How Therapists can Prepare to Work in Sport

Are you interested in taking up a role working with athletes and do you know the various routes into this exciting world?

Steve Miller, an experienced physiotherapist based in the UK takes us through how he moved from qualifying as a Chartered Physiotherapist with ambitions and very few contacts through to working in elite sport preparing athletes for the best rugby union league in world and Paris Olympic Games.

okayy guys so welcome to tonight’s session uh I’m Steve Miller I’m going to do a little bit of an introduction uh just to kind of let everybody drip in I know people will have been in uni or clinic or uh potentially sort of working in sports worlds already um so yeah I’ll do a little bit of an intro and then we’ll kind of go into the sort of more helpful bits and pieces hopefully for you uh from there so can everyone see my screen all right Grand so main bulk of the session really is to try and offer you guys a fair bit more support in the way of potential sort of career decisions you might be someone uh who’s not even applied for physio Sports Therapy Sports Rehab whatever it may be you might be someone who’s currently qualified uh worked in your roles for a little while uh and just a little bit unsure about which direction to take next and is Sport something that you’re interested in we won’t exclusively just sport talk about sport we’ll talk about some of the other routes and uh the sort of scenic route that I went through in in order to sort of almost move from uh my roles from qualifying all the way through uh into sort of working in professional and Elite Sport really I’ve had quite a few people approach me of late um just talking a little bit in and around sort of coming to the end of their academic qualifications be it undergraduates postgraduate stuff and again what is it that you would like to do if you don’t mind what would be really useful for me is if you want to pop in the chat group just who you are uh and maybe sort of the stage that you’re at and maybe some questions or anything that you wouldn’t mind sort of almost clarified in a little bit more detail really uh I’m very happy to answer almost anything to be honest whether it be sort of in and around uh early stages how to progress how to prepare all that kind of thing really so yeah if you can drop in there uh introductions um if you want to pop your video on uh you absolutely can do so people can see your face even for sort of 10 15 seconds uh would be great and then obviously kind of big thanks to the uh groups that have helped share and make you guys aware that this is taking place so uh SMA phys equip physique and the Sports Therapy Association big thank you to them really just very briefly as an overview this has been my journey so far so I initially qualified back in 2006 uh from Sheffield ham University qualified in that horrible time when there was hardly any roles uh available uh went and worked in California as a football or soccer coach for a little while across there built that up into sort of a more Sports Injury role uh went traveling came back and then the sort of physio World it sort of settled itself back back to normal again uh and in that world i’ sort of worked at uh a sort of lower level sport wise alongside some NHS work um in sort of connect worlds and and then eventually transitioned into working full-time at Newcastle Falcons um so I went from working Thursday nights and sort of alternate weekends for tyale who were in National League one at the time into a fulltime world uh of working in sport which are totally different really uh I also picked up a bit of experience just with various different volunteering roles both locally and at sort of higher levels within Olympics and Commonwealth Games and on the the right hand side there you can see sort of my current world that I work in so I’m employed three days a week for the UK Sports Institute which is the old English Institute of sport or Eis and I work for British Judo uh in that world so at the moment we’re prepping very hard for Paris we’ve got quite a few different weight categories both in the males the females the visually impaired athletes uh and then alongside that what I do are some event cover some consultancy work for British gymnastics tennis and then do some lecturing and then in the middle there you’ll see what I set up in lockdown uh and has kind of grown quite a lot since then is something called grow physio Academy so that is uh my baby I was very passionate about trying to give people access I know how hard it is to gain access into Elite Sport and I feel very lucky to have done it I found it very challenging uh just spent years and years sort of volunteering just shadowing sort of almost internship style stuff um a lot of it voluntary and not getting paid so this is a big challenge that I think we face at the minute in the the industry really is movements where it seems okay to just constantly advertise jobs with no salaries um free roles Etc um do we need to do them well hopefully by the end of this um you’ll hopefully get a bit of an insight into what my thought processes are sometimes it’s a bit bit unavoidable as long as you’re getting a lot out of that experience and from the people around you um there’s benefits but you’ve got to weigh that up from there uh this is is where the presentation comes from so this is the grow physio Academy so it is the website’s at the bottom there www.g physio academy.com if you click on start a free day trial uh on the left hand side there when you go on it doesn’t ask for any credit card details or anything you can click on that you can rewatch this you can also have a little look at some of the other uh aspects of the courses so it’s also if you’re interested in knowing what a normal or typical day looks like in the of a physio I’ve done one of those and then there’s also quite a lot of additional learning on there so yeah if you do want to watch it back just jump on there um click Start free trial uh go to the almost preparation backstage pass course um and then it will all be in there so that’s what we’re going to go through it also has other things on there just for interest so if you are interested in developing your assessment skills your treatment and intervention skills be it manual therapy be it some taping strategies some of the evidence in around this stuff might be a little bit sketchy but what I’ve found working in this world uh for sort of 105 years now from various different aspects uh is some things work and some really don’t some stuff you need to be doing regularly some people don’t have that luxury but what I’ve tried to do is give you the things that I think give you the biggest bang for your buck in clinic so you can kind of translate that into your own practice and again that’s sort of one of many different courses that are on there so lots of different things I’ve tried in a grow kind of way to start from the bottom from the foot into the Achilles and looking at Achilles tendinopathies car issues any knee problems ACLS pelop femal problems uh there’s a really wide range and basically if you work through them you’ll come out of at the other other end hopefully feeling miles more confident with what happens and how you should be managing some of these injuries uh it’s all sort of backed up with certificates and uh sort of CPD points on there so you can do that and and again this is sort of the a little overview not only is it sort of self-directed you’ll do that alongside quite a lot of the other members in there so we try and almost sort of focus in on a different topic every single month we offer or I offer sort of mentoring and support for you all uh inclusive of a membership um and then it’s got libraries of exercises and things so if you want to look at things quite quickly uh they’re all there for you uh for tonight and tomorrow if you are interested you can go on there and basically B your uh op preference of options so you can either just buy courses or you can take out the membership which gives you access to everything it’s normally 180 a year works out at about 15 pounds with the 30% off it’s about1 pounds a month so tons of learning uh probably one of the cheapest ways to to get through some some really good learning online uh but this is what tonight’s going to look like so I’m going to run through the initial uh sort of bulk of this I just realized uh only literally like two days ago uh in Easter holiday worlds my son’s going on a a residential camp tomorrow for three days the first time he’s ever gone away um so I’m basically going to play the recording go and see him for for his last evening and then what I’ll do is I’ll come back if you guys have got any questions that you want to ask either pop them into the chat group and I’ll pick them up at the end and we’ll go through it uh if you want to put your videos on and all that kind of stuff once the presentation’s finished uh again would love to kind of answer anything and get into discussion and hopefully help you guys the most that I possibly can uh few other resources for you that you might find useful this is just a YouTube um Channel which has quite a lot of the different assessment techniques that you might want to refer to uh so if you wanted to have a look at that on grow physio uh type in grow physio sports injuries um on YouTube that will get you there the next talk that I’m doing is around injury prevention so very much looking at some of the ways that we analyze things in our world very quickly you don’t need great expensive bits of Kit to do that um but if you are interested there’s a little QR code that’s there if you want to take a photo of that that’s Wednesday next week or the week after the 24th of April uh at 6:30 is when we’re running that and I’m also popping up to Manchester uh to run a taping course so a one day intensive taping course covering all the Upper Limb lower limb techniques that we used in rugby which was plentiful uh and also within sort of Judo worlds lots of different techniques that I’ve kind of acquired over time so you guys can then go ahead and apply them all with good confidence yourself so again you want to have a little look at that uh batch that QR code on there have a little look at that um there’s about four spaces left um on that in Manchester and lastly if you are someone who is which a lot of people are Keen to start working in in an around sort of a cute injuries it’s quite new it’s not something that I think universities prepare you well for at all um that acute assessment and then almost looking at how we manage them I’ve tried to put together a lot of the learning from the fisis course which is about 800 pound every couple of years to do um and then basically compiled it into a really kind of bite-sized um approachable level and again if you want to have a little look at that what I’ll do is I’ll add the these kind of bits of information into the uh chat but yeah the first sort of 50 courses have reduced down to 47 um and then this is just one other hat that I wear very lastly before we get into it the Northeast muscul musculoskeletal Society I am currently chair after being CPD officer there we offer quarterly free CPD so if you aren’t following these guys do have a little look on Facebook uh for the Northeast mskk Society follow them and then we’ve got some free webinars um Tom goom’s coming and doing a re if you haven’t heard Tom before absolutely amazing sort of talking around the four pillars of running rehab um and then we have once a year a conference um that runs in Newcastle so if you do want to meet up have drinks like everyone in Jord will do uh then that’s an option for you as well this is just the social so if you do want to kind of pick up any extra sort of free bits I’ll always share some extra learning on Instagrams LinkedIn Etc uh and then there’s the the website if you want to have a little look at that so that is that so looks like loads of people have introduced themselves welcome one and all uh what I’ll do is I’ll just pop the info into the chat now with any of those links in case you want to access them and then I’ll play this go and sort my little man out if anyone um has anything that you want to ask by all means at the end uh have a little think and more than happy to answer anything so I’ll see you very shortly hope hope you enjoy this right I will see you all in about 50 minutes this session’s a little bit unique in the fact that what we’re doing is trying to give you a little bit of a flavor really of sort of my backstory in terms of how I got to move into professional sport so hopefully some of the things that I’ve learned along the way can give you a little bit of a clue in terms of how you can also sort of benefit from that and Fast Track Your Way in if that’s what you want so again we’ll go through the different various routs that you can apply and go down in terms of getting