Richard Graves (00:00.263)
the recording or Andy.

Andrew (00:02.534)
Andrew, if that's okay.

Richard Graves (00:03.717)
Andrew Fine, Dan, Daniel, Daniel.

Daniel Booth (00:06.904)
either also that's completely up to you.

Richard Graves (00:08.967)
Perfect. Fine. Okay.

Well, Dan, Andrew, welcome along to the podcast. Great to have you both back on and this time together as I've just surmised it in the introduction. We're looking and going to talk about non-contact injuries and how they come about and whether we can be doing more to help prevent them in professional football. for those of our listeners that perhaps haven't caught you on previous episodes, give us a brief resume and sum up your experience for us. We'll start with you first, Dan.

Daniel Booth (00:42.926)
Yeah, so I've worked in elite sport for over a decade Been at places like Watford, Football Club, Ealing Trail Finders and then I worked under Steve Fudge as his performance manager as well in 100m to 400m sprinting Most recently I was at Warner Brothers Productions as their head of performance and that was dealing with all their actors and all that good stuff and now I run my own company MyLab which is a performance and

sports medical consultation service.

Richard Graves (01:15.835)
And Andrew, for any of our listeners or viewers now watching this podcast on our YouTube channel, Science for Sport, can already see that your backdrop suggests you're in the gym. I suspect you've probably finished either working out or working with a client. So bring us up to speed with your experience as well.

Andrew (01:34.241)
Yeah, so this is where I work with football players privately, which means outside of the club. They're from ages of twelve up to first team.

Before that, I've interned at Leeds United as a S C coach. I've worked with Science for Sport, as you both know. I've worked with Catapult and I've also worked with the NHS as well, which was an SNC coach role. That was a brand new role a few years back. but for the past six years, I've been practicing completely private on my own here.

Richard Graves (02:07.485)
We know if we look back to the start of this season in the Premier League, there were some high profile non-contact related injuries early on thinking Dominic Sibozlai at Liverpool, Joe Rodon at Leeds, Brighton have had a handful of players as well suffer. There are traditional strength and conditioning programmes put in place, but everybody has their own individual requirements. And I suppose...

With a great scrutiny on professional footballers, great demands on their time and scrutiny of performances, the question now probably needs asking. Do traditional strength and conditioning programmes work or do they perhaps get implemented at the expense of what the individuals require? In your experiences, where would you sit on

Daniel Booth (02:57.326)
I'll let Andy go first with this one I think.

Andrew (02:59.224)
So I think a good place to start would be what we actually view club-based or team-based strength and condition as. So usually the process that will follow is club will sign player, and club is in charge of conducting the medical. They're in charge of the players' overall health and performance. they aim to cover all bases across the pitch and the gym. And

essentially fill that players, I like to call them loading buckets in terms of the things that they need to be doing, strength work, speed work, conditioning. and both parts are important. So the gym supports the the strength and the capacity that the players need to do what they're doing out on the pitch in training and in games. some of the issues that can arise are that there's a limited number of SNC coaches.

In not necessarily in the whole club, but with the team versus a squad. Premier League squad can have up to twenty-five players. And within that SNC department, you may have a head of performance who isn't necessarily involved in the direct contact with players on a day-to-day basis. And you might have a head SNC coach and an assistant SNC coach who are working with that whole squad.

So, you know, the club can assess players in depth and they can gather a lot of data. They can also group players on needs or positions, but to go a little deeper, you can see why there's there can be limitations there.

