Craig Robertson heading to Commonwealth Games as Performance Scientist

Performance Scientist for Team England

Being part of this team leading into a home Commonwealth Games is an exceptional honour.

My Role as a Performance Scientist is to support the athletes in a physiological and performance analysis capacity. This will vary from providing Blood Lactate Analysis on the Holding Camp at Loughborough University to analysing Race Performances by the Team to allow them to perform at their best when it matters.

With some athletes already being pre-selected in Phase 1 of the team selections, we have just gone through Phase 2 at the British Championships in Sheffield, where I and some of the other support staff provided the race analysis for the swimmers looking at getting onto the team.

Once the entire team has been announced in May, we are looking at carrying out a test event at what will be the home of Aquatics for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, Sandwell Aquatics Centre. This will be followed by attending the Barcelona Leg of the Mare Nostrum Tour (25/26 May).

During June, part of the team will be attending the World Para Swimming Championships in Madeira or FINA World Championships in Budapest. The others will come together for a 10-day training camp that I will be a part of. This is the last step before we move as one team into the holding camp on 21 July, and finally, the Commonwealth village on 26 July before the games begin on 29 July.

This is my first experience as a member of a senior international team at a multi-sport games.

My aim is to just take in the experience as much as possible and learn from the exceptional team that I will be working alongside, but ultimately, I want to enjoy the experience and positively contribute to what will be an unbelievable summer.

CRAIG ROBERTSON

Craig is a Part-Time Lecturer and PhD researcher based in the Centre for Human Performance. He is investigating the effects of Apnoea Training on Competitive Swimming Performance. This includes both static and dynamic training methods and their effects on Swimming physiology. He is supervised by Dr Matthew Barlow, Dr Barney Wainwright and Emeritus Professor Roderick King

Craig is also the Module Leader on the Young Athlete Development Module as well as teaches other Physiological and Aquatic based modules.

As a practitioner, Craig works as one of the Assistant Performance coaches at the Leeds City Council Swim Training Scheme/City of Leeds Swimming Club, one of the most successful clubs in the country, regularly producing Great British International level swimmers.

He also works as one of the Performance Scientists for the Swim England Talent Team. He performs a blended role of Physiologist and Performance Analyst, working at all stages of their Pathway. This role leads him into coach education, where he will regularly speak at workshops and conferences about the underpinning Physiology of Swimming Training and Performance.