David Masterson Health & Performance

Call Directions Website Contact the business

David Masterson Health & Performance Strength & Conditioning Coach
I help athletes improve the physical capacities needed for their sport. I went to college and studied a Business degree in Sports.

Contact by: Messenger or
Email: [email protected] Growing up I had a love for Football and still do, I was blessed with great opportunities throughout my footballing career. That's where I found my passion for training and coaching. I started my work career in Coral Leisure in Monaghan as a lifeguard. Not long after that I moved and started working @ The Peace Link in Clones in the Gym as a instructor and a PT. There I have continued to develop my skill over the years now and fully qualified Cardiac Rehab Instructor, then went and attend my NCSC Strength and Conditioning Qualification. While I still work in The Peace Link I am also currently Strength and Conditioning Coach At Monaghan and Cavan U17,s who play in the Airtricity League. I'm a big believer in research i think the fitness game is always changing and we need to stay up to date. "Train Smarter not Harder"

Acute phase ACL Rehab needs performed consistently. A few ways I have made sure of this is to make it simple and easy to...
11/10/2026

Acute phase ACL Rehab needs performed consistently.

A few ways I have made sure of this is to make it simple and easy to access.

1. You need a simple program you can stick to. (The most important thing you can do is find an excellent practitioner, don’t settle you’ll need this person for the next 9+ months) check out LMD Physiotherapy

2. Set up your station (grab a small table and place your equipment needs on it) This needs to be in an area you will be the most.

3. Set reminders (During this Acute phase you may need to perform mini sessions multiple times a day) Everyone is going to have their own journey, for me I try to get 3-5 sessions throughout the day in these first few weeks post surgery.

A look at my table:
1. Game Ready - Ice & compression
2. NMES - Neuromuscular electrical stimulation
3. Training journal - record sessions & the odd thought
4. Mini band - Extra resistance once required
5. Strap - to help with knee flexion
6. Compression tube - when needed
7. Output device - helps to give me objective feedback on joint range but there is a lot of other ways to track ranges
8. Voodoo bands - not used yet, but meant to help temporarily reduce joint pain and stiffness.

Not everyone will have access to these so here’s my top 3 so far.

1. A simple rehab plan (Good physio)
2. Game Ready Machine
3. NMES

Insight into Surgery DayGoing into surgery I was probably more apprehensive than I expected.Not necessarily about the su...
08/10/2026

Insight into Surgery Day

Going into surgery I was probably more apprehensive than I expected.

Not necessarily about the surgery itself, but about what the other side was going to look like when I woke up.

Before surgery I had got myself back to a pretty good place.

The asymmetries were starting to close.
I was jumping, landing and running again.

So the thought of potentially waking up not fit to lift my leg, struggling to bend the knee and dealing with a lot of swelling was probably what I was most apprehensive about.

And when you read enough online, you see everything.

People unable to get the quad firing.
Unable to straight-leg raise.
Struggling with flexion.
Big swelling responses.
Poor sleep.

All of those things happen, but it’s on a scale. Every ACLR is different.

I couldn’t control exactly how my knee was going to react.

However I could control what I did next.

I woke up in recovery feeling pretty good, although the pain medication probably gets the credit there 😂

Once I was properly awake on the ward, the focus became very simple:

Fuel.
Move what I could.
Squeeze what I could.
Control the swelling.
Stack small wins.

Every hour or so I would spend a little time trying to tense the quad, slowly working towards a straight-leg raise and getting some gentle flexion.

With a few focused attempts I started to gather momentum.

A better quad contraction.
A little more movement.
A slightly cleaner attempt at the SLR.
And that became the system.

Focus on the small win,
Breaking the full task down to simpler actions, repeated often.

1st lesson I learned from
Surgery day rehab can feel overwhelming when you look at the whole journey.

But the job in front of you is normally much smaller.

19/09/2026

Don’t neglect the supporting structures.

When an injury occurs, it’s easy to get tunnel vision and only focus on the injured area.

But sporting tasks require the segments of the body to work together to access positions, stabilise and share load.

Even in shorter rehabs, if we neglect the rest of the athlete we can leave important physical qualities underprepared for when they return to sport.

The lower shank, hip and trunk all play a massive role in how we move, stabilise and transfer force during tasks like sprinting, jumping and changing direction.

Rehab shouldn’t just be about restoring the injured area.

It should be about returning the athlete to previous performance levels, while maintaining or rebuilding the physical qualities that make them robust.

Rehab the athlete, not just the injury

The reasons extension is one of the highest priorities out side of a quiet knee (decreasing swelling, allowing the quad ...
13/09/2026

The reasons extension is one of the highest priorities out side of a quiet knee (decreasing swelling, allowing the quad to activate).
Plus extension is so hard to achieve down the line if not addressed early in the process.
It’s also important to remember passive extension is not enough, you must have the ability to actively pull the knee into extension.

04/09/2026

Using a metronome: Basically the bleep test for muscles 😅

Currently I’m using metronomes in two ways within my rehab sessions:

1. Standardising RM testing
Same load, same ROM and same tempo when establishing and retesting loads on open chain exercises such as the leg extension.

2. Controlling tempo and time under tension
The issue with counting tempo at times is, as fatigue builds, our counting often starts to speed up.
Instead of guessing, the metronome gives me an objective tempo to work from.

