Glenn is a specialist in research and innovation in Sport related health, and winner of the International Federation of Sports Physiotherapy HvU Award for outstanding achievement in this field.
He is a chartered physiotherapist and the former Head of Science and Medicine and Performance Innovation in athlete health at UK Sport, and the senior consultant in Performance Innovation at the English Institute of Sport, where he managed the health research and innovation program related to ~ 1400 athletes across 40 core Olympic and Paralympic sports. Glenn also facilitated the ‘top secret’ development and delivery of new and novel ideas, approaches and equipment related to athlete health, which have had a performance impact over the last 5 summer and winter Olympic and Paralympic games.
Glenn has a Master of Science degree with distinction in Sport Medicine and a Master of Arts degree with distinction in Innovation and behaviour change and is driven by translating research and evidence into real world practice and evidencing that benefit.
In this episode, Glenn discusses:
- His previous roles as a Physiotherapist and Lecturer.
- The hunger to get back into performance sport.
- His time at UK Sport and the English Institute of Sport for multiple olympic cycles.
- How you make the best in the world even better.
- How he ended up at Podium Analytics.
- Why the SportSmart program is such an important initiative.
- How schools and sports organisations can get involved.
You can listen to the episode in full here.
You can find out more about the SportSmart program via the Instagram account: @mysportsmart or via the website: www.podiumanalytics.org
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
Glenn, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule to join us the real pleasure. So we’ll dive a little bit more into some of your previous roles, etc. And come into the project at podium analytics. Tell us a bit about your own sporting journey. What were some of the sports that you were involved in as a kid? How did that capture a love the sport and the career that you ended up going to?
Glenn Hunter
Well, I started probably my early love was for football. And so I was brought up in Blackpool. And back then this is sort of late 60s, early 70s. There wasn’t a Premier League, there was a first division and believe it or not, Blackpool were at the top of that, or in the top sort of five or six clubs back then. So there are quite a big club. And at the age of 11, I was sort of talent spotted, let’s put it that way. And signed as a schoolboy. So I played from 11 to 16 for Blackpool boys, as well as my school and the year above. And on a Sunday so heavily involved in football. It was my obsession. And then I left school and I was signed as an apprentice for Blackpool football club that’s like everybody’s dream. I think back then most clubs would sign to people as an apprentice from their scouting programmes around the UK. And after that two year programme of work, hopefully you convert to be a professional. What I didn’t know and neither did they when I signed is I was about to develop a problem with my knee. And the technical term is osteochondritis DESE cans but we’re basically it’s the blood supply stops to the bone in your knee and your bone, that bit of the bone starts to die and eventually falls off. So I started I was doing quite well I was playing in the reserves and but his pain was just agonisingly bad. And I think the reason for mentioning this there’s a bit of a lesson here in that I went to the physio who wasn’t a qualified physio, and said look, hey, you know you’re at the beginning of your career. Last thing you want is to be labelled injuries, own injury prone, sorry, keep going. And the doctor told me the same thing. So it’s kind of battled on the the physio who wasn’t qualified used to send me after training to stand in the sea in Blackpool. So I had to go and stand in the sea up to my thighs for an hour. And on many occasions, people thought I was committing suicide or you know, was this study in the sea of various people pointing fingers at me and things. I know a long, long story short, I just battled on and I was sort of in agony with my knee. But you got picked to play for the first team on a Thursday. And you got to the manager Harry Potts office, and I got this message to go to his office. And I thought was, I mean, the first thing was to open the door. And first thing I saw was my mom. And my mom had told him that I’d been crying at night. So I was sent off an investigation that resulted in surgery. And then the outcome of the surgery was, I couldn’t play football anymore. That was the end of my career. So I 60 and a half. And I suppose the main thing about that was going through the experience of how something you love and something that just brings you to life suddenly is removed from your life. And the probably the big challenge for me is I was really poor at school, I didn’t have