From The Vault: What Makes Sport Scientists Employable?

Professor Sam Robertson joined James Grigson to discuss the current state of sports science and analytics in elite sport.

In this interview, Professor Sam Robertson joined James Grigson to discuss the current state of sports science, sports analytics, and what will make individuals employable in these roles in the future.

Throughout the talk they discuss Sam’s journey from strength and conditioning to sports analytics, and his thoughts on solving new problems, create change in an elite sport environment, the future of sport scientists and some words of advice for anyone looking to switch their focus within the industry, or starting out in sport science.

Here’s a summary of some of the discussion points from the interview:

1. What drove you towards going down the data analytics route?  [00:09:58]

My frustrations grew around what we weren’t spending our time on in sport science. Where the opportunities (and missed opportunities) were, the level of dogma that was just expected and the level of current practice that wasn’t questioned. The application of analytics is one part of that overall view I have on sport.

2. How do you see the entrepreneurial mindset assisting in that space (furthering the impact of data analytics to improve processes in elite sport)?  [00:11:37]

The fact is there’s not enough objective questioning going on about the way we run sport; from a high performance perspective or from the way we structure competition.

When I talk about entrepreneurial mindset, I probably mean people that will disrupt things in an objective manner…. People that can go and disrupt, and then provide some logical, feasible, implementable solutions are far more valuable, but also far more rare.

3. What’s an example of a focus in sport science that there doesn't necessarily need to be (or vice-vera) which you saw back at the start of your journey, and still hasn’t been addressed today?  [00:14:40]

Fundamentally I boil it back down to the way that we're training our undergraduate students…. Our need and willingness to develop skill sets in all of the sports science disciplines (which are quite broad lets face it) in our graduates, I feel like we're not embedding other hard scientific skills into their skillset. So these are things like understanding how to read research and interpret it, and also understand its limitations. Basic concepts of measurement like for validity and reliability, understanding what a meaningful difference is. As a whole, I don’t think graduates are coming out with those skillsets well developed.

If we look at the way that professional sports are operating, and the people that are in management roles that came through 10-20 years ago, it shouldn't be surprising to us that they make decisions that aren’t evidence-based if they aren’t trained well enough in that area.

We have all these different people with skillsets in physiotherapy, or sports science, or coaching, that a large part of their job is actually decision making. The reality is you go through all those courses, and there's no element of decision making in their training whatsoever. Some aren’t really exposed to that at any stage. This is a fundamental problem when most of these jobs have large amounts of data to deal with, and really important decisions to make on the fitness and health of athletes, on whether you're going to terminate an athletes contract or not, or how you’re going to design a training session. This is basically what high performance sport is, and we don’t have good training in how to make these decisions.

4. How do you suggest that people go about trying to create change in their environment? How can people articulate a new change, or a new idea to their wider audience and gain attention when the rest of their team may not necessarily be critical thinkers?  [00:21 :55]

It’s relationships, and that’s the soft part of this. As you get to know people in your work environment you know what makes them tick more, and I think we can't escape that. It'd be nice to say we could go in with a magic visualisation and show them how we're going to change the world, but it's relationships, and if you don't have that relationship you may not even get a meeting, let alone an opportunity to show a visualisation about something.

Having an understanding about the importance of what you're actually trying to change. That sounds very very basic, and very very obvious, but it's a criticism that's been leveraged in sports science disciplines in the past; that the bang for the buck may not be there…. Having the perspective that you're very confident in what you're proposing is going to make it a meaningful improvement to the athlete or the team that you're working with. You don't always know that, but I think you’ve got to have some idea of that before you go in.

5. How important do you think self promoting yourself in the right way is? Can you take take me through your your psyche when you are going about self promotion?  [00:26:37]

I think you need to be consistent in what you're saying. I think there's an element of expected from people out there that you need to be quite consistent and regular in your messaging. I think that's definitely true for some individuals, but for me I'd rather only speak when there's something really meaningful to say.

6. Any words of advice for anyone looking to switch their focus within the industry or somebody who is just starting out in sport science?  [00:29:53]

You have to be a generalist to an extent…. Being versatile and able to adapt to different situations. As an example, when I talk about a strength coach who’s wanting to be the best strength coach in the world, do I think they should go and become also a great physiologist. No. But I think they should know their way around technology, I think they should become better communicators as a coach, I think they should have an ability to show perspective about where the gains they make in an athlete sit in the overall performance development of that athlete.

It may be extremely cliche, but they need to have a good work ethic…. I see a lot of students, and I see a lot of young people coming through, some of them are in research that I've worked with, PhD students, masters students, cadets and work placement students, and the commonality with the ones that are going to have success in the short and long term is that they work! I’m not saying going out there and doing 80 hours weeks (or 60 hour weeks), because I subscribe to that being a good model for sport going forward…. But, you need to put the work in to develop yourself and show your value. A lot of people who are very talented haven’t done that in the past.