Recover. Perform. Excel.

Welcome to Recover, Perform, Excel, the performance and rehabilitation podcast from Kiko Health!
This season, we follow recovery through its key stages with the help of our clinically esteemed guests: what diagnostic ultrasound can reveal, how treatment, training load and recovery strategies keep players on the pitch, and how theory links to practice when academia and sport combine.
In this episode, host John Hartley is joined by Dr Marwan Al-Dawoud, a Sport and Exercise Medicine doctor and musculoskeletal (MSK) ultrasound specialist who has worked with the FA, the RFL, Leeds Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants and Burnley Football Club, and who splits his working week between NHS community MSK ultrasound services and private practice.
Marwan's route in began as a multi-sport schoolboy - a goalkeeper and rugby player who also ran 100m hurdles and 200m sprint to county level and trialled for Scotland's U18 rugby union squad, before a broken collarbone ended his playing ambitions. He studied medicine at Manchester University, completed his foundation and GP training, and spent the following 15 years moving progressively deeper into sports and MSK medicine - his first taste of pitch side cover being, fittingly, American football's Brit Bowl. Years across rugby league, athletics, dance, rugby and football followed, before he stepped back from full-time club medicine to specialise in MSK ultrasound and ultrasound-guided intervention.
The conversation moves from the governance gap opening up as point-of-care ultrasound spreads faster than formal training can keep pace, through the promise and risk of AI-assisted scanning tools like handheld Clarius probes, and into Marwan's own pioneering research building a new classification system for dynamic hamstring ultrasound with a hands-free wearable probe harness. A “myth or method” segment covers Marwan's scepticism toward tissue-modulation devices, shockwave and vibration platforms, and the crowded field of injectables, before the episode turns to managing a player who wants to play through an injury against clinical advice, and closes on Marwan's advice to anyone starting out in ultrasound: use the free resources available, get hands-on with a scanner, find a mentor, and never let anything come before your professional licence.
00:00 - Introduction to Marwan and his roles across the FA, the RFL, Leeds Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants and Burnley FC, and how he and John first met
02:33 - Marwan's route in: a multi-sport schoolboy career, a Scotland U18s rugby trial cut short by a broken collarbone, and studying medicine at Manchester
04:03 - Foundation and GP training, then 15 years moving deeper into sports and MSK medicine - starting with covering American football's Brit Bowl
05:14 - Stepping back from full-time club medicine to specialise in MSK ultrasound, and why most of Marwan's week is still spent in NHS community services
06:52 - Speed of access to care: what sport gets right that the NHS often can't, and why that gap matters to patients
08:04 - The flip side of fast diagnostics: over-diagnosis, over-treatment, and the navicular stress fracture dilemma
10:12 - Managing timelines with coaches and executives after surgery vs conservative treatment, and the ethics of PRP
11:32 - The governance gap in point-of-care ultrasound as more practitioners pick up the probe
13:26 - Where training has improved and where it hasn't: the ongoing struggle to find mentorship for new sonographers
14:37 - AI-assisted scanning: Clarius handheld probes, tissue labelling and haptic feedback
16:52 - The risk of over-reliance on AI tools for less experienced scanners
18:13 - Ultrasound CT: an early-stage, full-body water-immersion ultrasound scanner
20:07 - Bringing it back to daily practice: the steep anatomy learning curve of scanning
22:04 - Using ultrasound wisely: why clinical acumen has to come before the scan, not after
23:42 - Neovascularisation and the double-edged sword of showing patients their own scans
24:33 - Interventional work: nerve blocks and ultrasound-guided diagnostic workups for hip and groin pain
25:26 - Dynamic ultrasound: a hands-free wearable probe harness and the start of hamstring research with Dutch collaborators
27:40 - Building a working group and a new dynamic hamstring classification system, presented at Aspetar, BASEM and Isokinetic
29:06 - Handheld vs cart-based ultrasound: portability versus image quality
30:20 - Myth or method: scepticism on tissue-modulation devices, shockwave and vibration platforms
33:11 - The injectables minefield: PRP, hyaluronic acid and prolotherapy, and how to judge what actually works
36:16 - Bias in research evidence, and why sleep, nutrition and stress still matter more than any device
41:12 - A question passed on from a previous guest: managing a player who says they're fit to play against your clinical judgement
44:10 - The coach-medic-player triangle, trust, and a concussion story from Marwan's rugby league days
47:53 - Marwan's closing advice: use the free resources available, get hands-on with a scanner, find a mentor, and never compromise your professional licence
Connect with your host, John Hartley on LinkedIn.
Find your guest, Dr Marwan Al-Dawoud, on LinkedIn.
Thanks for listening to Recover, Perform, Excel brought to you by Kikko Health.
This is a Loaded Hype production.

