In this careers series, Martina Mulhall, Gold Star Careers, speaks with high-profile figures across a range of industries to explore the stories behind their success.
From early career choices to pivotal moments, challenges overcome, and advice for the next generation, every interview offers a personal insight into the many different paths a career can take.
This week we turn our attention to renowned Performance Coach Patrick Harding.
Laois native, Patrick Harding, is best known as performance coach, physio, trainer, and mentor to F1 driver Alex Albon.
Also included in his impressive portfolio of elite professional sportspeople are Olympic boxer and medalist Michael Conlan, racing driver Tadasuke Makino, boxer Josh Kelly and golfer Paul Dunne.
He has also worked with Arsenal FC, Professional Rugby Union and Australian Rules Football teams.
He was the lead physiotherapist for Team GB’s Canoeing squad for the Rio 2016 Olympic cycle, and was also lead physio for the Tokyo Olympics.
As well as working with Albon, he has developed the Driver Performance & Development structure at Williams F1 Racing as the Williams Academy Performance Lead.
This programme supports nine young drivers from the age of 11 up to 21 who have the aspiration of becoming a Formula One driver.
He supplies all the services for the Williams team, and the services for the Pit Stop Development Programme, and he is the team physio.
His role encompasses both individual and team, ranging from supporting an individual who is at the peak of his F1 career to a 10 year old who wants to get there.
He is a Chartered Physiotherapist, a Strength & Conditioning Coach, a Mental Performance Coach and runs UK-based coaching company for elite athletes, Curadh Performance.
To become a physiotherapist, he refused to allow the CAO points race to get in the way, beginning with a a level 6 at Carlow IT (now SETRU Carlow), in Applied Health and Physiology), progressing to the BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy degree in Jordanstown, University of Ulster.
Since then, he has added on a master’s degree in strength and conditioning, and a master’s in mental development coaching. He is currently undertaking a part time PhD at Dublin City University (DCU) in the area of young athlete talent identification and development.
Yet, when asked to describe himself he says “I’m a country boy who loves sport, who wants to spend as much time with their family and friends as they possibly can. I don’t define myself by what I do. I work my job, but it’s not who I am”.
The core values he has around being honest and working with integrity have served him really well, he believes, both in his studies, but also in his work and life and the relationships he builds with the people he works with.
He uses that skill set to help elite sportspeople to develop, not only from a technical and professional point of view, but also from a life perspective viewpoint, in terms of building the behaviours in their own lives that help to support their sporting performance.
Among those he credits for helping him along the way are his parents, family, friends, and coaching peers. The GAA, particularly The Rock club, played a huge role, he says.
He was steeped in the GAA culture from an early age, played Laois football for many years, and is a strong supporter of club and county to this day.
1. What was your very first job, and what did it teach you?
You’re bringing me back! My first actual job was, in my teens, working in a PVC fabrication factory making frames for windows. I learned a lot from that, being thrown into an adult environment.
I think the responsibility that you had, even at that age, to be able to do your work and get it done at a quality standard. Work ethic was always a strong part of our family.
It didn’t matter what ability you had, but you were expected to put as much effort in as was nedded to do a good job.
So I always had a good work ethic, and I think certainly in that environment, that was important. And just being conscientious about my work and being on time, and all the practical things about being a good employee.
I guess, my first job, if I talk about sports specifically, was when I started to do some contract work for Team GB, which presented me with one of my big learning experiences.
This was when I had moved back to the UK, having worked in Aussie Rules and rugby before that. This Team GB work, came through somebody that I’d known.
It was in a couple of sports that weren’t really sports I’d ever thought of working in, or necessarily wanted to work in.
And I remember having a conversation with this individual and him giving me a really good piece of advice, which was, ‘these may not be the sports that you want to work in, but they’ll open a door to the sports that you do want to work in’.
And I thought that was a really valuable piece of advice in terms of turning up to those.
So I would basically cover trips internationally on competitions for squads who didn’t necessarily have a full time physiotherapist.
So they would draft in somebody, and you would cover that week or two weeks, and then you would come back, so you would throw in and out of these teams.
And I think that opened my eyes to the opportunity, in terms of when I turned up into that space to be as positive an influence as I possibly could, to have the impact that I wanted.
And invariably that led to me getting offered a full time role as a lead physio for an Olympic squad. So I’m very grateful to that individual for that piece of advice, and I’ve kept that with me in every environment that I’ve been in, which is every environment is not going to be perfect, but it’s what you can take and learn from that environment that will help you develop for the next job that is maybe the one that is perfect for you.
