Brief
Hanazono Kintetsu Liners is a Japan League One club based in Osaka. I joined in June 2015 as Head of Performance & High-Performance Manager and held the role for ten seasons, departing in 2025.
The job covered the full physical performance brief for a squad of 63 multinational players, with direct work on a number of high-profile internationals including Quade Cooper, Will Genia and Semisi Masirewa.
What I built
I built the strength and conditioning programme around a modified-APRE block design across the squad, with individualised lower-body profiling for forwards versus backs. First and second year players gained 7 to 11 kg over their initial nine months.
The GPS load architecture used Catapult 10 Hz devices on every player, every session. We tracked metres-per-minute, high-speed running %, acceleration efforts, and acute-to-chronic workload ratios. I wrote about the daily, weekly, and yearly use of GPS in pro rugby at the time. That piece describes the system we ran here.
Testing infrastructure was weekly RSI drop-jumps, subjective wellness, and quarterly force-velocity profiling. All of it fed an Athlete Management System (Kitman Labs, Catapult, Vlad, Speed Signature) that medical and coaching staff could query directly.
The match analysis and Moneyball work mapped a season of position-by-position output against S&C testing data, which became my lead-author publication on match output and S&C testing in the Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning, 29(6), 2021. World-first peer-reviewed work of its kind. The longer-form essay on what actually separates winning from losing in League One is the work-in-progress for Issue 02 of this journal.
Team
I managed and led a physical performance team of nine: multiple S&C staff, physiotherapists, sport scientists, a nutritionist, and the team doctor. Communication with the coaching staff covered load management, planning, and individual training performance across the season.
Outcomes
- Two undefeated seasons (2019 and 2021)
- Squad availability rate held above 90% across the role through periodisation, monitoring, and proactive injury prevention
- Squad averages improved year on year across 10 m and 20 m sprint, vertical jump, and back squat 1RM
- The work formed the foundation of a peer-reviewed publication that became the first of its kind in the literature
Methodology
The full methodology is documented across the essay archive. See Lower Body Profiling, Building Size and Strength, Daily Maximum for Autoregulation, and Is How You Feel a Lie?.