into sport a little bit about me my background how that transition can occur the highlights the challenges and then we’ll almost sort of summarize everything together now when I qualified uh back in 2006 what I had was a a rare landscape to step into really so there was various options after I’d qualified physiotherapy generally sort of angles you in the UK down a a route towards the NHS so you learn your different specialities um and it’s almost geared towards that and they miss the whole side of sort of returning to sport there is clearly a musculoskeletal component you will have musculoskeletal and Orthopedic placements but they definitely don’t prepare you for sport so when you come out again you’ve got various different options NHS Private Practice you can move into o health worlds you could go into research um you could even travel abroad but for me sort of thinking about how do I then transition in the long term into a sporting role was where I was so I had this little scenario here really where was I going to go there was either the option to potentially sort of go down an intern or an academy style route again learning a little bit more about that now the hours very unsociable they’re pretty long if you want to learn significant amounts what you’re going to likely do is go and join the first team or observe or shadow some of that world and then at the end of the day is then add on your Academy because most of the youth and the Juniors generally go to school or in education in some form so therefore what you need to do is almost add that on to the end of already a potentially long day you’re still going to have weekends the pay is generally incredibly low um but what it does give you which I think is quite nice is exposure to uh sporting world on a regular sort of full-time basis you can trial things there’s probably not as much pressure as there would be with a senior Squad so therefore you can extract and try things without maybe sort of being slipped up as much your alternative is potentially again very rare that anyone’s going to step directly into a senior Squad role so if you are part of a medical team it’s pretty likely that you’re going to have to work your way up or you’re going to have to get a skill set that is desirable enough to then step into a senior Squad role I’ve known a lot of people who’ve kind of gone into that role as they as a sole practitioner so sometimes when a job is advertised it’s really worth knowing who is around you what is the support network have you got any additional help from a medical or an snc perspective because what sometimes happens is when these lower level uh clubs advertise for roles you end up becoming a bit of a jack of all trades and you end up doing everything as part of it so do ask a little bit about what’s involved because otherwise you can get absolutely drowned in the amount of workload the advantage of being in a more established bigger Club potentially is the guidance the support maybe having a head physio a head of uh performance or a head of medicine who you can turn to if you’ve got Medics that are in there obviously that covers your back they can organize investigations a little bit quicker and ideally your development is the absolute key here so make sure you’ve got some specific CPD requirements and mentoring that’s factored Into Your Role you might decide that you’re going down a private practice route again you might get some Weekend Warriors some sports clubs that sort of drip into you that way it might not be full immersion you might have to pick up some insurance stuff around it maybe people who are just sort of office workers who are sort of getting occupational related necks and backs and shoulder stiffnesses and things like that but I think it’s challenging going straight into a private practice World um as physios I don’t think we get a great deal certainly not enough business uh mindset Associated compared to something like a chiropractor who has an entire module on business related things again it’ll give you a bit of a a varied case load um and has its positives as well you might want to be involved with some sort of University sports contract so again these are really nice things to get involved in it might be that once you attach yourself onto a team you’re there for trainings you’re there for match days quite often what I find in this world is you end up doing a lot of triage of various different sporting roles so you might be immersed in a university but actually get people from hockey from netball from football from rugby um whatever sports that may well drip in the facilities are usually pretty good in universities so you’ve got nice gym facilities you’ve got testing facilities if you have access to them so clarify those things and again you’ll have that match day cover so again you the downside is you’re likely to have that potentially on weekend it might be on a Wednesday which might fit much much better um but again it gives you that exposure to acute management and injuries other routes that you can go down English in of sport across here again you can have development programs coming at different levels there’s a very significant performance Drive related to that because a lot of the funding that comes for that comes at this Elite level will be based on the performance of athletes so just to sort of show you on the left hand side really uh is more like the route that I took so what I did I didn’t immerse myself straight away into sport what I did was did my undergraduate got some patient mileage some Expos Ure saw a wide range of different things was immersed in sort of semi-professional sport around it and then what I started to do was add courses and CPD and specialize um and get a good sort of desirable skill set so then I could drip in at a higher level your alternative on the the right hand side is that you go in almost with less of a a skill set and then start to build that up inside the environment that you’re there in a sporting world so it might be you do an internship or a voluntary role you’re then picked up into Academy part-time or full-time position and then slowly what happens quite often is if you impress and you um instill some of the values that the club believe in then you start to look at getting involved with the first team a little bit and then eventually if a role comes up someone leaves or they expand you may well be first in line for that you can then obviously specialize you can become head physio head of performance Etc from there once you have that sort of managerial side and that expertise again depending on the sport that that’s in that might be incredibly Niche or it might be something that you can extrapolate and use across the board there are some structured sort of recognized qualifications if you like um ACSM uh is one of them so you can do something like this which is the Bronze award really so again it sort of almost breaks down the skill set that you may require in order to achieve the the bronze level obviously a little bit more for silver and again sort of the more hours the more experience the more CPD that you can demonstrate the more likely you are to progress to the silver or gold level now I would say that 100 hours of shadowing when we think about shadowing what we have to do is make sure that it is very valuable so when you are potentially applying to help out at a club or you’re applying to started a club if you are the sole practitioner or you’re working on your own or actually if the main physio or the Sports Rehab therapist whoever it may be that you’re working with is not available they’re not in sight they’re not helping nurture you not helping develop you again you’re not going to develop and you might well actually Des skill quite significantly you will get exposure to athletes but again what you want to try and do if particularly if you’re doing a low paid or a voluntary role or whatever it may be even in a paid roll you want to have someone around you who is going to build you up and help you grow so again things that are quite useful like that you can sort of see on the right hand side we worked in a a really open plan Clinic environment so we had four or five beds in that with the doctor next door and again we could sort of observe we could bounce ideas off each each other do cross referrals assess things and really sort of take anyone who was in with us under our wing and sort of talk them through that process so let’s just go through sort of my journey really um again it’s a little bit of a walk down memory lane this really for me so if you are already immersed in this you might want to fast forward this onto the next stage but for me my journey began in about 2002 really um in terms of when I went across to Toronto in Canada I did a pre-season with this chap at the top um there a guy called Ben Smith great bloke he was a goalkeeper for ncast United at the time as old man was the goalkeeping coach uh until very recently an amazing stint from him but he arranged for us to go across and do a training camp um across in Toronto in this High Level facility uh really and this guy Steve Hill on the left hand side at Kings Cross physia Therapy Clinic in Toronto blew my mind he was dealing with a lot of the triathletes that is Lisa Bentley one of the Iron Men Hy performing ones after her Hawaii win when we were there he was working with some of the Toronto Maple Leaf ice hockey players a lot of the girls and football teams were up and coming the standard miles better than what it was in the UK had some amazing bits of Kit like a swimex so you can analyze people’s running swimming techniques all that kind of stuff really absolutely fell in love with it um all the movement analysis side of things his eyes were unbelievable at sort of picking out little asymmetries the way people moved and why that was happening and then almost piecing them back together so I absolutely fell in love with physiotherapy thanks to that man there and I had initially applied to do medicine and was all set to start that down at Manchester which actually ironically is where I am now but actually what happened was I was always going to defer my entry anyway but I decided at that point what I actually want to do is to do physiotherapy in instead of medicine now that is definitely the right move for me uh thinking about this now Adam K this guy on the right hand side if you haven’t watched this this is an amazing insight into the world of medicine I’m married to a medic as well a amazing hand surgeon for kids um and again I’ve sort of seen the other side of this for me physio is definitely the way that I am aligned but I think for me there was limited sort of career advice I knew that I loved health I knew I loved the human body so I was naturally pushed towards medic but actually it’s definitely worth exploring all the different other avenues that you can do this is some of them I didn’t have this many options when I qualified but there is Sports Therapy that’s starting to get additional recognition it is certainly not getting the recognition that it probably deserves to be fair you can’t necessarily at this stage step into the NHS as a sports therapist and and have that rotational experience there’s Sports Rehabilitation there’s Masters variations exercise Sciences so which direction do you go in physiotherapy is excellent it’s an established course it is something that is recognized throughout the world um and therefore for me it was the the perfect option but I knew that I was going to take a gap year really and in that Gap year um what I decided was what am I going to do to make myself available and try and get into this world of physiotherapy because at this stage I didn’t have an offer so what I decided to do was various things so I worked for Med Sanson Frontier which is Doctors Without Borders helping out volunteering for them um and then sort of did a bit of traveling um and put a lot of things together to try and make myself a bit more sellable when it came to interview some of those things were voluntary uh so I had a couple of roles one was at the Mari cury which is a sort of terminal paliative care Award with a big focus on sort of cancer support really so again we’re going in and supporting a lot of the uh individuals in that world and also another local sort of special school wood lawn was around the corner this was an amazing facility for uh children with special needs they were uh a mixture really of cereal py motor neuron disease muscular distrophy and basically what we did was we went in and we supported um the physiotherapists the occupational therapists the speech and language therapists with anything that they wanted and and for me that really opened my eyes in terms of how important it was although the patient is or the the child that scenario was Central to it the amount of input that they had and the the way that we link together all the different Health Professions as well as the probably the most important support network for that individual was the the family and trying to tie all that together to deliver a package of care that was really important really opened my eyes other things role wise where I I developed a a role within David Lloyd which is a sort of Sport and Health Club um quite a high level one in in England um and they and some of those roles included uh lifeguarding gym instructing uh running classes such as these sort of Speed and Agility camps that they put me through circuit classes um and basically sort of built me up from an snc side of things really then again for me just extra strings to Mayo that I wanted to add with my coaching licenses so I did my fa level one and two coaching badges that year uh and also did my developmental coach award which is the sort of tennis side of things so I started to develop a tennis coaching side of that again my background very much football very much tennis so it fed into the things that I love and and if that is your passion great whatever your passions are you’ll be much more motivated to do that and I absolutely love teaching the kids um on these camps and and developing developing them that way I also felt like I needed some really physio specific skills really so I did a level three diploma in sports massage therapy as well as the basic full body massage certificate that was there I got involved with the great North run just again at the Finish Line doing some rubs some uh treatment some little assessment bits and pieces that were involved with that um and then also did my gym instructor award which again if you are not familiar with sort of snc principles it’s a really nice way to familiarize yourself with all the kit the approaches the techniques that you do and again you could run various different things circuit classes on the back of that um and again it sort of got me really into um training as well on a slight little side uh note the other sort of roles that I had again I did my lifeguard badge um and also that enabled me to sort of get involved with the rnli which living on the coast again it’s a a a great rare opportunity but you have a amazing bunch of individuals really who all volunteer to be part of this rnli they get a call at any time during the day and potentially the first sort of six people who are um the quickest to respond will go out to try and rescue whoever it is out at Sea clearly these guys need to be amazing in terms of their rescue skills their first aid basic life support skills and actually it was an amazing Insight uh into sort of how they manage some of these scenarios and problem solving because these are not straightforward um I managed to last about four and a half weeks I think at Wet n Wild which was this uh little facility here it’s a basically a an adventury water park to be fair is the best thing it was but yeah we had little moments where I just knew this wasn’t necessarily the future for me really you can see the slide at the bottom there um that is one the ver more vertical one is called the kamakazi we’d come down there every single morning before the the place opened in a harness making sure that people hadn’t fired Nails into that this is in a pretty rough part of uh Newcastle and yeah there were scenarios where people have climbed up and uh actually bang Nails in so that was random and some things that I can’t repeat never want to see again happening in Jacuzzi or lazy rivers in that World um other things that I did though again that are really worth uh having uh reach out to are the local universities maybe sort of local clubs do they need any extra sets of hands and really it was again just a a way to sort of see what happens behind the scenes in terms of testing so again it might be that you’re just doing data collection but again you can sort of see into the worlds um that are there no one wants to analyze this data it takes ages um but if you put yourself forward again it can create connections uh and give you an insight into that performance side of the world we also were quite lucky where we were Gates head Stadium um was on our doorstep that was an international facility which again you can see there amazing facilities indoor and outdoor that are there that’s where the English Institute of sport was based as well so a lot of the Athletics programs went on there and I had some great opportunities just by reaching out to to go and Shadow and see what happens in that world so really recommend sort of reaching out to any clubs that are there same sort of thing really when I went on this journey again I wanted to make sure that I was going down the exact path that I wanted to go down so again these open days that you have at universities are a great chance to look around the facilities get a bit of a feel for the campus but also I would just recommend is just ask about lots of the different professions and the different courses and the differences that occur with them and actually then you can start to bespoke yourself and and align yourself yourself with the exact course that you want to do physiotherapy might be very different in one institution compared to another similar with sports therapy or sort of Sports Rehab it might be very different there might be different focuses on placement hours um the practicality of it how much time you spend doing data all those sorts of things but pick up the phone if you don’t have access to them have a wider reach email people these guys want you to attend their courses so they’re usually pretty good at getting back in touch but yeah so I embarked I I actually ended up at Sheffield hallem I did my physiotherapy degree that’s me uh leaping off the fountain outside of the city hall there on graduation day after my masters and getting my macp um that is the same fountain that when my mom on that day was uh taking photographs of us was stepping back to fit us all in and fell in the fountain um so yeah that Fountain has a little special U moment for me but once I’d qualified I knew that eventually what I wanted to do was maybe work in a sort of a sport sporting world how I was going to get there was a bit unknown but my background again very sort of sport bias football was pretty key I played for the University right the way through that process I’d won the FA vs before going to University with Whitley Bay um and actually I knew that uh that would then sort of lead into this which was another role I had straight after University had a random um visitor um from a guy who I now know and I’m good friends with um to be honest but this was was something that I did after University so I went across to the states and I did some coaching and again this is a really nice opportunity there’s camp Americas football coaching tennis coaching camps whatever it is that you’re interested in these are amazing things to be part of and it really sort of helps expose you apply some of your uh skills that you’ve developed along your journey I started to do alongside the sort of soccer coaching side of things the sports injury assessment advice stuff um and actually you do have a a great deal of fun on the way through that Journey as well but yeah this was where I eventually wanted to end up really and thankfully for me again it is a privilege and I feel very honored that I’ve had that chance um and very blessed to be given the opportunities that I have been given but again this was the world that I really wanted to move into so how was I going to get there I knew there was going to be a lot of hard work to to make that happen but this was the sort of the end goal this was almost the Dream from when I was a Crossing Canada to then sort of stepping foot into that world at that particular time so this is how we got there so when you when I was at University on the left hand side there is a little bit of a timeline you can see it took me about 12 years to actually step into that world so although I had the initial dream of doing it I didn’t want to go down an academy route I wanted to get enough skills in order to make that happen so when I was at University I did a lot of help with Sheffield United shadowing wise helping with some of their experiments and some of their investigations and setting up links with the football team and them in terms of assessing and I also did my elective placement at leads United Football Club so I had someone called Dave Hancock who is one of the leading Pioneers really in terms of sort of he’s done some amazing things in in sports worlds um and then obviously when that finished and I got my degree I then went across to the states worked for MLS camps which were affiliated with LA Galaxy and deportivo gas um and then really a little bit when I came back from that World um started immersing myself into uh the world of work really and I had a little bit of a mixed bag of things that I was doing Connect Health is where I spent most of my time which I’ll talk about in a second and around that I worked at tyale I worked at Team North Umbria which was a local University with the sports clubs there uh worked at Nik did my macp um and that gave me a little bit of a a nice background really so the main reason why I went into connect I never ever sort of um have been as nervous for an interview in all my life doing this because I knew that this was a big step for me in terms of developing they have something called the advanced development program which at the time was a day a full day of training um that was incorporated over nine months one full day would be allocated to just your development so you’d be alongside some of the other staff that were there um and then on on top of that every other week you’d have another half day of training so really the the value that they were going to bring to me was going to be huge with all of these areas um they were an organization who had at the time they were smaller they had a focus on Primary Care they had a focus on Occupational Health contracts and they also had some High Street private clinics as well so again working across a lot of those gave me a nice variety in flavor of things that could could develop me this is where I spent some of my time uh dealing with some of the individuals down at sort of Horton in Sunderland um cross the border against everything that I believe in as a Newcastle man but went South across the river bit of rivalry between the two but I ended up sort of managing um all of sundland eventually but the major positives of working for connect for me were that sort of patient mileage you could see a lot of individuals with a lot of different things you’d start to pick up little Trends and patterns that were occurring uh but the training and the super Vision that was delivered was amazing they pushed me down a master’s route doing my macp so I could then teach on that ADP program I then start to do a lot of team leader work uh and actually develop and and help uh sort of promotee the development of others in that world the drawbacks for me which ended up sort of becoming a little bit too much and why one of the things that pushed me was actually the the appointment times in the review times the time between reviewing individuals was getting longer and that didn’t suit the way that I was working and I didn’t feel like I was giving or able to give them um what they required and that for me just had a little bit of a knockback in terms of the quality but while I was there um because I wasn’t seeing a great deal of sporty individuals what I again did was I was involved with Team North Umbria I got involved a little bit with Newcastle Academy and then got some shadowing advice uh guidance from Newcastle Falcon Academy but I also in the top right hand corner tyale Rugby Club is where I spent about six or seven of those years um basically learning my trade so that was a semi-professional environment in a in a league that was two leagues below the Premiership so in rugby worlds just so you’ve got familiarity you’ve got the Premiership the championship and then you’ve got National one and that was where uh tyale were so it was the equivalent to say a division one club in football I also did some extra bits around that so I did quite a bit of volunteering at at major events so did London Olympics which again if you have the opportunity to get involved with any anything like this it is an incredible opportunity I then did Glasgow commonwealth games in 2014 um and also maybe this is the way that I’m wired but I was quite motivated to get uh some additional strings to my bow and test myself and challenge myself so again the advantage of being in there connect helped to sort of part fund me doing my masters had some of the most sort of pioneering people in terms of uh Educators in that world Kevin Banks who sadly away now is almost sort of instrumental really in that sort of Jeff maand original peripheral manipulation book we had Steven May on the