That was probably the thing I learned the most from those two experiences.
One is, you’ve got to work, and you’ve got to be conscientious, and you’ve got to be all of the things that an employer wants you to be.
And then the other one is, no matter what the environment looks like, there’s always something to learn, and that experience can set you up for the job that you actually do want to have.
So never take an environment for granted in terms of what you can learn, or where it could bring you.
2 – Did you always know you wanted to work in this field, or did your career path evolve over time?
I think the biggest ambiguity I had was before I started my career. I think once I started on the road, it felt like the right decision. If you were to ask me when I was a kid what I wanted to be, I would have said a vet.
I grew up in the countryside. We always had pets around, and we were around farms all our lives, so that was a bit of a natural choice for me.
But because of the rigidity of the Irish system at the time, there wasn’t really an access route for me to do that without getting astronomical points in the Leaving Cert.
I think the second natural fit for me then was sport, because I love sport. I always was involved in sport. My dad and my brothers were involved in sport and my mother.
So if I could make that a career, that would fit with my personality. I knew I didn’t want to be somebody who sat behind a laptop all day.
I wanted to be active, and I wanted to be engaging with people, and I wanted to be in a space where I could help, and I could feel like I was adding value just to an experience for people.
So, then when the idea of physiotherapy came up, it presented a similar challenge to that of veterinary, which was, how do I get into it?
At the time, I did a good Leaving Cert, I got 500+ points, but it was still 45 points short of getting into physiotherapy in Ireland.
I had a really good career guidance teacher in Ballyfin College, Niall Tully who is still a Guidance Counsellor, now at Mountrath Community School. Luckily he happened to be the coach of the senior football team I was captain of.
And he opened my eyes to a pathway that could work – doing a two-year level 6 course in Carlow IT (now SETU Carlow) as an access route to a physio degree. Sure, it takes a little bit longer.
You can be in a rush to get to the end, but the end isn’t always where you want to be. So, once I discovered there was a realistic access route for me to get into physiotherapy, that seemed like a very natural fit for me.
3 – Was there a turning point or moment that shaped your career most significantly?
I don’t think there’s one moment, there’s learnings along the way, and I’ve had some really exceptional mentors in terms of people that I’ve been in the space with.
I spent six years training to be a physiotherapist, and on that journey was very siloed in terms of what I needed to learn and what I needed to do to be successful in that aspect of my career.
And I think being then involved with Olympic squads and professional rugby and Aussie Rules, seeing what coaches did and the breadth of the knowledge that they needed to have across multiple professions to be successful really opened my eyes in terms of me realizing ‘I can be a physio for the rest of my life, or I can look to what gaps I have in terms of my other skill sets, and try to plug those gaps with learning, so as to open more doors for myself in terms of what I’m able to do in the areas that I’m able to work in.
I think the piece of education that really opened the door for me the most was the Masters in Strength and Conditioning.
I did my four or five years with the English Institute of Sport, and was the lead physio for the Rio Olympics, for British canoeing. And we had a really successful games.
I knew I was leaving, so I started my masters in S&C the next year.
I did that as well as working at Arsenal, and then suddenly, when those opportunities came up for an individual to be an individual athlete, Coach, I wasn’t just a physiotherapist, and I say that with the utmost respect, I also could look after the performance lead.
So, you were able to programme and support their physical and technical development, as well as manage their health, injury rehab and injury prevention, so suddenly within that you’re much more attractive prospect to people.
So, athletes who looking for a physio and SNC suddenly had two in one. And for me, those two skill sets just sit hand in hand.
So, certainly, any young physio out there, or even somebody looking to get into physio, I would say, later on down the line, have a think about adding a skill set like that to your portfolio, for your own knowledge and development, for how you’ll help patients and athletes, as well as increasing the amount of opportunities you’ll get. It’s dramatic in terms of the influence you can have on your career.
4 – What’s one challenge you faced in your career, and how did you overcome it?
I think I’ve had a lot of good experiences, and I’ve absolutely had some real challenges in life in terms of career. I’m thinking of one I was having with a couple of athletes who had tonnes of ability, but maybe not the right attitude.
For a period I was filling in gaps that they were leaving to help support them, and probably picking up a little bit too much of that.
There was an Australian coach who was working with us at the time, an incredibly successful guy, and I remember him saying to me ‘you can’t want it more for them than they want it for themselves’.