any qualifications when I left school. And the hardest bit for sport for me was actually the journey on the minibus or the coach coming back as you talking to people. But on a pitch. I don’t know, I just turned in some kind of Napoleon Bonaparte or something, you know, I just I just felt so at home, this voice came out of me that I didn’t know I was the captain of every team that I’ve ever played with. And yet, and when it finished, you suddenly faced with yourself again. And, and a lot of friends disappear because they only see free tickets to football matches and things like that. So it’s interesting experience. Anyway, the trigger for that was what do I then do as a career. And I decided that because I’d had an injury and hadn’t had much support that might be not a bad thing. So I thought maybe I’ll be a physio. And I went to the the the library spoke to librarians before computers and new studies that will you pull out these index cards, and I couldn’t find it at all. And then she came up to me luckily she changed my life anyway, because I was walking out having not found it and she asked me if I’d found it. I said no, it’s not there. And I was looking at a dress for physiotherapy and she went to pee and pull it out and then it was like, Oh, you need five O levels and an A level I thought flipping out. Anyway, that started the journey to become physio so I then got enough qualifications trained to be a physio was when I qualified I was about to go in the NHS live up in Scotland with the person I was with at that particular time and I got a phone call from reading Football Club saying we want a physio and we want a qualified physio. And at that time, there’s only one out of 92 clubs, one qualified physio, which was Gary Lewin at Arsenal and had a week to decide, do I you know, do I got to live my life in Scotland or do I leave everything I’ve you know, and I went into football. So So I then had a life in professional football that sort of seven days a week is a very when I say intimate, I don’t mean in a rude way. It’s the proximity of living with people or it from an injury perspective day in and day out. Two matches a week in the first team reserve team. It’s just this very intimate way to understand the fluctuation and the moods and all the things that go with it. So over a period of maybe nine or 10 years I was physio for running Football Club, Portsmouth Crystal Palace and fallen. So I was a physio in all four divisions, during the sort of would have been 80s really left there went back into the NHS. I ended up running the outpatient department at guys hospital, and then went into academia teaching for 15 years in university in Bristol, and then UK Sport, English Institute of Sport and now podium. Sorry, it’s been mainly football in my younger life was mainly football. But when I went into UK Sport, then you’ve got roughly 48, national governing bodies, totally different sports. And certainly got to learn quickly about those domains too.
Rob Anderson
And a bit of a, I guess, an evolution of role as well from being someone who’s, you know, a working practitioner working with athletes day to day to more the kind of research and innovation sort of side of things with the UK Sport, is that fair?
Glenn Hunter
Well, that’s true. Yeah, I mean, you gradually get, the irony is you get you get, any clinician will say this, you, you develop these clinical reasoning skills that almost become automated, you really know what you’re talking about, and you’ve got credibility in that domain, then you go into teaching, and then you start to drift away from I’d be pretty dangerous as a physio now I think, I mean, I’m joking, but to some degree, but there’s there’s no way of beating that that relationship when you’re with somebody who’s had an injury or an illness or a disease, and you’re helping them to get back to wherever they could be. There’s great skills of reasoning around that. But you’re not in academia, suddenly, you from reframe your thinking, say, Well, you’ve got all this professional wisdom, how do you transfer that into the hearts and minds of young people coming into that world. And then of course, when you move into when I was in the research and innovation team, UK Sport, you then operate through other people. So UK Sport, I was a tour as I got head of science and medicine was basically I think back in it, I didn’t really think about at the time, but it was for the UK. So you’re trying to it was about 2004 that the country was getting pretty serious about sport, it was not no longer about let’s turn up, I know we’ve won a gold medal. So like coming 36 in Atlanta games was shame was put on the nation. So so great organisations like the Olympic Association, Paralympic Association, UK Sport all got together and thought, like, let’s understand what it means to be excellent. And let’s, let’s have no compromise in getting there. No compromise doesn’t mean winning at all costs, it means let’s let’s do our best to get people at the start line, to be in the best possible position to open the door to their dreams, you know that that in the safest legal way as possible. So I had to, we had to attract the best science and medicine people. And my role was to do that, and also help them develop in their knowledge. And the knowledge really, when I look back on it was more about so if you take a brilliant medic or S&C or whoever is getting into understand the coach, and the coach understanding the practitioner, and both understanding the athlete, that’s the hardest bit. So it’s more like applied practical wisdom in the world of sport is quite a challenge for a researcher to I remember, the one of the first projects I had to go into UK Sport, had just come out of university and you, you know, taught research methods, and you’ve got your pockets for like this, but Batman Batwoman belt of all these research methodologies, and you suddenly find you got one person, you got six weeks to go, you need, I don’t know, five watts more power. And there’s no control group, there’s no one ever, because this, what you’re dealing with the fastest person in the world, and suddenly you start to feel very vulnerable and naked, because what you want is this, the this armoury of statistical power and all of that sort of stuff. But so your options are you don’t do anything, or you work it out. And you reframe how you think of the approach, which is one of discovery exploration. You know, the early phase of research is always about pictures and patterns, it’s observations, and you’re seeing things and you put together a series of events, and you can justify your reasoning how you got to that point, and you can talk about the outcome, but you’re not thinking this caused anything. And they’re best there might be a correlation, but you’re identifying pictures and patterns that over time start to become consistent, that you then feed up the experimental change. So so that was that and then then I transferred the sort of at that time, I didn’t think it was right that UK Sport were developing practitioners and the English Institute of Sport was delivering practice. So made the case along with other people to transfer the development and delivery of science of medicine to the English Institute of Sport. And then I was fully in the innovation team, which was led by a brilliant genius and great bloke and doctors got draw. And there was a bunch of sort of five of us that’s got got together and said, like your commando squad, get out there, don’t tell anybody, what you do is all the secrets, secret squirrel stuff, and understand where the opportunities are to support sports. And then off you go. And we all had our own domains, and mine was the area of athlete health. So that involved a lot of equipment design, making athletes feel comfortable and confident. So things like saddle designs for British Cycling, and multiple other other things that allow people to train for longer, in more comfort, be in better positions. So you sort of protecting them in a way from a comfort perspective, so you can liberate them, and that kind of thing, really, and so 1000s of projects that are all not not, you don’t publish them, because that gives you secrets away and things like that. And so that that flipped from the kind of standard research methodology to innovation, and innovation, I think we couldn’t really spell it, I think when we started off as a team, but we gradually established that it was, first of all, you think it’s something new and novel, like a wacky idea, and then you realise it’s not. And then you realise, well, what it is, is it’s a new and novel idea in a particular context that people use, and it makes a difference. And if people don’t use it, it won’t make a difference. And if he’s not making a difference, they’re not going to keep using it. So actually, 95% of innovation is behaviour change, is getting the idea by creating the environment where someone desires it, once it tries it, it makes a benefit. They wouldn’t like it taken away from them. And it was a fascinating journey over 15 years of innovating in sport. And the English Institute of Sport, led currently by Dr. Matt Parker, just a brilliant group of people who innovate in that space that it’s a bit like, I wouldn’t compare it in terms of severity of this. But you know, a Bletchley Park during the war, a lot of amazing stuff went on that no one ever spoke about. It’s a bit like that in the university, not not in terms of threat to the nation. But some brilliant thinkers who are doing stupendous work, what you’re trying to do, is you thinking that every other nation is going to come up with something that’s a little bit better. And we just became, as a team quite good at that. Not not not clever stuff, but just getting there first. So that was an interesting journey.
Rob Anderson
So tell us when did podium analytics come calling? And how did that opportunity presented itself?
