My goals for Systems in Sport
Systems in Sport is for committed and passionate practitioners. I want it to provide learners with a firm footing on the grounding principles of training so that they can feast on the methods and tactics the sports science and fitness world has to offer you without fear of drowning.
- My goal is to create a community of practitioners who span the performance pathway that are committed to giving those in their care the very best that they have to offer with a pass it forward mentality to helping others.
My personal contribution to this community is to combine my passions for training, teaching, building and design to contribute carefully crafted 1st principle frameworks and resources for coaching athletes.
- I keep coming back to this quote: “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” Pablo Picasso
I’m not really advocating a way of coaching. Rather I’m looking for the immovable principles of good coaching.Once you understand the rules, my hope is that you take my resources and run with them, lay your own coaching style over the top and apply them to your favorite sports the way you want to do it. - And last but not least, I want my community to create aspirational opportunities for people from every background to work in performance sport. This community will constantly strive to create access points and pathways to the top for those who might otherwise never believe they could achieve it.
About Systems in Sport
Systems in Sport is a growing bank of resources that I have built and refined over the last 10 years. My frameworks don’t attest to any particular method of training, rather each holds only what I have found to be the immovable principles of training. I’ve coached many athletes in many different sports; young and old, male and female, tennis players and cricketers, footballers, fighters and rugby players. The approach changes but the principles stand firm and I’ve refined and continue to refine the systems as I see them interact with the real world.
All of this is driven by an obsession to engage athletes in the training process and that starts with highly relevant, precise and appropriate program design that is both progressive and responsive. It’s a somewhat aspirational goal that depends on baking my knowledge into frameworks and leveraging those frameworks through technology.
That work is laid out here for the purposes of teaching and coach education but these frameworks were initially built for me and my own practice.
Because of that, this isn’t overly intellectualized nonsense from an ivory tower, they work in the real world which is often messy. I know that because I use them every single day to communicate and compel athletes, drive consistency of philosophy amongst my colleagues and see coaches of all levels achieve the same success with their athletes. What needs teaching here is how these frameworks operate and interlink. Learn the rules of engagement and how to apply these principles in practice.
About me
I am a strength and conditioning coach with 15 years of experience working in performance and professional sport. That experience resides mainly in skill-sports including major roles in county cricket at Gloucestershire CCC and performance tennis at Team Bath MCTA.
Thinking deeply about how to positively impact skill-sports performance and support skill-sport athletes forces has forced me down a more unusual route in strength training. If I were to suggest an area of expertise it would reside somewhere in the middle of performance training, movement competency assessments/interventions and motor learning.
My philosophy of training sits behind the resources that you find on this website.
I’m a husband to Katie and a father of 3 living in Bristol with an aversion to social media. My sporting career was pathetic but I’m hoping to approach 40 with plenty of gas in the tank.
Outside of that I try my hand at building pretty much anything: I am the proud owner-builder a gym/ workshop/man-cave and more recent dabble in plywood furniture carpentry. It would appear I’m now an amateur website builder as well!
Teaching & Coaching
I love the education side of my work and I’m fascinated by pedagogy, using the frameworks I’ve built to create elegant, engaging and compelling roadmaps for motivating athletes to step-in and engage in the coaching process wholeheartedly.
I’m not a particularly pushy coach anymore, I like to see if I can create an environment where the athlete takes-on as much responsibility and independence as possible. I’ve not only found that the most effective way for me to coach but also the most enjoyable way for me to do my work. I take great enjoyment out of being around intelligent, curious and engaged athletes.
Having spoken to many S&C coaches, physios and other practitioners I’ve come to learn that my frameworks prove extremely helpful for others in providing structure to their strength training practice. Systems in Sport is a presentation of those ideas for others to use in their coaching journey.
Key Influences
My research for tennis took me a different journey in strength training, away from pure strength and power development at all costs. I’ve been thinking about optimal joint function, building the kinetic chain and the nuances of rotational power development for 10 years or so.
Here are a few of the main people that have influenced my practice over the years in the pursuit of those goals:
Gray Cook’s extensive work on screening and integration of local and global function, Stu McGill’s books on preserving the spine as a whip in rotational sports and Thomas Myers’s Anatomy Trains. Kelly Starrett’s pursuit of optimal local function, Jame’s Moore’s application of anatomical research into hip-groin function and Eric Cressey’s deep dives on shoulder function as expert practitioners in the trenches. Frans Bosch on theories and practice of skill-development complimented with Nick Winkleman’s work on coaching language for learning.
Each of these people caused massive shift in my practice. They influence the way I coach and the way I teach other coaches to coach. Their work is baked into the Systems in Sport frameworks and I hope I don’t embarrass myself in the process of communicating what I’ve learned from each of these people.
Whats next?
Good places to start are the Exercise Ladders page of the Strength-Skill Operating System or an overview of how the SSOS is built to dive into the rabbit holes.
If you want to get in touch, the best way to do that is info@systemsinsport.com