And I think that started a real journey for me in terms of understanding the line between my responsibility as their coach in that space, and their responsibility as an athlete over their own journey, and that no matter what great structure you put in place, with the best of evidence and the best services that are available, if the athlete doesn’t want to be there, doesn’t want to engage, doesn’t put in the work, hasn’t got the right intentions, isn’t committed to that journey, then that’s not for you to take that on board as a failure of what you’ve been delivering.
I think that gave me a little bit more focus, to ask myself ‘am I doing everything that I need to do to make sure that I’ve left no stone unturned, so that they have access to the services that they need to be successful?’
And that’s certainly still to this day, one of the things that drives me the most, the fear of not doing that.
I’ve been lucky enough to be trusted by some very special people who are on an incredible journey, doing something that I could never do, to help support them to get better.
And I feel the weight of responsibility of that every day. That’s why I’m doing a doctorate at the minute, the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know anything.
And the fear of me missing something, or not doing something properly, or, not seeing something in their performance that we need to work on that would negatively impact their journey, would devastate me.
So, for me, that weight of responsibility is really important in terms of my own drive and the quality of work that I want to provide. So that’s a daily challenge in a sense.
5 – How important were education and qualifications in getting to where you are today?
That’s an interesting one. Because, I’m in the position now where I’m employing young coaches to help work with me on the Williams Academy. And for sure, there’s a need to have technical knowledge.
You need to understand the principles of whatever profession you’re in, and that needs to be grounded in good quality research, and you need to be able to diagnose and put good treatment plans in place, or, if you’re a S&C coach, put in place training plans to help support these young athletes to develop.
But actually, don’t forget the importance of being able to develop relationships and communicate and understand emotion and be empathetic and compassionate.
The big work that we’re doing this year with our coaches is very much around them understanding who they are as a coach, and their own philosophy about coaching.
Because, with the availability of information now, I can jump on Google Scholar or any of the university search engines, and they can find a meta analysis or a systematic review on any piece of technical knowledge that I want, and I go away for six or seven hours, and I can be upskilled on whatever I need to know technically, but, I’ve seen people with PhDs who can’t be in an environment with athletes because they don’t know how to understand the space, or be able to develop the right kind of relationship, communicate really well or understand certain cues, or, drawing on our profession when athletes need it.
So education will only take you so far, and then it’s really about you as an individual, and how you blend that education with who you are and how you deliver within a certain specific context.
So of course, it’s really important early on to build your technical knowledge. But when I get asked by young coaches or young physios about getting into the kind of world that I’m in, I say go and spend as much time as possible at entry level.
Spend as much hours as you can with every type of athlete that you can possibly get access to.
I get messages from people who are still in Leaving Cert, or first/second year in university, and they’re asking how to get into Formula One. And in my head, I’m like, there’s 12 years in between you asking that question, and even thinking about you being ready.
So, so my advice is always, focus on where you’re weak at right now. Develop those skills. Get access to as many athletes as possible. Try out as many different techniques and training plans and programmes as you possibly can, and learn from the things that you’re implementing, whether they go well or they don’t go well. Spend time in the environment you’re in right now and focus on what you don’t know and try to fill those gaps. The opportunities will come.
And I’ve been asked that question a few times. People talk about five year plans or 10 year plans. I never had a five year plan. I never had a 10 year plan.
I was always so consumed with doing a good job right now that I just was very reflective on the skill set that I had, and every moment and every opportunity I had was trying to fill those gaps in my learning, and invariably, the work that you do gets recognized for the quality that you deliver, and opportunities come on the back of that.
And I think that’s why my career has been a bit varied in terms of the sports, because I’ve been very open minded.
And as opportunities arise, I take them on their merit. I’m not saying right now that in five years’ time, I really want to do another Olympics, because I know between now and then anything could happen.
Remember, the second you start looking too far ahead, you’re not looking at what you’re doing right now. So focus on doing a good job and being really reflective, and get good people to ask you good questions about what you’re doing well and what you’re not doing well.
And the stuff that you’re not doing well, try and get better at that. And that’s just a really good motto for dealing with what you’re dealing with right now, don’t look too far ahead, keep concentrating on what you’re doing now.
In terms of my own academic pathway – as I mentioned earlier I got great career advice from Mr Tully who pointed me towards a level 6 at Carlow IT. This led to physio in Jordanstown.
Since then I’ve done two master’s degrees, one in S&C and one in healthcare management. And, I’ve really enjoyed doing those courses.