Glenn Hunter
It was an invitation. So podium was set up by Ron Dennis, another genius in the world of sport, one of those rare pioneers who goes from In essence, what was a mechanic to setting up McLaren Formula One, the most successful sport. And Ron is very focused, amazing thinker, and brilliantly compassionate. And one of the most caring people or maybe not, maybe people may or may not think about that about Ron, but he is one of the most caring people and that that manifests itself in is charities and how he utilises his time. But in Formula One, he was one of the people that was pushing for safety. You know, it’s hard to imagine, but many, many years ago, it was just difficult even to get seatbelt in a racing car, because the right drivers would rather jump out and be trapped in a car that crashed. So if you take the journey of the design of the car, and the halo and the safety and protection, or Ron was a real big driver of that, so after Formula One, in a situation where he was at a meeting, and this particular school, was struggling to get a team together, and he started to push questions like, Well, why how do we know like, oh, well, if we’ve got injured, well, what injuries are we getting? We don’t know. And so, all of a sudden, you know, Ron’s sort of genius brain goes, right? There’s a problem here, we could do something about it. How do we create a safer world of sport to allow people to participate, not not not to stop people’s being poor, but how can we liberate people to do that? And the obvious thing to do would have been gone into maybe an easier place, which is elite sport. And what I mean by that is that there’s money, there’s a lot of people you can get the data. Everybody’s thinking about the world of performance, and tutor Ron’s sort of creative mind. He said, Well, where’s the gap when the gap is in young people who really want ideally would lead a healthy lifestyle and be active and and elements of that activity would be sport, and who understands that world, you know, of grassroots sport? There’s about 25 million people play grassroots sport a third of the population. But the research kind of stopped just as you get through that fence into the grassroots, but there isn’t, I think, and Ron was said, This is big and ambitious. It’s classic. Ron’s spa, right? But let’s give it a go. So we’re going to focus on this young people group, and set up a strategy to do that. And before I arrived, one of the obvious places to go is to develop the world’s best in this area. So the we’re very privileged in the UK to have some of the best sports science sports medicine universities in the world in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the UK, it would obviously would have been gone to the currently existing university, but but our answer, well, let’s bring another player into the room. So if you’re a process, quite strict process, actually, interview process ends up at Oxford University. So we have the podium Institute, Oxford University, a 40 million investment over 10 years to being the best brains in what isn’t just an outstandingly staggeringly clever place, it always freaks me out going to look at this world of young people in sport, but a podium there, what are we going to do at podium so I was approached, I think, because of working in innovation, innovation is all about translating stuff from an idea into reality. And let’s have our translatory research team at podium. So that’s my role of director of research and innovation, we sort of take what exists, wait that evidence? How strong is it, and then try and make that live in the world of young people, PE teachers, parents in that world? So it’s how’d you how’d you? How’s it live in what I would call real world research. And that’s difficult, because, as you know, there’s at one end of the research spectrum, you have the efficacy model, like this works in this environment, you know, in this laboratory or on this person, and then you get the effectiveness end, but nobody’s using it in the real world. So it’s like there’s a there’s a continuum there, that we’re connecting up really with the massive firepower and genius of Oxford, with how do we get how do we understand the world of school, the school teacher stepping into their shoes. I think that that’s, that’s a really important thing. In my, in my research background, I went through the kind of classic, I suppose classic scientific roots, I was doing a lot of research, I developed in my when I was teaching at Bristol University, I set up a human analysis laboratory. So it was all data, it was all EMG forces and so on. And I started to research into hamstring injuries and things like stretching and its effect on on on injury. And I was intrigued because muscle injuries occur when a muscle is contracting. And a lot of the assessments of muscles particular around flexibility or when the muscle is passive. And I just thought that can’t be a link. So. So it was all engineering based, I devised a way of measuring the active stiffness of a muscle. And then I got a research grant from the FA for three years to look at hamstring injuries in professional footballers. So it’s very much the numerical data, graphical analysis sort of thing. When I was a UK Sport to try and understand innovation, there was an opportunity to do research in that area. And so I went to the Royal College of Art. And they have an innovation design department, a lot of people think as sort of drawing, you know, life drawing stuff. But they have a brilliant innovation department, part of the Dyson Group there. So I was looking at innovation in that. And design basically, I went I went I won’t bore you with that. The interview process is quite amazing art Royal College of Art interview process. But when I arrived there, I was asked to do a research paper presentation to the professional, I wrote this thing, gave it to him and went into the feedback. And he said, it’s the most boring thing I’ve ever read in my life. Get go away and write 10,000 words, which was the topic on the word desire. And I remember coming home saying to my wife got this I’ve got I’ve gone to this weird place. And it was all what they were trying to get to is the importance of desire, wanting something you care about it. So how do you create desire, meaning value, that draws people to want to be in a place to do something, you know, and that’s where it links to innovation, you know, if people don’t really care about it, and they don’t want it, they won’t use it. So that sort of training through well College of Art, and then I went to St. Martin’s College of Art over 13 years, was really brilliant. You know, I really draw a lot on that in my research thinking of how we might do that. And of course, it starts with understanding the audience who who are the people that are living the life that you’re trying to design for? And how can you as well said for every bit step out of your shoes into theirs, and design around the wants and needs from that perspective, and that that’s so often not done. And so that drives my thinking that that sort of world of art and design is a major player in my thinking about research.
