#WeAreEmpower
We believe that “everyone’s an athlete” and that sport science and therapy should not only be accessible for elite athletes, but rather shared with everyone. If you are looking to get fitter, faster, and stronger, then you have come to the right place!
Our story began in 2017, when Coach Morgan was established to provide professional personal training and martial arts coaching to youth and adult kickboxers, collaborating with Academy Martial Arts. Following the closure of Academy Martial Arts in 2020, Coach Morgan re-located to The Gym Group Stourbridge in 2021 and opened up their services to include sports massage therapy and coaching for general, clinical and sports populations.
Since 2020, we have maintained a professional relationship with Empower Martial Arts ,who provide excellent kickboxing coaching with the aim to empower the people of Stourbridge to strengthen themselves mentally and physically, support the community, and succeed in life. This ethos resonated with our Head Strength & Conditioning Coach, Morgan Ferris, who combined these values with his experience in sport science to re-form Coach Morgan into Empower Strength & Conditioning in 2023.
Since our journey started, we have worked with a wide range of population groups, including youth athletes, elite and amateur athletes, clinical patients, public services, and the general public. It our continued mission to improve the health and support sports participation in Stourbridge through high-quality professional strength and conditioning coaching and sports therapy services that caters to the individual needs of every client. Every session follows a holistic multidisciplinary approach, which pools knowledge from many sports and exercise science areas including biomechanics, physiology, psychology, nutrition and sports therapy.
Our Philosophy
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We believe that a balanced whole-body training approach offers the best solution to boosting performance and preventing injury, which is why each of our S&C sessions feature fundamental multi-joint movement patterns (e.g., squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, brace, rotate, run) that aim to train the body as an integrated system. Our sports therapists also adopt this philosophy by treating the body as a whole when dealing with soft tissue injuries. Support for the whole-body training approach comes from research that compared multi-joint compound and traditional bodybuilding isolation exercises, that found that while similar strength gains can be achieved, multi-joint exercises develop greater levels of co-ordination and is more time efficient.
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In the 1500s, Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus said, “prevention is better than cure”. In response to this well-known quote, we value prehabilitation (a.k.a. Prehab) in our programmes. Prehabilitation refers to individualised exercises that aim to reduce incidence of specific injuries that someone is predisposed to or prevent the reoccurrence of those injuries. At the beginning of our sessions, we offer the opportunity to work on prehabilitation exercises with our S&C coaches expert guidance.
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In terms of our coaching style, we use a guided discovery and constraint-led approach to learning movement skills, whereby our S&C coaches create an environment where you are encouraged to self-organise and solve movement problems in a safe and effective way. Alongside this, our S&C coaches provide consistent feedback on exercise technique and provide progressions or regressions of fundamental exercises to suit your individual abilities.
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All of our S&C and sports therapy programmes are based upon theoretical and evidence-based research. Our S&C coaches and sports therapists regularly engage in continued professional development through courses, conferences, and research to remain on the cutting edge of sports and exercise science knowledge. We also employ a test-retest model, where we assess our clients’ abilities, implement health and fitness interventions, and assess the effectiveness of our programmes. This means that you can be sure to achieve your goals as our programmes adapt as quickly as you adapt to our programmes.
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Living in the modern day, we are constantly wearing shoes that force our feet into unnatural positions. This is why we advocate barefoot or minimalist footwear during our sessions. Wearing minimal footwear has been shown to improve postural stability as well as develop the musculature of the lower-limb, both of which are integral to the aims of any S&C programme. Our facility is fitted with regularly cleaned foam-matted flooring, which is a perfect introduction for those that have not done barefoot training before.
Our Testimonials