McKenzie side Gavin Cummings was one of the most inspirational teachers of of muscular scal stuff never prepped a thing just turned up what you want to learn about and we just talk for about two hours um I was putty in his hand uh and then yeah pain specialists like Shona uh and and Miles that are there um and Sarah as a sort of guider in terms of sort of guiding me through that Journey as well so really my journey from a a part-time into a fulltime Elite Sport position um was starting to become a little bit of a hankering that I was after really so I applied for a role at Newcastle Falcons um and then luckily was successful uh I we had a doctor who worked across both um who maybe sort of put in a a good word but again it was look what I wanted to do was immerse myself completely into that Elite Sport world I wanted to push myself in terms of The Rehabilitation skills the treatment skills see the acute management and and guide that all the way through to the end where we return them back into Sport and I suppose the question sometimes that people ask is well why did you picked rugby you were all football you were all tennis growing up for me I think rugby was the perfect sport because it gave me such an amazing variety of different things it gave me Upper Limb lower limb spinal conditions con cussions and it gave me everything from that acute management and and that ability to build them back up again all the way back into their Sport and for me Rugby’s an incredibly varied sport as well unlike uh other sports or even League the difference in the athlete sizes shapes role positions and all that kind of thing is actually really varied so it makes it a lot more exciting because you’re trying to match the demands that they’re going to go back into so if you’ve got someone who’s a jumping athlete versus a front rower versus someone who’s a kicker you’re going to have all the variety that comes with that so it’s a it’s a really nice sport to be involved in and that’s probably why I ended up sort of spending six seasons of my life there and again you’re seeing new things year on year clearly things are starting to repeat themselves as a bit of a cycle you’re going to have the short-term injuries the long-term injuries but again I absolutely love my time here and we had some great moments um some great wins met some great people players and staff uh and fans as well who are still in contact now and and this is sort of a bit of a a flavor in terms of how it looks behind the scenes in terms of the the support that’s there so from a medical perspective we had three doctors we had one who was full-time and we had two brilliant uh guys coming in part-time to help with various other things on Match days or other support surrounding the club we had a head physio reys who you can see there and then me and Andy underneath him as the sort of two first team physios we had an admin assistant and we had a soft tissue specialist as well and then on the right hand side we had three Academy physios the lead Dave and then the other couple Kyle and Toby then you have the coaches so again you’ve got big numbers of coaches you’ve got six coaches in that world Dean being the director snc wise you’ve got three guys you’ve got analysts you’ve got Academy staff as well so it’s a big team um and actually you need them all and what does it look like in terms of a normal week we’ll talk more about this in the sort of typical uh day in a physio which I’d recommend watching after this one but what I want to draw your attention to really is there is potentially no days off so if you do not have a wider team so if there’s not a few of you who can share the burden or the load then actually what you can end up doing is although they’re not full days you might actually be in every single day while the season is on so for example although Wednesday is deemed a player day off that is when you will be in with some of your long-term injured athletes so it might be acl’s shoulder Recons and one who you’re trying to turn around for the weekend then if the game day is typically on a Saturday the Sunday May well be the Injury Clinic or the recovery day that you’re running so again the coaches will more than likely want to know what numbers do we have for training on the Monday morning so the only way you can sort of give them a good idea is to do an injury clinic on the Sunday or first thing on Monday for a more accurate update but again you’re going to need they’re going to need to want to plan who’s available for the upcoming weeks and we’ve varied things a little bit because it didn’t work at times but again the same sort of patterns occur even the day offs can potentially result in you coming in for a few hours so your ability to switch off is fairly minimal and that can happen almost every single week unless there’s an international week or you have a a break in fixtures potentially you’re looking at almost six or seven days a week every single week for us and there are other different challenges so again in this sort of world the the main sort of Drive really for us is to make sure that players are robust make sure that they are available and we will be deemed um successful if we can get above a certain percentage in football that percentage was 90% in this study on the on the right hand side there um for us we actually had about an 80 to 85% record and I think if we compare rugby to football um there’s significant differences isn’t there in terms of the physicality the impacts the traumas all that kind of stuff so yeah for us our kpr our key performance indicator was to try and get 85% um of those individuals um and make them available because that has a massive bearing on the success often of a club so if you have the same group of individuals your best players available on a consistent basis they’re all used to knowing each other’s roles and responsibilities and linking up with each other they’re going to be more successful and you can see that by the the cups and the league wins that you can see on here the higher the availability is the more likely they are to be successful when it drops below that uh actually they end up uh not performing very well and some of that is to do with the ratios so again for us it changed massively when I moved into the club there were 52 senior players across the senior Squad and the academy and there was two of us there was the head Physio and myself and we were fighting fire with this revolving door where people were just coming again and again and again but actually the the governing body stipulated that actually what we need is a ratio of 15 to1 and that change in the dynamic and the ability to put quality processes in place was really really important and obviously injuries come in in different forms don’t they so you might have injuries that are fairly low risk like this one this is a a guy who’s taking a knock and a bit of a pull uh but he walks off he’s got no real sort of major risk associated with him um versus maybe the the right hand side where you look at that where you actually sort of carrying someone off who can’t feel their hands they can’t feel their legs they’ve got sign ific neural loss um and actually that can potentially lead to sort of career threatening or ending injuries or even sort of lifechanging injuries in some situations and and this is what happened at the club we did have a a couple of athletes actually who did retire uh based on significant one-off incidents to do with their necks being affected both front rowers we had Scott Wilson on the left hand side Ty Veer on the right hand side thankfully they are all okay um they are functioning um and all right but against medical advice we’re advised to to um sort of retire from the sport because of the risk of potential knock on effects which were not desirable at all and I think this just goes to show that that when you go into sport it is a huge responsibility um when you do step into this world you do need to have done a pitchside qualification if you’re going to do anything on the pitch obviously we’re going to there is the the grow physio program that is here but I strongly advise doing a recognized qualification um but that will certainly help prep you significantly for that other ones who have retired this is one of the best guys the best blos one of the best athletes I think I have ever worked with and probably ever will work with this is Mark Wilson who sadly after a knee injury decided he was going to have to step away from from this world um but they you there is a lot of trust there’s a lot of um responsibility associated with this people are trusting you with their careers their lives um and actually sometimes um you do have situations where they can’t continue and unless they’ve got a contingency plan which again they’re planning to play for x amount of years this might come as a massive shock so big sort of educational push at the club for us um was to try and almost make sure people were ready um post that now the other thing I want to just talk about really is the the culture that often sort of stems around professional sport and this can be positive or actually it can be very negative and it can be very draining the culture is something that the club worked on a lot while I was there there it was certainly pioneered by the club Captain who was brilliant uh great bloke again called will Welsh and what he decided to do alongside the the coaches was create their own identity and their own branding so they came up with this thing called true north and again what they tried to do was almost create a ethos a group of individuals who all read off the same hym seats stood for the same principles and that would resonate right the way through the club and all the way through the staff now this has been done in other clubs so sarsens um came under a bit of fire for uh valid reasons when they broke the salary cap but there they came up with four key phrases so honesty discipline work rate and humility and they had that plastered across the stadium at the top of the stadium they had it in the training ground they had this everywhere so basically this was instilled in all the individuals and they broke that down um into greater detail so everyone was on the same page with that and I think that that is something that’s really really important so when you go into this world if you are starting off fresh or you kind of go into it and there’s certain things that aren’t potentially the way that they should be often if there are um bad habits that have developed it can be unhealthy for the individuals it can be unhealthy for the team and stop them progressing so worth sort of having a little look at and that is sometimes what happens unfortunately so in the early days what I found at the club was there was a very um pointing pointing fingers blame culture where actually if somebody did break down with an injury everyone was pointing at each other who’s responsible whereas what should happen is we should all come together we should talk about it decide where we went wrong and just make sure that we don’t make those mistakes again the worst thing that you can do is just keep repeating the same errors year on year and not developing and growing from that so again it might not be the easiest thing in the world to sit down and look at reflecting on it sometimes you have to throw your hands up and say you know what this could have been done a lot better on our side and actually sort of almost piece that whole thing together but the communication side absolutely critical because fundamentally when we have this the performance focus is key the winning culture that you develop will not be able to continue unless you’ve got that strong Foundation that’s there and that happens a lot within sort of highlevel sport really and that has a big knock on effect to the amount of funding that you have so again when we’re looking at sort of lottery funded sport England um worlds then again they’re going to allocate funding and it’s usually based on the performance levels and the success within that sport so you can see this broken down um by Sport and by the games that are occurring on the left hand side and then on the right hand side looking at how that’s actually divvied up in terms of sort of where the money is allocated and as I say this is sort of generally driven by medals that are won so depending on the the performance there’s massive amounts of pressure because actually people’s jobs and the next Olympic cycles and the funding that comes from this is largely down to the medal winning um nature of that sport so you’ll have different sports and you can sort of see there the the areas where most funding is just in sort of bar chart form rather than pie chart and again you can see within sort of uh Team GB British worlds you’ve got Athletics cycling rowing sailing swimming all being those key areas that are are most successful and that’s matched by