Career Periodisation in Practice
by Cian Gormley
9th Dec 2022
I have always leaned on those around me for advice on my career. It still feels strange when people reach out asking for advice, but it’s a privilege to be asked to share my experiences to date. In this blog I hope to share some of the tips I’ve learned along the way to periodise my career.
What is ‘Career Periodisation’?
Career Periodisation is “breaking down the core competencies of your industry into smaller and more manageable chunks in order to map out your development”, as defined by Josh Fletcher and Dan Howells in a recent article. I have been very fortunate that along the way I have worked with world-class coaches that have helped guide me. Many of these learnings have been accrued through observing their experiences and trying to learn from those with skin in the game. Other lessons have been learned the hard way by taking chances and hoping for the best. In this blog, I hope to provide some food for thought to those that are currently paving their own path in the industry.
Journey Beginnings: Undergraduate Degree
Like most, I first entered into the industry through an ungraduate degree from 2013 to 2016. I completed a degree in Health and Performance Science in University College Dublin. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say – choosing what I wanted to study in University wasn’t an easy choice. I chose to pursue something I was interested in, rather than something with a clear cut path. I quickly realised that wanting to work with athletes in Professional Sport was a pipeline dream and there’d be many steps before I had the chance to do that.
Despite my family and friends encouraging me to pursue a more clear-cut path, I stubbornly set some goals for the next few years. Somewhat naively, I convinced myself that hard work would be sufficient. Since then I’ve realised that this is somewhat true. We do need to work hard – but also work consistently. The term ‘Grit” gets used a lot in this industry (Angela Duckworth defines Grit as the combination of passion and perseverance), and yes, putting your head down during a 3-year degree is brilliant, but it’s never going to be enough. The road will be long, and consistently working hard is arguably more important than intensely working hard.
Barely a year in, I realised that an undergraduate degree was not going to be enough to get me a job in professional sport, so I turned to the advice of others. One of my lecturers in University College Dublin, George Petrakos, encouraged my class to go out and coach as much as possible. As a young 1st year student, I knew my next step needed to be getting skin in the game. However, I had an ongoing internal battle where I felt like “any coaching” wasn’t going to cut it, so I tried to figure out how I could set myself apart.
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The Internships
In the 2nd year of my undergrad, we were given the opportunity to study abroad. I knew there was no better time to gain coaching experience. I chose a university in the United States called Purdue University. After some cold-emails to the Purdue Sports Performance Department, I was fortunate enough to have a 6-month internship lined up before going over. Furthermore, I knew I’d be the only student going so I would be to forced outside my comfort zone on a personal level. I also told myself that I was going to find whatever opportunities I could to coach different sports while abroad.
Going abroad and working with a variety of sports taught me a lot – if you want something enough, you’ll find a way to make it work. It also taught me to be less afraid of putting myself out there. Coaching athletes in a foreign country, in sports I knew nothing about, allowed me to focus on what was really important – my coaching models and my ability to communicate.
As this internship came to a close, I received some excellent advice about planning for the next steps. I was advised to look at job descriptions for positions that came out in sports that I was interested in. As someone who was at the beginning of my career, I should be looking to fill the ‘essential’ criteria – while always having the ‘desirable’ criteria in the back of my head.
“Essential Criteria”
Degree.
Coaching hours.
Ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team.
Despite having already taken steps to achieve the bottom two criteri, I knew I had to remain consistent and challenge myself to continue learning and developing in these areas.
Full-Time Role & Transitioning Sports
The decision to be proactive and seek coaching hours abroad stood to me when I applied for a Nutrition internship with Daniel Davey at Leinster Rugby. Despite wanting to work as a strength and conditioning coach, I felt that the opportunity to work with a world-class nutritionist in a professional environment would further develop my knowledge about the role of the multidisciplinary team in athletic performance.
All of a sudden, when I looked back over my three years of my undergraduate degree, I was starting to build a CV I could be confident in. I now had a degree, I had started accumulating coaching hours with different sports, and I also had experience working across different departments within the multidisciplinary team. While things definitely didn’t fall into my lap, I do believe that there was a snowball effect - Once I started putting myself out there and tried to think outside the box, opportunities began presenting themselves.
With gaps still in my CV, I started looking at ways to become an even better generalist. One thing I identified as was that I felt I could contribute to teams through GPS monitoring. I was fortunate to work closely with Peter Tierney at Leinster Rugby during my second internship there. In order to learn first-hand how to use GPS data, Peter used would give me a GPS unit to wear during my own hurling matches. I’d then be tasked with analysing my own data. This was one of the best insights I’ve had into sports science as it showed me the need for relativity when trying to communicate complex information in a simple way. Being able to relate how you feel as a practitioner when you accumulate certain volumes of accelerations or decelerations, or high-speed running or very high-speed running for example, gives you another level of understanding when speaking to athletes who report fatigue post-session or post-game. You now know what the difference between those metrics feels like.
Now what?
Unfortunately – as we all know – progress is not linear. Despite having achieved a full-time role in professional sport with Munster Rugby, I knew that things weren’t just going to be handed to me. Despite what I thought before starting my undergraduate degree, it wasn’t as simple as getting in with a professional organisation and getting promoted every few years. After failing to secure various roles due to “not having enough rehab or leadership experience”, I decided I needed to change tact – I had to figure out how I could continue progressing in my career.
Based on interview feedback, I knew that I needed to seek out an environment to develop my rehab knowledge. Instead of only seeing a handful of injuries every year, I needed to find an elite environment where I was surrounded by a myriad of injuries every day. Despite some questions like, “Why would you leave professional sport when you’ve only been here two years?”, I decided this was a gamble I was willing to take.
Fast-forward through 12-months of learning at the Sports Surgery Clinic (Santry, Dublin), alongside some of the best practitioners I’ve worked with. I knew I’d made the right decision as working in the SSC allowed me to develop systems and processes for dealing with a range of injuries. It also challenged my programming and communication skills as I was seeing athletes much less frequently. In a team-sport environment, you see athletes every day. You have the luxury of monitoring their adherence to sessions. Whereas when you only see a client every 2-3 weeks, your ability to clearly explain what you expect of them is hugely important. These athletes were also from a range of sports and backgrounds, so how I communicated information was vital. Through these experiences, I knew that when the opportunity presented itself to re-enter professional sport, I would be bringing the best version of myself to the table – with one more hole plugged in my CV.
The Present
The last few years of personal and professional learnings culminated with my most recent move to Professional Football over in England. While it still feels a little surreal – and I often feel out of my depth – this is another experience that is helping me grow as a practitioner. Through a little bit of luck, a lot of external guidance, and some internal grit, I have landed in the position I am currently in.
I believe that by finding gaps in your own CV, seeking opportunities to plug these holes – while setting yourself apart from those around you – you too can pave a path in the industry. While I have spoken about my own experiences aiming to progress to professional sport, your end goal is entirely individual and there is more to our industry that professional sport.
Firstly, I hope this article gives you some ideas on how you can structure your own career periodization. Secondly, I hope it gives you some confidence. Like many industries, strength and conditioning can be a difficult place to forge a career path, however the opportunities are endless. Look after yourself and nourish your growth mindset, put some plans in place, and enjoy the process.
Cian Gormley
Strength & Conditioning Coach, Blackburn Rovers Men’s Team
For more content from Eoin, follow him on Twitter (@ciangormley), Instagram (@ciangormley.coach) or check out his website
Join a growing network of professionals in strength and conditioning and sports science. Get involved in discussions with world-leading practitioners and use our forum to make invaluable connections.