Rob Anderson
I think there’s a really important point you made a few minutes back then went on highlight, which was around that gap. And that was something that I completely agree with. Because, you know, when you’re working in professional sport, you do see this kind of pyramid where the least amount of people at the top, which is the professionals are engaged in sport, but they’re surrounded by the expertise and the resources and all, everything required to produce performance, as you said, actually, where the bulk of the population of playing the sport is where there’s the volunteer coaches, there’s, you know, really limited budgets and resources, etc. And there is a huge opportunity, huge gap there. And so I want to dive into that you obviously already started touching on it in terms of, I guess, the initial questions that prompted some of the research have prompted some of the innovations. So tell us about the sport smart project. So we’ve obviously identified that the injuries is kind of the primary objective. Is there any other aims of the project?
Glenn Hunter
Well, yes, I mean, ultimately, so the headline would be a safer world of sport. And the reason for doing that is to enhance participation. And if you’d boil that down, what we’re really talking about is that exercise activity and amazing thing. But like anything in life, there are risks involved. And when you try and understand risk, there are some risks that we just are inevitable. There’s no such thing as no risk. But there might be modifiable risks, things that we can intervene with. So the whole headline is all about understanding how people express their love why sport is important to people. And there’s so many things that dent that experience, but one of which can be injury. And because there’s about 1600, different codings of injury if you’re doing injury surveillance, and they maybe don’t all matter in terms of the incidence and severity. So when you understand risk, a definition of risk is uncertainty about something that matters. So you want to tease out the things that matter to people that dent their experience of sport. And that’s what we’re trying to do at podium. So the way that podium started to develop to do that was have a creator data platform that is unique in its design, brilliantly designed and have an app application that is free cost at no cost to schools and clubs to collect information on on injury and illness. So that’s kind of where it where it all started, really. And then when I came into the post, we started to look at what sort of projects could we be bringing in, as well as collecting data on injuries? How might we step into the space of trying to prevent them really what things do we need to understand. And so what I tried to do was to design projects that were generic, not injury specific at the moment. So things like understanding the growth spurt. So we have a two year project with Bath University looking at the growth, but what we mean by that is the evidence at the elite level is quite strong. But can we translate it into the school environment, understanding workload and adaptation, mental health, psychological well being data literacy? So when you present data back to a school, as in my life, so I did 15 years of injury surveillance in the elite sport? Three questions are always when you present the data? What does it mean? Is it good or bad? And what should I do about it? So and then the other area of a project that started to arise was, well, what about there’s a lot of information in science and medicine that exists in the world? How would you get it into the school environment, so it’s easily accessible and compelling for school teachers and PE teachers. So the point being we started develop these bits of activity, that it made sense to bring it together in one space, one space, really. And that that’s where really sports Mark arose. So it’s this sort of Oracle, this this container, if you like, of all a bits of information that like a toolkit, in essence, that someone working in grassroots and school sport, can access this this place, and find these things that would, the way I express it is doing the basics really, really well. And that’s not to say that doesn’t go on. There are just outstanding examples of care in the school environment, sometimes against great adversity of lack of resources and time, some amazing, amazing things going on in us. How can we boost that and put sort of a bit more fuel in there. So sports marks about that. It’s it’s accessing tools