Inform Performance

Episode 234: In this episode of Sports Science Insights Podcast, host Steve Barrett is joined by Niklas Virtanen, who leads the sport science efforts at FC Midtjylland. With over eight years of experience in elite sport and high-performance consulting, and backed by UEFA fitness coaching and physiotherapy credentials, Niklas has built his work around a data-driven approach to optimising player performance and development.

Much of the conversation starts from a premise that is easy to say and harder to sit with: GPS has been mastered. Total distance, high-speed running, sprint counts — the metrics that once felt like the frontier are now table stakes, tracked by almost every club at almost every level. The interesting question is no longer whether you can collect them, but what you do once collecting them stops being a competitive advantage.

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From there the discussion turns to what sits underneath the movement data. Niklas makes the case for IMA and IMU signals as a way of understanding how a player is performing an action, not just what action they performed — the accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction and mechanical signatures that separate two players covering identical distances in completely different ways. It's a shift from describing workload to interpreting quality, and it changes what sport science can offer a coach.

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The episode also explores where that leaves practitioners: the discipline required to stop adding metrics, the value of asking better questions of the data already being captured, and what genuine progress looks like once the obvious layer has been solved.

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Topics Discussed:

GPS Is Mastered — So What Should We Be Doing Now?

Using IMA/IMU Data to Understand How a Player Is Performing, Not Just What They're Doing

Moving from Workload Description to Movement Quality

What Progress Looks Like Beyond the Obvious Metrics

Where you can find Niklas:

LinkedIn

Instagram

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Sponsors

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BTL: BTL Industries develops advanced rehabilitation and performance technologies, including SIS DUO, Shockwave Therapy, High-Intensity Laser, TR-Therapy, Lymphastim and R-FORCE. BTL systems are designed to support recovery, pain management, functional rehabilitation and return-to-play pathways across clinical and elite sport settings.

VALD Performance, makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training

Hytro: The world’s leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport. 

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Where to Find Us

Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on:

Instagram

Twitter

Our Website

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Our Team

Andy McDonald

Ben Ashworth

Nicola Graham

Steve Barrett 

Pete McKnight

Episode 233: In this Gameplan episode, Andy McDonald is joined again by both Alan Murdoch & Simon Harries for Part-2 of their combined approach to ACL rehab.

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Alan is the founder of Elevate: Speed & Rehab, a performance rehab consultancy working with athletes from professional to Olympic level. With over 15 years’ experience, he specialises in the link between rehabilitation and sprint performance, using movement efficiency and speed-based principles to drive recovery beyond traditional timelines.
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Simon is a specialist Rehabilitation Strength & Conditioning coach with a passion for problem solving the complexities of high performance rehabilitation. He has a PhD in Human Physiology and is an accredited ASCA Master L3 S&C coach with over 15 years of experience in high performance sport, having worked with athletes from a diverse range of backgrounds, including AFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Rugby Sevens, Water polo, and a range of individual event sports.

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Part-2 Topics Discussed:

Addressing movement deficits post-ACL

Identifying common technical errors in acceleration

SEE, SAY, DO, DEVELOP Framework

Fast, Fit, and Skillful (FFS) Framework

6-Level Skilled Pathway:

Foundational Skills

Individual Technical

Positional Unit Technical

Decision-Making

Modified Gameplay

Team Play

Performance Intent & Guardrails

The "Mini Pre-Season" Conditioning

Progressive Reintegration Framework

Monitoring & Graduation Markers

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Where you can find Alan:

LinkedIn

Instagram

Elevate Speed Rehab

Where you can find Simon:

LinkedIn

Instagram

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Sponsors

Gameplan Is a Rehab Management System providing Medical & Performance Departments with a centralised platform to plan, track & manage the return-to-play process inside a data rich environment. Gameplan provides one platform to connect the people, process and data during rehab. 

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Where to Find Us

Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on:

Instagram

Twitter

Our Website

Episode 232: In this episode of Accelerate Podcast, host Nicola Graham is joined by Jordan Stewart-Mackie an Applied Performance Scientist and PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, where his research focuses on wearable technology and data integration.

Jordan's work has spanned some of the most contrasting environments in world sport — from the Premier League to Thai football to NBA Academy Africa — settings where resources, infrastructure, and staffing vary dramatically. That range has given him a rare view of what actually determines whether technology succeeds: not the sophistication of the device, but the system and the people around it.

ㅤ At the centre of the conversation is the translation problem in sports tech: the gap between what data can tell us and what practitioners can act on. Jordan has built a set of structured models to close it — BISA for technology selection and evaluation, SFQT for turning data into actionable decisions, PLACE for cultural readiness and implementation stickiness, and ATRIS, the end-to-end system that connects those layers.

