Keenan Watson is the Head of Strength and Conditioning at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in South Africa. A former national athlete, he has built a diverse high-performance career across multiple sporting codes and has coached athletes who went on to national records, Olympic teams and World Cup success. He is a student with Setanta College.

Below, Keenan discusses the early spark that led him into sport science, the athletes he’s helped develop, and how studying with Setanta has shaped his practice.

An Early Fascination with Performance

Keenan’s love for sport science began long before he knew what it was called.

“My passion and love for sport science developed when I was a young boy, around the age of 10. I didn’t know it was called sport science at the time, but seeing how athletes move, perform and push boundaries during the Sydney 2000 Olympics — where I heard the words ‘sport science’ for the first time, during Australia’s golden era at the Games — made me aware that there’s more to human performance than meets the eye.

This same drive to understand human performance pushed me to become a national athlete for my country. I’m retired now, and have been for many years due to injuries and a lack of support during that era, but I’m still involved in the high-performance environment at the University.”

The Head of S&C Role

Keenan’s current role sits at the centre of WITS’ high-performance system.

“My role is responsible for driving performance excellence and a high-performance culture, providing guidance and effective planning with coaches and their performance staff around the demands of their game model. To summarise, it’s basically providing the best performance system suitable for their environment, making sure athletes and personnel are safeguarded, and overseeing the performance and medical staff day to day.

A typical day starts with checking in on all the sport scientists and S&C coaches to see if there are any concerns from previous training sessions, or any players flagged as a risk. That’s followed by updates from the medical team, and then my daily check-in with the HP manager for tasks from the HP office and other stakeholders.”

A Diverse Journey

Keenan’s path into the profession began with curiosity and a willingness to volunteer.

“My career as a sport scientist had a bit of a weird journey. While I was studying, I had the opportunity to voluntarily start applying and refining my trade at the sport science department — I was privileged to be allowed to, because undergraduates weren’t normally permitted that.

Because of my curiosity, I always explored the libraries, watched different sporting codes train and perform, and analysed how differently each high-level athlete moves and what makes them different from the general population. Those steps made me obsessed with biomechanics — how do we improve athlete performance without removing the quality of movement? That’s how I ended up opening my academy and training athletes, applying mixed-method training modalities. I didn’t fully understand why it worked until I got my first high-performance job at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where applying those methods allowed me to understand the population I was working with and provide a clear pathway to enhance their performance.”

The results speak for themselves.

“One of my key moments to date was working with Kurt-Lee Arendse in 7s rugby, before he became a Blitzbok and World Cup-winning player. A few of my athletes have been breaking through on the circuit — a great example is Naeem Jack, who as a 17-year-old broke the 110m hurdles national record in 13.06 seconds, ran 20.11 in the 200m and 10.08 in the 100m, the only athlete to have done so at his age.

Henricho Bruintjies ran 10.06 in the 100m while he was at the academy and went on to break the sub-10-second barrier with a time of 9.93, and 9.87 wind-assisted. Gardeo Isaacs, former 400m national champion, made the Olympic team. My most recent highlight is winning the Varsity Shield competition this year with WITS Rugby in my first year in the role.

There are many more I could mention. My profile is really diverse, and that’s because I probably participated in every sporting code at school and University — athletics, rugby, football, basketball and cricket — again down to my obsession with human movement and performance.”

Why Setanta

Keenan was looking for a programme that would develop him as both a practitioner and an academic.

“I was looking for something different from the normal master’s programme — one that could enhance my thinking as a practitioner but also improve my abilities as an academic. Sometimes you find candidates who are strong academically but still learning practically, or vice versa: strong practically but avoiding the academic side completely.

I’ve realised that having a balance between the two allows you to sit and talk to both sides, learn from those conversations, and build a broader network of knowledge and mentors. My hope with the programme was exactly what I received — advanced techniques for athlete profiling, applying those training methods, improving my statistical analysis, and really bridging the gap between evidence-based research and practical application.”

What the Programme Delivered

“I enjoyed the flexibility of the programme. Though it was still our responsibility to complete our tasks and research projects, the staff and lecturers really take into consideration that some classmates have day jobs, and that our environment is unique in that we travel a lot and teams keep us busy until late hours of the night. They make space for those challenges.

I also enjoyed meeting practitioners from all over the world, some already involved with the best leagues and teams. The programme has helped my career by allowing me to bridge the gap between teams that have the best systems and teams that have none — how to approach environments with diverse cultures, and how to win over anecdotal thinking and move away from it.”

Advice for Others

“Every day is an opportunity to enhance your skill, whether it’s communication, practical application or report writing. Every day is an opportunity to be better at what you didn’t know yesterday.

Don’t lower your standards to suit the ones who are comfortable — instead, challenge your environment to get to your standard. That’s how value is recognised.”

Looking Ahead

“Right now our focus is on building a sustainable high-performance programme and developing the next generation of Olympians, Springboks, Blitzboks and national soccer players. The University has such great potential, and that’s what makes me so excited for the future. So watch out — WITS University is coming!“