{"id":8708,"date":"2021-08-12T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=8708"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:47","slug":"four-factors-that-enabled-the-english-institute-of-sport-to-respond-and-adapt-to-the-uncertainty-created-by-covid","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/four-factors-that-enabled-the-english-institute-of-sport-to-respond-and-adapt-to-the-uncertainty-created-by-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Factors That Enabled the English Institute of Sport to Respond & Adapt to the Uncertainty Created by Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 12 Aug 2021 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Four Factors That Enabled the English Institute of Sport to Respond & Adapt to the Uncertainty Created by Covid<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/four-factors-that-enabled-the-english-institute-of-sport-to-respond-and-adapt-to-the-uncertainty-created-by-covid\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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A Human Performance article brought to you by our Partners<\/p>\n

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The pandemic has certainly impacted the way that people operate across the English Institute of Sport [EIS]. \u201cI now work in a shed!\u201d says Kevin Currell, their Director of Science & Technical Development.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ve had one working day out of here since the UK entered its first nationwide lockdown last March.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memories from that period are still fresh. \u201cThe first thing we did was send everyone home. It was an indication of how quickly things change,\u201d he continues. \u201cOne Friday afternoon, I was penning an email, which I was going to send to all science practitioners telling them to get out of all sporting environments. It was meant to be reviewed over the weekend. By the Monday, the Prime Minister had shut us all down.\u201d A further three weeks later, in mid-April, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games were postponed by 12 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe combination of lockdown and the postponement required some upskilling, refocusing, and adaptation,\u201d adds Currell. \u201cWe needed to be able to deliver services virtually and provide support to athletes, particularly in those first few months when we were all locked down. There were some great examples, such as strength & conditioning coaches delivering strength training via video link to people in their garages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily for the EIS, adaptation and agility are necessary skills. Over the course of its nearly 20-year history, the EIS, which provides science, medicine, technology and engineering services to 40 different sports in the UK, has needed to evolve, adapt and adjust its support, so that its offer continues to meet the needs of the sports it works with as well as keeping up with new developments in sports science, medicine and technology.<\/p>\n

In addition at the start of every cycle, the organisation reviews what has worked and where support can be improved and adjusts according. So while Covid was not a welcome change to the organisation\u2019s plans, EIS people had a history of adaptation that they could draw experience from.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe type of work that we do meant that we were adaptable and found our rhythm and didn\u2019t lose our stride with our productivity,\u201d says David Gallimore, the EIS\u2019 Interim Head of Performance Data.<\/p>\n

The EIS has a network of people that can share problems and solutions quickly, and this soon evolved into a support network.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great thing about being in the Institute was everyone caring for each other and the community that we\u2019ve created. There is a lot of checking in with each other and looking after each other as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute looks at four ways in which the EIS found opportunities amid all the uncertainty of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

1. Online delivery enabled greater visibility, particularly for leaders<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much of the EIS\u2019 agility stemmed from the shift to in-person to online delivery, and some of this may well remain a permanent feature.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get this different mindset when working at speed,\u201d says Currell. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to wait two weeks to go physically see somebody, you can probably do it that day or put that time in the diary, have a video call, and get people together. Some of that speed is good to retain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe set up agile groups, to use a business term, around return to training and the future of working. We did a huge amount of work on what our day-to-day work might look like in the Institute when we eventually decide to go back to some sort of normality, which for us will certainly be post-Games now. There was some incredible agility to pull this stuff together at speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, there were inadvertent benefits, as Mike Naylor, the EIS\u2019 Head of Performance Nutrition, and his team found. \u201cIn many cases, during lockdown we were operating via online tools, but that had the benefit of meaning that we were with them virtually in their cooking environment at home, which is different to talking to them when you\u2019re \u00a0poolside or trackside with them,\u201d he says. \u201cYou actually are with them in their kitchen a lot of the time and you\u2019re coaching them through food preparation, meals, nutrition information and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another benefit was that there was a greater level of access, as Currell notes. He says: \u201cI\u2019ve noticed that you can be more visible as a leader at an organisation like the EIS when we use online tools. We\u2019re spread across the country and I cannot be in each site every day, but if you embrace channels such as Microsoft Teams or WhatsApp, weirdly you can be more visible. I feel more connected and more visible in the organisation now than I have in four and a half years of doing this job.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. An interdisciplinary approach that challenges conventional wisdom<\/strong><\/p>\n