I’ve always enjoyed formal learning and the structure of that. Even though I find it a challenge, I like that challenge. I’m doing a part time PhD now at DCU.
Obviously it’s a longer term commitment, but that gives you a bit of a pathway over the next few years to get your teeth into something specific.
6 – What does a typical day look like in your role, or is there no such thing?
There are elements of my role that are extremely structured. So, we get to a race weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, of any race weekend I could template across the 24 races of a calendar, and that’s the aim.
We try to be super consistent with what we do, with how we prepare, even down to our nutrition and sleep. It’s really consistent across all of our race weekends, because that fills the behaviours to help create a platform for Alex to be able to perform.
Outside of that there is a bit of juggling between, running the Williams Academy and the Pit Stop Programme, but also the PhD, but also family life and having a personal life, so that can be a little bit more variable, but, what I really enjoy is that, to a certain extent, I have absolute control over how my schedule looks.
Obviously the race calendar is very structured, but, I wake up and today I decide what I do today in terms of what work needs to get done.
And I really enjoy that flexibility. This morning, for example, I’ve spent time working on my PhD, doing admin for the Academy, as well as a couple of conversations with people around this race week for Alex. So within that one morning, I’ve, dipped into two or three different roles.
7 – Who inspired or mentored you along the way, and what did you learn from them?
There are multiple people that could take some credit for how I am today. My parents, fundamentally. My dad was always involved in GAA. He coached football and soccer.
He was a huge influence on us, as coach to the Rock team and coach to Laois Minors. From a very early age, I observed him as a coach in that space.
My mother was one of the first people on the side-line, hail, rain or shine, watching us play. And she was a huge support for all of us in terms of getting us to training and to matches.
Dad was the coach, but Mam was equally as involved. So they were real inspirations in terms of supporting me to develop my own sporting side and sporting personality.
When it comes to work, I think there’s been some really incredible people that I’ve been around.
There’s a coach called Alex Nikonorov, who I worked with in the Olympic sports and he was probably the first individual that I worked with where the level of detail and planning, in terms of how he structured his athletes’ training, just blew my mind away.
There wasn’t one minute of their week that wasn’t planned for a specific reason, and you could pick out that minute, and he would explain to you in detail exactly why that was in there.
It’s no coincidence that he coached five, six-time gold medal winners at Olympics plus silver and bronze winners.
I think he ended up with 12 Olympic medals from his career. So that was a real inspiration in terms of getting to that level and to support athletes to be that good. That’s what it takes, from a planning point of view.
From a human element, I’ve been around some really good coaches as well.
There was an Irish football coach Kwame Ampadu, whose son, Ethan plays for Leeds at the minute, but he was the youth coach at Arsenal when I was there, so I had some time with him as well.
And just seeing how he engaged with these young guys in terms of helping them to understand their environment, helping them to integrate themselves, their personalities, into what they were trying to achieve from a sporting point of view.
He got a really nice balance between supporting and challenging them technically, but also supporting and challenging them from a personal point of view. And he is somebody that I’m still in contact with today.
He really demonstrated that you can not just challenge and support from a technical point of view, but you can be really supportive as a coach and still get not just the same outcome, but an even better outcome by viewing all these athletes as individuals, and how can you support them from an emotional as well as physical point of view.
There’s been a few boxing coaches that I’ve learned a lot from too. But some of my peers at the minute, a guy called Kim Keeble who worked with Romain Grosjean and worked with Oscar Piastri for the last three years.
Another coach Rupert Manwaring who’s working with Max Verstappen, and he had previously been with Carlos Sainz.
Those peers are really important for me in that space, and I’ve developed really strong relationships with them, being able to be in the space with them that is super challenging, but have somewhere that I can go and bounce ideas off, have a vent every now and again, provides a really supportive space for me. Clearly, we’re peers, but they’ve also been a really good support to me from a from a human perspective.
There’s probably 20 names I could give you for different reasons, but those are probably a few that really stand out in terms of that initial passion and connection, but then a technical level, but also a peer support and friendship as well.
8 – What advice would you give to Leaving Cert students who aren’t sure what they want to do yet, or to adults who are seeking change?
Do not stress. And this is me reflecting on my own experiences. I used to put a lot of pressure on myself, and used to have a lot of anxiety around exams, and sure I wanted to do well, but probably at the detriment to my own enjoyment at times, and to the things I sacrificed for that extra hour of study.
