Nicole Surdyka is a former Division I soccer player, doctor of physical therapy and a strength coach specializing in soccer performance training and rehab. She currently owns Surdyka Physical Therapy and Performance and has extensive experience working with athletes of all ages.

Nicole has also worked as a soccer coach and possesses a wealth of understanding about the game and has tremendous passion for growing it in the US. While I am not well versed in soccer, I really admire Nicole’s ability to break down various strategies and tactics and how they might affect a player’s physical training load.

This was the crux of our discussion as we get into the finer points of how reverse engineering a sport can work. Nicole breaks down some basic soccer formations and how each can impact the workloads of different positions and then we deep dive on how we might alter training based on particular strategies.

We also talk about taking care of the whole athlete, the current landscape of soccer in the US and various training topics especially pertaining to psychological/mental stress and how we can find out what interventions will best resonate with each athlete based on their personality and playing style.

Nicole can be found on:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/dr.nicolept/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NSurdykaPhysio

Website: https://www.nicolesurdykaphysio.com/