{"id":8305,"date":"2021-09-21T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T19:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=report&p=8305"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:14:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:14:23","slug":"how-the-english-institute-of-sport-is-bringing-data-and-performance-analysis-to-the-athlete","status":"publish","type":"report","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/how-the-english-institute-of-sport-is-bringing-data-and-performance-analysis-to-the-athlete\/","title":{"rendered":"How the English Institute of Sport Is Bringing Data and Performance Analysis to the Athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 21 Sep 2021 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Reports<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

How the English Institute of Sport Is Bringing Data and Performance Analysis to the Athlete<\/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\n\n\n\n
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A Human Performance article brought to you by our Partners<\/p>\n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
\u201cOne of the ways the Institute has been successful over the last 20 years is that we\u2019ve taken science out of labs and out of consultation rooms and put it where the athlete is,\u201d says Kevin Currell, the Director of Science & Technical Development at the English Institute of Sport [EIS].<\/h6>\n

\u201cWe spend a lot of time in the training environment and being around athletes where you can influence them. Of course that disappeared overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pandemic has caused the EIS to pivot in how it supports its athletes, and while the circumstances have sparked a slew of creative ideas, they all derive from solid foundations that have long been in place.<\/p>\n

The use of data across the EIS is a case in point and, here, we explore the EIS\u2019 efforts to ensure that the 40 sports with which it works are able to be more strategic in using data to meet their performance goals.<\/p>\n

It starts with in-house capability<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Leaders Performance Institute spent a recent afternoon discussing the EIS\u2019 approach to data with David Gallimore, the Interim Head of Performance Data. \u201cNone of what we\u2019ve been talking about was possible before 2014,\u201d he says. \u201cThe decision to invest in that area has made what we now deal with possible. We recognised the trend, where things were going, that data was going to be more important and we needed to be more skilled in using it, providing more tools, support and expertise. We\u2019ve got some expert data scientists who can turn around really robust insights from quite a large and complicated dataset very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallimore mentions 2014, which was the year the EIS inaugurated its High Performance System Data Strategy, with the intention of accelerating the benefit of data-driven performance insight across Great Britain\u2019s World Class Programmes. Responsibility for its execution sits across both UK Sport [the government agency responsible for investing in world class sport] and the EIS.<\/p>\n

The close nature of the relationship between the EIS\u2019 data scientists and the athletes, practitioners and coaches stood them in good stead when the pandemic struck. \u201cThey have this real deep context and understanding because they are talking every day to sports, practitioners and coaches,\u201d Gallimore continues, \u201cand understanding not just what\u2019s needed but how to land that. What sort of messaging and visualisations are going to be right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that context and understanding is really important, which is why we try and have those core capabilities in-house because it means we can really build that context, understanding and the relationships with the different stakeholders, coaches and practitioners.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Blenkharn, who works for UK Sport as its Sport Intelligence Programme Manager, explains further: \u201csports are already on a journey in their use of data. We exist to enhance this by fostering a culture of data exploration through instilling consistent data approaches, sharing best practices, and developing data skills. Every sport and every environment is different. However, many data principles do not change, whether it\u2019s data capture, structure or visualisation. We work with performance staff to encourage a consistent way of working with data, building on good existing practices and developing processes that are sustainable within each unique performance environment. Working with so many sports is a significant challenge but also provides us with a unique opportunity to stay ahead of our competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The value of embedding analysts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Members of the Performance Data team will embed within a sport in order to better understand its needs. \u201cWe have developed a process whereby we embed in the sport for a short period of time to map their data landscape, understanding as much as we can about how data is being collected, stored and used by practitioners, coaches and athletes to support performance,\u201d says Sarah Domone, a consultant leading on sport-specific support.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, just as importantly, we take time to learn about each unique performance environment and philosophy, embedding ourselves in the day to day training setting, understanding the context within which data is used, making sure the recommendations and insight we provide is relevant and applicable in\u00a0situ. The insight is used by the sport to develop a data vision and step by step plan to get there, providing the basis for all future work that we do with each sport, so that we are in a better position as a central support team to provide tailored advice, guidance and support in the build up to Tokyo and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