It’s easy for me to say that now, but I think I’d say don’t be so hard on yourself. Accept that some exams will go well. Some exams won’t go that well.
Prepare to the best of your ability, and if you’ve done that, then that’s all you can be asked of. And believe it or not, the decisions that you make now in terms of what you do next after your Leaving Cert won’t define your life.
There’s plenty of opportunity. My career has changed and evolved 10 times in the last 20 years, and I expect it to do the same over the next 10 years.
So, you’re not picking something that you’re going to do for the rest of your life. It’s just a stepping stone into the real world, and when you get there, then it’s just about following what you feel like your passions are. There’s a lot more freedom than you think out there.
So my advice is: don’t put too much pressure on yourself. This isn’t a knife edge moment. It’s not going to define you for the rest of your life. It’s just what you do next, and everything after that is your decision.
9 – If you could go back and give your younger self, one piece of career advice, what would it be?
I think the bit that I’ve learned, and the bit that I’m most proud of right now, is that identity piece, which is, you’re never just what you do.
What you do is just something that fills the days and pays the mortgage. And you absolutely want to be passionate about that. But no matter what you do, you’re still an individual.
And what’s most important is who you are as an individual, because jobs will come and go and opportunities will come and go, and you’ll get some jobs and you won’t get other jobs. But that doesn’t define you as a human being.
So I would probably say to myself, life is going to have ups and downs, and when it goes down, understand what you need to get back up. And just enjoy the journey more.
Like I’ve already said, probably the same reflection applies to exam times. I probably could have been a bit easier on myself and enjoyed it a little bit more.
And, being a bit more present in the moment and being a bit more engaged in some of the experience I’ve had. But you only can learn that with reflection.
So similar to the last answer, don’t stress too much, and try to enjoy the journey as much as you possibly can.
10 – What’s next for you – any goals, projects, or new challenges on the horizon?
This is my second year running the Williams Academy, and my second year running their Pit Stop Development Programme.
I’m kind of halfway through the PhD at the minute, So, like I said earlier, my goal at the minute is to do as well as I can and continue to develop those services to be the best services and reflective of kind of the philosophy that we’re trying to put in place, in how we want to develop young athletes.
Other than that, honestly, I’m not sure. I think there will always be opportunities, but it’s all about being in the now right now.
People laugh, when I say in five years time, I might not be in sport anymore. Maybe I’ll get to the point where I want to do something completely different.
The only sport I’ve had a bit of an itch to scratch is NFL, American Football or Division One College Football, it’s always been something in the back of my mind. I love the culture of NFL.
I love the support for the performance structures are in place, the profile that it gets. It’s just a sport that has always interested me. So you never know. Maybe when, when motor sports ends I’ll go over and do a bit of that. Who knows?
Your Laois Connection?
I grew up in The Rock, went to primary school there, then Ballyfin College. My parents still live in the Rock. One of my brothers lives there too, and another in Shanahoe. I was home two weeks ago.
I try to get home three or four times a year at least, and my parents get over at least once or twice a year. And, being in London, it’s not a hard sell.
So my friends and my brothers get over a couple of times a year, because they use me as a bit of a base for London, which is absolutely fine by me.
The GAA was such a huge part of my life growing up and up, up until I was probably 26/27 it was probably the priority until a career in sport really took over from the other side of the fence.
So I have a really strong emotional connection to the GAA I love the culture of it, in terms of where it’s come from and how it’s embedded in community, and the positive work that it does for small and big communities. It’s something that I always feel connected to.
On a local level The Rock GAA club gave me so much; in terms of the skills that I learned around discipline and work ethic and commitment, being part of a team and what that meant, and having responsibility within that team.
Those are the skills that I brought forward into my working life. And if you asked me to name my closest friends in the world I’d say 80% of them are still lads I played U-14 with in The Rock.
They are the friendships that I’ve developed that will stay with me, hopefully for the rest of my life. So I owe The Rock a lot.
Those friends are the ones who are there for me now when I need them. So I wouldn’t have had that opportunity without The Rock club.
So I’m more than happy to be helping out through a bit of sponsorship. If I was on the ground, I’d love to be a bit more involved from a training point of view. But if this is all I can do for now, then I’m happy.
Martina Mulhall, Gold Star Careers offers one-to-one or small group career advice, in-person or online, to people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. Follow on Instagram for updates and reminders about all things careers, or head over to the website to book a personalised guidance session.
SEE ALSO – Check out all of the other Martina Mulhall pieces here