The EIS has long adopted an interdisciplinary approach to performance, but the shift to online, remote delivery has helped to accelerate its evolution. \u201cWe realised really quickly that it was about everyone working together because nobody had the answers,\u201d says Currell, \u201cand we were already on a shift from that discipline-based working to more thematic working. Covid-19 really accelerated that interdisciplinary working both at the level of sport but also as a system; it really accelerated change in that people were far more comfortable with the idea that it\u2019s not just about their discipline and their profession, it\u2019s about the athlete and those interdisciplinary solutions at the heart of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the benefits of high performance practitioners working in interdisciplinary teams is the ability to challenge conventional wisdoms by using the knowledge of a multi-disciplinary team. \u201cThere are a lot of ways we can positively impact on performance,\u201d says Cat Shin, Biomechanics Project Lead at the EIS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere might be conceptions that have been involved in sports for a long time. I like working best with coaches and practitioners who are quite willing to say \u2018oh, this is conventional wisdom but we don\u2019t necessarily know if that\u2019s true.\u2019 Then we can work as a whole performance support team together to dig deeper and say, \u2018actually, what is most important to performance?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not just biomechanics. \u201cNutrition alone is never going to win a medal,\u201d says Naylor. \u201cWe need to understand what the performance plan is. As a collective, how are we going to work together to support the performance of the athletes?\u201d<\/p>\n

The networked structure of the EIS, with teams skilled in a specific discipline working across multiple sports, enables practitioners within a single field to share insights from across those sports. Laura Needham, the EIS\u2019 Co-Head of Physiology, describes how this scenario might look for EIS physiologists. \u201cWe have a group of physiologists who will all share good practice with each other and experiences of what\u2019s gone well and what hasn\u2019t,\u201d she says. \u201cThen they\u2019ll go back into their sport, design interventions, and come back and reflect and debrief. It\u2019s not just physiology doing this, it\u2019s the whole performance support team. That\u2019s the power of the network, that you\u2019re all performing as one and helping each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Extra time, added insight<\/strong><\/p>\n

In some ways, the additional 12 months were viewed as an opportunity. \u201cWe had some projects running that we hoped would have some impact before Tokyo and, because Tokyo is a year later, we potentially have more chance to have an impact in those projects,\u201d says Shin. \u201cRather than having one or two datapoints, we can have three or four.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extra year provided new opportunities that we capitalised on really well,\u201d says Chris Wagg, the Head of Performance Support at GB Boccia. \u201cThere were projects and pieces of work that we were going to have ready for Tokyo but that extra year of research detail, review and reflection enables us to go in even more prepared .\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagg cites the example of opposition analysis. \u201cCoaches were able to use the time to invest in deeper analysis of all of our Tokyo opponents and use that to inform some really impactful coaching meetings around sharing video footage, sharing data; \u2018this is what the trends say about country A or country B\u2019. Coaches could than formulate detailed tactical plans and playbooks for Tokyo.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. CPD remained a priority<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA key element of what we do as an institute is develop practitioners,\u201d says Currell. \u201cOne of the things we pride ourselves on is delivering quality-assured practice to a high standard. Of course, we had to totally reimagine what those standards were in a Covid-impacted environment. When we were in the midst of that first lockdown, we developed an internal Sharepoint site, which could host all the knowledge in an interdisciplinary fashion around how to train the support people in a lockdown environment. Whether that be how you deliver a strength & conditioning session, how you stop de-training [the impact of a prolonged break from training]; right through to the psycho-social and technical and tactical aspects.\u201d Such initiatives are popular. Currell says: \u201cOur internal Sharepoint site got over 15,000 views \u2013 there\u2019s only 400 people who work in the EIS. We take great pride in developing those kinds of resources for our people and to support our sports\u201d<\/p>\n

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This feature was taken from our latest Performance Special Report, Staying Agile: Managing Disruption and Optimising Preparation During the Pandemic –<\/strong> detailing the work of the English Institute of Sport with its teams and athletes.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n