it another shot and again, blessed, we're lucky to have another shot on one. You have to have resilience on one and you have to have resilience both physically and mentally to play sport the highest level, to keep turning up and training the way they do, to keep delivering with that energy that they do. And a lot of these guys have health battles in different ways, health battles being injury, some of them induced by overtraining, some of them induced by overtraining, some of them induced by misfortune and some of them health-related and fighting their way back in those terms, to being able to perform again. They have to have a huge amount of resilience. So those, as a collective four, are the key, I believe, and those that can, as I said, with Kevin or with the Sam Tompkins or others that can keep delivering, those consistently, have the biggest chance of real success.
Speaker 1:Awesome, mate. I think it's really interesting for me to hear you talk about choice there and easy and the hard. It's something I completely misunderstood and also about gratitude. For me, what I'm hearing there is that ability to be kind and I've just written a note down there what happens when we turn that inward, and I think that's that. So I'm hearing one thing, but I think there's there's quite a few layers. The way that I see the world. It goes straight back onto me. So it's really easy to say thanks to other people. But but can we be grateful, can we be kind to ourself?
Speaker 1:And I sometimes think that doing the hard stuff isn't always physical. At certain times it's emotional as well. And knowing ourselves. This goes back to what you're talking about earlier all that emotional intelligence to know when to push hard and when not, to what does actually hard look like. What's hard today? And doing the right thing by ourselves is often kind. And the easy one for me to pluck as an example is the drink. I don't drink because I'm kind enough to myself to say no, if that makes sense. Yeah, and it's something that I've learned to understand. Hard isn't always physical, and nine times out of 10, or in fact, even higher than that 99 times out of 100,. Not everyone sees that hard anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely agree, and it's something that I've evolved my thinking with in terms of kindness to self and what actually optimal function is or high performance is in my mind, and understanding that there is no reason to compare myself to anybody else in any context or situation, whether that be physically, mentally, business, coaching I now don't view any coaches in world sport as competitors Genuinely thrilled when a colleague gets a new opportunity or an opportunity potentially that maybe I was interested in, because we're on different journeys and that goes physiologically as well. We all tolerate load and we talk a lot in the sports world about load, stress and strain in different ways to different levels, and we're surrounded by the world of social media that gives us the hot shot, high level, exciting snapshots of people's lives, and we're all guilty of looking at that at times, I would imagine, and going wow, how many things are they doing. You know what an amazing life. Wow, that's brilliant. They've just run two marathons, back-to-back or whatever. Oh, I should be doing that. Well, no, I should be doing me. And if, if, that's right for me, great. But I'll be honest, it's not. I go no way. But well, I've. When we're all guilty of this, I've only run 5k or I've just done that. No, you haven't just done that, you've done what you've done. You haven't only run 5k, you've run 5k. That's an achievement. You're in your life, doing your thing, achieving at your level, and it's only me and only you that determines what the ceiling is.
Speaker 2:So the self-care element is really vital, that we don't get carried away in terms of loading stress onto the body, and that could be in so many different forms, as described with the Catalan scenario, that there comes a point where you break in some way, shape or form, and understanding that I was talking recently to to our coaching group about this is that to be better in function and in health is generally perceived in general population as well. I have to do more. I have to do more training, I have to do more reading, I have to do more podcasts, I have to do more cooking Actually flip it and go. What can I do less of? To give me more quality of life, more energy, more return? Make me a better person in mood. Quite often mood and outlook that will energize others rather than just myself and myself and then others. And that's a a really chaotic way of thinking for someone like me who's always looked at process outcome. If I do this, lift weight, get stronger, run faster, get fitter uh, actually, no, run less more. Feel better about oneself, say what? Yeah, this whole, oh, I miss my.
Speaker 2:And we're very solution-centered within the everyday athlete, in that we're running everyday lives for people, fitting programming around them. So it links in there and we talk about winning it back. And what that means is and this happens on the sports field a lot if we miss something or a client misses something because of a work schedule or some family commitment that came up and oh, I couldn't train. No, don't get stressed about it. We'll work out how we can get that into your program at a later date. We'll win that back. Don't beat yourself up about it. We're trying to live our lives 80, 20, rule 80 really well in your, in your realm, not mine. What you need, and then 20. You know we've got that leeway and no one perfection is a false, a false narrative. It's not happening, it's process. It's going on the journey and just trying to be that little bit better. So it just just being more mindful of care.
Speaker 2:In my situation now I've moved out of the spin cycle of coaching.
Speaker 2:Day to day I'm getting to choose far more diligently what my activities are and I'm being very selective because my mental and physical health has changed immeasurably in the last 10 weeks since I've not been in that spin cycle and that's not me talking negatively past.