Making rehab a little more measurable and repeatable.

If you’re not using it within your rehab, it might be worth experimenting with.

StrengthAndConditioning

30/08/2026

Quad Loading Progressions 🦵

A progression method that has worked well with ACL clients in the past and is currently working well for me is shallow-range quad loading.

Following an ACL injury we can experience arthrogenic muscle inhibition (AMI), a neural response that can make it difficult to fully activate and load the quad.

So early on, the goal is to reduce the things driving that inhibition while progressively restoring quad activation, control and loading capacity.

Rather than chasing more range straight away, I like to first establish control and load through a range the knee is currently comfortable with.

Then gradually earn more.

Something along the lines of:

Low load + shallow range
-> Increase load + shallow range
-> Reduce load + increase range
-> Build load again through the new range

Nothing fancy just gradually increasing the demands placed on the quad without creating a negative knee response.

Exercise progression:
Banded TKEs
¼ Squats (not shown)
Step Downs
SL Box Squat
Barbell Box Squat
Barbell Squat

Just listen to the knee and move to the next logical progression.

Markers I’m using to guide progression:
Pain during 2/10
Pain immediately after 2/10
Pain at 24hrs 2/10
No increase in swelling
No loss of ROM/extension

Load what you currently have and then move to more range.

We constantly hear ACL timelines.9 months. 12 months.Then we see athletes returning in 7–8 months and everyone starts co...
27/08/2026

We constantly hear ACL timelines.

9 months. 12 months.

Then we see athletes returning in 7–8 months and everyone starts comparing timelines.

But the calendar and how you feel don’t tell you enough.

Day 1, I felt good.

Pain ✅
Swelling ✅
Movement felt good ✅
Strength felt subjectively good ✅

But when I started putting some numbers behind it, there were indications of a loss in terminal extension and strength.

Nothing dramatic, but enough get the knee assessed.

Time and biology still matter. So do symptoms and how you feel.

But progression should be earned through objective criteria, not simply because another week has passed and you feel okay.

By using a criteria-based rehab, you can make better informed decisions throughout the process and give yourself the best opportunity to rebuild the qualities needed to return as a better, more robust player.

I recently came across some research (Sportsmith)on the Assisted Countermovement Jump (ACMJ), and it got me thinking abo...
08/07/2026

I recently came across some research (Sportsmith)on the Assisted Countermovement Jump (ACMJ), and it got me thinking about how it might be used in programming.

Research comparing assisted, resisted, and normal CMJ training suggests that ACMJ may improve jump height more than traditional CMJ training.

In one four-week rugby study, jump height improved by approximately:
Assisted CMJ: 6.7%
Resisted CMJ: 4.0%
Normal CMJ: 1.3%

Another study showed similar results, with assisted jumps improving jump height by 8.6%, compared with 3.4% for resisted CMJ and 0.6% for normal CMJ.

So the day after a pitch session I compared:
A CMJ
An assisted CMJ
And then re-tested my CMJ again 3 hours later

The assisted CMJ provided a clear over-speed stimulus, and there may also have been a short-term potentiation or priming effect.

However, I would not overstate this from a single test.

But it may be a useful tool for exposing athletes to higher movement velocities, and they may have some short-term potentiation benefit that is worth observing over time.

Can a trap-bar jump tell us something useful about GAA speed and power?For my MSc study, I looked at load–velocity profi...
19/06/2026

Can a trap-bar jump tell us something useful about GAA speed and power?

For my MSc study, I looked at load–velocity profiling in club-level Gaelic football players and its association with sprint and jump performance.

In my study, trap-bar jump (TBJ) load–velocity variables were strongly associated with 10 m sprint, 40 m sprint and CMJ performance.

So how could this be used practically?
1. To profile and monitor load-oriented, velocity-oriented and composite L–V qualities over time.

This may help coaches see if an athlete’s profile is shifting more towards load capacity, velocity expression, or a combination of both.

2. To better understand how players produce performance.
Two players may have similar 1RM or CMJ scores, but very different L–V profiles.
One may be more load-oriented.
One may be more velocity-oriented.
One may have a better overall profile.
This can help guide more individualised training decisions.

Important point:
This does not replace sprint testing, CMJ testing, strength testing, or GPS.
It adds another layer.

And like all data, it is only useful if it helps make better coaching decisions.

21/10/2025

The Back Extension
A variation of this exercise is now in every one of my back rehab sessions.

But should everyone have a variation of this exercise in their program?

I’ve seen speak about this on his instagram saying it’s time to get these of the rehab bench and into athletes training programs.

Charles poliquin stated that if the strength of your low back muscles increase, strength in all your other lifts will go up.

The idea is that through having proximal stability (truck and pelvis stability) your limbs can produce more force.

You also gain secondary strength in the glutes and hamstrings 💪🏻

My progression so far:
Back Extension ISO
Back Extension reps and increase ROM over time
Unilateral Back Extension and increase ROM over time.

I’d love to hear of others experience with the back extension 💪🏻

Address

The Peace Link, Liseggerton Clones Co Monaghan
Monaghan
N/A

Telephone

+353879868370

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when David Masterson Health & Performance posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to David Masterson Health & Performance:

Shortcuts

Share