to collect information on injury, it’s helping people understand what that data means. It’s, for example, in the resource hub, the first year we have launching in June, a series of 12 episodes on injury prevention. So this is a bit like a mini Netflix if you imagine it like that. So you could go on. For example, one of the first episodes is on the Grossberg. So we got two world leading experts in Bath University to say this is what it is, this is what it means. Then we’ll have a school teachers point of view then we’ll have some practical top tips. And as we go on. So each of these episodes we bring more and more understanding of about the, the the sort of expert opinion. But here’s the challenges of doing that in the school environment. And ultimately, the stars of the show, if you like, ultimately, in sports might in the resource up will be the school teachers, it will be the coaches, because it’s a world that they understand. And I think it will evolve to be driven by school teachers PE teacher saying, Actually, we really would like more information on this. And our role at podium because we’ve got the resources as a charity to do that is to bring that information into that world, to create that safer world of sport. So it’s a whole suite of information, collecting data, understanding data, educational things, sharing ideas around but best practice DIY solutions to to allow people to do the basics really, really well. I think one of the practical challenges I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, or maybe the listeners will have done in is trying to bring a scientific research mindset into the school environment, where you start with let’s have complete datasets where there’s no gaps, where we’ve got seven years of data with a statistical power of this very difficult to get it. And even in situations where we’ve got some brilliant podium schools, you’ve got nearly 200 schools engaged in sport smart at the moment. So one of the first questions I might say to a PE teacher who’s in data collecting, they have a passion for it, they’re trying to understand, does this data truly represent all the injuries? And they often will go? Well, it’s not all of them? No, but we’re interested in these ones. So it’s not a truly reflective data set, as you’d see in elite sport. So for me, I spent quite a lot of time thinking, Oh, my God, that kind of worries me a little bit, you know, is some data better than no data? And how do you deal with that? But if you reframe your thinking around the, it’s a learning journey, it’s a school that says, we don’t know what an injury is, we don’t know how many we’re getting, we don’t know what to do. Where do we start? So you provide some information, they don’t really understand initially. So you work with them to understand it. Now they’ve got knowledge. So alright. Okay. So we want to understand a little bit more about that. So it’s more of a progressive journey, or around confidence competency. Engaging with elements of care, what can we do that’s better than what we’re doing now? What’s the evidence for it, and it’s, if you view it like that, then it really works really, really well. And sometimes an elite sport and the a, you know, the IOC, let’s say, who are brilliant at what they do, might look at the methodology of it hang on a minute, you know, you’re only collecting small datasets here. But it allows you to have more information than you had to make decisions on it to test those decisions when it’s safe to do so. It’s the only way of gradually treading forwards in this space. I would say, when a UK Sport, when I was looking across the UK, I thought that was the most complex thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s nothing compared to to working in a school and club in Rome, because you’ve got all the challenges of rigour data information, changing behaviours that are engraved for years, understanding young people. It’s massively wicked problem. But that’s what podium is there to do to sort of unify and accelerate and create a momentum to shine a light on this sort of dark space that no one’s really engaged with. And so how can we work it out as we go? And one of the beautiful things about podium both both the institute Oxford podium, is it sort of agility and the speed with which we can say like, this is this doesn’t look like it’s working. So where we’re gonna go now, you know, this incredible iteration to be like a centre of gravity to pull people into this world that has been pretty vacant today, you know?
