Salford students get region’s football teams prepped for new season

The university’s strength and conditioning teaching and research team have been out and about across the region conducting pre-season testing with teams including Stockport County, Carlisle United, Rotherham United and Salford City.

Programme Leader for the MSc Strength and Conditioning, Dr Paul Comfort, explains: “We tend to undertake such testing on an annual basis, with a variety of different teams. Where possible, we offer these sessions as developmental opportunities for our undergraduate and postgraduate students.

“Many of the clubs we’ve been visiting to carry out testing also employ our graduates and PhD students in their in-house teams, so it’s great to be able to catch up with some familiar faces! It’s fantastic that we can continue to build these relationships with the clubs and provide amazing industry experiences and contacts for our current students too.

“This work also forms part of ongoing research, including an industry funded PhD with Hawkin Dynamics, so it is also a chance for us to contribute to the body of knowledge around sports science and strength and conditioning, meaning we can continue to improve the services we offer our athletes.”

PhD student Andy Badby managed to collect data on around 250 athletes at the start pre-season, with the help of some students and the research team. The team included research lead Dr Paul Comfort, Dr John McMahon, Dr Nick Ripley (also a graduate from the undergraduate Sport Science programme and MSc Strength and Conditioning) and visiting post-doctoral research fellows Dr Fran Robles Palazon and Dr Marcos Soriano. Dr Soriano has also been collecting data with Real Madrid as part of some multi-centre research. 

The university team has also been undertaking regular in-season assessments of the athletes’ performances at Salford Red Devils rugby league club, as part of their partnership with the team, led by Dr John McMahon.