Supporting Champions

This week’s guest is Sian Allen. Sian is a vastly experienced performance scientist having worked at the English, Scottish and New Zealand Institute of Sports. Sian received her PhD in Statistical Modelling of Sports Performance from Aukland University of Technology, while working with British and New Zealand swimming teams. Sian headed up the performance intelligence work for the New Zealand Sort...

This week’s guest is Jean Gomes. Jean is a New York best-selling author and a business consultant to 100s of CEOs and businesses. He is CEO and founder of Outside who utilise the latest research to support and develop wellbeing, leadership and organisational culture. His clients over the years include Google, Nike, Schneider, BMW, Tik Tok, but also includes the Lawn Tennis Association, UK Sport an...

This week’s guest is Dr Mark Burnley Mark is an exercise physiologist by trade, currently an academic at Loughborough University, having previously been at Brighton, Aberystwyth, Kent and Wolverhampton. Mark’s background is in oxygen uptake kinetics, having undertaken much of the pioneering work on priming - which I’ve used extensively in my work with athletes. Much of Mark’s work has centred arou...

This week’s guest is Costas Karageorghis Costas is a professor of sports psychology at Brunel University. I first knew of Costas, many years ago as “Piano Man”, as he was sat at the piano in a bar at a BASES conference, skilfully and joyfully playing away entertaining conference attendees. Only the next day did I find out that that music was his specialist topic. Since, Costas has become renowned...

This week’s guest is Dr Kate Hays Kate is Head of Women's Performance Psychology at The English FA Kate is just about as richly experienced a practitioner and leader in sports psychology as you are likely to meet. Kate has worked on the Front line in Olympic sport, in particular in the sport of diving, working with Olympic Champion Tom Daley; she has worked in professional rugby at Harlequins RFC...

This week’s guest is Joe Baker Joe is a Professor at the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University in Toronto Joe’s work specialises in optimal human development, largely to understand how someone gets to, and stays at, the highest levels of performance. This means he works in the areas of skill acquisition, talent identification and athlete development. He has recently written a...

Happy New Year! This week’s guest is Christian Swann. Christian is an associate professor at Southern Cross University and specialises in research around goal setting and mental health. In Christian’s early research he noticed an interesting observation. While working with elite golfers he asked them what sort of goals they set for themselves. To his surprise the types of goals they set didn’t con...

Nick is a senior research fellow in Exercise Physiology at Harbor UCLA Medical Centre. For over a decade, Nick has been scrutinizing the commercial health and wellness industry through the critical lens of scientific skepticism. Where he finds nonsense he has called it out, campaigned for a stronger stance against snake oil, bogus claims and myths. Nick is also the author of The Skeptic's Guide to...

This week’s guest is Dr Lucy Gossage Lucy is a triathlete and doctor and on underpinning that a phenomenal person. Lucy started her career almost by accident, just trying out in triathlon for fun, then got the bug, entering her first ironman and steadily realising that she could go pro and taking 12 Ironman titles. In between swimming, biking and running, Lucy studied medicine at Cambridge, where...

This week's guest is Andy McNab Andy McNab is perhaps the most recognisable name of any special forces operator in the world. Andy served in the Royal Green Jackets in Northern Ireland where he was awarded the Military medal for gallantry, he entered the Special Air Services in 1984 and worked on both covert and overt operations including and drug operations in the Middle East and Far East, South...

This week's guest is Ryan King. Ryan is a strength and conditioning coach by trade. He has a background working at the EIS and England FA. In addition to his conditioning work Ryan has led numerous teams, for example managing the women’s pathway team, the performance support team and the innovation work at the FA. Ryan is now a performance strategist at Kitman labs and a performance consultant for...

This week’s guest is Tom Geraghty Tom runs a business that supports and coaches people and teams in the area of psychological safety. He has created a reputation in this niche, through his work, his online contributions and a very impactful newsletter each week. Tom hasn’t come at this topic through what you might think is the traditional and formal psychological route, but from the position of a...

I have two guests for you this week, Jenny Coe and Dr Amy Whitehead Jenny Coe is former international basketball player for Ireland and has spent her working career developing coaches and players, first at UK coaching and now working as a Head of Performance and Wellbeing with West Ham Women’s Football Team. Jenny also runs her own company Impact the Game a company that supports coaches and athlet...

