16 January – The League Managers Association (LMA) in the UK and medical provider Perform struck a deal to provide a fitness and wellbeing programme for managers at the new FA training facility at St George’s Park.
The partnership provides current and former league football managers with the opportunity to undergo a performance and lifestyle assessment, with the objective of not just identifying potential health issues but actually improvin their ability to do their jobs at a higher level.
Dr Charlotte Cowie, clinical director of Perform at St George’s Park, said there are plenty of annual corporate screening programmes that provide health checks at a senior level for executives, which will often there is not much change from year to year.
The implication being that these screening programmes do not fully measure the unique stresses and lifestyle of professional football management. The ‘Fit to Perform’ test for managers is designed to take the test to a deeper level and to provide practical ‘wellness’ advice for manager.
Before arriving at St George’s managers are given a First Beat monitor for three days that provides data not just on heart rate but also heart rate variability. Along with the data collected during the tests at St George’s a fuller picture is built up allowing practical advice to be given about any suggested lifestyle changes.
With the majority of managers having been professional players, the test includes a muscular skeletal screening that will look at joints and will identify any area of potential problem, perhaps where there has been an old injury, for example. Managers are then given a video of the exercises they can do to deal with any problem.
“Managers are very competitive people,” said Dr Cowie. “We have been surprised with how honest the managers are when discussing their lifestyles and the issues they face,..This has enabled us to come up with specific and practical advice that will make a difference to their performance.”
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