She cites an example from British Swimming: \u201cWe worked with British Swimming to develop an interactive team selection tool for the Mixed Medley relay, a new event for Tokyo 2020. In this event, teams are free to pick either gender to swim any leg, team selection therefore presents a complex task that must consider what 16 other nations might choose to do with the swimmers they have available.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdded to this was the decision about whether they could rest some swimmers in the heat and still ensure qualification so that, come the final, the team were as rested and fresh as possible. In collaboration with the analysts in sport, we developed an interactive tool for the coaches which simplified the data modelling process and allowed them to select different combinations of teams to simulate possible race outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the 2019 World Championships in Korea, the modelling suggested the Russians, with a slightly different team, could have been 0.2-0.3 seconds quicker based on their simulated time. Britain actually beat them for bronze by just 0.1 second. These small margins make opposition analyses such as these incredibly powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

GB Boccia\u2019s SmartCourt analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Similarly, the SmartCourt Analysis system has proven a gamechanger for Boccia UK during the pandemic. The tablet-based software was developed by the National Governing Body in tandem with Sheffield Hallam University and the EIS Performance Data team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe software enabled us to capture data more quickly, and feed that into a big database,\u201d says Chris Wagg, the Head of Performance Support at Boccia UK. \u201cThen you can look at multiple data points \u2013 and multiple data points in multiple matches \u2013 for really strong trends over time rather than indications or averages where you\u2019re making a hunch judgment. Coach judgment can be really valuable but the more data we have the more confidence we have in the trends we\u2019re seeing and the decisions we\u2019re taking. They\u2019ve been through every opponent and looked at themselves; we\u2019ve looked at it from a behavioural\u00a0 as well as technical and tactical perspective and generated some clear tactical plans. These strategic plans when they play and use different behaviours at different points in time to respond to or manage the contest with their opponent. It\u2019s really provided an extra layer of detail and consideration around our analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coaches can take a tablet on to court with them; it\u2019s a set of dropdowns that are pre-set of different codes that they can put in for types of shot and different scenarios and to record all of the relevant context around a shot that the athlete\u2019s delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The need for smart visualisation emphasised by Blenkharn and Gallimore as underpinned the project. \u201cThat was one of the key outcomes that we wanted to deliver with our SmartCourt system is being able to capture the data and feed it straight through to programmes like Tableau and Power BI and visualise that straight away,\u201d adds Wagg.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur performance analyst Anna has worked really well with colleagues across the EIS and with the EIS\u2019 Performance Data team around how she manages the data flow from that software into the visualisation software to produce reports and turn them into really impactful ways of presenting data back to our coaches, going from old school pie charts and bar graphs to scatter plots of balls on a court so you can see the precise location of where balls have been played.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that Anna has benefited from the wider support that the EIS provides all practitioners in technical leadership in being able to check and challenge and learn from others in how they\u2019ve done similar work in other sports and brough that back to Boccia to help us deliver that SmartCourt project really effectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat feeds into our cloud database, then we can generate and share reports using logins and links. We\u2019ve also linked that to our video database as well; all of the historical video footage that we\u2019ve collected over the past 10 years. We\u2019re now able to identify particular time codes, matches when a particular shot has happened and create a mini playlist for coaches or athletes to look through of specific shots at specific points in time that they can go back to, either to understand their process for how they did that and develop that further or look at examples that didn\u2019t work so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now refining that video playlist bit but, in essence, from the data that Anna will hold and access through the cloud database, she can access with a coach and find the key time points and then find a playlist and share that playlist with the coach; then they can then get online and see and go \u2018it was these five shots that they played a particular way\u2019 or \u2018this is every shot of this type that they\u2019ve played\u2019. The coaches will use the tablets to generate that type of information and then we can login through tablets to the various bits of it to access the insights that it generates for us. It\u2019s a very collaborative online solution that can work anywhere in the world and can work remotely given that we\u2019re camp-based and remote-based; it helps our coaches and our practitioners collaborate when they\u2019re not side by side on court.<\/p>\n

\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 on what has gone before proved to be a great benefit; to be able to go in even more prepared and respond to the ongoing fluctuations and challenges that the pandemic continues to present.\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