Richard Graves (04:33.037)
much of a concern Dan is there that occasionally we might fall into the trap of one one size fits all and we're trying to prepare everybody the same

Daniel Booth (04:41.806)
I mean, essentially that is exactly what happens to no fault of the club. You have, like Andy says, 25, 30 players that you have to try and accommodate. Each of those are an individual in themselves, each have individual requirements. No two bodies are the same. But unfortunately, a lot of the time, even at the Premier League level, in terms of the performance and medical side of things, clubs are severely underfunded. And, you know,

as Andy just said, you might have a head of performance, a lead S &C coach and an assistant head S &C coach. So that's three individuals a lot of the time too, because the head of the department very rarely wants to get involved in the day to day. know, two individuals to service 25 players seven days a week is pretty hard going, especially when, you know, those two individuals are probably also running all the GPS data. They're, you know,

They're not doing short days, put it that way, amongst all the traveling. it's, unfortunately, I think we're in a bit of a no man's land situation where, you know, the average FNC coach in an English football club is probably on about 30,000 pounds a year. And, you you're not working 40 hours a week, that's for sure. You're probably working double that.

So, you know, a lot of the time we aren't getting, and this is no disrespect to anybody that works in the industry, but we aren't getting the quality practitioners that we need. We're getting people that tick boxes and fill budgets.

Richard Graves (06:21.299)
You know Dan, I'm going to pick you up there, but you know that the casual listener will say, hang on a minute, you've just said that football clubs in this department are underfunded and yet football is a business. have, or seemingly have sports scientists, data analysis, a wealth of tech available to them. And, you know, we all hear of the money floating around at the top end in the premier league.

with transfer fees, wages, so on. If that is the case, and I don't know, where does attention need to be focused? Because there's clearly a problem and cause here. And if you consider that footballers are the crown jewels of your business plan, because they're the ones that go onto the pitch, score the goals, get the results, what have you.

then they need to be kept as healthy and fit as possible.

Daniel Booth (07:21.363)
do and unfortunately the way that the leagues are currently set up is that we credit those that have masters degrees and PhDs and those that you know are just very very good coaches get left by the wayside because everything is so data dominant now a lot of the time to their detriment because I am you know this offseason I had eight rehab cases across Premier League and Championship and

Each of those was a new injury or a re-injury and data from the club dictated or said that they were in the top 5 % for groin squeeze and all this other testing that they have. But the second they step on the pitch, they break down. So there is a huge disconnect between what the data is telling us and what's actually happening on the pitch. And unfortunately, those that aren't coaches first and foremost,

ignore what's happening on the pitch and they only focus on the data. Data nowadays is big business. There's new tech firms popping up every day of the week trying to get into elite sport and take advantage of that because they know it's so heavily reliant on it.

Richard Graves (08:32.851)
Are we not getting the context right then? Are people not interpreting the data that they're getting correctly?

Daniel Booth (08:37.299)
No, definitely not because most practitioners and I can put my hand on my heart and say this from experience. Most practitioners do not know more than six of the data points that GPS VESC actually give them. Period. It's, know, you have somebody like a stat sports, for instance, they can turn out 60, 70, 80, 90, a hundred different metrics.

most clubs are only using three to six because they're the ones that they actually understand. And when you speak to, you know, like for instance, the normative data that is used to set the baseline for every clubs on their GPS is plucked out of thin air. It's created by the companies themselves that have done the research. A lot of the time it's never been done on professional football players that then sets the normative data.

that then the entire league works from. And now that's changed over a period of time. And you you have got your sports scientists that dig deep and actually because they have a stack of data, they can then individualize their GPS to their squads, but not everybody is doing that. And the other thing that we see is that players are also heavily, heavily under loaded every day of the week in training. So that when they go out and play a match,

they've not even been working at 70 % of their match load. They get on the pitch, body start breaking down because they're not being exposed to what they need to be exposed to during the training week. And it's

Richard Graves (10:15.525)
Andrew, you smiled as Daniel was talking there. I suspect it's something you've come across yourself.

Andrew (10:22.73)
Yes. and I think on the opposite side of that working predominantly privately, I think something that we need to not do is spill those loading buckets over the ranges that the player should be in. but as Dan said, part of the issue is

That they're not reaching the range that they should do anyway, which is part of the issue in itself. Of course, when players come and work outside the club, what we do shouldn't conflict what they're doing at the club. It should complement it. But there can be disparity when what's being done at the club isn't covering some of the fundamental stuff anyway. The generic stuff, never mind the stuff that that individual needs as a completely different system and body to another player.

