Coach first.Masters sprinter second.Student and mentor throughout.

I came to sprinting the long way round. Before the track I was a semi-professional footballer and a mixed-martial artist, which means I spent my teenage years in sports where speed decides outcomes and almost nobody is taught how to produce it. That is still the thing I find hardest to accept about the way we develop athletes in this country, and it is why I do the work I do now.

I started competing on the track at 20 years old and although I had the ability, there was a lot for me to learn. My first coach at Basildon, Vespa Ellis, was fantasic in my early development - helping me achieve PBs of 7.10s in 60m, 100m in 10.87s and 200m in 22.0s. I joined Michael Afilaka's group at 22 years old. I trained like an elite athlete while working full-time, and undeniably became a very fast, strong, and fit sprinter. Although I improved all of my PBs marginally in my 3 years with the team, I never produced in a race what I did in training. I pushed myself too hard in training, thought too analytically on race day, put too much internal pressure on myself, and didn't take the time to understand my own mind, the minds and words of others, and execute with every bit of energy I could without draining myself.

I quit sprinting at the age of 26 after disappointing myself and burning myself out. I feel my coaches did all they could, but my stubbornness was the barrier. I successfully took up boxing competitively which really helped with my adrenaline control and all-out output and skill during chaotic situations. I also continued training at the same volume and intensity as when I trained as a full-time sprinter, plus I learnt how to apply sprint practices and impulses into my boxing training which made me very competitive instantly. I moved to a different county with no boxing gym, so I started football again at the age of 28 and quickly worked my way up to semi-pro level; again by applying sprint philosophies and movement strategies into football which made me look faster and fitter on the pitch as well as far more decisive and confident on the ball. I didn't do any traditional distance running for football, only sprints - fast and repetitive - and was always the quickest and awake player on the pitch in the dying minutes of a match.

I started coaching general strength and sprints for field-sport athletes in 2018 alongside football as I began to understand the underpinning impulses and movement strategies that are found in almost every sport. In late 2019 I started my own sprint group. In 2020, during Covid lockdown I began sprinting on a local field again as it was the only thing I was allowed to do! I made some mistakes, partially tore my achilles tendon, then raced 2 months later. Surprisingly I achieved 10.83w which gave me a lot of hope I could get close to the potential I once had. 2 years later, I ran 6.90 and 10.60. Continuing that form for 2 more seasons.

My first sprint group was very successful, but I think I owe that more to the talented athletes that I coached rather than an innate aptitude for coaching. Notably, Michael Onilogbo ranked 3rd in Europe for U18s 100m in his time in my group and went on to earn an athletic scholarship to an American university. Their talent, successes, and failures was a trial of fire for me as a coach and made me very eager to understand what I could do better and how to best communicate instructions with different types of people who learn and perceive differently so they can acquire new skills deeply and execute them when it matters; there are huge differences from person to person and this is reflected in my coaching style.

As an athlete I am now a British Masters 100m champion and a fifteen-time county and area champion over 60m, 100m and 200m. My lifetime bests are 6.90, 10.60 and 21.62. I am still competing, which matters more to my coaching than it sounds: I am running the sessions I write, feeling what a badly placed rep does to the next one, and losing races to people who prepared better than I did. It keeps me honest about the difference between a programme that looks right on paper and one that works on a Tuesday night in February. Most importantly, I'm always learning and trying to master every millisecond which helps me understand myself and transfer to others in a way that they can interpret accurately.

The gap between knowing what fast looks like and knowing how to teach it is the whole job.

Where I coach

I am assistant coach in Michael Afilaka's sprint group. The group coaches the current British 100m champion, who recently took European Championship gold over 100m, and the British 200m silver medallist. Working at that level teaches you what the top of the sport actually demands day to day, and how little of it is exotic.

Alongside that I run my own group under Spiral Sprints in Basildon, Essex. My athletes are track sprinters from junior to masters, semi-professional and academy footballers, and international rugby players. With the footballers I work across speed, agility, football-specific technique, fitness and strength and conditioning; with the rugby players the brief is usually speed that survives contact and a heavy fixture list. Every sprinter in my group set a personal best this season, with one exception — a 46-year-old who has instead run his fastest times in five years.

What I am qualified in

I hold UK Athletics Level 2 Speed Coach Certificate, the Exos Speed certification, and a Level 4 qualification in sports massage. I am in the final year of an MSc in Strength & Conditioning at St Mary's University, Twickenham. That combination is deliberate. I wanted to be able to write the programme, coach the technical work on the track, deliver the gym session, and put hands on the athlete afterwards - because in a small private group the alternative is four people who never speak to each other.

How I think about the work

Two commitments run through everything on this site. The first is that speed is coachable - not infinitely, not equally, but far more than the "you either have it or you don't" folklore allows, and far more than most team-sport athletes are ever given the chance to find out. The second is that measurement should serve coaching rather than replace it. I am doing a master's degree in a discipline built on numbers, and I still think the most valuable instrument at the track is a coach who has watched ten thousand reps and knows what this one looked like.

What I offer

Athletes can train with me in person, work with me remotely, or buy a self-guided programme. Coaches can bring me their own planning to review and rebuild. The details, including what everything costs, are on the coaching and consultancy pages. If you want to know how I think before you decide, the writing is a better guide than anything on this page.