the funding and you will have different individuals who are ranked according to the levels and the chances that they have of potentially achieving um medals at certain games and that funding will often match that so the drive and the desire for the individuals to go from an entry level up to that sort of Podium potential um is huge and that funding is very much driven from that so again when these people have gone on this journey yes they’re all about winning but actually there’s a there’s certainly a backstory and a lot of other aspects to consider relating to funding um that can surround this as well and this is sort of the world where I worked in so during the Five Seasons that I was there I honestly thought you know what these new changes that we’re starting to instill and the changes in the culture and everything are starting to develop we went from 11th to 8th to Fourth to then surely the only place was going to be first but actually we ended up bot um we got relegated to the championship and then in my final season um full season there we went back up to the Championships um from there but again some of the margins in this world are so fine some of the differences between winning with the last play of the game versus losing the last play of the game that was the difference really for us between literally finishing fourth and finishing 12th and clearly we need to make sure that we have all the fundamental important bits correct for the athletes things like nutrition sleep Sports Science obviously Ronaldo is the epitome he’s got a team of absolute experts that basically are there to try and look after him and his body to make sure he is in the optimal condition probably why he’s going to keep playing high level sport till he’s 40 um but actually there’s also some other little variables that that people believe that that feed into this and I call them the sort of the one percenters really and they’re little mental things that can have a bearing so things like the Chang room quality so we invested quite a lot of money for us in our changing room to make sure we had a nicer environment it was all decked out it all looked very nice uh we did the opposite to the uh away room after we went to Bath one year and it was the worst changing room I have ever been in it was basically tiny they built a wall so no one could see each other they blocked all of the um sort of underbench storage area so there’s bags everywhere with 30 massive blocks in there we were in a tiny little little shower trying to strap and rub they’d put the the heating on full blast it was generally the worst possible environment that we had and other people have done similar things so Norwich decided little again little 1centers they decided to paint their away room pink because they believed that that would reduce testosterone make the opposition less competitive um and would that have a bearing you could go one or two ways you could make it as luxurious as possible with coffee machines and that kind of thing or make it as sort of horrible as you possibly can as cramp and whatever um so actually people don’t have a very good prep and there’s other things as well that have bearing so clearly sort of mentality of certain stadiums that players go to fans will have a bearing some are more vocal I remember going to Gloucester um and across sort of down at Newport dragons where there were really hostile crowds and and how did that have a bearing on the the performance levels and and they always talk don’t they about that sort of 12th man uh in football or the 16th man in rugby um that can have a massive bearing and other things are the media can have a play on the mentality and and get a bit of a uh have a bit of a negative or positive spin on things and similarly sort of fans and and what have you can also have a bearing and sometimes it’s little individuals will have certain superstitions that they go through certain rituals routines whatever it may be Nadal has this classic one doesn’t he before every single point that he does it’s the same thing he checks his strings and then adjusts his shorts does his nose rub does his shoulder touch his hair tuck um but he’s really successful it gets him in the right frame of mind to get there but these are some of the little routines that these highlevel athletes go through and I just want to very quickly touch upon some of the sort of challenges further that that are in this and really you can be working as hard as you possibly can behind the scenes things can be looking amazing but actually that doesn’t always lead to success so few challenges really in season they typically feel very long so depending on the the worlds that you’re in so rugby would generally go from say like a a June all the way through until about a sort of early May sort of time really so they’re very long so you don’t get time off and you can’t often take time off until the offseason it does feel like you’re sort of saying no to a lot of invites and social events because it’s pretty unsociable hours if you’re on the road I found it pretty hard to switch off it ends up getting a little bit stressful because you feel like you’ve got to sort of stay you’re immersed in that world you’re returning athletes you’re pouring your heart and soul into getting them back on time and if they do reinjure for whatever reason which thankfully wasn’t very often um again it it kind of falls on you so it does come with a bit of stress feels like you’re on a bit of a roller coaster sometimes whether you’re winning you’re losing um if you’re on a good streak then it’s great if it’s if you’re on a bad streak it’s it’s not a very enjoyable place to be but again physically and mentally you’re pretty immersed in that what I would say is trying to establish a an idea of the the CPD or the the training and development programs that are involved in that is really important some institutions certainly the Eis seem to do that amazingly well within certain clubs it’s very mixed so try and get a good flavor I set up something as a CPD program within the club um but again sort of sometimes you rely on a lot of that uh experience L informal discussions around that culture really important so if the atmosphere spere politics result driven stuff is all really important in terms of sort of driving that culture uh and then recognition really so quite often if you aren’t in a very good culture it’s just that almost expectation that you get everybody back you pour your heart and soul into it and that’s just the expectation and actually sometimes when you’re on a good streak and there’s not many injuries and you got a bit of breathing space it’s great when you’re on a losing streak and you are just flogged it isn’t a very nice place to be and basically you can quite easily end up sort of going from being pretty full pretty Keen uh in the early days to then pretty much running on empty so as the seasons went on I certainly alongside having a little boy who didn’t sleep for three years um and working insane hours it started to slowly erode me away but now look at me on the right hand side happy as the day is long and some of the other things that kind of feed into that again on a weekend most people who are working on Monday to Friday switch off they have the the weekends to recover for us we’re actually then on the road some of the time and Newcastle obviously based in the northeast of England looking at the other locations that you have uh you can see we are the furthest away from anyone who’s there so again our away games a lot of traveling that’s involved with that and that is pretty draining after a while you get there pretty late you then go into a hotel you start doing all the treatments the strappings the whatever so you don’t get there and then kick back and watch a film you’re then sort of almost doing some of the last minute little preparations and then next morning you sort of have your breakfast you go into your taping slots and then basically you sort of almost back into the game doing your injury clinics after the game get on the bus carry an all your kit and go from there but it’s not all doom and gloom I don’t want this to sound like it’s horrendous we do get some amazing trips it’s great to see the world we had trips to Philadelphia we went to Russia uh in SOI and again so I’ve just come back from Dubai really but other things that are worth just considering um this is kind of how I felt it was really when I sort of pulled in in My Little Fiesta um and sort of pared next to some of these supercars that are there the players generally have a lot more money than the staff um the cars that they drive are a lot better and again so I remember going into the club and just being like God should I even be parking my car here should I hide it out the back in in somewhere away from all these nice cars really and that’s the same in football it’s bizarre but the amount of money in football compared to rugby is totally different but actually the salaries that staff get can be very consistent so Rugby Union is generally better paid than rugby league however football in premiership worlds where you think God they’ve got so much money floating around they’re buying players for millions and millions of pounds paying them hundreds of thousand pounds a week actually sometimes the the pay levels that they get are around that sort of 30 35 Grand Mark for a first team physio working full-time in a Premiership outfit and actually for my good friend here I worked with he was on the same same wage for about four or five years really the advantage in football is often they get a little bit of a Christmas or an end of season bonus depending on where they finish in the league which makes it feel a little bit nicer but actually their basic salary is pretty similar and the reason is this really uh because there’s so many individuals uh who are mad Keen to work in sport the supply levels are huge whereas there’s not that many jobs available so it drives the market price down so actually people willing to do it and they will be continue to be willing to do it for this but what I would say is try and remember your worth if you have gone through this program to all the grow physio teaching you have applied those things and you’ve taken them all on board you’re going to go in with a amazing skill set that you’re going to be able to use to develop and enhance the club so sell yourself because people won’t naturally offer you more money but if you go in and say look this is the skill set that I’m bringing this is why I demand x amount of money pay isn’t everything happiness is obviously kind of a huge part of that health is a huge part of that but actually you need to value your own time as well and there are other options so you might have part if we go from the top leftand Corner really part-time roles just doing a quick little search before this presentation really part-time roles within a Premiership outfit in an academy 14 to6 pound an hour H KR is a rugby league club they’ve got a salary full-time sort of equivalent of Newcastle Falcon but in a rugby league World salary 30 Grand British Triathlon worlds is a physio 30 grand to 35 Grand depending on experience but if you contrast that just to someone who’s a couple of years qualified going into a band Six rotation at 34 to 41 Grand sort of territories or uh looking at sort of even working from home or having mixed roles and much more flexibility nicer hours all that kind of thing and you’re getting sort of 35 to 45 Grand with some private companies again it’s sort of it’s a bit of a thinker and a heads scratcher why we do this but I wouldn’t have done it any other way which is again sort of the flip side to arguing that one way or the other and the other things that are worth just considering which happened this year is wasps and Worcester were both Premiership rugby clubs who both went into Administration all of the stff was were sacked and laid off um because they had such amazing amounts of debt 95 million pound worth of debt so they’ve gone into Administration and that’s the end of your role so there’s not a great deal of job security sometimes when you’re working in sport the contrast to that which is the most staggering thing that hits home close to home is Alan pju signed an eight-year managerial contract deal I don’t understand why football managers get this but it’s something that has just become the norm if they sign a contract for eight years they do a shocking job and they get sacked after three they will be paid for the remainder of their contract so again when I was at Newcastle it was actually a permanent role whereas some people will offer you a one-year or a two-year deal so it’s worth just again negotiating if you’re relocating or wanting to sort of see this through long term how long you’re going with that because when you’re in it you are more than likely to only really have time off if you are significantly