Paul Gamble PhD, the founder of Informed Practitioner in Sport, has worked in elite sport over a period spanning two decades and three continents
The knowledge and experience in elite sports accrued over this period encompasses team sports (Paul began his career in professional rugby union with English Premiership side London Irish), racquet sports (Paul served as National Strength and Conditioning Lead for Scottish Squash for six years), and a diverse array of individual sports with athletes of all ages competing at national and international-level.
Paul is an applied sports scientist who is internationally recognised in multiple areas of specialism, including physical and athletic preparation, youth athlete development and sports injury rehabilitation. Paul completed his PhD in 2005, and the period since has published four textbooks, the most recent Comprehensive Strength and Conditioning (Revised Edition) being released in July 2019 (the spanish language version was released in 2021). To support the quest to better inform his practice, Paul has remained involved in the academic realm throughout and continues to contribute to applied research. Paul provides bespoke coach eduation content to third parties including national sport organisations and national coaching associations as well as delivering workshops to performance staff and sports injury clinics.
Paul has a special interest in sports injury and performance health. Paul has worked and written extensively on the themes of strategies and countermeasures to mitigate injury risk, performance injury rehabilitation and return to performance following injury. In previous roles, Paul has been responsible for coordinating sports medicine and physiotherapy provision, as well as nutrition and lifestyle support for athletes under his care. Paul has provided troubleshooting for complex sports injury cases involving professional and national team athletes and presently consults with sports injury clinics. In 2021 we launched the first of two e-learning modules for practitioners who work with sports injuries on the topics of ACL injury rehabilitation/return to performance and resolving running-related injuries.
Having latterly served in Coaching Director and Performance Director roles, Paul brings extensive experience in leadership, managing staff across disciplines, and providing mentorship and continuing education. Paul explored these themes at length in the recent titles Prepared: Unlocking Human Performance with Lessons from Elite Sport and Informed: the Art of the Science of Preparing Athletes. Paul provides executive coaching to performance directors in different sports as well as providing consulting to sports organisations and mentorship to individuals.
In an effort to exploit every available avenue for optimising performance, Paul continually seeks to extend his knowledge across across all facets of performance and injury. In striving to apply this knowledge Paul has acquired practical expertise in multiple areas. Paul is unashamedly a ‘movement’ geek and his exploration of mechanics of running, jumping and throwing eventually led him to become a track and field athletics coach.
Ultimately, Paul remains a coach first and foremost and so took the step to pursue a new venture in the quest to retain 'hands-on' involvement as a performance coach and performance rehabilitation practitioner. Paul has coached rugby union at university and semi-professional level and as a track and field athletics coach he has coached athletes to national records and international level competition and continues to mentor coaches in the sport who have enjoyed notable success with multiple national records and international honours.