Meet...Nick Karamouzis, Hampshire Cricket Head of Strength and Conditioning

What is your official job role at the club and what are you main responsibilities?

I am Head of Strength and Conditioning at Hampshire Cricket. The main aim of my role is essentially to maximise professionally contracted and academy player’s availability to train and play all year round, as well as optimally prepare them for the rigours of the cricket season. Additionally, my role is to effectively coordinate the delivery and content of strength and conditioning services across all of Hampshire Cricket’s performance and development pathways.  

What does your role entail during the season?

My role during the season is pretty random and unstructured to be honest. As previously said, my role is to ensure that the squad are available to perform throughout the season and the hard work that is obtained during the off-season is maintained. Although, as the cricket schedule is busy and subsequently, physically, psychologically and biomechanically demanding, for me this is very challenging as you are constantly balancing whether to push players that little bit harder or simply – or, leave them alone. We don’t have any expensive monitoring system that does this – we just ‘talk to them’ and I believe having sound relationships, and an excellent multi-disciplinary team supporting the players is somewhat particularly effective when making decisions on players during the season.

What does your role entail during the off-season?

Physical preparation is key for a cricketer. The off-season is where all the hard work is done so I’m generally very busy during the winter ensuring players continually develop physically from objective based individualised programmes. There’s a lot more gym based work going on and one-on-one time with the professional players is something I look to maximise as much as possible during this period. I also have a big responsibility to ensure that our Athletic Development Pathways and Programmes are running effectively and continual physical development is achieved. 

Although busy, I thoroughly enjoy the off-season as I can really see the improvements from consistent training and incredibly satisfying to see the all players no matter what level or age physically develop and improve before heading into what we hope will be a successful season for Hampshire Cricket!

Getting started

Well, I originally wanted to be a Physiotherapist and during my undergraduate studies, I did some work experience at a Regional Rehabilitation Unit in Catterick Garrison working with Pre-Afghan soldiers. At first, I enjoyed it a lot but the enjoyment slowly worn off as I found a lot of the rehab was generalised, boring and not specific to the individual. After finishing my placement I discovered that I just wanted a group of athletes that I could get strong, fast and powerful and support in their development within sport. That’s when I decided to take the path which led me to Strength and Conditioning.

Roots

I’m originally from Cardiff in South Wales and I attended secondary school in Wales too before moving to the North East to enrol at Teesside University to study ‘Sports Therapy’ for three years. Following this, I applied and obtained a Strength and Conditioning Internship, as well as gaining an Assistant Position after a year with Hampshire Cricket and very fortunate enough to work alongside Michael Main who is now Head of S&C at Sri Lanka Cricket. An opportunity then presented itself which led me to become Head of Strength and Conditioning at the club, as well as juggling a Master’s Degree at Worcester University in ‘Applied Sports Science’.

Interesting Fact

My second name is ‘Karamouzis’ which comes from my Grandad who is Greek – my Nan is Spanish too actually, so I suppose that’s a little bit different to most!