There's one fix. You're the only one positioned to make it.

Your child's coach sees three hours a week. The physio sees the aftermath. The limp, the scan, the two weeks off. You see everything else: the Tuesday evening in the backyard, the car ride home after the game, the growth spurt they've been in for six months, the tournament weekend followed by six straight days of extra sessions.

That's not a figure of speech. You hold the most important clinical information in your child's development. The problem is nobody has ever shown you how to use it.

The Problem

There's a specific thing that happens on Saturdays. Your child, the one who looks sharp and confident at training, arrives at the game and something closes down. The decisions slow. The body follows the head. Afterwards they say they tried, and you believe them, because you saw it too: they tried and it still happened.

And separately, or so it seems, there's the physical thing. The knee. The heel. The hip that flares up every time the training load increases. The scan that shows nothing. The rest that fixes it until it doesn't.

These are not two separate problems.

The same practice environment that produces the match-day freeze is the same environment that produces the injury. The coach can't fix either one alone, because they don't have access to the information that would change both.

You do.

Why the Parent is the Most Important Person

In 14 years of treating youth footballers, I kept seeing the same pattern. The child with the Tuesday-Saturday gap and the child with the recurring overuse injury were almost always the same child. And the training environment producing one was producing the other.

The home practice setup that fails to build match-ready decision-making loads the joints in exactly the way that drives overuse injuries. Fix the environment and you fix both.

Your child doesn't need a different coach. They don't need a different physio. They need a different Tuesday.

What the Backyard Lab is

The Backyard Lab is a four-week live group workshop — maximum five families — where you learn three things:

Why injuries keep coming back. Not bad luck, not genetics. The relationship between training volume, growth, and recovery — and the single variable in your child's week that you control and the club doesn't.

How to design home practice that builds match-day decision-making. Not drills. Not repetition. The kind of session that prepares a child's brain and body for a real game — that you can run in your garden with one other person.

How to be on the sideline without getting in the way. What to say. What not to say. And the specific car ride home conversation that either protects or destroys confidence over a season.

The Result

Four weeks from now, you'll watch match day differently.

You'll watch your child scan instead of freeze, make decisions instead of waiting to be told. And you'll understand their physical state well enough to know whether this week needs more or less — and why.

That's not two outcomes. It's one: a child who performs AND stays healthy, because the environment around them is finally designed for both.

Saturday starts to look different. For both of you.

Why join the waiting list

I keep these cohorts small — a maximum of 5 families per group.

It's the only way I can give each family's specific situation the attention it deserves. Joining the waiting list gives you first access when enrolment opens, and guaranteed priority over anyone who finds it later.

About me

I'm a sports physiotherapist — master's degree from a top-ten sports science institution, 14 years of clinical practice, active youth football coach. I've spent most of that time treating the same child: competitive, talented, performing at training, struggling on match day, managing something physical that keeps coming back.

I also blew out my ACL twice. Five surgeries. I know what it costs when a development environment sets a young player up for failure.

That combination — treating these kids clinically, coaching them on the pitch, and being the parent watching from the sideline — is what the Backyard Lab is built on.

Frequently asked questions

Is this for elite players only? Biology doesn't care about the league. Whether your kid is at a pro academy or playing local Sunday football, they have the same joints and the same brain. This is for any parent who wants a resilient, skillful kid.

What's the time commitment? One live 60-minute session per week for four weeks. If you can't make it live, the recording is available immediately. All sessions are recorded and you have direct access to the group throughout.

Will this conflict with team training? No. The Backyard Lab works in the gaps between team sessions. The goal is to help you be the gardener of their overall environment — so they show up to team training fresher and more capable than before.

Can I do this without any background in physiotherapy or sport science? Yes. The Lab is designed specifically for parents with no professional background in sport. Everything is translated into practical decisions you're already making: how long a session runs, what kind of practice you set up, what you say when the game goes badly. The only qualification you need is that you're paying close attention — which you already are, or you wouldn't be here.

See you in the Backyard Lab.

- Hans Martin