This week's guest is Colin Lewin  Colin was Arsenal Football Club’s physiotherapist from 2005 to 2018 - making that 22 years of front line medical support in elite football. Acting both as a physio and later as Head of Medical Services, Colin oversaw the creation of Arsenal’s outstanding purpose-built medical facilities in 2012 the £17 million player performance centre and implementing the Researc...

Abbie Eaton is a racing driver having competed in a range of Series’ including the Mazda supercup, Super 2 series, 2 x British Champion and notably in the W series. She is also a test driver on the series The Grand tour. In this discussion Abbie talks about carving out a career as a woman in a male dominated sport, she shares her drive, personal ambitions to not only compete but to manage everythi...

This weeks guest is David Joyce. David is a physiotherapist by trade but over the last decade or so David has carved himself out as a strategic thinker, advisor, and developer of teams and leaders. He has learned his craft at the cold face in numerous systems based in Europe and Asia as a practitioner but his curiosity has led him to undertake some fascinating research in the area of strategic dec...

This week’s episode is with Dr David Dunne. I mentioned a few weeks ago in the reboot episode that I will continue to speak to scientists, applied practitioners, coaches and athletes and those outside of sport. But I also flagged that I want to speak with entrepreneurs and consultants, people who’ve created businesses or are consulting for their income. David is one such person. He is a doctoral ...

103 Danny Kerry on performance leadership Today's episode is with Danny Kerry. Danny has led the GB field hockey teams for 17 years. He recently coached the men’s team to the Tokyo Olympics, and is perhaps best known for coaching the women’s team from 2005 to 2012 and again from 2014 to 2018 - leading them to a bronze in London and a wonderful gold medal at the Rio Olympics. What you hear from Dan...

102: Vanessa Bohns on Influence Today’s episode is with Vanessa Bohns Professor of organisational behaviour at Cornell University. I spoke to Vanessa about her recent book “You have more influence than you think” with the subtitle of “How we underestimate our power of persuasion and why it matters”. I found this topic fascinating - because we spend so much time thinking about our ideas, interact w...

The podcast is BACK! We're delighted to be back and we've got some great conversations ahead for you! We've taken a bit of a break and now we're recording again Expect to hear from great scientist, coaches and athletes. Unique to the podcast we'll still be speaking those people outside of sport who are performers themselves or have insights that can inform what we do. We'll also be adding more voi...

We’ve had a little break from the podcast and now I’m delighted to say we’re back and have got lots of great interviews coming up. New episodes are uploaded on 29th June. Don't forget to subscribe on your podcast platform or Youtube   So what’s changed since we were away, well we haven’t changed things around too much. We’re still exploring all aspects of human performance, whether that is getting...

After 100 episodes over 4 years, I take a chance to reflect on the lessons learned from hosting the Supporting Champions podcast and speaking with some of the world's best performers, coaches, support staff, mainly from sport but also from a range of other performance fields too. I'm joined by my close colleague, friend and initial podcast guest Dr Jamie Pringle to help me reflect.   Episodes ment...

A very, very warm welcome to our 100th episode. Woo! A milestone for us having started the podcast just under 4 years ago. I truly hope you have enjoyed all the episodes. If you’ve listened to them all then kudos and thanks for being with us along the way. If you’re new in, then hello and I kind of envy you as there is a back catalogue just waiting for you to tune into. When I look back now only a...

This week’s guest is one of the most outstanding athletes ever, Mike Powell. Mike has held the long jump world record for the last 30 years, taking the mark from the legendary Bob Beamon - who held it himself for 23  years. The record stands at 8.95 m or in old money 29 feet 4 and a bit inches. When I do keynote speeches, one of my favourite things to do is to measure out Mike’s record just to ill...

This week’s guest is Ben Ryan. Ben coached the England Rugby Sevens team between 2007 and 2013. Ben then took a big leap of faith in taking up the head coach role with the Fijian team, leading them to Olympic gold at the Rio Olympics. In recognition of these achievements the IOC named Fiji as the best male team performance at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and Ben was awarded the Companion of the Orde...