george petrakos
George Petrakos
Director and Lead Consultant
Key Experience
11 Years I > 500 Athletes I 2 International Teams I 3 Professional Teams I Olympic Medallists I > 7000 coaching hours I > 1000 training and match reports
I have refined my athlete engagement and performance
solutions with the following:
Scotland Rugby (4 years)
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)
Edinburgh Rugby (1 year)
Chelsea F.C. (1 year)
I am a published author and researcher in resisted sprinting and
physical performance analysis.
"I strive to evolve environments to allow athletes and staff to 'fall in love with getting better'. Creating Spark Intent has been a natural and very enjoyable step in my career.
Consulting is an opportunity to do more of what I love.
I am fortunate to have evolved my knowledge and practice with Premiership football players, Olympic medallists and International Rugby players. I have successfully transferred my athlete-engagement philosophy to allow colleagues and performance staff to realise their own transition from sub-optimal to self-determined motivation.
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.
News and Clientele
July 2019 - SujiBFR
Exciting appointment to the advisory panel of SujiBFR - incredible potential in this company
June 2019 - Scotland Rugby at the Rugby World Cup
Full-time consultancy as Physical Performance Consultant for RWC19 preparation and delivery in Japan.
April 2019 - Resisted Sprinting
Spark Intent delivered a presentation to SCP Sporting Lisbon (Portugal) to enhance their knowledge of horizontal force application and programming solutions for resisted sprint training.
Spark Intent Workshops
Our first workshop was delivered in June 2019
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