Speaker 2:I love that and I got so much from it. The relationships and the care and the love and the experience were all huge and I will go back to some consultancy, but on my terms and I'm engaged in some currently. But it's um far more manageable and I would encourage anyone who's battling with or or struggling with that element of self-care just to take that question in mind. What can I take away here? What can I really take away from my routine to get more health benefit, more personal satisfaction and care in my routine? And that's where you know coming in. I coach a couple of individual guys now who are high-level executives and that's all about behaviors and lifestyle management and quite often we're talking about strategizing to manipulate lifestyle rather than add more to lifestyle to get the game and that level of function that really allows us to thrive, not just survive and clean up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, mate. Mate, I could stay here all day talking about this stuff, but technical issues. My end gave us a late start, and so I'm going to start to wrap it up, Rich, but is there anything you'd like to mention or talk about before we start to close out, mate?
Speaker 2:I think the title of the podcast is Forging Resilience, and I've mentioned resilience on a couple of occasions and I've mentioned resilience on a couple of occasions. I think the overriding message for resilience in individuals and teams is that we're all running at different levels and we all have different thresholds around how much we can endure and our capacities and our capacity to endure is no doubt increased by having good people around us, and I would encourage anyone who's listening to be very contemplative about who is in their inner circle and understand that that inner circle is invaluable and if you don't have one, you don't have individuals that you feel you can share with, lean on, offload to and equally, they can reciprocate. And that's not being a moaning mini, that's chatting as man to man or man to friend, that's chatting as man-to-man or man-to-friend. That can be a game changer in terms of your ability to endure. Look at issues and challenges in life, because life's not easy. Look at these things rationally and improve resilience and our ability to succeed by having a trusted circle of friends, which and I hope that's come across clearly and that's defined for me as care, care and love, which, for a 44-year-old dude and I missed something in France. I'm going to finish with this.
Speaker 2:When I arrived in France, the French custom is to kiss double cheek, one each side, sometimes three if you know them really well. And as a guy from Yorkork trying to live abroad before, I was like whoa, I don't kiss dudes like this, is just not something that I do and I spent about 18 months avoiding these contact, shaking hands you know you're very respectful, but not wanting to hug and embrace and then I suddenly realised I was missing out on the feel-good hormone of oxytocin, which is a free hit to feeling good, and I don't think any of the guys realised on the science level what was going on. But this moment I went hang on a minute actually, and if you think about having an argument with your wife or, you know, arguing with a friend, when you make up and you go, oh, come here, come on, you get this little buzz and that's a hormone change, that's the oxytocin hit and that's a free bit of dopamine, a free bit of goodness, thinking, well, I can get this probably 10 times a day. And I suddenly turned from being this guy who was like ooh, to come here, you big bugger, and enjoying and embracing physical contact, which isn't for everybody, but in my mind I thought that was a game changer for me in terms of understanding the care and love needed to share and to embrace each other, and then how that actually affected me intrinsically, rather than being a bit of a lone wolf and a bit of a guy that thought I could solve everything on my own, to this outward-looking approach of I can help these people and I've been doing that for a long time and they can also.
Speaker 2:I should accept their help and care and love and the more that was reciprocated, the stronger the relationships have become and my inner circle. I'm very, very grateful for and, yeah, for us to surmise it that genuine care can be the difference in any working space, any professional space, any social space. If you truly care, then it's a game changer yeah, and what I'm hearing there is that in.
Speaker 1:In that case, then, because again I can relate is dropping barriers, our own sort of story about what's right or not right, what's acceptable for brit lad or a northern brit lad and not, and and that. But look how it opens up that ability to connect. There's two argentine dads at the school and they give us a hug every morning and it's a, it's known as, it's a level of respect when they offer you the kiss. That's yeah, yeah, it's because there's a connection there. So I completely get that, mate, and it took me also a while, so I completely get that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, rich mate, thanks when you when you see everyone in halifax hugging and kissing all of what it? It's just right out there. Maybe next year, mate, maybe next year. Change takes time. You'll know better than me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, better than me. It started here, mate. Listen, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've taken so much away from our conversation today and I know our listeners will as well. Where can people get in touch with you, mate?
Speaker 2:if they're wanting to to reach out rich, I'll put the linkedin linkedin um, richard hunnix. I believe I'd have to check rich or rich hunnix, richard hunnix and. And then insta is yeah at rich hunnix and hunnix is h-u-n-w-i-c-k-s. I think there's only one of me, so it it's very, very easy. There is mate Generally those two platforms, and what I would add on is I love to connect, share. I'm open to sharing anything, from my professional practice or otherwise. And, yeah, just don't hesitate and appreciate anyone who's had a listen and wish you the very best in your endeavors. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Brilliant mate. Thanks for all that you shared today. It's brilliant to hear, and I love the fact that you've opened up as well that vulnerability thing, dropping barriers to share and connect. So I really appreciate that, buddy. It's been an absolute pleasure, Thank you. Thanks for having me.