It’s fun taking heart in the fact that even pro surfers, the party animals and good-time boys and gals of the sporting landscape, are often worked so hard not even they have the energy to revel in their globe-trotting, sun-kissed existence well into each night. Dishing out this much-unwanted – but much-needed – physical torture to the biggest names in surfing is Wes Berg, personal trainer to Aussie superstar Joel Parkinson and long-time mate and mentor to the all-too-soon recently departed Andy Irons.
Queensland boy Berg is also head coach at North Burleigh Surf Life Saving Club, so he doesn’t just dish out his punishment to the elite; local athletes every year line-up to be run into the sand, smashed by the waves and paddle like there’s no tomorrow, too. Whatever doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, hey Wes?
You can catch the 31-year-old on the box or at beaches across the country over the summer dishing out yet more pain on the human race as a competitor in the Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Ironman series. How he manages to train athletes while putting in the hard yards required to keep up with the Shannon Ecksteins of the Ironman stage intrigued us, so we sat down with Berg over a juice to find out how he does it.
INSPIRATION
“When I was younger, I was actually coached by the first-ever female surf life saving coach, Geraldine Miller. I think there were four people with level-three coaching accreditation and she was one of them. I grew up in a small country town, Meroo Meadow, near Nowra on the NSW south coast. We didn’t have a coach per se, so Geraldine, my mate’s mum, volunteered. She could hardly swim but anything she didn’t know she’d go and learn. She researched so much. The thing I try to take most from her, besides the fact she taught me everything I know in terms of strength and conditioning, and training people and the emotional intelligence side of it, is that we’re trying to make people better for themselves. It’s easy to make people enjoy themselves, but if they come for a reason, a purpose, and they have their goals set out and they’re structured, it’s so much easier.”
JUGGLING ACT
“I’m able to keep up with coaching and competing because I have a really good wife [Jade Sutcliffe]. Jade used to be an Ironwoman herself … she just gets it. I get up at 4.40am every morning, have a quick stretch, a little bite to eat and then I’m in the car and in the pool by 5.15am. I normally swim anywhere between five-six kays and I do that normally four or five days a week. I get out of the pool by about 6.50am and I’m home by 7am, where Jade has breakfast ready for me! I walk out the door at about 7.45am and then I’m straight into the gym.
“I normally have clients from 8am up until about 1pm. Then I go home and, once again, Jade looks after me with lunch – has it all prepared pretty much every day. I normally have an hour or two at home, then attend to one or two training clients in the afternoon then I’m off to the beach to coach my North Burleigh squad. I finish that session and go back to the gym three nights a week and hold group sessions for surfers, a couple of lifeguards and Billabong corporate guys.”
NORTH BURLEIGH BOSS
“I’m the head coach at North Burleigh Surf Life Saving Club, which means I make sure everything’s running smooth with all our squads, that we’re all heading in the right direction and that everyone’s getting looked after. It’s basically all about maintaining the good vibe and making sure everyone has quality work and everyone’s happy.
“The role’s all about reading people. Every single person likes a little bit of attention; if you give that one person a little bit more attention here and there, it’s going to push them a little bit harder to try. At the end of the day, I’m there for the kids. And I want all the other athletes to be the best they can be. Training like this puts people in a situation in life where they’ll look back and think, ‘You know what, I used to do this in the swimming pool, I used to do this in the afternoon … I can handle this new challenge in my life, no dramas.’”
Main images by Trent Mitchell
“In my North Burleigh squad my athletes range from 13-year-olds to 36. I have every category, attitude, age, talent and ability of person. We have two of the girls in the Ironwoman series, Alyce Bennett and Brodie Moir, then there’s myself, then we have another young guy who’s in the Kellogg’s series, James Stuart. But not everyone’s an elite athlete; the program has to be scaled out so it can work for the majority of the squad. “Training the guys in the surf club group is a little less complicated than working with my individual clients because the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships are held in April each year, so 90 per cent of my squad wants to peak in April. We don’t want everyone peaking at different times. The whole idea is to get everyone peaking at the one stage so that when they compete, they’re all competing at their best ability. Whereas the people in the Ironman series, like myself, want to peak at the start of summer, back it off through the middle of the summer months, then come good again in April.”
