Tom Green is the Head of Athletic Development at St Peters RC High School and holds an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in Strength and Conditioning (S&C) as well as being a qualified teacher. Outside of his role at the school, Tom works with the UKSCA to support the delivery of S&C within schools and for Catapult as the Youth Research Reviewer for Science for Sport. Tom has an extensive background in delivering quality S&C with over ten years of practice at elite, University and school levels.
In this episode Tom discusses:
- His role at St Peters RC High School.
- Some of the limitations in his role at the School.
- How he influenced the delivery of PE/Sport at the School.
- Why he decided to undertake teacher training.
- How teacher training opened his eyes to some weaknesses in his coaching.
- What he believes S&C Coaches can learn from teachers.
You can listen to the episode in full here.
You can follow Tom’s work via his Twitter account: @ThomasGreen1 .
Join us in Edinburgh, Scotland for the LTAD Workshop on February 25th & 26th, where Rob Anderson and Jared Deacon will be covering all things adolescent training including the development of strength, power, speed and agility. Get your tickets now here:https://bookwhen.com/ltadnetwork/e/ev-sbt0-20230225000000
To learn more about the LTAD Network check out www.ltadnetwork.com or follow on Instagram: @ltadnetwork or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ltadnetwork .
You can keep up to date with Athletic Evolution via our www.athleticevolution.co.uk , Instagram: @athleticevouk and Twitter: @athleticevouk .
Rob Anderson
Tom, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to finally get you on.
Tom Green
Yeah, thank you so much. I’ve been a massive fan of of everyone you’ve had on before as well. So I’m really grateful for this and looking forward to it.
Rob Anderson
Great. So before we dive into the role some Peters and what you’ve been doing there, give us a bit of a an experience take us back when you were a youngster growing up, what were the sports that captured your imagination? What did physical activity look like for you? Yeah, so
Tom Green
I, I played everything as a kid. I just love being outdoors. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t just sport. I love you know, football, rugby cricket. Being in the UK, that was something that I think I just subconsciously picked up on. But I love being outdoors, just just playing my friends tag we call it kind of tracking here, which is like big tag kind of had all of those little fun games and just love being outside and playing really. And school was great for me, scores fantastic because it allowed me to, you know, pick up and do things that I hadn’t had access to before, you know trampolining, and hockey and all those other things that filled gaps that were in my, in my kind of repertoire as an athlete, and then I left school with, with played at a semi decent level, so just kind of district and stuff and like county representation and stuff like that in football. And then when I got to university, I figured rugby wasn’t the sport for me, I went to a really big rugby University, and I wasn’t as into it as the other guys. And I certainly wasn’t blessed in terms of natural size. So that would have been interesting. But I suppose yeah, going back to, to school, kind of I left school with quite low aspiration academically, and a strong sense of kind of how teachers made me feel and I think that plays quite nicely now into to my role in a school and how I how I practice and how I try and make every student feel valued.
Rob Anderson
So what was the unit you went through? And was it sports science or strength conditioning or something completely different
Tom Green
that you studied? Yeah, so I, I went to undergrad at the University of Western England. In funding I left I went into a degree in sports coaching. So from school went to college instead of the BTech I studied level three to diploma in performance and personal training. And this was just fell into this because of a love of sport like primarily was it was told that I wasn’t very good at things in school. So just kind of find my way into a sport career. wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. But I matured immensely in that time and just really engaged with the content and enjoyed it and had a real passion. So I enrolled in on an undergraduate in sports coaching and then I think around that six to seven month mark, I kind of figured this wasn’t for me in terms of the coaching side of things. Don’t get me wrong, it was amazing to accumulate all of those hours working as a sports coach, you know, for for clubs and stuff. And I think before I before I enrolled in the undergraduate, I secured a lot of hands on coaching experience, which, which was immensely beneficial to me as an SSC coach, but I just did a module on I think it was it was kind of like periodization and I figured them I love the nerdy side of things like I love supporting the athlete. I knew I wasn’t ever going to be one myself. So I thought hey, this this is a this is a way into that environment. Which which you know, was fantastic for me. So yeah, university came out of there with with a good classification and then I was awarded a academic scholarship to study my masters there too and had fantastic mentors in Ben Drori and James McCarran from an s&c perspective. And then later on within my career there kind of met Thomas leg who was who was a coton was was a coach but for me, it was just someone who really questioned s&c which I loved he queried it he questioned everything about it and I think for me as a as a young practitioner, then that was nice nice to have. And then through through internships, you know, blessed to work with Kevin Mannion, who was a fantastic coach amazing with people and I love being in his in his environment and seeing how he engaged in secured by him. I know exactly and James Baker as well were really influential for me in my kind of foundation years as a as a young coach. So I was lucky to have some really top practitioners around me
Rob Anderson
mentioning James takes us on nicely, because obviously he was the original kind of, I guess, you know, founder of the kind of s&c supports and Peters wasn’t me. How was the programme? I mean, obviously, we’re talking good 510 years ago now, but he would have been there. How has had things evolved? I know there’s been a predecessor before you. Yeah. Anyway, James. So what does the programme look like today in terms of what your role is like?
Tom Green
Yeah. So in between me and James was, was a coach called we’ll pan out who was, you know, fantastic. He’s asked more now. So he’s doing an amazing job there. He was only in the role for eight months. So I had to, I had to play quite an interesting role quickly on as because of the turnover within that position. I think I adopted a little bit of not resentment, that kind of I came in, and I think I had to secure trust and buy in quite quickly. James had the amazing groundwork to create the programme with the head of department, Stuart Crabb, who. It’s just incredible, like, I feel, I feel so blessed to have the job that I do, I coach six to seven hours, you know, every day, purely s&c and and those children will leave a geography lesson and come and have an hour in a strength and conditioning environment. So really complex role, you know, within a day on a cleaner, engineer, Counsellor, kit, man, peacemaker, all of those things, and I think scores are sometimes the truest form of sink or swim as a coach. Because nothing prepares you for the challenges you face. Coupled with the demands of exams and fixtures and all of those things that come with the roll. It’s a really great test of perseverance and resilience, because kids like to pick gaps in your practice.
Rob Anderson
Yeah, I think it’s, you know, just reflecting what you said there. I think a school is probably one of the perfect kind of places to get a holistic view of what’s going on in ethics life, isn’t it when you’re in an academy, you might not see the academic side of things or, you know, you but when you’re in that environment, you can see the social elements of them at school, you know, being obviously a member of staff you’d be involved with safeguarding etc, as well as a much bigger picture, then, perhaps in SSC, coaching a normal kind of organisation or professional Academy a club would? How has that kind of changed your approach? Or do you think has made you more holistic as an s&c coach as well?
Tom Green
Yeah, 100% Like I said, this refers kind of back to the coaching side of things where I didn’t have a strictly love to be a football coach, or a rugby coach, or, or anything, I felt a strong sense that relationships and buying were really important to me, and I’m reflecting them back on my my kind of origin of how I started in sports career, I remember feeling from teachers and coaches, you know, I’ve run through a wall for a teacher who took time to build a relationship with me and understand me as a person. Same with a coach. But I also was on the other end of things where I was dismissed and made to feel quite small in terms of academically. So I think in my practice, I’m naturally quite reflective and mindful of how, how I how I interact with the children. And I’ve had internships, you know, with West Brom, and Gloucester rugby club as just two examples, and working with the heartbeat as well with the first team. I see it from the other side as well, everyone’s kind of trying to juggle and spin their plates of what’s important. And at the end of that package is just a 1212 to 18 year old who is learning to navigate the challenges of life being an adolescent, or going through that maturation stage. And I’m really actually quite empathetic to how hard it can be being an athlete of a high level. And so always trying to make them feel first and foremost valued. And I know that I am approachable and there for them if needed.
Rob Anderson
So give us a bit of a bird’s eye view of the programme. How many athletes do you see? Is it just a gifted and talented or is there kind of a whole school element? What sort of sport etc.
Tom Green
Yeah, sure. So I work primarily at the moment 205 athletes that are across the school, so roughly about 15%. And I think the biggest thing for me moving into the role, like I said earlier through, you know, banks have done an amazing job of, of the programme being in the curriculum, so I had a complete blank canvas to come to and to adopt. I wasn’t sure really, what will it then like we’d had Congress sessions but nothing more than an hour. So I, I knew roughly what I wanted the programme to look like but very much spent the first couple of months just try not to rock the boat, trying to understand what had been done. And also ask the children as well what had been done to get understanding from them. And what I you know, what I envisaged the kind of after, after about three months, I made a five year plan of what I wanted the programme to look like. And I, so far I’ve been really strict with it. And I’ve ticked off everything that I was working towards. But within the curriculum we have, you know, I have free lessons with students at Key Stage free over a two week process. So that’s years seven to nine. And then after that I have five lessons over two weeks. So as you can imagine, some of these children are performing at quite a high standard, some of them get de released and they’re at, you know, Aston Villa Academy, or they’re NGB athletes and working and juggling kind of the priorities of that club as well. And the programme encompasses everything from kind of strength, power training, mobility, recovery, speed changing direction, I think aspects of it that I’ve really put in is kind of that breast recovery. A lot more, there’s a lot of a freerunning element to it, I think the nutrition side of thing, things become really important to me. And just empowering empowering students to make better decisions I think the you know, wherever they go on to represent you know, the country or play a really high level, or whatever it is just giving an individual the confidence to go into the gym and hit the weight, the weight section, you know, and, and not neglect the lower body either. Like, that’s that for me is like a fantastic accolade. And I started I started in a position I remember now four years ago thinking how important I was, I remember thinking like, this is really important. I’m I’m an important cog in the wheel, not not me, but s&c, you know, as an industry. And actually, as long as they leave me with a sound understanding of, of why exercises should roughly be going into a programme, how do they help them athletically and from a health standpoint, and that the next coach can pick them up and, and they are competent movers, from both a strength and a change of direction, agility, speed perspective. I think I’ve done a great job. And I think I’ve probably changed over the years as well might how I perceived my role. And it’s important.
