Since completing my PhD in the physiology of football I have always been fascinated in trying to understand the performance limitations within the sport and how we can then subsequently design interventions to address these factors. Even as far back as 1997 I was aware that the science had demonstrated that performance in football was multifactorial though my training and thinking frameworks always led me to focus on the physiological. As my career has progressed I have had the luck to experience elite football up close as well as develop my criticalappraisal of the literature through my academic practice. The degree of insight that my dominant problem-solving paradigms have provided as I have attempted to gain insight haveat times left me dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction is a functionof a number of considerations. The knowledge that I have gained, either experientially or scientifically, has frequently only provided a small additional piece to the puzzle I was trying to solve. While I recognise that this small contribution may well be important, it is accompanied by the realisation that I still amonly able to partially comprehend what is going on. I`m aware that there are "unknowns" that are probably important, maybevital, to the issue but I am still no nearer to explicitly identify these factors let alone fully interpret them. Perhaps this is a function of not measuring the right things in the right ways. Maybe it is a result of my reductionist view constraining mythinking to focus on discrete factors rather than more complexconcepts like interactions and relationships. It`s possible thatwhat I need is a shift in perspective to one that somehow allowsme to see a "bigger picture". From this elevation insights maycome into view that provide opportunities to see underlying elements. These may provide the key to interventions that havehigh leverage and therefore the capability to impact several dimensions of the problem simultaneously.
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