HORSES FOR COURSES
“Not everything works for every single person. As a trainer you can’t just put the blinkers on and use a one-size-fits-all program and think you’re going to get results straight away.
“Something I do for Joel Parkinson is completely different to what I’d do for a younger pro junior surfer who’s trying to build strength through their legs. If we’re focussing on rotational work with Joel, we’ll get on the cable machine, doing, say, reps of ten at a medium weight, trying to get that range of motion. We won’t so much focus on strength and power because he already has that. Whereas, if I’m trying to increase the leg strength of one of the pro juniors, we’ll have lower reps at a higher weight.
“I have a lot of improvement left in me as a trainer. I love to be self-educated. I read a lot of stuff. I try little things even on myself. Every pre-season I do something different just to break it all up and see if it was good or bad for my own personal preparation. If it does benefit me, it’ll get worked into my program when I go back to the ‘bread and butter’ which I know works.”
STAR STUDENT
“I’m quite lucky because I get to work with some of the best surfers in the world and they’re really into training – it’s great. For me personally, Joel is one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen. Not as far as ability, but dedication and motivation. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had to get up him in three years. It says a lot about him.
“Joel does three strength and conditioning sessions a week, then on the Tuesday he’ll do a water session and Thursday will be a land session. The latter can be anything from stairs to hills and soft-sand interval sessions. The water set, meanwhile, is designed like an ironman session; we’ll put cans out and put him in a heat scenario. He’ll complete an obstacle course on the beach featuring a few runs, exercises, a ‘suicide’, then he’ll paddle out to a can, come back in, stop, then have five minutes to pick a wave. What we’re trying to do is really put his mind at fatigue like in an event, get him practising good decision-making while under fatigue.”
DRAIN GAME
“The training my elite athletes are put through for a race is quite brutal. The hardest thing for them is when they get to a stage of fatigue at the end of the week, especially in the loading phases of our training. They’re swimming as hard as they can, then they have their conditioning work in the gym, and although it’s only a half-hour to 40-minute session, it’s a big drain on their nervous system. On top of that, ski paddling is so forceful for the body; the athletes absorb a lot of muscle through their upper-body when they’re ski-paddling.”
OVER-COOKING
“The biggest thing I try to do with my athletes is make sure no one’s cooking themselves. I have to really engage and read the emotional intelligence of every single person. If someone’s really fatigued, I have to pull them back a bit and just go at a more aerobic-like pace with them and keep them at that capacity. Whereas, if I can see that someone’s easily handling the workload, I’ll push them forward a little bit.”
AT INTERVALS
“This year’s been a bit crazy for my Iron athletes because the series has returned to the old format; the first race was two hours long, so we’ve been really trying to prepare – and I’ve been preparing myself – for two-hour races at full tilt.
“With the girls, we’ll do anything from two-hour continuous to four half-hour continuous sessions with a five-minute break in between. Or anything with intervals for an hour; two one-hour interval sessions on board, skis, swimming and running. They’re the Iron sessions.
“Most of the stuff we do with the board is a mixture of off-the-beach efforts; out to the back of the break, then beyond, then back to shore, or we might start at the back of the break and do distance work along and back. Again, it’s all interval work.”
FAVOURITE FORMAT
“I’m rapt, because the Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Ironman series is back on live television this summer. There are five great locations, great sponsors on board; I think Kellogg’s have done an amazing job to ride through those rough waters after the Uncle Tobys series folded. I think it’s remarkable they’ve hung around and that the series is coming back and it’s going to be popular again. The best thing about it is we have really good athletes on board this year – from numbers one to 20. It’s going to be really tough racing. The television coverage will reveal it to be one of the hardest series of all time.”
IRON WILL
“Andy’s passing was obviously an absolute disaster … but life goes on, hey? I suppose he was lucky to have had the life that he lived and to achieve the things he achieved in such a short 32 years.”
– James Smith
