“It’s amazing you haven’t had any stress fractures yet," was the comment a bowling coach once said to me during a warmup for a three-day game back in the summer of 2016. These very words continue to still circle my mind almost nine years later. Little did I know at the time that that exact day was going to be the day that would change the trajectory of my life for what I now believe to be for the better. On that very day I did suffer my first stress fracture in my spine playing yet another ordinary game of cricket, and it continues to be one hell of a journey of self exploration.
Growing up, sport had always been a focal point in my life, with some of my very first memories getting a pair of batting pads when I was six for Christmas, learning field hockey as a nine year old and throwing myself at pretty much all sports that came my way, from swimming, tennis, rugby, and anything that predominantly involved a ball. However, I think it is also fair to say that no individual simply falls into playing and develops such a passion for playing sport. Usually, and it was no different in my case, an instrumental figure cultivates this innate love of sport and draws this out further. My father was and continues to be without a shadow of a doubt that influential figure in my life who allowed me to develop the necessary skills both mentally and physically to thrive in sport. He instilled in me the meaning of competitiveness, which he achieved by quite literally never allowing me to win at anything! Whether it was a “casual” game of pool, table tennis, chess, how many lengths you could swim under water, or throwing balls at me in the nets, it did not matter. He made it very hard for me to succeed or win, and this lesson I am incredibly grateful for. Not only did this force me to find solutions very quickly, but made the taste of success that bit sweeter. This edge of competitiveness rubbed off on me in a big way during my formative years and is something that I have carried with me into all aspects of my life.
Up until that day in the summer of 2016, there was not a single second of playing sports that I did not absolutely love. Sport was my happy place. I was always quite a shy and quiet child during my school days, and this was no different on the sports field. However, having a bat, ball, or stick in my hand allowed me to express myself in a way that I enjoyed. Everything that sport encompassed I loved. I loved the team aspect, the skills you developed, which carried over into every aspect of life outside of sport, being outside, and ultimately getting really, really good at something you loved. Moving into my mid-teens, cricket started to become the forefront of my sporting passions, and I found myself putting more and more time into practising come rain or shine. Fortunately, as I climbed through the levels in cricket, I was lucky enough to play alongside some individuals, who even then possessed talent that was nothing short of mesmerising. This really opened by eyes, and I would often find myself asking questions such as, what differentiates those at the absolute peak of their game from those who are not? What enabled them to make the game look so easy? What characteristics or qualities—physical, neurological, or psychological—did the individuals who succeeded more often possess? These very questions form the foundational basis of my questioning within the industry that I continually reflect upon in my exploration of understanding the human body.
My initial stress fracture acted as a catalyst introducing me to the world of the gym, and I quickly (rather foolishly but unknowingly), among others, placed a huge importance on this facet of the game. It was obvious to me that being the best in the gym equalled being the best on the field, and more importantly, in my mind, completely bulletproof to any further injury. However, this was not to be the case. No matter how much stronger I got in the gym in the subsequent years that followed, injuries still continued to come my way, and I began to feel my fluid, well-coordinated movement begin to dimish, and this has been the story up until this present day. This rather one-dimensional outlook on sport performance ultimately led me to the thinking that there must be more to achieving peak sports performance than simply getting stronger in the gym, but what exactly? At this stage of my journey, I began to film everything I did in the gym and hone in on the details. From the exact placement of bones and the anatomy responsible for moving specific bones. I felt that maybe my recurrent injuries and pain up until this point were down to not how much I lifted or how fast I lifted something, but the coordination of my movements, more simply how I moved.
A couple years later, my childhood best friend came to me for help in the gym, asking if I could pass on my acquired knowledge (extremely limited at the time!) and a year later I started HMF. By that time I had begun my undergraduate degree at Cardiff University in Human Geography in 2019, yes, a rather strange choice for someone whose entire life revolved around sport, but we won’t dive into that! During my undergraduate degree, I completed my Level 2 Gym Instructor qualification and a load of other certifications from individuals at that time I respected to further develop my knowledge. I found that the more I learnt, the more I wanted to learn and more questions it posed.
Unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, my injury woes continued as I fought to get back to the sport I love. With this reduction in time playing and practising sport due to the pain I was finding myself in, my determination and drive to seek the answers grew exponentially. Along this journey of self exploration I have been lucky enough to meet and converse with some remarkable individuals within the field, further opening my eyes to the possibilities of the human body and what we are capable of, and it is these experiences that have been truly invaluable to me not only personally but as a coach too in what I can offer other individuals. And as of September 2024, I have embarked on an MSc in Strength and Conditioning at St Mary’s Twickenham.
Despite that seed that was sown back during my mid-teens, the qualifications, certifications, books, and my current studies, I still find myself at the surface of what is to be uncovered and ultimately what I want to uncover. In a relatively new and emerging industry, I want to find answers to the questions I have but also to the questions that are presented to me as time goes on. So, I want to use this blog as a sort of personal dumping ground to collate my thoughts and opinions of my findings. But appreciate, this is very much just the beginning of making sense of this new, emerging world and what’s to come.