Rob Anderson
I think you’ve touched on a really important point there that I think is worth highlighting to the audience. Because it’s something I’ve experienced as well like to come in and spend a good period of time observing, I was very fortunate in the way a situation happened for me that I did the same thing. So I got appointed to a new region. But in two weeks time, I had to go wherever the junior national team for a couple of weeks, so I couldn’t really implement anything. So it forced me to do exactly what I should do, which is just go and speak to everyone and get the lay of the land much like you did for that three months and get a good picture of okay, what is this really like? What’s what’s the real challenges? What’s the real barriers, etc. So give us a bit of an insight. What What were some of the milestones that you set up in that five year plan? And then what were some of the barriers that you had to overcome in getting those completed?
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. So I kind of one I could sense I could feel it it wasn’t it wasn’t said I could just like I said, feel that as a result of staff turnover, that there wasn’t yet warmth towards me, I think, like, and that’s I want to say this through no fault or will either by the way, like like but I think I think I just came into the role and I had to secure their trust and rightfully or wrongfully like I felt that and I think that was important for me to set that story up from the start. A big part of why I work with with within a youth capacity is I completely see our roles as the opposite. I don’t think they should be seen as stepping stones to to senior roles with adults. By all means, I think if you coach children, you can go on and be a fantastic coach in within, you know, the senior setups, but actually, I think it’s a skill. I think I take real pride in what I do and the time that I spend in developing and honing my craft over time. So I believe in s&c So just working with those 250 students wasn’t wasn’t really good enough for me. I wanted I wanted to impact the whole school 1700 kids that I think should and could receive elements of what what I had to bring. But again, being sensitive to the fact that I wasn’t You and I didn’t need to, you know, rock the boat too much. So in the second year, I, I kind of put together a proposal for all staff to adopt a warmup that moved through a mobility, a strength and conditioning circuits. And now all of the children, first 20 minutes of every PE lesson is a focus on, you know, really kind of looking at ankle kind of hip for Asik mobility just to target some of the issues that come with sitting in a desk sitting at a desk all day for children, and excessive hours, you know, gaming on or whatever they do. And after school, it’s usually not stretching or playing or moving around. So that was big for me. And I wasn’t, wasn’t too, you know, that wasn’t, that wasn’t hard, I think it just was a good sale, like, I was lucky that I had a department that were forward thinking and willing to give things a try. That fell off the back of COVID as well, a little bit. So those two factors coincide. And for me, whilst it was an awful time to be working in school with kids, it gave us time to reflect and actually, every child now gets that warm up. And it’s, it’s something I’m really proud of, because I can just sit there and watch it and it looks a bit drilled and it looks a little bit of everyone’s doing the same thing. But actually, the teachers are fantastic at delivering that. And I’ve learned, you know, I give, I give us an exercise or some form of mobility pass into a teacher with 1015 20 years of experience, and I’m humbled every day that how how good they are at layering at that skill and teaching that movement. And it’s something that, you know, I’m fortunate to be able to do every day. And then the smaller things is, is I think my one of my biggest challenges actually is a budget, I don’t have a budget, like the budget is memberships that we sell to the children, they’re really cheap, it’s like 40 pounds for the whole year, and they can use the gym and that got gets put back into the gym. There is no profit. Sometimes that is the paint on the walls, you know, it’s that kind of, we’re funding that level. So it’s a, it’s, it’s a great gym, it’s got everything I need in there, and we’re producing some amazing results as a school as well on both for local and COVID and national stage. But that’s a that’s a challenge for me, I think is the financial side of things, which, again, as a as an s&c, coach, we’re not always faced with in those kind of professional roles, if you like.
