About Dave O’Sullivan And The ProSport Academy…

I remember the first time I realised I wanted to be a physio…

I was in fifth year in Colaiste Chriost Ri, Secondary School in Cork City.

My Irish Teacher (and hurling coach at the time) said to me “what do you want to be?’.

That isn’t always an easy question for a 16-year-old.

But I had an answer…

The night before I had watched a football match and the image of the physio running onto the field was the one thing that stuck with me. I thought ‘that’s what I want to be’.

That was my answer. I hadn’t had an injury myself. I hadn’t had to overcome this or that. I just saw a guy on the football field and thought ‘that looks cool’.

I wasn’t ‘smart enough’ to study physio in Ireland. I didn’t get enough points in my leaving cert exam.

But I found a way there.

I went to IT Carlow for two great years to study Physiology and Health Science (and nearly ruined my liver in the process in all honesty J).

That allowed me to get into Physio at the University of Huddersfield and begin my three-year degree.

I quickly learned there was no magic bullet.

The one thing all these courses gave me was short-term results.

In professional sport these were useless.

The player would go out, but you’d see them an hour later and the problem was back.

In a private practice clinic, sure, this can buy you some time but when you’re working in professional sport, there’s nowhere to hide.

The short-term changes were pi**ing me off.

I was left asking, ‘how do I get this to stick?’.

At every course I was being told the same thing again and again, ‘that’s the advanced levels’ or ‘that’s the higher levels.’

I spent nearly £10,000 on one course alone. When I raised the issue of short-term changes, they sold me the dream of ‘you need the advanced levels’ to sort that problem…

That course came to a head when I brought a player down to London to see the ‘main inventor’ of this technique.

And sure, we got some short-term changes…

But alas, by the time we got to the train station, the problem had returned, and I had a two-and-a-half-hour train journey back up to Huddersfield with this player.

I’d had enough there and then.

That’s when I thought to myself…. I need to forget about these ‘magic bullet techniques’, forget about the ‘magic exercises’, forget about the ‘magic hands on technique’.

I needed a structure and a system.

A system – a repeatable way to get a desired result.

In 2015 my second daughter, Ruby Rae was born, and I was looking to come out of professional sport.

I was always getting emails from therapists, asking me to coach or mentor them so I said let’s give it a go.

So, with 25 people in the first class, I set up the first ProSport Academy Mentorship.

At the start I thought therapists just wanted me to teach them hands-on, rehab and assessment techniques etc…

But what they struggled with were the small things…

Knowing how to make sense of the objective assessment…

Where to start with a treatment plan…

How to give an accurate prognosis and set expectations…

How to progress or regress a patient…

When is it safe to allow a patient to go back running again?

How do you transition from the bed to higher level rehab safely?

That’s when I knew what they really needed was the structure and my step-by-step system.

And to give them genuine confidence and clarity in the clinic on a day-to-day basis, they’d need a lot of the skill sets that professional sports physios have…

…such as

Speaking to coaches and giving return to play predictions to set expectations…

Making difficult decisions about when to progress or regress…

And how to know if it’s safe for someone to return to high level activities without flaring up or breaking down.

Because let’s face it, working in a cash based private practice can be just as high pressure as working in pro sport.

Patients’ expectations have never been higher while their attention and adherence never lower.

So, it all goes back to understanding the ‘WHY’ behind everything you’re doing.

And to be completely honest with you…

I still get embarrassed now when I look back at the 2015 class and some of the stuff I was teaching.

But it was where my head was with the system.

The structure of the system has stayed the same, but I’d like to think I’m working smarter not harder 6 years on.

The system becomes invaluable when you need to make high pressure decisions.

You need to take the emotion out of the decisions and let logic prevail.

This is where the step-by-step system has been invaluable. When I worked with England Rugby League at the 2017 World Cup final week in Brisbane, Australia…

I had two tough calls to make.

But the system allowed me to take the emotion out.

The players had to earn the right to progress and helped me in the decision-making process.

The same in Japan at the 2019 Rugby Union world cup.

My progressions and regressions, my hands-on treatment…

Everything was done as part of the bigger plan of where I was trying to get the athlete to.

This gave me the clarity and ultimately the confidence to answer difficult questions about when they will be ready to train or play again.

With clarity comes confidence. With confidence comes action.

The structure and system gives me clarity and confidence every single day I go to work.

It’s been quite a journey.

We’ve been able to replicate the step-by-step system with over 1,000+ therapists in over 40 countries all over the world now and growing.

I still pinch myself sometimes.

When I get someone in New Zealand or Australia in the mentorship forum saying, ‘I’ve helped this person who’s failed traditional approaches’…

That’s a dream come true for me.

That’s what I wanted for myself. I wanted to be able to help people who had failed traditional approaches.

That’s why I set my own clinic up and the mentorship now allows us to help even more people around the world.

My reputation is everything to me, both in the clinic and in the mentorship.

Any patient who comes to my clinic or comes into my mentorship for help, I take that very seriously.

I have a responsibility to deliver results quickly and safely and will leave no stone unturned to help if they are willing to do their part too.

The step-by-step system is the thing that allows me to get repeatable results with such a complex topic and a human being with pain.

And of course, It’s something that is continually evolving.

That’s why I want to give people lifetime access to the mentorship because I am constantly improving.

With COVID-19 and having to do telehealth, that’s really accelerated me as a therapist even more.

I haven’t been able to use my hands and I’ve realised that I have been relying on my hands a little bit too much.

It’s been great. I’ve had to figure things out and in turn, strengthening my system.

These updates to the system have been put into the Mentorship so even those therapists who came on board in 2015, now have access to where my head is currently and the latest version of what we do.