Rob Anderson
And obviously, we’ve heavily focused on schools, but I’ve also heard you say clubs multiple times as well. So I’m guessing it’s always accessible for recreational clubs, grassroots clubs, locally, so
Glenn Hunter
absolutely. So we currently sport with England hockey with the have the app doing their leading on their injury surveillance programme. So so there are grassroots sport information coming in from from for example, we do all the injury surveillance, as I say, during the hockey there on an iterative journey. We got seven years of their data about a year ago, we analyse that we go right, this is this is really strong. This could do with a bit of work. Now we go into the next iteration. And so in our work while we focus, mainly schools, there are certain clubs linked to NGBs that would come for support. So for example, one of our partners is schools who are Ballet School, who are at the elite end, I mean, probably the top in the world of that, but they’re They’re looking for specific questions about how we can understand the experience of young people at that end of the world. British gymnastics is a case in point, the Lawn Tennis Association. And the LTA is a great example where they really care about young people who have a talent or potential talent. And we’re talking about sort of 10 year olds now, going at the regional development player centre. So there’s 15 of these, and you come in at the age of 10, you end that journey at 14, and hopefully in the majority of them will flip over into the national programme. A lot of historical work in sport has been measuring things like data, how strong people are, how fast they serve. And we’ve missed the reality of the human experience of why people play sport. So in the research team that I lead, we talk about understanding what meaningful sport means, what does it bring to people? Why do they care about it? How do you capture the experience of sport so you can design the experience of sport, because if you think if you just focus on on injuries, the negative stuff or psychological well being and when it goes wrong, you’re missing the understanding that comes from when it goes, right. And what people care about when it goes right are the things you want to design into your programme. So where it’s leading in the future is how do you design the most meaningful experience for that person. And that experience is more about being appropriate is appropriate to their development. So there’s going to be times when it’s going to be quite hard, because you got to push to get adaptation. But it’s within your best interest that we need to do that. And it’s consensual, and so on. So it’s not the abusive end of things. So there’s an element of our work through national governing bodies, which is more around this meaningful sport. How do you how do you create that? British gymnastics is another case in point that we work with who do an amazing job of turning, responding to, you know, the the white review? And how do you do that across all these grassroots clubs. So that thinking about creating the experience of sport is really important. And also, what we’re finding at the school environment is, there are people that play sport for social engagement, they just like walking or jogging and talking to people, they don’t have a desire to be really good at that. The social aspects of sport are often missed, you know, an injury can take that away, you lose your social group, you’re not in the WhatsApp group anymore. So all of that. So NP II, you know, when you go into a peer, that’s about being active, it’s about experiencing different things. It’s not a performance progression. And but that’s really, really important. So we’re trying to understand the different levels of engagement in sport, support all of those levels. And that’s, that’s the beauty of spectrum. At one end, we work with International Federations, we work with national governing bodies. But equally, we will be standing on a pitch with a school PE teacher who also teaches geography does an amazing job. That’s the whole spectrum of podiums work really
Rob Anderson
fantastic. And I think he’s such a useful tool, because you know, you don’t need to hang around PE teachers very long to, to understand some of the challenges that have around you know, large groups, and maybe don’t have the time to think about how to adapt it for little Johnny, he’s turned out with an ankle injury. So you just get out. And then that creates a whole nother other issue, all those things. So I think it’s a fantastic tool. What’s been some of the feedback that you’ve had from some of the schools that are using it so far?
Glenn Hunter
It’s very, I think the the invitation from podium is that schools have the opportunity to engage with podium at no cost over understanding injury prevention. Some schools are really on it, they love it tends to be they’ve got a champion. Who drives it, some schools are more resource than others. And so at that end, it’s it’s really embraced. At the other end, it’s sports might try it a little bit, and maybe finding a little bit difficult to keep up to date with all the injuries and things like that. So that’s part of our process of finding that out, you know, there are schools that are more capable, have more capacity to do it than others. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not nimble enough, and responsive enough to deal with the others that are more have more constraints. So we’re working on a lighter version at the moment of how can we what’s the smallest amount of information that we could collect from a school that will be beneficial, that would bring value and it’s worth the effort. Otherwise, you just forget, you don’t forget you just say it’s not worth it. And every young person’s experience and those that support it is worth it. So it’s our ability to be nimble and act to that so that’s that’s something that we’re working on at the moment. In some schools, I mean, Seven Oaks centre Albans with St. Albans on Monday, are doing an amazing job at using data to inform practice, to feed back to the governors to influence all based around care of young people. So what we’re trying to do is we work on the principle that all coaches, PE teachers, parents, kids hair, it’s like, how can we just match the level of care with their ability to engage? So that the feedback has been great. Across the board? There’s no