The Constraints Collective - Episode 113, October 2026 Monthly Round-Up - Ian Renshaw & Keith Davids

If you study or have studied sport science anywhere in the world, your degree has a family lineage. Most of us never look at it. We inherit the subject split into sub-disciplines of physiology, psychology, biomechanics and the rest; we inherit the habit of assessing performance and recording data from performers, and we assume that is simply what sport science is. In our October round-up, Keith and Ian trace that lineage of the academic area of sport science back to its roots: a small department in the lower floors of a building on Byrom Street, Liverpool, where the world's first single honours sport science degree began enrolling students in 1975.

Twenty two individuals at that time did not know that they were part of academic history that shaped the development of scientific theories and models, as well as applied practice for athlete and team support over the past decades. The timing of this podcast is not accidental. The Liverpool Polytechnic cohort of 1986 to 1989, the students Keith taught just after he arrived there in 1985, are about to celebrate their 40th reunion in October 2026.

It All Stems From Byrom Street

The course grew out of very early applied work in professional football in the city of Liverpool. Dr. Vaughan Lancaster-Thomas, a former Olympic basketball player, had set up a sport science lab with Dr. Tom Reilly and Dr. Frank Sanderson, and the group was providing support for Everton Football Club in the English First Division, which eventually morphed into the English Premier League. Everton could see the benefit, wanted more of it, and the staff realised they would need more graduates trained to provide the type of sport science support skills that the club wanted. A degree course was quickly formalised and followed in 1975. Keith joined the staff at the Department of Sport Science at Liverpool Poly ten years later, sharing an office with Tom and Adrian Lees, covering sport psychology and trying, against Frank's resistance, to steer the modules more towards skill acquisition.

"Any listener now who is on a sports science course, or has attended a sports science course, whether it's undergrad level or master's level, or maybe someone who's done a PhD in sports science, really it all stems from Byrom Street in Liverpool. That's where the first course started." Keith Davids

Liverpool also hosted the first World Congress of Science and Football in 1987, with every code of football in the same room for the first time. It returns to the Albert Dock venue in 2027, forty years on.

Not a Bunch of Lab Scientists

 From a single lab supporting Everton to a global discipline: applied sport science started with athletes in the room.

What Keith remembers most about those students is that they were enthusiastic athletes and many were also passionate coaches too. They challenged staff, brought their own sporting experience into the lab, and produced third-year projects that external examiners compared to master's level project work, several of which were published.

"They weren't a bunch of scientists that were just studying sport as like some sort of lab-based phenomenon... It was about their performance, their own experiences as coaches, as athletes as well. That really sparked it." Keith Davids

Ian's own route ran in parallel. He began a Human Movement Studies degree at Carnegie in Leeds in 1981: six theoretical subjects alongside six practical ones, with a second-year unit called "linking studies" where small groups took one sport and each member analysed it through a different discipline. Ian's group, unsurprisingly, chose cricket.

The Money Arrived, and the Theory Paid for It

The second phase came in the 1990s. In Keith's account, poor Olympic returns for Great Britain at the 1992 games in Barcelona gave politicians a reason to fund sport science support, and the field of consultancy and funded support for athletes and organisations expanded rapidly. Keith's view is that the speed came at a cost, sometimes to the detriment of theoretical development and scientific research.

"Some sub-disciplines of sports science went too deep into the applied practical side of things too quickly." Keith Davids

Staff moved into consultancy, some left academia entirely, and in some sub-disciplines theoretical development stalled. Ian added the opposite problem, drawing on conversations with Damian Farrow at the AIS: scientists who went into sport to collect data for their own careers, then never gave anything back to the coaches who let them in. Neither version puts the athlete's performance at the centre.

The Copy and Paste Fallacy

Ian's time at Sheffield Hallam University, one of the regional hubs for the English Institute of Sport, brought a different lesson. At the national table tennis centre in Nottingham, the programme director was French, the head coach Chinese and another key coach Swedish. The players went to the local comprehensive school, which the Chinese coach struggled to accept: in his country's sport system, they would have been training full time.

Each coach arrived with a method that worked in their home environment. Mark O'Sullivan calls this the 'copy and paste problem' in sports coaching and athlete support. What works in one country may not transfer easily to another environment and yet we can observe the same practice exercises and coaching methods when we are transported between countries around the globe. For Keith, it ignores the socio-cultural and historical constraints that shape how people learn in a specific context.

"The fallacy of cut and paste, copy and paste, I think... has been shown quite well by Mark O'Sullivan." Keith Davids

Keith pointed to Sam Hyde's PhD, close to submission in October 2026, which argues for a transdisciplinary model built around agreed principles underpinning the work of a Department of Methodology sports organisations may benefit from, with the athlete at the centre and the disciplines functioning to work together rather than operating in parallel silos.

Theory Is Not Enough

Knowing the roots of a field lets coaches ask why a practice exists at all.

Both hosts agreed that strong theory on its own may not change practice. It is only a part of the contributions needed for athlete development and sound coaching support. Ecological dynamics offers clear principles, but someone still has to design the training activity, the session, the week and the programme over a season.

"Just having the strong theoretical science, the ideas and concepts, is not enough... This is where you need the blend of experiential knowledge and empirical knowledge, deeply integrated." Keith Davids

The coaches who manage that blend share one trait. Ian described finishing late-night sessions with John Herdman in Canada, where Herdman would counter Ian's observations with something he had read by Joan Vickers. When a podcast host once asked Ian what advice he would give, his answer was short.

"Just be curious, was my answer. Keep being curious and want to know more and find out more. And then you go away and you realise you don't know that much." Ian Renshaw

Ian recalled Scott Kelso making the same point at a meeting in Dunedin in 2004: go back and read the original papers. Keith added why it matters. Knowing the history lets a coach ask why a particular practice task, session or programme exists at all, and sometimes the answer is that it may simply be a historical artefact handed down over time, not something contemporary, with a sound theoretical basis.

Sport science did not begin with the latest podcast, wearable or social media thread. It began with a lab, a football club and a group of academics and students who were athletes before they were scientists. The founders built our field around applications. The challenge now is the one Keith and Ian keep returning to: placing the athlete at the centre, integrating theory and practice to support athletes and teams, and staying curious enough to check where your own habits may have come from. In their own way sports science and coaching are dynamical entities, changing at different timescales.

If you're getting value from our podcast check out our membership options and coaching community at www.theconstraintscollective.com where you can access podcast summaries, narrated presentations, early release podcasts and monthly online meet ups with experts from the Constraints Collective.

https://www.theconstraintscollective.com

This episode is available now on Buzzsprout. Listen at  https://www.buzzsprout.com/2354827]

- Ian Renshaw & Keith Davids, The Constraints Collective