going to miss something so if you’re getting married that is usually a winner if you are having a child that is usually a winner for paternity or maternity leave but apart from that it is very rare that you will get time off to go and hang out with friends go on stagos any of that kind of stuff really but there there you go my beautiful wife uh and all my friends on uh cross I Bea getting married so yeah the other things you will probably kiss goodbye to are your Christmas breaks so often at Christmas time most people wind down don’t they for us that’s when people want to watch sport so therefore you have a more intensive fixture list in rugby this this was the saddest time I’ve ever had we basically got beaten by sarens on Christmas Eve I then went to my mother-in-laws for Christmas with the family and on boxing day I had to get this very sad looking Toy Soldier boss called a mega bus back up to Newcastle it broke down in leads took me about nine hours to get back and then we were back in the following morning at 800 a.m. for a review so again just bear in mind that you will be making sacrifices a lot and this is really why I have started to shift myself more towards sort of family time really again this is absolutely fundamentally key I didn’t want to miss out on this little guy growing up um for obvious reasons look at him he is unbelievable but yeah he was part of that sort of New Castle Falcon’s life this was us we’d always get there half an hour before Injury Clinic hang out with each other the players were amazing with him and actually it was great to have him part of that Journey but actually now moving out of that I’ve got to spend a lot more time with him this is probably one of the the happiest little moments of of my entire Sports Physio career really where you see my little guy come running out with the team captain will Welsh that you saw earlier on this was my last game so it was a a nice little tribute um thanks to everyone who organized this but you can see there he is absolutely incredible um running out with a captain on my last day but these sorts of things having your kids part of that and it was always lovely seeing the players sort of running out and having the player the their own kids on the pitch and being part of that Journey cuz it is something to celebrate it’s such a unique world that you can be part of professional sport has some amazing individuals in it some amazing opportunities um so yeah a great big thank you really to to everybody who sort of made that possible for the little guy charging off and on that as well not just thank you to them obviously a massive thank you to my family parents wife everyone who’s been part of that amazing jour we’ve actually managed to go on holidays since there that you can see there but everybody needs to have a rock and she is absolutely my rock and and doing some amazing things in in her world as well and this is sort of how life looks maybe after you’ve worked in a in a professional sporting world you can start to pick and choose things once you’ve got a a great skill set you’ve still got your qualifications so I’ve just been working at the world gymnastics championships I’ve just been out to Dubai um to work in the sort of the world sevens competition there I’ve been doing some bits with volleyball with Athletics with Judo um with the gymnastics sort of side of things so again it’s it’s a really nice skill set that once you’ve developed the skills that you have in that environment the rehab the taping the assessment skills the ability to guide people you become a good commodity in in future years and I still do the occasional volunteering role I still love being part of these big events I’ve just been down to Birmingham and worked with the hockey there basically sort of again sort of assisting any of the athletes who do need anything additional from that side this is Dubai so we’ve just literally come back tan is obviously fading um but again a great cohort of individuals an amazing skill set had one of the biggest names in sort of rugby sevens coming out with us in in Heather fish to do the coaching and again supporting the net ball the rugby s side of things is an incredible sort of opportunity I never would have had had it not been for that and it does come with some other little challenges going on tour you do have elements of nutrition sleep diets all the recovery side of things that are absolutely critically important and the other side of things that I’m now involved in is a lot of teaching so here I am uh on grow physio I also do quite a lot of work in different universities so this is some of the work that I was doing down in uh Gloucester again they’ve got the perfect slogan haven’t they let grow in their grow Hub that they have all tiing beautifully into the grow physio Vibes do some teaching um at sort of specific events this is us at Middlesboro football club going through some of the return to sport post tendonopathy guidance at their Symposium some International teaching and work at therapy Expo huge event down in Birmingham and then also being able to go out to Dubai and Saudis uh out to jeda uh and we’re going out to Riyad later on this month to do some teaching uh and sort of share the knowledge and the skill sets that we have so again I’m a big believer in trying to share that um knowledge set and actually sort of seeing different cultures learning styles is all developing me as well and you also get to meet some great people some great friends that I’ve made through doing this uh these are the guys at sort of uh physio matters um some of the moderating uh to try and build that up from there so that’s it guys so just in summary really working in sport for me has been a privilege and I feel so honored to have had that opportunity but don’t forget to value your own worth when you come into that world discuss what you’re willing to do what your time’s going to be and mentally prepare yourself for that that’s your time before you go in to negotiate contracts from there because it will be very time consuming and if you don’t love it you’ll get found out you’ll start to resent it you’ll not enjoy it anywhere near as much as you should and I would say just remember to refill your own glass and what I mean by that is if you’re constantly pouring and emptying stuff from your glass and you’re not refilling it with things that enhance you mentally physically you will burn out in that world the skill set again that you develop along that journey is incredible it’s quite specific um to sportting Worlds but that makes your potential sort of future employability with those transferable skills really useful try best you can to have a uh family that is going to support you on that Journey particularly if you start to have a family yourself of your own again you need to try and retain that healthy balance but I don’t have any regrets from doing it there were certainly times when I felt absolutely near broken and wrecked and and why am I doing this but actually uh looking back on it some great memories some great friends that I’ve kind of continued the experiences are are helping me to share some of these things with you which hopefully help the Next Generation so massive thank you well done everyone for sticking with this hope there’s loads of stuff hope you’re super motivated to go into sport but maybe sort of maybe select the the areas that you want to go into that’s it Guys these are the platforms that I operate on please do get in Conta with me you can email me you can drop me a message on anything um if you have enjoyed this and you feel like it’s something that you that other people could benefit from then please do share it um The Grow physio Academy is something that I’m really proud of and and hopefully it will help many many uh people for many years to come all the best take care of yourselves guys and I’ll uh hopefully see you in the next session okay guys complete thanks the little guy is off uh so I am delighted um to answer any questions any queries that anyone has um if you want to stick your video on your mic on you want to ask anything I’m a pretty approachable Jordy guy not very intimidating hopefully despite the bald head um but if anyone’s got anything that you want to ask then then please do fire away it’s a it’s a hopefully a reasonable opportunity and you can see I’ve had quite a mixed background uh I don’t have all the answers but I will do my best to to answer anything that I can really um thanks everyone for filling in your little introductions as well this is a it’s a really wide mix of people looking at this from second second year students some physio Master students some sports therapists uh in their final year uh and also people who are very qualified as well so um here come some questions right Amanda I recently qualified as a level five tissue therapist with lssm and also a member of sta would be interested to know if there are many opportunities working in sport without a relevant uh degree in sport physio or physio with my level five qualification um just prior to this uh I also got a question that was sent through from someone asking a little bit around the different levels of uh massau qualifications whether you should be level three whether you need a level four uh and obviously yourself a Manda with a level five qualification I had to look into this a little bit because it’s not something that I automatically look for with with someone who’s going to come onto a placement or anything like that but obviously the higher your qualification the more experience you have the more you can potentially from level four and above is what I found out that you can deal with more injury stuff really um I would say that my best advice to people who’ve got this sort of qualification is obviously highlight the stuff that you have that’s more relevant to the role you’re going to go for on your CV or resume or whatever it may be uh and then obviously from the back of that just to make sure that you are kind of reaching out to people putting yourself out there I would say the people who sort of collect all of these amazing qualifications um and sort of sit waiting for that amazing role to come along and they’re not willing to go into some other things and just apply their trade they’ll probably deskill a little bit if they’re not using it as much uh and you never know who you’re going to meet so if you’re in a role and someone kind of asks you in interview like what are you doing at the moment and you’re describing that you’re doing some stuff be it voluntary be it low pay be it sort of ad hoc bits that you’re doing if it’s event cover whatever it is it all sort of adds to your picture really and gives you more to talk about more experiences and who knows what will come up and I think one of the other questions that Katie uh had fired through earlier on which kind of feeds into this a little bit was is it better to wait for vacancies in clubs to open or should you be proactive in contact clubs and I think it goes back to the same thing like there’s so many people who could potentially step into some of these roles it’s normally the people who are knocking on the door and putting themselves out there that are the ones which will naturally be higher up that pecking order um uh so yeah so the more that you can put yourself out into the shop window I think it’s really nice isn’t it as well to kind of celebrate some of your learning so if you have completed this you’ve taken photographs of it put it on LinkedIn and things make yourself a bit more visible to people uh and then when they are checking who’s applying when they scroll through your LinkedIn and things like that you’ve got examples of being proactive you’ve got examples of you’ve engaged off your own back into CPD stuff um and you’ve completed XYZ course really I think they’re the things that I really look for uh that and a good personality and a proactiveness would be the things I would do I can upscale anyone in there uh skill set but I can’t change their personalities and I can’t change their kind of drive and motivation really like that is often ingrained and and sort of demonstrated in the behaviors that a lot of uh people will um have so I hope that helps a little bit uh Annie just said can you remind me on the details about the event on September the 27th yep give me two seconds so on the 27th what I’m running is a a uh Sports taping course uh so let me just share this with you just to pop this up for a [Music] second uh so this is the sports taping course that is in Manchester so if anyone does want to have a look at enrolling on that there were four places left uh at the start of today so we had nine already enrolled uh it’s in Salford we basically go through all of the essentials that you require all the tapes included your certificates included you’ll get to online uh recordings so you can kind of refer back to them whenever you want so it’s