Rob Anderson
Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think, you know, anyone who’s working in a school environment, you know, certainly government school environment will probably relate to, to what you said there in terms of the budgetary constraints. And I mean, even those, you know, I mean, your expenses. So do your budget a bit, Danny. So when you even when you’ve got a decent budget, you want the next bit of tech that’s going to Yeah, definitely, yeah, the extra 1%. And I understand as well, that you’ve you’ve completed your teacher training. So it took us through that experience, what was that a mandatory part of your role? Or was it something additional, you personally wanted to get added to your qualifications?
Tom Green
Yeah, so I speak about it really candidly, because it’s, it’s important, I think, as an industry, we understand that so I was paid as an unqualified teacher, which, you know, for starting salary was incredible, like, it was no, no kind of issues with that. But I think two years into the role, I had reached the top of my, my kind of band of pay. And whilst I, I didn’t voice a concern about that I knew I was delivering, you know, I was doing a really good job. I was influencing the wider school kind of ethos, and I put a put behaviour tracking into the, into the athletic system. So similar to kind of like a total score of athleticism, I actually put a behaviour component into it too, because we were having issues where children were really talented, but were struggling within an academy system, or were leaving home at 16 and just couldn’t manage themselves. And so I quickly noticed that that was something away for me politically to get the whole school on side and equally for me to get the room to where I wanted it to be and children understanding that they were very lucky and they should be they should should feel proud and privileged of to have that kind of programme. So I think all of those factors together came to my boss saying that we you know, we you’ve done an amazing job, we would love to invest in you now that you for your teacher training. So that was two years. I managed to do the bulk of the work so so two years is On a mandatory, you get observed and you have to kind of check in all these modules. But I think I did almost like a degree in about 16 weeks, which was really tough. It was a lot, a lot of early starts and weekends for, you know, all of it and just call it fair. And I was, I was amazed at how little I knew. And it’s something that, you know, we can talk about as well in detail is, I was completely unaware of how incompetent I was and how much I contributed to a sometimes negative behaviour, sometimes poor behaviour within a lesson. Little things you know, where I stand the toe in the pitch, how I sort of level I’m at when I’m talking how I can use moments of silence How I can order things to ensure like a seamless, you know, transition between things, all of these little golden nuggets that I had no idea really and I was someone who had a big coaching background too. And it was something that my undergraduate dissertation focused on the coaching habits of strength and conditioning. So again, I was really, I was always keen on that side of things and the more human side of things, but I was very humbled, I had a fantastic mentor who was very black and white with me, and I deliver a session I was like, really good, really good, less than that. And he’s like, why, why was it a good lesson? I was kids enjoying themselves, I felt like they learn what hygiene, do they learn, you know, and all these questions that actually, within a school environment, as an SSC, Coach, I have a duty to educate children too. So getting better at that side of things was important. And, like I said, Sorry, earlier is is the salary progression. So the longer you know, the longer you stay within a school, you do get paid more money. And these roles are, I think they’re sometimes overlooked. Or you just think, right, you go to a school, you get some experience with working with youth. And then you’ll go to an academy and you’re climat through that system, I get, you know, i This doesn’t happen, but I can work between nine and four. And if I choose to finish at four and do nothing, I can do that. And I get my weekends, we have a quite a big rugby fixture for for 12 weeks of the year. But after that, I get my weekends. And I get holiday every six weeks, I get a week or two weeks off or in the summer, six weeks. So there’s some really good perks to working within a school that I think are not discussed enough.