Welcome to Recover, Perform, Excel, the performance and rehabilitation podcast from Kiko Health!
This season, we follow recovery through its key stages with the help of our clinically esteemed guests: what diagnostic ultrasound can reveal, how treatment, training load and recovery strategies keep players on the pitch, and how theory links to practice when academia and sport combine.
In this episode, host John Hartley is joined by Dave Carolan, a practitioner with over 30 years' experience in elite professional sport, spanning Norwich, Colchester, Birmingham, Derby, Millwall and Stoke, as well as spells with Edge10, UEFA, FIFA and the FA.
Dave's route into the game began, by his own admission, almost by chance: an afternoon at the beach in 1982 that led him to watch the iconic Brazil vs Italy World Cup match, and a subsequent switch from rugby into football in 1998. From there, Dave built a career at the coalface of English football just as sports science itself was being invented - describing the early years as "slash and burn through a jungle," with no established discipline, no shared language for testing (foot-pounds or newton metres, depending who you asked), and plenty of resistance to convince coaches and players that strength work and nutrition could help rather than hinder performance.
The conversation moves from that grassroots-up story of an entire industry forming, through Dave's decision to step outside full-time club football to see the game "from a different angle" with Edge10, and into his current portfolio career across FIFA's technical leadership and talent development work, UEFA's fitness advisory group, coach education with the FA, and his own venture, Sport Detection. Dave and John also dig into the technology that's shaped his career, from counting squares on graph paper to calculate isokinetic force output, through to force plates, GPS and heart rate monitoring, and why good data can only ever inform decisions, not dictate them. A "myth or method" segment covers some of the fads Dave has seen come and go, and the episode closes on the advice he credits with sustaining his career: never stop being curious.
00:00 - Introduction to Dave and his 30+ years across Norwich, Colchester, Birmingham, Derby, Millwall and Stoke 02:00 - How Dave got into sport: the 1982 World Cup, playing multiple sports, and the pivot from rugby into football in 1998
06:30 - Stepping outside full-time football: working with Edge10 on athlete management systems across major leagues 
09:30 - Why Dave returned to football, and what led him to want to give back to the next generation of practitioners 
12:30 - Current work across FIFA (technical leadership and talent development), UEFA's fitness advisory group, and coach education with the FA 
17:30 - The importance of mentorship and "reaching a hand below" to bring others up in the industry 
19:30 - Building sports science from nothing: the early days of "slash and burn through a jungle" at Blackburn, Norwich and London Irish 24:30 - The trade-off between the routine of club life and the challenges of working independently across multiple organisations 28:00 - From counting squares on graph paper to isokinetic dynamometry, force plates, GPS and heart rate monitoring 
32:00 - Why data should inform practice, not dictate it - and the risks of over-relying on scans and diagnostics 
36:00 - Myth or method: stretch mats, glute activation bands, and the pull towards reductionist quick fixes 
39:30 - The reality of budgets and procurement for new technology inside professional clubs 
43:00 - Strategy vs delivery: what Dave misses, and how he measures success in his career 
46:00 - Dave's closing advice: stay curious
Connect with your host, John Hartley on LinkedIn.
Find your guest, Dave Carolan, on LinkedIn.
Thanks for listening to Recover, Perform, Excel brought to you by Kikko Health.
This is a Loaded Hype production.

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