Sports Science Insights - Dave Carolan: Internal & External training loads - The Evolution of Sport Science Over 30 Years

2025-05-26

Episode 189: In this episode of the Sports Science Insights Podcast, powered by Inform Performance and hosted by Steve Barrett, we’re joined by Dave Carolan, a highly experienced Head of Performance, strategy advisor, and entrepreneur, currently leading the first team performance program at Derby County. With over 30 years in elite professional sport, Dave brings a wealth of knowledge on the evolution of performance departments, athlete monitoring, and the changing landscape of sport science. From his early days pioneering innovation in football to his current s...

Episode 189: In this episode of the Sports Science Insights Podcast, powered by Inform Performance and hosted by Steve Barrett, we’re joined by Dave Carolan, a highly experienced Head of Performance, strategy advisor, and entrepreneur, currently leading the first team performance program at Derby County.

With over 30 years in elite professional sport, Dave brings a wealth of knowledge on the evolution of performance departments, athlete monitoring, and the changing landscape of sport science. From his early days pioneering innovation in football to his current strategic leadership role, Dave offers both historical context and forward-thinking insight.

Topics Discussed:

The evolution of performance departments in elite sport
How internal and external load monitoring has changed over three decades
What innovation looked like in the early days of sport science
Why players today are playing fewer games than 10–20 years ago

This is a must-listen for practitioners, coaches, and leaders seeking to understand the past, present, and future of performance strategy in elite sport.

Where you can find Dave:

•⁠ LinkedIn

•⁠ Website

•⁠ X

Sponsors

VALD: makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training.

Hytro: The world’s leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport.

Teambuildr: A platform for any coach in any setting. Every day, thousands of coaches log into TeamBuildr to write training programs, build questionnaires and access athlete and client performance data. Teambuildr is a complete platform. Whether you're building your own programming, looking to create custom reports or give athletes a tool for accountability, they've built it out.

Where to Find Us

Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on: