Martin Haines

Martin Haines is one of the country's foremost experts on biomechanical screening and, as head of Intelligent Training Systems ™, he runs specialist training courses for sports coaches, golfing professionals, personal trainers, fitness instructors, therapists and other health & fitness pro's to help prevent injuries and optimise performance on the pitch, in the gym, on the track or training ground, even on the beat

Martins contact details

Email: martin@intelligenttrainingsystems.com 

Listen to Martin lecture on Biomechanics

Profile: Martin Haines, Managing Director and Course Director

If Team GB's athletes are less prone to injury in the London 2012 Olympics, if future Ryder Cup golfers eliminate the occasional slice, if Formula 1 racing drivers are seated more ergonomically, if our police walk the beat freer from back pain, if footballers and rugby players sustain fewer injuries in the years ahead, then some credit should certainly go to Martin Haines SRP, MCSP, DipRGRT. Martin is one of the country’s foremost experts on biomechanical screening and, as head of Intelligent Training Systems ™, he runs specialist training courses for sports coaches, golfing professionals, personal trainers, fitness instructors, therapists and other health & fitness pro’s to help prevent injuries and optimise performance on the pitch, in the gym, on the track or training ground, even on the beat.

Although he now focuses on training the trainers, in the science of biomechanical screening, there were times, during his physiotherapy consultancy days, when Martin would recognise a celebrity client or two on virtually every edition of TV’s Question of Sport. He has worked with a dozen Olympic medallists, F1 motor racing drivers, European golf tour professionals, top soccer clubs, rugby union and league teams, NFL players, the occasional rock musician and movie star. Today, operating under his ITS business, the courses he has developed are used and accredited by the likes of UK Athletics, the PGA, Norwich Union’s On Camp With Kelly, the Home Office and the exercise professionals register, REPs.

Martin's specialism, on which the ITS courses are based, is Biomechanics, which is loosely defined as a science concerned with internal forces that act on the human body and the effects those forces produce. There are two branches to the discipline, extrinsic and intrinsic, and, whereas extrinsic Biomechanics is the study and measurement of movement patterns for a particular function, such as running or a golf swing, intrinsic Biomechanics relate to an individual’s own mechanical makeup, which can be inherited or affected by factors like having one leg slightly longer than the other. It's the difference between seeing how a body works and understanding why it works that way - and intrinsic Biomechanics is where Martin specialises.

When he studied originally, 25 years ago, Biomechanics was a relatively unknown science and, even today, academic courses are rare, although Martin is guest lecturing on a couple of University programmes. A Chartered Physiotherapist, he qualified initially as a Remedial Gymnast & Recreational Therapist, and it was the ‘kinesiology’ element of this course that fuelled his early interest in Biomechanics.

Later, working in private practice in his London clinic, he treated a succession of sports stars from various fields and thousands of regular clients. However, when making follow-up calls to check on their progress, he discovered that many suffered recurring injuries and problems, which meant either he wasn’t a very good physio or there was some underlying cause. So he invested heavily in state-of-the-art isokinetic and video analysis equipment, not seen outside a research department at that time, to gather information and identify the hidden causes. The data, together with research culled from around the globe, provided the basis for Martin’s understanding of, and expertise in, biomechanical screening and, indeed, for the ITS courses that are his current vehicle for spreading the word.

That core biomechanical data, the results of more than 4,000 tests on professional and amateur sports people collected over the last 15 years, informed Martin and his colleagues that many minor niggles, injuries and recurring problems with knees, calves, shoulders and backs don’t necessarily stem from those areas, but relate to intrinsic biomechanical dysfunctions elsewhere. What’s more, unless the client’s inherent biomechanical problems are identified and corrected first, he or she will learn movements during functional or fitness training that actually compensate for those biomechanical flaws, leading to still further difficulties.

Working with Olympic athletes like Steve Redgrave, Daley Thompson, Linford Christie, Roger Black, Derek Redmond and others, time and time again Martin discovered that shoulder and upper back problems, knee and calf niggles, and other recurring injuries related to inherent biomechanical issues like pelvic imbalance, irregular leg length and involuntary muscle spasm. Much the same was true when he worked with soccer players like Tony Adams, John Barnes, Dennis Wise, Craig Burley and a pre-umbrella Steve McClaren, who were sent to Martin’s clinic with recurring problems that normal physiotherapy treatment could not resolve.

Word spread and other clubs, players and their personal trainers beat a trainer-shod path to his door. Wigan RLFC, then arguably the world’s most successful club in any sport, had their players treated biomechanically before many Cup Final appearances; England RU personalities like Rob Andrew, Will Carling and Brian Moore were given treatment at his clinic when necessary; even NFL club New Orleans Giants and Chicago Bulls sought his advice during a US training camp. F1 drivers David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen, their personal trainers and designers consulted him on the most ergonomic seat design for their individual physiques. He has also appeared as a sporting injuries pundit on programmes as diverse as Panorama and TalkSport.

Transferring this expertise into the development of a broad-based sports and fitness training programme has already resulted in three modular ITS courses. Here the emphasis, rather than on treating clients direct, is on training sports coaches and fitness professionals to conduct their own biomechanical screening, helping to disseminate Martin’s hard-won intelligence across a much broader spectrum of athletes, players and fitness enthusiasts than he could hope to reach himself.

Staged regularly at mainly sporting venues around the country, the three one-day courses focus on biomechanical screening, injury prevention and developing optimum performance, progressively addressing what Martin terms the normalise, stabilise and functionalise phases, while there is also an accredited diploma course for would-be Biomechanics coaches. Delivered by Martin and his team of Master Biomechanics coaches, the trainers’ courses have been endorsed by UK Athletics and Skills Active, and approved by the PGA, for training their golf coaches engaged with elite players on the European Tour. Outside sport, Martin is working with the Police Force about training a cohort of PT instructors and occupational health nurses to carry out pre-recruitment screening and address duty-related physical problems.

Martin firmly believes that an understanding of an individual’s biomechanical make-up is critical, if professional coaches, therapists and fitness trainers are to prescribe safe and effective exercises, so this pyramid approach of training the trainers will help dramatically reduce the risk of injury recurrence and improve the functional performance of many sports stars. The results of this innovative work is being seen now and will be seen in the years to come.