For me, my job is trying to find the gaps in what the individual needs and what they're not getting at the club and then fill in those areas. and to do that, you need to understand the player and their body on a deeper level. as Dan said, you need to understand like what you not just the data, not just the numbers, but what is the why behind the data. you know, if if a player has sore adductors and their squeeze test is low for the adductors or it's painful, then the typical the typical plan of action is let's well let's.

do some adductor exercises. But what if the adductors are weak or sore or in pain because they're taking on too much for another area of the body that's not doing its job properly? We could actually be giving it more of what it doesn't need and causing more fatigue and we're not getting to the root cause of the problem.

Which is which is what we aim to do. you know, clubs can throw exercises at a specific tissue, but it's it's the victim, it's not the issue itself. And I'm not saying that always happens at a club, and I'm not saying that never happens privately either. There's a certain standard of practice that's needed outside the clubs, but like previous injuries, strength of other region of the body, movement strategies, these are all things that are very specific to the individual, and these are the kind of things that that we need to look at.

Richard Graves (12:27.963)
If I come at it from a slightly different angle, how important is culture within football clubs in terms of encouraging players to take ownership of their own physical development? Because after all, in any walk of life, there's nobody that knows your own body better than you.

Andrew (12:43.992)
I'll I'll start. I think you know, club is more group-based. and it's it's a group of boys or girls together. It's it's a team and they're often socializing, they're often going through the motions. When they're at the club, they feel like they're going there to play football, to train, and they're wanting to get outside on the pitch. So, you know, and if you ever see any inside training type content on YouTube, you'll see the players are wanting to

kick the ball in the gym, you know, they're wanting to chat to the mates, play music, have a laugh and they're not really focused on the intent of the session or what they're supposed to be doing. That's if the session is designed appropriately for the group or for the players.

And w when they go private, it's their choice. It's it can be their team on their terms and it's it's for them and them only. So I think it can be easier for us to to get buying with the players, which is is it's a struggle for the the S and C coaches at the clubs and I do simplifies for them. it requires a different type of soft skills. but

Again, the the intent that the players have is really important. Like the way an exercise is loaded in terms of physically how much weight is used, or how the players move and their focus on the exercise, or even what we're focusing on within that exercise. Like if if we've got a player who's had a previous ankle injury and and we're doing

let's say some sort of single leg exercise is is the focus on let's say it's a Romanian deadlift is the focus on the hamstring or is the focus on how they're applying force through the foot and how they're stabilizing themselves because if we're looking at an ankle issue that completely changes the focal point of the exercise and the adaptation. so this this part of it's really important, but in the same sense, private work,

Andrew (14:37.642)
It needs clarity. So if if you're building a team outside of the club, you need your SNC coach, you need a physio. y you don't need

a physio, an S and C coach who thinks of a physio, and someone who gives you a massage and they're all giving you different and conflicting opinions. Someone needs to have one voice and and there needs to be clear clear roles that are defined and practitioners that are working on similar levels in terms of quality. So that's that's how I see it culture wise, but I'm sure Dan will have have more to add.

Richard Graves (15:08.915)
Well, I was just going to say as you're talking there, I recall the last time we had Dan on this show back in August last year. The reason we had you on, Dan, was because time Paul Hekenbottom was manager of Preston. He'd highlighted that one of his strikers, Daniel Jeberson, had been working privately with a strength and conditioning coach and didn't approve of it. So when I turn around to the pair of you and say, should individuals be encouraged to take ownership of their own developments,

There's a conflict here, isn't there, occasionally, between what the clubs might believe is best for a footballer and what the individual themselves might think.

Daniel Booth (15:46.625)
mean, for me, what we do at MyLab, we try and work and have tried to work as closely with the clubs as physically possible. And the way that we pitch it to a club when a player or an agent approaches us about working with a certain player is that we are an extension of your existing team. So, you know, myself, the people that work for me, we have a culture, you know, it's, it's, and everything we do is aligned with what each other, all the different segments that

each of us are trying to bring to the table. So we all under, we all sit under one philosophy and it's very easy to work with a company like that, especially in a club setting where you know exactly what you're getting, you know, the standard that you're getting and you know that everybody is at that standard and shares the same philosophy. Whereas if you have individual coaches, you know, you might have a player that's got two, three different physios, chiropractors, might have an S and C coach, you might have a chef.

and they're all singing off the same song sheet. Whereas what MyaLab does is we get everybody on the same sheet because they all sit under the one company and we all speak from one voice, which is me a lot of the time. So we work directly with them. And we have found that just on the culture piece that a lot of players, they see the gym as kind of a slacking area in a lot of clubs. They see it as a time to sort of...

you know, just go through the motions, have a chat with your mates, all that sort of stuff. But actually they get very much a culture shock when they come and train with us because of the way that we do things. And, you know, we've even had a couple of players that just for whatever reason haven't come on board with that culture aspect of it and that work rate. So what we've actually done is sent them to our part, some of our partners in the US and gone, let us show you.

how the rest of the world is doing it outside of football. And they come back and their minds are blown. And it completely changes their outlook moving forward for the future. You we had multiple players do that this off season. You know, we sent them to places like, you know, Texas State College. Some of the guys went to the Seattle Seahawks, you know, and they've come back and they've just gone, my God, we're doing it so wrong.

Daniel Booth (18:09.707)
And it's not until they step outside of those boundaries that they actually go, actually, perhaps the way that we're looking after our bodies isn't the best. And then that completely changed their mindset. unfortunately, what we find is once they then go back to the club, they are very much in that English football mindset of, you know, a lot of the coaches still don't believe that you really need the gym. It's just an add on. You know, for instance, if you get a Spanish coach, a lot of them still don't believe in lifting weights.

And it's, know, when I was up Watford, there was three managers we went through in my time there. it's, yeah, exactly, exactly. But it was, you know, they're all from different parts of the world. So it's all contradicting and the players never get any consistency. What we as a company deliver is that consistency. You can go anywhere in the world to play football. Your team is your team and that never changes.

Richard Graves (18:45.895)
Yeah, what for the well known for going through their managers, they're not sign changing.

Richard Graves (19:04.613)
Okay, and this is an important point because when you mention sending players over to the States and seeing how things are done differently over there, there's a different emphasis, different culture. For those that are familiar with the NFL, they'll know the scouting combine ahead of the draft. A lot of players are assessed on their ability to compete and perform drills that are designed to measure explosion, power, speed, agility, which is of course very different to the way

football over here in Europe operates. In this instance then, and either of you can take this first, if you have a player that comes to you specifically wanting to become more explosive, develop more power in the way that they perform, and all the while we're conscious of avoiding soft tissue injuries, talk us through how you'd assess their needs, their physical requirements, and develop an individual program around

Andrew (20:04.798)
I think I'll go first. I think on on a club level, back to what we were speaking about at the start of the podcast, in regards to how the the physical preparation is conducted at the club. They will test players, they'll put them on force plates to look at their strength and their power in in different tests. and

Their program should cover lots of different aspects. They'll jump with weight, hopefully, without weight. They'll lift some decent weight. Although Dan did share a some work recently of

a club that were lifting weights, professional club, versus a female American college and s the men on the professional level in football were lifting on two legs, what the the females in an American college are doing on one leg. So you and it just yeah, you you can see it it opens eyes. but essentially the the club are looking to to cover everything that needs to be covered. Hopefully that would be the case.

Richard Graves (21:05.533)
That opens eyes, doesn't it?

Andrew (21:18.06)
When a player comes outside of the club, we might ask the question, what is it you want to work on? And we will put that together with, based off our assessments, what we think they should be working on. So if a player was to come to me and say, I want to work on my power, okay, why?

