Jacob Miller's journey from university to professional sport science

McMaster kinesiology graduate Jacob Miller finds career as sport science consultant for Forge F.C., Hamilton’s professional Canadian Premier League team

In his early high school years, Jacob Miller aspired to be a professional basketball player. But due to him not being athletically gifted like other athletes, he had to find a way to compensate for this to succeed. For him, that was doing research on how he could scientifically optimize his abilities.

“I wasn’t necessarily gifted athletically so this kind of forced me to find other ways to make way. I did my own research on things such as things I could do to increase my vertical jump” said Miller.

Miller came to the realization that he wanted to do this as a career, which made him choose kinesiology as his major. He interned as an assistant strength & conditioning coach with the McMaster basketball and football varsity teams.

As the assistant strength & conditioning coach, Miller was responsible for working with the football and basketball varsity teams, creating fitness plans for specific players to improve performance and mitigate injury.

In 2021, the manager of the strength & conditioning program at McMaster, Ben Bahrami, let Miller know that there was a head strength & conditioning coach position at Forge FC, which Miller gladly took up.

This however was a learning curve for Miller. He had only done strength & conditioning for a basketball program in Oakville previously and he had never kicked a soccer ball before in his life. “The start was a bit of a struggle for me as I never played soccer before. It was a big transition learning the culture of the sport so I could adapt to the team around me” Miller said.

However this transition presented some benefits as well. The weekly schedules planned out by the coaches took Miller by surprise but he enjoyed the organization as this allowed him to build a robust strength & conditioning program for the players.

“Something surprising for me was the way the coach structured the week. In basketball, I always thought things like weekly practices and such could be more consistent. Once I got to Forge, the structured weekly schedule allowed me to build a more comprehensive program which I found a lot nicer,” said Miller. 

Miller credits a lot of his success in strength & conditioning to the resources he was provided at McMaster. The coursework, combined with the coaches, set a good foundation for him to prosper.

“The anatomy and physiology courses provided a good foundational understanding of why we do such exercises. The big thing though was being surrounded by a bunch of high level performance coaches. Working alongside them showed me the level I had to achieve in order to be successful in this field” Miller said.

Miller advises any young professionals trying to break into sport science to create their own opportunities. “I would say reach out to people and be a free set of hands, this way you can get that experience and although it may suck doing work for free, your work won’t go unnoticed if it is of high quality,” said Miller.

Now, in addition to his role with Forge FC, Miller has his own business, Miller Human Performance, where he regularly works with athletes to enhance their athleticism. The end goal for Miller is to be fully self employed and running his own coaching business.