a it’s a really good course and we basically go through everything uper Lim lower limb uh to prepare you to work um by taping if you missed it the other thing that’s coming up is an injury prevention webinar on Wednesday the 24th of April uh that is a paid event but um tons of learning in that if you ever sort of want to work with a team or with players or even yourself if you picked up injuries tons of stuff that you can apply just straight off the bat you don’t need loads and loads of equipment um have a little look the QR codes there if you want to take a picture of that uh and the only other thing that was there was that um sort of acute management course that’s there really so hope that helps with that uh what are your Zoe asked what are your thoughts oh someone got a hand up you just adjusting your uh webcam I think uh fine so what are your thoughts on graduate jobs uh you might have to elaborate a little bit on that because there’s a lot of different options Zoe on that I don’t know if you’re brave enough to put your mic on and want to ask come on Zoe you going to be brave not going to be brave fair enough um if you want to type in the in the box below I’ll come come to you in a second on that but obviously The Graduate options there’s tons of graduate jobs really I think you’re referring to uh graduate roles that are almost like a little bit of an intermediate role and I think with the way that the world has been with covid striking and not having access for a lot of people people who’ve been in University they haven’t had the exposure or the hours that we’ve normally uh had so when I qualified you had to do 2,000 hours as part of your undergraduate training unfortunately a lot of that’s been very limited hasn’t it and we’re slowly sort of coming out of that uh cohort but I think the one of the biggest things about therapy is the use of your hands your patient handling your interactions with people and it’s very different online isn’t it compared to uh in person like it’s very difficult to often judge body language tone you pick up things you learn to sort of almost delve a little bit better into things you can get a bit more Buy in a bit more motivational interviewing stuff going I think face to face and obviously kind of the obvious things are you can get Hands-On assess things and go that way so if there is a role and you are in that kind of category really where you haven’t had as many hours uh to be exposed to Patient mileage I call it and actually be able to observe people in person actually have chance to practically put it into place I would recommend and upping that amount that you possibly can because talking to a lot of friends who work in University worlds and lecturing and what I’ve seen uh from going in is there seems to be quite an impact that naturally if you’ve only done online learning for uh 18 months or so then really you’re not going to have had that practical uh skill set build up quite as well really uh Mercy’s asked uh would you suggest doing a masters in msk after studying a BSC physio to gain experience in working in the sports field for me I did a masters and I did what’s called an macp which was a very uh practical Masters so it was very much clinical reasoning very reflective but it also had a placement built into it so it was a really nice combination um but that was done about six or seven years after qualifying so I think there’s huge value in getting your undergraduate degree getting some patient mileage seeing some people working out some of the ways that you kind of build up some of those Basics and and some of the things that you find that works and then immersing yourself into a masters for me is quite a nice way of doing it because it totally throws a cat amongst the pigeons you don’t know what you don’t know so you therefore kind of have that amazingly harsh realization that actually you thought you were doing all right and actually there’s a whole another level to how you are but I think if you just go from your undergraduate straight into a master’s sometimes I know this would have happened to me I wouldn’t have got as much out my masters I didn’t understand quite as much of the uh practicalities and applying that into practice really um how would you approach being paid lowly and people hoping you don’t know your worth the issue with demand and pay Anton this is really tough it’s a it’s a common bug bear I know that a lot of people out there they will advertise roles that are free unpaid roles or they’ll actually kind of advertise it as a wow this is a a paid role and it seems crazy doesn’t it you go to university you upscale you do courses that cost you money you may well have done something like a fisis course which is the prehospital immediate care and Sport course that course itself at level uh three um is expensive uh the ones that we have to do is around 780 for a weekend it’s very much medicalized it’s very good it’s probably the gold standard really for me in terms of rugby gymnastics horse racing it’s it’s the the best way to deal with acute trauma in my opinion but then you have on the flip side people saying I’m going to pay you 50 pounds a day and you’re GNA leave at 7 AM you’re G to travel with a team you’re GNA get back really late um and it’s crazy it’s a real mismatch in terms of what’s happening in terms of approaching it I think realistically you go in and say look this is the qualifications that I have this is what I um have had to do on the back of it if people are willing to play so it’s you want to try and really get some perks in there if they if the company is going to get you on board maybe they will cover the fee of for you to do your pitchside courses what else can they throw in to potentially make it worth your while really that might be CPD allowances it might be um various other things that you can kind of negotiate and realistically weigh up would be my uh opinion how how much value is this to you how much do you enjoy it I think you have to 100% enjoy the journey and not just the destination so you might have a long-term goal to work in Elite Sport but actually you’re not going to do that overnight if you haven’t got experience so what are the little things that you can do to build up the uh credentials the qos that that make yourself more employable and unfortunately if that is your your limited options so be it you can obviously with a qualification um actually end up doing event cover so you can affiliate yourself with some big organizations like I work for British gymnastics they are constantly putting out feelers and questions uh for people to cover events on almost like a weekly basis uh and they are UK based International based so if you’ve got a little bit of flex in your diary or you don’t have other commitments you might be a little bit more amable to stuff like that um there are people who only do event cover uh and do that as their full-time role so they’ll work across various Sports um and do it that way and they’ll pick up 200 to 250 pounds usually uh per day um to cover major events really U really nice if you want to see acute injuries and then obviously kind of do that we had the world trampoline championships I’m sure Grace will be on here at the moment I think that’s her um met one of the other students um and again it’s sort of a nice exposure into that world really from there uh any tips for getting shadowing opportunities in sports club uh have struggled so far without any initial experience yeah it’s tough I think we’ve all been there we’ve all been in that sort of frustrating scenario where you’re hoping that someone in your family or friend group knows someone who works within that world I think that’s probably your best way in the world that we’re in now though you can act which I definitely didn’t have is LinkedIn is massive so you can start searching for people who work in any of these clubs the internet is an endless source of knowledge uh and insights into who’s there you can often get people’s emails or directly contact them or message them um to kind of create opportunities and obviously initially if it’s just coming in for a chat these are the skill sets that I can offer I can do massage I can do taping um I’ve got a first aid qualification or idealia a pitchside qualification um or these are the things that I’m currently looking at doing or a lot of people who are uh in the educational world are pretty good people like they’re just there to try and support other people they’ll put on free talks they’ll happily kind of talk to people um and there’s also mentorship stuff as well so if you do reach out it might be that actually you have a bit of a sounding board that some people will say you know what I’m more than happy to take you on answer some questions nurture you um and actually I’ll just become your mentor and it’s a bit of a touchbased thing mentoring is a little bit different to coaching um in terms of mentors well generally sort of almost try and show you the path and then it’s up to you to really go away and make sure that you fulfill all those things then come back again um but that little bit of guidance and direction for me checking in uh periodically with people definitely makes me more accountable to do the things that I’ve said I’ll do so um if anyone wants to do that if anyone’s Keen um by all means reach out to me if there’s someone else more locally that you want to do that with um do it that way uh Cameron’s question uh thanks Cameron do you think NHS rotations for a year or two would be beneficial e developing case load skills for working in high level sport or should this time be more effective in an academy or lower league role this totally depends on you for me to have a foundation really helped so I saw tons of different things the advantages of that is you get to see and highlight red flags neurological problems rheumatological things things that are maybe things that you need to bounce off to the GP and you become a little bit more competent hopefully with an MDT around you that are not just msk focus but you also get a little bit more wide experience with that I worked for connect as I kind of went through there which only saw msk problems they were GP referrals that generally came in initially when I went into that uh and because of that they’re just GPS who maybe people have phoned up saying I’ve got back pain but actually you you speak to them you screen them for all your cord requ of things you kind of then find out that maybe there’s other causes other past medical history things that really feed into a much bigger picture so actually sometimes I think you can become so narrow lensed in sport that actually you forget that all these things can uh occur so for me at least I’ve got that little sort of light switch that’s been turned on and I’m sort of always aware that there could be although they’re very rare some inflammatory things some neurological things maybe some other options within that world so for me I I didn’t do NHS in true fashion but it was a a private company who were commissioned to do it and I think there’s huge value in it um I know my head physio hugely valued that um but there were people who just came straight in from Academy roles and they’d done something like a sport Science degree beforehand then done physio so they were a little bit longer in the tooth they’d kind of developed a little bit more experience um the mature students for me generally who’ve kind of gone into the workplace and then come back into physio or Sports Therapy generally have a bit more life experience and life skills so sometimes they might be ones who kind of Step nicely into an academy or sort of lower league role really so very much depends on you um for me I know that I I was nowhere near ready when I first qualified to dive into an academy um so I went a different route but it’s it’s totally up to you if you know that that is your aspiration Your Love you’ve got a sport that you really want to work with um then why not go for it straight away but I think for me to get that sort of almost all the communication skills up to a level where I was much better it’s sort of the chitchat and things that go on that just smooth transition because it is a pretty brutal World sometimes going into Sport and you will get hammered uh unless you’re on your the sort of top of your game if you know what I mean uh thank you for the info on taping we be holding another taping event this year I’m Belfast based so to plan it in advance um yes so I’m based in Birmingham uh the next one that I’ll probably run there will probably be in about a month’s time uh so I’ll try and put a date out for that we’ll run it from the Judo headquarters uh which is in walaw um so yeah I’ll drop something out there and hopefully you can get across um ah zo mic’s not working is there there this is from a question earlier on there is a graduate job in a private school for physiosports therapists