I don’t think anyone is going to be robust to the intensity demands of sport by being sat on their ass and not training

This presentation is a breakdown and step by step process of how Keir has done his work bringing players back through a progressive return to play protocol that begins with, ironically, decreasing the injury occurrences in his athletes. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work out. This is where Keir gets into the meat and potatoes of his talk. The first part of this is going over how to evaluate what went wrong leading to the athlete becoming injured and the importance of metrics and data collection prior to injury in order to know when athlete’s actually “back.”

The next segment is a discussion on training and how it can be impactful, in a negative and positive manner, in injury prevention and rehabilitation. He utilizes a pyramid (taken from Tom Farrow) to show how he sees the progression back to competition and shares with us the matrix that he built for rugby based off the table looking at just about every bio motor demand of sport and gives us the reasoning and examples of requirements needed to move “up” the matrix. This includes a visual step by step up the matrix for and injured athlete’s on speed work, agility, strength training, and power. These videos give coaches a great step by step to build off of for each of their own progressions, or even a plug and play model that’s there for the taking.

He finishes off by sharing with us an example how he has made modifications to the program using a dry erase board, the matrix, and communication across all levels of the staff to review what is best for the athlete to progress them as fast and safely though the matrix as possible.

The final 10 minutes is q and a where Keir discusses the roles of technique vs speed vs tactics vs conditioning in rehab, regressions and alterations within the matrix, advice on how to successfully come onboard with a new team/staff where there is come “changes” that need to occur, how to handle athletes who are taking their time in return to play, where med ball throws would fit, and where weight averages fit into the acute/chronic ratios.