Matthew Nesbitt

International experienced coach with World Cup experience at International national sevens level. Youth strength & conditioning experience at age grade and international level. 

My professional experience has included working within the  semi-professional South African schoolboy sporting structures as well as international experience I have gained in approximately 10 years as a coach. I am an ambitious, determined, hardworking and most importantly team-orientated individual who has high ambitions within the athletic performance area of sport and education. 

I have been lucky enough to work in various different levels in the sport’s athletic performance environment. I have always had an interest in sports science and athletic performance. While completing my studies in Sports Science I was lucky enough to start working as a strength and conditioning coach with Pretoria Boys High School. I oversaw and developed the programme for six years. One of the key programmes I developed was a long-term athletic pathway for students from the age of thirteen to nineteen years old, ensuring a safe and progressive pathway was followed to ensure correct growth was achieved. My job role included the running of the strength facility, budgeting, procurement, and maintenance of equipment as well as running the strength and conditioning programme from the facility. I designed programmes for individual and team sports as well as students who wanted to improve their health and wellbeing. As well as my strength and conditioning role I also ran the physical education programme which included teaching the students sports science and testing them periodically.  

 Whilst working at Pretoria Boys High School I was lucky enough to start working with the Zimbabwe sevens rugby team. I designed and developed their strength and conditioning programme for two seasons. From the beginning we had two goals to qualify as a core team as well as get out of the group stages of the 2013 sevens rugby world cup in Russia. We managed to win the Hong Kong qualifiers tournament in 2013 and went onto the next stage only to lose to Scotland. We achieved our goal of exiting the group stages of the sevens world cup in 2013 as well. My strength and conditioning programme was credited as a reason for the team’s improvement and results of which to this day I am still proud of. 

I relocated to Hong Kong to gain overseas experience and work with internationally minded coaches to gain experience and grow as a coach. In Hong Kong I have worked with Hong Kong Scottish RFC as a coach and the Hong Kong rugby union as a coach as well as strength and conditioning coach. With both organisations. I have applied my sports science methods to pre habilitation, training, recovery, nutrition, and sleep. In 2019 I was asked to accompany the Hong Kong U17 NAG team tour to the Philippines for an educational camp to prepare the players for the demands of U20 rugby. My role was to educate the players on safe strength training, guide them on conditioning, flexibility, nutrition, recovery, and mind gym techniques. I enjoyed this experience and I believe I work well with students of all ages. Having had experience working with some of the talented schoolboy athletes in South Africa.

Msc Performance Coaching (Currently enroled) Setanta College (Ireland)

Degree in Sports Science University of Pretoria

World Rugby Strength & Conditioning

NASM CPT

HFPA PT

REPS Level 3 PT

Project Management University of California