george petrakos
George Petrakos
Director and Lead Consultant
Key Experience
13 Years I > 550 Athletes I 2 International Teams I 4 Professional Teams I Olympic Medalists I > 7000 coaching hours I > 1000 written-feedback events
I have refined my athlete engagement and performance
solutions with the following:
Wasps Rugby (Ongoing)
Scotland Rugby (5 years total)
Glasgow Warriors (3 years)
UCD High Performance (4.5 years)
Irish Hockey Women (3.5 years)
Irish Rowing athletes (and Olympians) (4.5 years)
Irish Athletics athletes (and Olympians) (4.5 years)
Chelsea F.C. (1 year)
I am a published author and researcher in resisted sprinting and
physical performance analysis.
I am fortunate to have evolved my knowledge and practice with Premiership football players, Olympic medalists and International Rugby players.
Points of difference and in-house innovations
· Aligning physical competency with a coach-led ‘Winning Model’: How can we physically prepare to win trophies?
· Improving physical effort in pitch training: The use of self-determination theory and autonomy-supportive behaviour to guide feedback design.
· Management project: The development and implementation of mutually inclusive staff and player ‘visions’ for long-term performance and work-motivation.
· Design and implementation of a match-simulation protocol to assess rugby-power-performance under match fatigue, and the individual physical characteristics associated with fatigue-resilience.
· Report writing to assist the coach: understanding the ‘interesting’ and the ‘useful’, coach-autonomy and the transition of data to knowledge.
Testimonials
Stuart Hogg
Francisco Tavares
Anna O'Flanagan
"George has made an obvious difference at Glasgow Warriors. The way he communicates with us as a squad and as individuals helps create a real buzz around training and wanting to be better. "
"George looked after the physical side of my return following a tough bout of injuries last year. Being injured is a downer, but his energy and coaching helped build a really strong relationship with George and the injured-group as a whole. It resulted in me quite enjoying hitting my goals during the rehab process.
We have a team that love training hard. Everybody wants to stand up and show effort in the gym, on the pitch and we want to make good food and sleep choices when away from Scotstoun. "
"George’s way of sharing information is something I had never encountered before. I actually look forward to testing days and the Physical Report his team publish on a daily basis.
With George as Head of our Physical Performance Department you can see the effect he has had on his staff. They all seem to prioritise communication and learning about us as people to get the most out of us as rugby players"
Stuart Hogg
2x British and Irish Lion
2x Six Nations Player of The Tournament
Glasgow Warriors and Scotland Rugby Union
Pro 12 Winner
Anna O'Flanagan
Francisco Tavares
Anna O'Flanagan
"George was more than someone who wrote our programmes. He made me want to get better. He made us understand why we had to train in certain ways. Most importantly, he let us make big decisions about where we wanted to go and how it would improve our hockey.
I hadn’t experienced that kind of coaching before".
Anna O'Flanagan
Irish Hockey International (179 Caps)
World Cup Silver Medallist
Irish Hockey All-Time Top Scorer
Francisco Tavares
Francisco Tavares
Francisco Tavares
"I worked with George as a fellow coach at Glasgow Warriors. I quickly learned how effective it is to transfer data to meaningful and motivational communication with players and coaches. George’s methods and attention to detail truly affected the self-driven motivation of each player at the club. He used psychology to promote intent in our players’ daily training efforts. "
"I also experienced George’s methods as a staff member under his management. Life was great in the department. I felt free to make big decisions regarding my clear roles and accountabilities. Our weekly department meetings were full of debate, roundtable discussion and driven by reflection for improvement."
"I have taken many of George’s methods with me to my role at Sporting Lisbon".
Dr. Francisco Tavares (PhD)
Physical Performance Coordinator,
Sporting Lisbon