I feel like my acceleration lacks power. Okay, so you want to work on your acceleration. Yes. Okay. So that already takes us in a different direction of what they originally said. and with that, we can start to zoom out and look in more detail and spend more time with that player to say, is it power? We can assess that. again, we'll do jumps that that the club do, we'll do tests that the club do, but we can look at different metrics and have a deeper look at.

what we think it is a need to improve, if it is that. The clubs usually will pick a few key metrics to look at. And that's more usually on a monitoring side, looking at something like fatigue on a week-to-week basis or even within week basis. Whereas again, even as private practitioners, we don't want to overload ourselves with metrics. We want to focus on a few important ones that we think are valuable. But we can look at those and see is it, is it the the impulse that you can apply

upwards in the jump that's lacking. is it the amount of force you can produce on the way down, moving down before you go to jump up? Is it how quickly you can produce that force on the way down or the way up? is it sequencing those two things together? And and we can start to work on that more individually. It might not be that we might we might go and have a look at their acceleration on the pitch and we might say, not not how quick can you do it? Not what is your

top speed that you attain from zero to twenty, or or how quick is your zero to twenty time. We look at how are you getting from A to B and is there anything that needs changing in your technique to make your acceleration safer or or make it more effective?

Andrew (23:21.058)
You know, what part of the technique is it that needs working on? Because you can have generic models of you need to project more and and you need to push more or you need to switch quicker. But how does that individual actually move and what the day what does that individual need more or less of? Because everyone moves in a different way. And sometimes you need to balance things out. Some people are already really good at using the ground and pushing and driving, but they can be a little bit slow to actually switch their legs. Some players,

Just can't hold themselves in the correct posture. Some players over push. going back to what Dan said, is it even more basic? Is there even strength standards that those players don't hit that can support the power side and the acceleration side? So zooming out on just one aspect of power or acceleration, that's that's how I might look at it.

Richard Graves (24:12.305)
Let throw a curveball in down before I you in. Given everything Andrew's just said there about how he'd approach that scenario, if that individual comes to you and they happen to have a history of soft tissue injuries, let's say hamstring trouble for example, how would your approach differ?

Daniel Booth (24:30.73)
So with the way that we work, everybody gets an initial assessment. We will always request the data from the clubs. We'll look at that data. If not, we'll do the test ourselves just so you have those baselines. We then assess the player in front of us. So we walk them through a series of movement assessments. Very, very simple overhead squat, single leg squat, you know.

moving laterally through space, all that kind of stuff. And then for instance, if it's a speed or power development type thing and they've got a history of hamstring injuries, we'll get them to do a couple of accelerations and we assess those on the spot. So something that I've been very lucky with is my education from Steve Fudge, who's arguably one of the best sprint coaches in the world. The way that he taught me to assess

movement through space is quite unique and you don't need data at all really. But for me, somebody that's coming with repetitive hamstring strange, you instantly want to look at their gait and how they're running because we found specifically in football that most players don't know how to accelerate properly. They also don't know how to control their bodies at top end speed if they ever achieve it.

So it's looking at that, it's looking at stride length. You know, when I was, well, working in football and rugby, I had a couple of players that had recurring hamstring injuries. I'm actually going to be dealing with a club up north in rugby league when the new season kicks off, you know, recurring hamstring strains. And nine times out of 10, if I'm being honest, it's just because they're over-striding.

and they don't know how to counteract that. You know, for instance, there was a female first team Chelsea player. She had recurrent hamstring strains for the best part of 18 months. Nobody could figure it out. They did all the tests, everything. I went, yep, no worries. We're gonna go out on the pitch. Do need anything? No, no, no, I'll just take my phone with me, thanks. Within 15 minutes, we'd solved that she overstrides with every step.

Daniel Booth (26:56.074)
She leans back in her her accelerations and that was causing too much stress on the upward chain With every step that she was taking so we shift

Richard Graves (27:06.557)
Do need to educate both the medical teams and the players at football clubs then? Is that what we're lacking here?

