The technology behind Saints' fitness

Movement Performance Solutions (MPS) play a strategic role in helping Southampton’s players fulfil their physical potential.

For a number of years, Saints have been partnered with MPS, who pride themselves on being educators and suppliers of the best technology in the industry, focusing on ‘health of movement’ to help athletes perform to their best.

MPS have supported Saints’ staff by teaching them how to use both The Performance Matrix (TPM) and Kinetic Control (KC) to reduce risk of injury and enhance performance.

First introduced in 2008, TPM is a reliable online movement assessment, analysis and retraining system.

The club have been utilising a sports specific version of this tool (The Football Matrix) as part of their strategy to help reduce the chance of injury for those players identified at increased risk, with a number of sports science staff undertaking a ten-day course (The Performance Solution) to get the best out of the resource.

Lincoln Blandford, course tutor and head of education for MPS, said: “It’s been a real privilege to work with such a group of excellent practitioners, who clearly value the role of movement as part of the bigger player support picture.”

In addition to TPM, a number of Saints medical staff have also attended ‘The Movement Solution’, a 15-day course supporting KC.

Rather than highlighting risk in movement patterns, KC assesses and retrains movement to address the presence of pain, such as identifying when a player is injured. 

This has proved particularly successful in addressing hip-related issues and continues to be an integral part of the acute injury management process. 

Saints’ first-team physio Steve Sparks said: “The Performance Matrix has been an integral part of our pre-season screening for a number of seasons. 

“It assists in our injury prevention and performance augmentation strategies, helping us to identify key areas of individual physical development in conjunction with our other screening. 

“Through the use of Kinetic Control principles, this screening also helps inform our rehabilitation protocols and planning in order to restore healthy functional synergistic movement patterns.”