Birmingham bring in US performance coaches to create new 'philosophy'
Left: Peter Cummings with Alex Guerrero; right: Rob Brennan.
Written by Training Ground Guru — December 7, 2023
BIRMINGHAM CITY have brought in two performance consultants linked to Tom Brady to work with their existing staff and “write a philosophy from scratch”.
Brady, the NFL legend and seven-time Super Bowl champion, was announced as a minority shareholder in the club in August following the takeover by Knighthead Capital Management LLC.
He is also Chairman of the club’s new Advisory Board, “applying his extensive leadership experience and expertise… including working alongside the sports science department to advise on health, nutrition, wellness, and recovery systems and programmes.”
That has led to Peter Cummings and Rob Brennan coming in as performance consultants from the United States. They both work for TBRx, which was launched in September by founders Cummings and Alex Guerrero, Brady’s former “body coach.”
TBRx says it uses “evidence-based techniques that combine hands-on manual therapy and functional movement exercises to promote swift healing and pain elimination” and that this “empowers individuals to embrace total body recovery and continue pursuing their passions without limitations.”
Guerrero has been a high-profile and sometimes controversial figure in US sport and beyond. His career began as a massage therapist in Los Angeles and he went on to study traditional Chinese medicine, which helped him develop a theory of health that was based on ancient wisdom, massage and nutrition.
Brady has written about the alkaline diet he and Guerrero developed, which he says helped to reduce inflammation within the body and extend his career. Cummings was previously senior medical adviser to Guerrero’s companyTB12 Sports and his background is in forensic pathology (determining the cause and manner of death).
He describes himself as a sport neuroscientist. Brennan was Assistant Athletic Trainer at Shenandoah University before working for TB12 as a ‘body coach’ (a US term for a fitness coach).
Speaking at the club’s Open House event - a new quarterly open evening for up to 100 invited fans ‘who are committed to Blues’ at St Andrews - Technical Director Craig Gardner, the former Blues midfielder, announced that Cummings and Brennan were now on board.
“Peter Cummings and Rob are two body coaches that have come over from TBRx, they have been here for about three weeks,” he said.
“They are writing a philosophy from scratch on how they want it to work. We’ve had a nutritionist come in that works the way Tom Brady wants to work. We are getting a very good reaction from the players.”
Chief Executive Garry Cook, who was previously CEO of Manchester City, UFC and the Saudi Pro League, added: “The greatest athletes in the world, there is something a little different about them. The ones who are world champions are slightly different.
“Tom Brady is like that. He has this myopic focus, this unnerving focus about recovery, nutrition, the body, athletes, how they perform, why they perform and when they perform.
“Craig has embraced that. He’s brought some body coaches over from America and they are now working with the physios and sports science team. There’s a new way of thinking. It doesn’t mean to say it works, or it’s wrong, or it’s right. What it is, is change. If you’re willing to change it might work, it might make us better.”
Birmingham’s Head of Performance is Sean Rush, who returned to the club (following a previous spell from 2018 to 2020) in July 2021. = Head of Performance. Came in with Garry Monk.
Dhani Pattinson-Hughes first team physical performance coach. Andy Kavanagh, who had the same title, recently left to become Head of Sport Science at Bristol City.
