Welcome to the FMPA Conference 2022!

This years event will be a series of on-line workshops, FREE for FMPA Members.

Here FMPA Education Co-ordinator, Kevin Paxton, tells us a little bit more about what we can expect:

“After 20+ years of working in professional soccer, many of which have been in English academy or senior set-ups it is now more so than ever apparent that most people don’t know what they don’t know. Many a seasoned practitioner who has given a huge amount of their personal life to the pursuit of improving their employer’s performance on the pitch will be quick to tell you that they’ve forgotten most things they learned from when they first started. The very essence of our profession is you use what you need and you discard what you don’t!

With this in mind over the last few years of designing continual professional development conferences and workshops I have thought we actually learn more from an event from the younger, enthusiastic presenter who is keen to showcase their findings in the public domain compared to the serial conference presenter regurgitating a slightly modified presentation from 5-10 years ago (guilty myself for the record). Ofcourse there are numerous exceptions whereby an experienced person, keen on staff development and reflective practise will have wise words to share and inspire discussion amongst the audience, however, I have often walked out of a conference thinking “why don’t they actually give us an example of what they do?” or “how many blue sky philosophy waffle slides do you need?” or worse still “what do they actually do there?”.

To cut a long story short, I hope the underlying concept of this virtual conference of providing a platform for people to genuinely share their current work for the wider benefit of the industry resonates with you the delegate. It is also an opportunity to showcase some of the excellent work that is being delivered in our home game as opposed to be continually looking outside of the game because it is deemed an appropriate strategy and potentially missing a real gem right under our own noses.

Furthermore, I hope that by incorporating a wider spectrum of discipline speakers involving not just medical but the scientific and conditioning aspects of the performance arm that this maybe a year by which we step out of our comfort zone and learn from disciplines around the multi-disciplinary team that can help inform and shape our specific area of impact on the athletes for an improved benefit, after all, isn’t that what we are all paid to do?

I appreciate with the huge amount of online content that has become available since the start of the pandemic that people are “zoomed out” and crave face to face interaction. However, in light of the circumstances this may not be appropriate and as such I felt it important to provide more selection of shorter digestable sessions virtually. The benefit being it is easier to take in information but also easy to go back to at a later date.

In doing this I have looked to structure presentations around the three pillars of producing effective performance – The people behind the scenes, the processes that they work by and because we are now in the generation of technology the products by which we use to continually improve our practise. I hope you will enjoy;

“Three P’s of Productive Performance”

Many Thanks

Kevin Paxton, MSc, ASCC, CSci

Find out more:  Visit FMPA Conference 2022 and find out how you can register for FREE