Lecturer to head up Sports Science & Medicine at Olympic training Centre

Dr Peter Francis, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Rehabilitation and Health Sciences at Leeds Beckett, will work from the training camp with the Athletics Association of Ireland from Tuesday 29 March - Thursday 3 April. 

He commented: “Training camps provide an opportunity for me to put into practice so much of what I research and teach students at Leeds Beckett. In my mind, it is very important not to get stuck behind a desk for too long and forget how to do what it is you are teaching.

“As an accredited performance physiologist with the Irish Institute of Sport and accredited physical therapist, I will have a dual role on this camp. Morning monitoring will involve athletes taking a resting heart rate, filling in a recovery log and providing a urine sample, mainly so we can get an overall picture of how they are adapting to the training load. The athletes will then engage in morning training and in the afternoon I will take on the role of physical therapist providing mostly, I hope, soft tissue maintenance but of course assessing and treating injuries as they arise.

“Injury prevention will be a big focus of this camp. In the evenings I will be leading injury prevention sessions and providing advice on load management. At that point all athletes and particularly staff will be ready for bed! I have been attending training camps in a similar capacity since 2011 and consider it a real honour any time I am asked to assist our national athletes.”

Last year Dr Francis was appointed as Team Manager for Athletics Ireland at the 2015 European Athletics Junior Championships in Sweden. With 1,038 athletes and 440 coaches and staff from 47 countries, the European Athletics Junior Championship in Eskilstuna were the biggest ever junior championships.

Dr Francis has been a senior lecturer in sport and health science at Leeds Beckett University since September 2014, having previously worked in the same area at the University of St. Mark and St. John, Plymouth. He works across programmes in the area of sport and exercise therapy and physiotherapy.  Awarded the Roadbridge Medical Research Scholarship at the University of Limerick in 2010, Peter conducted research which investigated age-related change in muscle quality (mass, strength, function). Subsequently, as part of a research team, Peter investigated the role of exercise and nutrient support in improving muscle quality. This work was submitted for the award of PhD in June 2014.

With a keen interest in high performance sport, Dr Francis has worked at the performance laboratory of the Irish Institute of Sport on two occasions, prior to the Beijing and London Olympics. He became an accredited performance physiologist with the institute in March 2013, with a case study specialising in marathon running. Dr Francis has a BSc in Sport and Exercise Science and a BSc in Physical Therapy and regularly conducts applied work in these areas, most notably on behalf of the athletics association of Ireland. He has a keen interest in chronic lower limb injury in endurance athlete’s as well musculoskeletal health across the lifespan.