Rob Anderson
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Because it certainly, you know, if you contrast that was the discussion that’s going on at the moment in high performance sport around coach well being and burnout and, you know, the the cost of being a coach, not just financial, but the impact from your family and your personal time. It’s very much almost the opposite in this situation where, you know, previously people would kind of consider school roles, as you know, firstly, you know, as you said, down the chain, maybe a stepping stone, but actually now, you know, given the the environment you’re describing, people might look at that a little bit differently certain, certainly, if they’re looking and thinking well, actually, yeah, okay, that’s the salary here as an unpaid teacher, but if I was to go through my teacher training, that changes the situation, and actually, you know, weighing all these holistic elements up of the time off the work life balance, you know, not as much travel as if you’re a premiership Academy, SSC, all those sort of things, actually, could be quite a lucrative role in terms of your whole life. Yeah,
Tom Green
no, definitely, definitely. It’s, like I said, it’s something that I, if you’d have asked me in school, do I want to be a teacher and work in a school now I’ve even met teachers that taught me and they kind of laugh myself working with a school now, which I always find quite funny, but it’s so rewarding. And I think it gives you a completely different skill set that as an s&c Coach, certainly in my experience, anyway, was was quite underdeveloped in terms of, I think, more the kind of skill acquisition side of things and classroom management. And I say that transition, like limiting dead time, I think, is a really important thing when working with youth because they are naturally curious and quite creative and want to try things. And so if you turn your back on them for a minute, they exploit that. So it’s even the little things that let’s say that I’m working through, say a progressive kind of chord or agility game, like a change of direction game, what I may do is the whole group is working, I might just pull two of them to the side. So right in a second, I’m going to call everyone over. And I want you to To demonstrate this, teach them that and then let them flow back into the session. And when I blow my whistle, say, right, everyone come in, I’ve got those athletes ready to show everyone else I’m limiting that opportunity for them to You mess around, essentially, and I’m giving them focus, I’m showing them that they’re making it safe by their peers doing it and their peers modelling what I want to see. So they all can feel that they can have some form of success undertaking that task. And then straightaway bang back into it off you go again. Maybe that’s just normal coaching practice, maybe that’s a measure of maybe that’s in my inexperience and the viewers that I do that anyway, but but all those little things I didn’t have, I was very much like, either A to B to C really linear, and just kind of like we do this. And we do this and we do this, which doesn’t always work with children or space or availability of an area. But I just think the way in which you you break down a problem, and you word, how you use your words is become a lot more important to me as well in practice.
Rob Anderson
So given the amount of time you’ve been in the role and and reflecting back on, I guess, when you first came in, or kind of fresher, a fresher face than wide eyed to now, what do you think school based s&c coaches should be focusing on a some of their kind of top priorities or low hanging fruit when it comes to the delivery of their coaching?
Tom Green
Yeah, so we spoke a little bit earlier. And I think it’s something that, you know, yeah, I think in terms of, I’ve had a couple of interns work with me. And I was certainly there to like, I remember watching things and thinking oh, like, this could be better, or the science doesn’t agree with this, this paper doesn’t support this. And, and honestly, I think everyone is doing the best they can with with the knowledge they have available to them at that time. So I never begrudge that. But I think I don’t know how to word this because it’s quite a controversial point that I think students should be really proud of their academic attainment, like I think they should aspire to get the best grades that they can at university. At no at no detriment to them getting practical experience at the same time. I think practical experience while studying actually gives your lessons, a lot of context, your seminars and everything you go to you start to think of, you know, the no board is great, but how many, you know, how does it work within a gym environment, or I’ve seen this and it’s not as it’s not as reliable, or as you know, rigorous as, as we’re doing it now in this environment. Because the athletes that kind of break in at the hip, and all of those things like you just get that that those smarts associated with it, which I think are really important. I think experience is highly transferable across loads of different areas. You don’t have to be in an SSE environment. In between that year of my masters in getting this job, I worked in a primary school or below as a primary school sorry, and I My job was a coach, like a sports coach. And I would just go in and teach a bit of hockey, teach a bit of dodgeball, football, everything I had balanced bikes in my in my car, I had 20 balanced bikes in the back of a small patio to seven, and teaching children how to ride a bike, you know, as young as four, like, it just changed the way in which I saw the importance of my job and some of those skills were why I believe when I went to interview for the school I taught, I taught more of a lesson than an s&c session. And I think I think if every school you know, hired an s&c coach at the minute, I think we’d be I don’t know if we’d be equipped to, to really deal with the challenges that come with it. I think if you’re just in school and you’re just an s&c, coach, great, fantastic. I think the minute you start to adopt care and and enter into that past or safeguarding we get a form or you you begin to get one lesson I teach a bit of BTech. Now, you quickly realise that there are many gaps in your practice. So like I said, taking taking knowledge from from every area, you can even if you’re stacking shelves, how you talk to people, you know, really matters. It really makes a difference. And you you can practice in every environment that you’re coaching and working in
Rob Anderson
Reminds me of a quote of reading, Tim Ferriss book, Tribe of Mentors, and sort of interspersed throughout there. Here’s a quote from one of them. It says, in theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. I think it’s that bridge. Isn’t he talking about that? Yeah. Okay. This is what it looks like when it’s clinical. And it’s nice and black and white. You get into the real world and you’re like, Okay, this doesn’t fit perfectly like that we might have to change some things. Is it still valid if we, if we change this or, you know, is there a different way or a better way we can make this appropriate for this age group, because actually, maybe that’s going over their heads. So it’s time Keep the content and then wrestling with it in reality and going okay, yeah, I can see how this works. But it might be a little bit different.