Role
Dr Pete Holmes is Senior Lecturer in Sport Coaching. He teaches on the BSc. Sport Science & Coaching undergraduate programme, leading the year 1 Exploring Coaching Practice and year 2 Coaching Science modules. He supervises final year research projects across a range of coaching areas including coach learning and coaching practice.
Career overview
Dr Holmes joined NTU from University Centre Doncaster where he led an undergraduate programme in PE & Sports Coaching and a distance learning top-up degree programme. Prior to this he has worked in various roles within the sport and exercise industry, including being an Analyst with ProZone Sports and an Exercise Physiologist with BUPA Wellness, having begun his career as a Fitness Instructor & Personal Trainer with Living Well Health Clubs. Dr Holmes has also coached in a range of sport environments, including junior football, college rugby and in the talent pathway with Castleford Tigers Rugby League Club. In addition to his role here with NTU, he also works as a Coach Developer with UK Coaching, working one-to-one with coaches in talent and performance environments, across a diverse range of sports including rowing, swimming, fencing and kayaking.
Research areas
Dr Holmes' research interests are typically very applied and centre on coach learning, development and practice, though he has a range of interests crossing sport sociology, psychology and athlete development. He completed his PhD through Leeds Beckett University in 2017, under the supervision of world-renowned Professors Richard Light and Andrew Sparkes. His thesis investigated the lifelong development and practice of elite professional head coaches in rugby, including some of the biggest names in the sport as participants.
Dr Holmes' first journal publication from his PhD came in January 2020, focused on coaches' early life experiences and how these began to shape them as people and coaches. He has since published on the lifelong development journeys of elite coaches and academy football coaches' use of challenge and support, in addition to having completed a funded project alongside Loughborough University evaluating the Lawn Tennis Association's (LTA) new coach development offer.
Dr Holmes has presented at a number of international conferences, including the Cluster for Research in Coaching (CRiC) in Northumbria in 2024 and Stirling in 2026. in 2025 he lad a very successful practitioner-centred Coaches' Conference here at NTU attended by 100 coaches, coaching leads and coach developers. He has also recently examined a PhD on personal epistemology in adventure sport coaching through the University of Chichester and a DProf on athlete and coach development in swimming through Leeds Beckett University. In addition, he is currently the External Examiner for the MSc in Sport Coaching at Liverpool John Moores University.
He is currently working on a range of projects including:
- The development of a challenge and support dials concept to support coaches in their practice
- Coaches' use of challenge and support across a range of sports including lacrosse and rugby
- Personality profiles of riders in equestrian sports
- Swim coaches' integration of psychological skills in their coaching practice (PhD project with Nathan Hilton & British Swimming)
- The history of coaching in rugby league
- The lifelong development of elite coaches in equestrian sports
Dr Holmes is open to receiving ideas from prospective PhD students for future projects, ideally connected to some of the work above, and can be contacted via email on pete.holmes@ntu.ac.uk.
External activity
As noted above, away from academia, Dr Holmes is a Coach Developer with UK Coaching, supporting coaches over the long term in a range of sports including swimming, volleyball, gymnastics & cycling. He has also held roles as a Senior Coach Developer with the Rugby Football League and Talent Coach/Coach Developer with Castleford Tigers RLFC. He has coached a range of sports including rugby league and union, football, swimming and cricket.
In 2025, Dr Holmes led a UK Coaching funded Play Their Way project here at NTU supporting student-coaches in focusing their practice on children's rights, in particular around voice, choice and development journeys.
Dr Holmes is a member of UK Coaching, the professional body for coaching here in the UK, and a fellow of AdvanceHE, the professional body for higher education.
Collaborators
Dr Holmes has worked with the following organisations & institutions:
The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA)
UK Coaching
Play Their Way
The Rugby Football League (RFL)
West Riding County Football Association
Castleford Tigers RLFC
Leeds Beckett University
Yorkshire RFU
Doncaster Rovers FC
Research Collaborators
Dr Holmes is currently working with:
Dr Julie Johnstone (NTU)
Prof Mustafa Sarkar (NTU)
Ben Ashdown (NTU)
Prof Chris Harwood (NTU)
Prof Chris Cushion (Loughborough University)
Publications
Journal articles
Holmes, P., Light, R. L., & Sparkes, A. C. (2025). “Everything Plays a Part Doesn’t It?’’: A Contemporary Model of Lifelong Coach Development in Elite Sport. Education Sciences, 15(7), 932. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070932
Holmes, P., Light, R., & Sparkes, A. (2020). The influence of early life experiences on English and Australian Super League coaches’ learning. Sport, Education and Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2019.1710698
Stanford, J., Roberts, R., Johnston, J. P., Sarkar, M., Holmes, P., & Healy, L. C. (2025). “You’re just like me, so we must be great together”: How similarity in narcissism impacts the quality of the coach–athlete relationship. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 14(3), 437–456. https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000381
The Conversation articles
Women's World Cup: why are there so few female coaches in football? (theconversation.com)
Other media
Dr Holmes was also interviewed by The Metro for the following article: Euro 2020: Even in defeat Southgate's squad still brought football home | Football | Metro News, interviewed live on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland show on the significance of Gareth Southgate's approach to coaching in England's success in recent years and was referred to in a Sathnam Sanghera column in The Times newspaper.
Press expertise
Sport coaching and athlete development
Course(s) I teach on
-
|COURSE
Sport Science
https://www.ntu.ac.uk/course/sport-science