Daniel Booth (27:11.71)
Yes, yes, yes, yes. We have have physios that hold themselves in such high regard that they put they actually believe that they're medically trained doctors a lot of the time. I am big on the sort of the the physical therapist set up that the states have the Salford University, especially is doing a really good job of with their course and it's delivering well rounded practitioners that

have exposure to strength and conditioning, soft tissue, MSK physio work, you know, they're looking at, you know,

chiropractic techniques and all this kind of stuff. it's the students coming out of there are more rounded in their approach to dealing with rehab and injuries than anybody who's just gone in a singular direction. You know, for me, I look at the body the way that I do because of all the different exposures that I've had. You know, if I was an out and out S and C coach and it's like, no, no, you just need to

lift heavy as possible and you know five times body weight and all this sort of nonsense you know I'd never I'd never achieve what I have done but it's we need serious education the standard for the UK in terms of medical and performance practitioners is far too low you know it's it's we have the UK SCA I'll say no more on that we have the UK SCA

I don't have my UKSCA. I will never have my UKSCA. I do have the American equivalent, which when I worked in football, I told that I had to downgrade from that standard to the British standard to tick their boxes. Safe to say you both know me quite well. I refuse. But it's it's you know, we have the lowest standard of entry to working in this space.

Daniel Booth (29:17.49)
in the world or in the Western world, I should say. it's hugely concerning.

Richard Graves (29:20.945)
Which is concerning in itself, isn't it? I'm conscious that time is fast catching up with us. So in closing, if I could give both of you an opportunity for the professionals listening or watching with us on YouTube, one piece of advice from your wealth of experience you could offer in this field when we're trying to keep players fit and available for selection on the pitch in their team programmes, individual programmes.

What would that be? And Andrew, you can fire away first.

Andrew (29:56.92)
question.

Focus at the club, being temptful. If you're not doing something with purpose, you're just you're wasting energy and time. ask questions of the coaches of the club, challenge, seek to understand why you're doing things. and take care of your body. If you believe you need a team beyond the team,

Seek one, build one, but do it under a informed guide. Again, like what Dan does with my OLAB having himself positioned around other practitioners and there's a clear, clear team involved.

Daniel Booth (30:44.819)
me it would be teach your athletes to lead the process. They shouldn't be a passenger in their own career. They shouldn't have people around them telling them what they need to be doing and what they shouldn't be doing. As we've said before these are individuals, they're the human equivalent of race horses. You know they know their body better than anybody. So if you're a Lamborghini owner, if you're lucky enough to be

You know, you don't just jump in the thing, start the engine and put your foot down and hope for the best because it will only end one way. Professional athletes are exactly the same thing. They need to be warming up. They need to be taking their time. They need to be getting their body right. And it's all the little extra things that they do that will get them in the best position to perform. But the only way to get there is to ensure that they are educated enough so that they can lead the process. And we, as our job, is only as advisors.

Steve always used say to me, you can only take somebody to the top of the path. You can't walk them down it. And that's exactly what our job is. So get your player educated enough that they can lead the process. And then you as a practitioner, do your very best to look outside of your box. Whatever your biases are, look beyond those, far, far beyond them. You know, if you work in football, start focusing on what tennis, tennis coaches are doing. Focus on what baseball is doing.

focus on what ice skating and ballet is doing because some of the stuff that they're doing is incredible and it actually translates really, really well to football. So just look outside those boundaries that you've set yourself because, you know, sitting in that, you're not going to achieve anything.

Richard Graves (32:24.947)
education, collaboration, focus and finally awareness seems to be four key words that would arise from this conversation. Listen, Andrew Hyde, Daniel Booth, this has been a conversation that has certainly given me plenty of food for thought and hopefully for our listeners as well, gives them slightly different perspectives to come what are recurring themes when it comes to professional football. I really appreciate your time and look forward to having you both on again in the future.

Andrew (32:52.258)
Thank you.

Daniel Booth (32:52.425)
Thanks very much.