314: Player Load, Practice Periodisation...

Richard Graves is joined by Jackson Polk, Director of Sports Science at the University of Southern California (USC), for a conversation that covers the full spectrum of what it actually means to do this job well, from wrangling a thousand Catapult metrics down to the handful that matter, to the perhaps surprising conclusion that conversation might be your most powerful tool.
Jackson's path into sports science isn't the conventional one. He started as a student videographer with Oklahoma football, found himself drawn to the patterns hiding in data, and taught himself enough statistics and analytics to make coaches stop and listen. That curiosity eventually took him from Norman, Oklahoma, to Los Angeles, where he's spent the past four years building USC football's sports science programme from the ground up.
What makes this episode stand out is Jackson's willingness to be honest about uncertainty, about AI, about his own mistakes, and about the limits of any single metric or method. He's equally at home referencing Principal Component Analysis and the TV show Veep, and that breadth of thinking is what makes him worth listening to. Whether you work in elite sport, study sports science, or just want to understand what goes into keeping a college football roster performing at its best, there's plenty here to take away.

In This Episode You Will Learn

• Why reducing Catapult's thousand-plus metrics down to a focused few, Player Load, sprint volume, and repeat sprint exposures, actually produces better decisions than trying to monitor everything
• How Jackson uses principal component analysis to build confidence in the data he's presenting to coaches and athletes
• The "iceberg" model of athlete monitoring: what data can tell you, and what only a direct conversation will uncover
• Why practice periodisation and load management have been one of USC's biggest organisational wins, and how PlayerLoad underpins that planning
• How force plates (via VALD/ForceDecks) and velocity-based training tools like Perch complement GPS data to reveal readiness on any given day
• The case for teaching college athletes sound recovery habits early, so they're not spending their rookie contracts figuring out what works
• How Jackson thinks about AI in sports science: where it's useful, where to be cautious, and why it's only as good as the data it's trained on
• Why communication, not technology, is the cornerstone of an effective sports science operation, and how to make data digestible for coaches under pressure
• The value of building a culture where experimentation and failure are treated as learning, not liability
• Lessons from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke on separating process from outcome, applied directly to sports science decision-making

About Jackson Polk
Jackson Polk is the Director of Sports Science for USC Trojans football, a role he was elevated to in 2024 after serving as Assistant Director from 2022–23. He joined the USC support staff in March 2022, bringing with him an unconventional background that blends mathematics, data science, and a deep passion for American football.
His journey began at the University of Oklahoma, where he spent four seasons as a student videographer before becoming a volunteer performance analyst. While at OU, he co-founded the Oklahoma Sports and Data Analytics Club, which went on to win the Pro Football Focus Analytics Blitz contest. He completed his bachelor's degree in mathematics at Oklahoma in 2021 and subsequently pursued a master's in data science and analytics.
At USC, Jackson has been responsible for building the football programme's sports science infrastructure, integrating GPS monitoring, force plate testing, and load management into daily practice planning. He holds an MBA alongside his analytical credentials, and his work sits at the intersection of data science and high-performance sport.

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