As part of my academic role it is not only an obligation to contribute to research outputs, it is very much a keen interest of mine to remain fully immersed in developments in research within my area of expertise as well as enhancing my evidenced-based practice. I am very fortunate to have a balanced academic-industry role where I regularly aim to inform students, colleagues, industry practitioners and athletes with whom I work with around best practice. My personal and professional intention is to extend boundaries to accessible literature in the areas of applied sport science and particularly physiology, which will, in turn direct and encourage innovative methods for the purpose of enhancing elite human performance in professional football.

“In association with Liverpool John Moores University and Blackburn Rovers FC Academy, I’m proud to be working with some of the industry leading practitioners in the world of elite football, sport science, biomechanics and neuromuscular physiology’’

With this in mind, my current area of research revolves around measuring adaptation to training programmes with elite youth academy footballers over a longitudinal period. Taking into account the demands with youth development academy football and stages of maturation there remains a need for greater research to inform practitioners around key windows of trainability. Current research has measured acute responses to training, with reluctance to monitor athletes over multiple seasons, which would naturally inform research more. Furthermore, greater accuracy and reliability of screening tools and physiological test measures is required in order to provide essential feedback to practitioners throughout periods of training to determine correlation with adaptation or fatigue. While there is a large emphasis on measuring adaptation in line with performance outcomes, there remains an attraction in my research for clinicial and medical practitioners given frequency of lower limb muscle injuries. Monitoring changes in various tissue types and testing against performance competencies can give indications around improvements and potential vulnerability to increases in work load. Essentially, providing a good assessment of current training status. In collaboration with industry experts and academic colleagues I am very much looking forward to the journey throughout this area of research on my PhD.