Julie Pearce - British

Julie Pearce - Member of the World Paddle Awards Academy

Julie Pearce has been involved with the delivery of physiotherapy to elite athletes within high performance programmes since 1994. During this time she worked with British Canoeing as Lead Physiotherapist for 7 years and subsequently Lead Physiotherapist for 5 years with the Canadian National Slalom team based in British Columbia.

On returning to British Canoeing in 2005, working alongside the head coaches and the MDT Julie became responsible for the direction and delivery of their sports medicine strategy up to the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Within in this role her special interest was in the implementation of sports specific screening protocols used in the identification of key performance indicators to enhance athlete training, and also risk factors which were associated with injury prevention.

Through work done with elite canoeing athletes and professional cricketers over the past two decades, Julie gained expertise in the area of shoulder injuries and their management. This has helped to facilitate the fast track return to play to enable a number of key athletes to compete and deliver medal winning performances on their return to sport.

She has been a Faculty member at the Sporting Shoulder Conference at The Wrightington Hospital organised and led by Professor Len Funk a renowned shoulder surgeon in the UK.  Julie's presentation discussed the injury mechanisms associated with slalom canoeing, their diagnosis and post-operative rehabilitation. She has also been responsible for the delivery of this module as part of the Nottingham MSc program in Sports Medicine for over 6 years.

Following London 2012, which was her 5th Olympic Games with Canoeing, it was time to change focus and move into a role where she was able to share her knowledge and experience more regularly with other practitioners. Julie took up full time Technical Lead post with the EIS in August 2013 working within a number of Olympic sports programs including GB Canoeing, GB Rowing, GB Hockey, GB Fencing and GB Badminton.

This has involved the implementation of an injury mentoring management system to assist the physiotherapists within these medical teams to understand the optimal pathways for injury management and injury prevention.