just wondering if this would be a good idea for growing and networking after University I think this could be the gold the golden ticket for a lot of people because if you start working in a school what you end up with is all the gorgeous delightful holiday periods that come with it so if you are like a lot of my friends are with teachers um as partners they then have holiday time together because the the school term will run at the same time obviously as the teachers so if you can manage to shoehorn your way into working in sport in a university I think it’s a great gig to be honest um you’re also working usually with a mixture of athletes some of them will be D teams c teams B Teams a teams and some of them be right up there with the sort of scholarship level but as a result you see a really nice wide variety of different sports different standards different sizes um and all different sort of aspirations really within that so I think that would be a really really nice role there’s probably less pressure than there will be um unless you kind of a really high University lbr baths Etc who are top level um trying to compete for things but there’s probably way less pressure in that world than there ever would be there and also most people will be similar sort of age which has pros and cons if you just graduated so you’ll be a similar sort of age you’ll be able to relate to a lot of stuff um but actually make just make sure that you maintain that sort of professional boundary at the same time uh so yeah I definitely have a little look at that uh Molly has asked I’m about to graduate with a Sports Therapy undergraduate degree congratulations I’m looking at doing a master’s degree following this I’d love to go into Elite Sport would you suggest an msk injury prevention masters degree or Sports Science master’s degree would be more beneficial for this with regards to job opening and skills um for me immediately with that I would probably like the one that stands out for me but I love injury prevention and injury reduction strategies would be the injury prevention one again it just depends on where you want to Niche yourself into really so if injury prevention is your bag then that sounds like an ideal fit for you if you wanted to go with something a bit more generic you can obviously always specialize into a certain area later on down the line but there are now in football clubs um certainly people who will just be in charge of injury prevention uh and prehab that goes on within sort of your I know a lot of the Premier ship Sid we’ll have a mishmash of some people who will only do manual therapy some people that will kind of go ahead and do uh just the injury prevention side of things there’ll be people who just do the early rehab people do the late rehab etc etc really so um just whatever you think that fits really I would say both of them look pretty appealing anyone with the Masters um obviously gives you a little bit extra cudos uh but would I value more experience than a master’s it probably depends on where the the experience es and stuff are really if I was going to try and take somebody on um Molly has asked what additional qualifications do you think are most beneficial to have an Elite Sport for example cing dry needling Etc because some courses can be expensive totally agree just wanted to know what extra qualifications are recognized by clubs than others I would go with the stuff that is going to be used daily so for me Sports taping is probably your biggest one um that every single sport will have an element of taping in it and I’d also add some sort of manual therapy skill be it a sports massage diploma be it something like Mulligan techniques something that will give you a little bit of Hands-On stuff um because it’s not for everyone but actually to be better with your hands and potentially change things within a session don’t forget that if you do go into sport you will probably have more access to athletes more regularly than any other role that you could possibly work in um so again you can do some of these manual therapy techniques you can do that reassess see how they are maybe do it again the following day and almost kind of build up that regular routine that actually makes a massive difference the the Big Challenge in the way that I think that manual therapy is getting trashed H and slandered at the moment in the presses um by certain people is you just can’t do it enough in normal NHS roles so if I were seen someone once every two weeks then manual therapy probably wouldn’t be the route that I’d go down I’d be going down more of a rehab based route does that mean that manual therapy or soft tissue techniques doesn’t work not at all but the quality of its application is very different across the board how long you have with them is very different across the board uh and again it sort of for me I know that it can make a massive difference as long as you’re selective about what you’re doing I’m not just talking about just eing someone’s car for 20 minutes actually going in and changing joint mes and and release techniques and things can make a huge difference with some of these athletes so um I just think about one of our ACL athletes at the moment who she’s actually had two acl’s um but the it that knee often gets quite sticky she loses a little bit of that extension if she’s doing a lot of impact work and a few extension mes restore that range it takes away all the posterior knee pain that she has uh she’s more confident and basically she’s kind of back on on full training again so some stuff really really works um with that uh Rowan whereabouts do we find opportunities for British gymnastics home and abroad via email or will they show on the site so what I can do um I think it’s a woman called Karen Roberts I think she’s called but if you type in British gymnastics uh physiotherapy or Sports Therapy stuff it should come up um you have to log on to their system um and so once if you express interest that’s the first stage really with Karen uh and then basically what you’d have to do naturally is show all of your qualifications prove that you’ve got a pitchside course Etc um all of your bits and pieces that you’ve done uh and then obviously kind of what you’ll do is end up on a roster and then she just emails out to everybody on this roster and it’s basically just a first come first serve thing but as I say there’s tons of stuff uh only yesterday got an invite to about 11 or 12 different events um so I just picked up something across in Lily Shaw uh on a weekend that I wife and son are traveling abroad so it’s it’s dead easy it’s an extra bit of uh money good chance to meet people you never know who you’re going to meet I last time met some people working in the LTA obviously try to shoe on my way towards Wimbledon uh obviously that’s everyone’s favorite place to be but and it doesn’t always happen but there’s people working in lots of different worlds from dancing ballet uh ruges tennis Etc who you can meet on that that world really uh also are your thoughts on biomics course would it benefit phys work with football um I mean obviously kind of if you can start to pick up little changes in people make them more efficient or effective movers then then it has to be a good thing really um it’s not something that I’ve spent tons and tons of time on um but again this is kind of a we we were quite lucky that we had a rehab therapist who sort of sat between the snc and the physio world so they would normally look a little bit more at that um and even coaches are worth tapping into if they can pick up little things in the way that people are moving from there H Josh has asked which pitchside qualifications would you recommend really good question H I think it depends on which sport you’re going into so the one I’ve always done because it’s rugby and Judo and gymnastics is is where I’ve generally worked that has a high risk associated with it that will they always recommend the rfu course or the Rugby Football Union course and it’s called fisis Uh we’d have to do the level three um there is a level two that’s a little bit cheaper to do if you’re in football uh I can’t remember which way around it is it’s either between rugby league and football you either got imof or at myth uh which is one’s an fa run core so they will want you to have their specific course um and the other one in rugby league sort of thing is is more recognized really um question from Mark uh my background is football uh through EF aif uh but I’m looking to go back to my local Rugby Club how difficult would that be it’s not difficult at all so we um had someone working for Newcastle United Academy who then came back into H Newcastle Falcons main reasons being I think he was pretty bored he generally just saw hamstring strains and ankles uh hamstring tears and ankle sprains uh with a majority of things that he managed really whereas rugby you’ve got spinal problems neck problems concussions Upper Limb trauma lower limb trauma soft tissue things you got joint related problems and tons of rehab means you’re very busy and you but you will learn miles more for me in that World um about a variety of different injuries but again if you’ve got a special Niche area if you love hamstrings um then why not stick with football sort of thing but yeah it’s not not a tough thing um you’ll probably have an adjustment period where you really have to up skill in quite a lot of the things that you probably don’t get much of rugby generally manages for me things like concussion as the gold standard football there’s still some horror things going on where players are going back out on the pitch um clearly not uh right to go back onto the pitch so um I think you’ll find that there’s probably a a significant upskilling um that maybe you need to do but for me totally worth it I was always football as a player that tennis but for me that was a pretty dull world to uh to work in really so I went back into rugby just to see more and more injuries which bit of a weird way to to think in it that you want to to see people getting injured but it’s great for development really uh Mercy with the qualifications are there any specific type that we need if we want to work in Elite Sports yeah just just what I you don’t need them but I I would say they huge advantages to have taping some sort of sports massage thing um and maybe some sort of Hands-On thing acupunctur um for me I am acupuncture trained I use it very rarely but for some people it works really nicely so um again they’re just all strings to the bow really that you have uh just coming towards the last question here now so uh Benny hi Steve I’ve recently started working within a private healthc Care Clinic while I’m gathering some work experience at my current job I’m also interested at the potential chance of working abroad do you have any tips information and advice on how to go about this uh I get peppered with various roles abroad all the time um just probably from being on LinkedIn and things showing interest joining certain groups uh indeed the job application stuff will always have it um so yeah I think if you kind of are linked in with some of those little networks things will crop up really the only I haven’t looked into this for a long long time really but I remember thinking about going to Australia it was much easier to go to New Zealand and then transition across from there so yeah you’ll often have to do exams relevant to that country uh so Canada America uh will have their own ones Australia new zealands will have their own ones as well really but do a little bit of asking around um there’s tons of people who’ve done it so yeah reach out to some of these organizations really from there Grand folks I think that is basically a wrap that’s all the questions done I hope it’s been really useful if you do think of anything that you want to ask uh after this and you’re just like oh I wish I’d um asked him about that I’ll just put my email back up again so if anyone wants to uh have a little look these are my socials um that you can catch me on you can message me on Instagram or if you want to email email me my email is Steve grys academy.com so on that note guys thank you all so so much for tuning in um I hope it leads you down a a journey uh that hopefully kind of is a little bit more prosperous and uh helps you kind of almost be a bit more proactive in reaching out uh and looking to gain some of these qualifications the grow physio Academy is there for you if you want to upscale um and yeah look forward to hearing how get on let me know how you go if you’re applying for stuff or you’re just getting knocked back from things let me know by all means ping over you uh little things you’ve applied for see if there’s anything that I can cast an eye over um I’m more than happy to help guys so on that note good night God bless and hopefully catch you uh in one of the future sessions all the BL guys