I have recently had the privilege of moving back into full-time secondary education having been a senior lecturer for over ten years researching, teaching and writing about concepts around pedagogy, youth sport development and physical literacy. This has presented an exciting and challenging opportunity to fully operationalise my years of theorising into effective practice that doesn’t just constitute a short-term intervention or action research project. This article will reflect upon the journey I have been on in contributing to a whole school programme based around physical literacy whilst wrestling with the often- juxtaposed priorities of participation versus performance. I will attempt to outline some of the challenges of compartmentalising approaches to physical literacy and identify a model of factors that will help practitioners to consider the impact of the philosophical premises of physical literacy on whole school planning, pedagogy and teaching behaviours.