ㅤ The discussion also explores why human connection remains the deciding factor in adoption, and how educating and empowering athletes — rather than simply monitoring them — turns data from something done to a squad into something they buy into.

ㅤ Topics Discussed:

The Translation Problem in Sports Tech

Building Frameworks for Implementation: BISA, SFQT, PLACE & ATRIS

The Need for Human Connection

Empowering and Educating Athletes to Aid Adoption

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Where you can find Jordan:

LinkedIn

Instagram

JSM Performance

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Sponsors

Gameplan Is a Rehab Management System providing Medical & Performance Departments with a centralised platform to plan, track & manage the return-to-play process inside a data rich environment. Gameplan provides one platform to connect the people, process and data during rehab. 

VALD Performance, makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training

Hytro: The world’s leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport. 

BTL: BTL Industries develops advanced rehabilitation and performance technologies, including SIS DUO, Shockwave Therapy, High-Intensity Laser, TR-Therapy, Lymphastim and R-FORCE. BTL systems are designed to support recovery, pain management, functional rehabilitation and return-to-play pathways across clinical and elite sport settings.

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Where to Find Us

Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on:

Instagram

Twitter

Our Website

Episode 231: In this Gameplan episode, Andy McDonald is joined by both Alan Murdoch & Simon Harries to discuss their combined approach to ACL rehabs. 

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Alan is the founder of Elevate: Speed & Rehab, a performance rehab consultancy working with athletes from professional to Olympic level. With over 15 years’ experience, he specialises in the link between rehabilitation and sprint performance, using movement efficiency and speed-based principles to drive recovery beyond traditional timelines.
-

Simon is a specialist Rehabilitation Strength & Conditioning coach with a passion for problem solving the complexities of high performance rehabilitation. He has a PhD in Human Physiology and is an accredited ASCA Master L3 S&C coach with over 15 years of experience in high performance sport, having worked with athletes from a diverse range of backgrounds, including AFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Rugby Sevens, Water polo, and a range of individual event sports.

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Topics Discussed:

Addressing High Re-Injury Rates

The Performance Rehab Triad

Load-Compromised Joint

Neuromechanical Deficits

Neurocognitive Deficits

Acute Phase Non-Negotiables & Gait Re-Education

Managing Quad Lags

Early RFD Training

Redefining the Plyometric Framework

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Where you can find Alan:

LinkedIn

Instagram

Elevate Speed Rehab

Where you can find Simon:

LinkedIn

Instagram

- 

Sponsors

Gameplan Is a Rehab Management System providing Medical & Performance Departments with a centralised platform to plan, track & manage the return-to-play process inside a data rich environment. Gameplan provides one platform to connect the people, process and data during rehab. 

-

Where to Find Us

Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on:

Instagram

Twitter

Our Website

Episode 230: In this episode of the Inform Performance Podcast, Andy McDonald is joined by Keith D'Amelio, PhD a performance architect with more than two decades inside the highest levels of elite sport and business.

Keith has led performance for the Boston Celtics and the Toronto Raptors, guided innovation at Nike's global HQ, and advised startups, athletes, and leadership teams on how to build sustainable systems that enable performance at the highest level. He founded Heretic Performance to challenge conventional thinking and to help teams and companies execute consistently and with purpose.

Throughout the episode, Keith explores why sporting organisations so often default to risk aversion, and what it actually takes to build decision-making processes that hold up under pressure. The conversation examines the holistic cost of implementing new systems — the time, staffing, and cultural load that rarely appear on the invoice — and where the line sits between genuine innovation and practicality in an applied environment.

The discussion also looks at what sport can learn from other high-stakes industries, why so much low-hanging fruit in performance still goes unpicked, and how practitioners can focus their energy on the things that move the needle rather than the things that look impressive.

Topics Discussed:

Why sport teams are often risk averse

The importance of decision-making processes

Holistic costs of implementing new systems

Balancing innovation and practicality

Learning from high-stakes industries

Addressing low-hanging fruit in sports performance

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Where you can find Keith:

LinkedIn

Instagram

Heretic Performance

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Sponsors

Gameplan  Is a Rehab Management System providing Medical & Performance Departments with a centralised platform to plan, track & manage the return-to-play process inside a data rich environment. Gameplan provides one platform to connect the people, process and data during rehab.

VALD Performance, makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training

Hytro: The world’s leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport. 

BTL: BTL Industries develops advanced rehabilitation and performance technologies, including SIS DUO, Shockwave Therapy, High-Intensity Laser, TR-Therapy, Lymphastim and R-FORCE. BTL systems are designed to support recovery, pain management, functional rehabilitation and return-to-play pathways across clinical and elite sport settings.

-

Where to Find Us

Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on:

Instagram

Twitter

Our Website