question about that. There’s definitely alignment, people are leaning into this world that we’re really had their backs facing to this world at the moment, I think the next year or two will see a massive push in engagement. So I get a give to two extremes if that if that’s okay. They took the podium Institute at Oxford, they’re about to produce the world’s first economic impact on head injury. So we know that it’s there’s a euphoria over the moment, it’s universal in the papers. What was lacking was was the economic cost of it, what difference does it really made in economic terms, we know the kind of human incidence and severity aspects of it. So on that end, that’s producing a paper to say, look, this is the extent of the problem. But backed with that is this sort of unique programme at Oxford, were looking at what might be the dose response model. So trying to understand the response of the brain to different loads and impacts to maybe get to a position to to say that this person has crossed that threshold. So that one end in that area. And in areas like artificial intelligence, technology, use sport medicine, is really driving front end stuff, for example, cardiac risk in the young, you know, eight to 10 deaths in a week. What can we do about that? It’s a really challenging problem, but it’s a really major issue. And it’s a very, so there’s Oxford at that end, the other end, it’s trying to understand, what are the practical challenges in an environment where a PE teacher said, you know, like, why is it that we get a lot of females who aren’t about 14, disengaging, like, and they’ve been injured. But when the boys get injured, they don’t. So we’re also listening with an ear to the ground, really, at the front end people saying, Actually, we don’t understand this, like, what, why is it and we can go into the that end and start the journey of understanding. And the other thing that I would say, over the next two years, and where sort of sports Mart starts to link in is it creates a central place where people hopefully can Gump to, to get really good information in talking to teachers. Because kids are playing lots of different sports. So you play in football, you got here’s what football says about Frank level, a head injury, rugby, here’s what rugby said about it. And it’s like, Oh, my God is really good. What can I got me keep it really simple, do do the basic stuff and say, this information is easy to find it’s current is exactly what you need to know. And it’s currently the best evidence, we’ve got to argue that we can modify this risk and therefore increased participation. And that that’s really what what podium was trying to do. And also through its work to bring in more financial resources, which will give us the capability to provide more support to grassroots level and school. So I think two years it will start to feel more weighty. And hopefully teachers will come and find that there’s a benefit. But it’s an iterative process. And I think we consult and it’s like all design, you design it, you understand the person using it, you put it out there, people come back and say, Could it be a bit more like that? And we will respond. And I think there’ll be an iteration over the next 18 months, particularly with the resource hub, to say, Well, can we have it a bit like this? Or maybe less time or more time? Or can we speak to rob Anderson and have Rob on that, you know, that kind of thing? Is where we’re heading with that.
Rob Anderson
Fantastic to the words out my mouth because that was my next question is going to be around the next sort of 1218 months. So let’s, let’s answer that question quite nicely. Where can people find out more about sports man, there’s teachers listening who want to, you know, champion in their school, where’s the best place to go?
Glenn Hunter
Well, they’re probably the, the bait. The overall information about podium was just on a website or podium Analytics, you know, and that’s fine. There is I’ve got it written down here that you can email info at sport smart.org. And an email would be responded to really quickly. We’ve got an amazing comms team that would deal with that. And that’s probably either the website but ideally info at sports mart.org And that would allow the school or club to get signed up to podium to be able to access that information. And it’s an exciting time to do it really because the sports Mart is just launched the resource hub launches in June, so a month away. And also what’s possibly one a stronger reason I recommend it at the moment is the government head injury guidelines have just come out as we know. But linked to that through a very thorough process through government and the scientific committee was how we’re going to understand the impact this is having on the school environment. So podium have been chosen to conduct to be Dr. A two year study to understand the impact of head injury guidelines on the school environment. And to do that all the current guidelines are in our application, which is pause part of the sport Smart Information generating programme. So schools can have access to the app to record head injuries. And for us to understand how that’s going, whether the guidelines are being implemented, what the challenges are. So that’s also a useful reason to engage at the moment, because those those guidelines are out there now. And it was quite a rigorous process ever incredibly robust scientific committee at the end government, as you might imagine, looking across the world at what to do. And so we work quite closely and in the end, they chose the podium platform to collect that information that will be two years study, looking at how it’s helping schools and grassroot clubs to manage head injury and care for people in a more positive way, more powerful way.
Rob Anderson
Fantastic. Well, it’s a mammoth project that you’re undertaking, but a really important one. So no, thanks for everything you’re doing. And I’m sure it’s going to provide a fantastic service for schools and a sorely needed one. But thanks so much for your time today. It’s been great to get your your side of things and how podium analytics and sports smarts kind of developing and hopefully more people take the opportunity to jump on board and utilise that because it’s going to be a fantastic resource.
Glenn Hunter
Great. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much for your time. Been a pleasure.