Supporting Champions

This week’s guest is Chris Rosimus, Chris is the Head of Nutrition at the Football Association, leading all aspects of dietary provision to the England football teams. Prior to that Chris was nutritionist at England and Wales Cricket Board, English Institute of Sport and England Squash. What was fascinating about this conversation was the route that Chris followed, which you might consider unconve...

Dr Cath Bishop competed as a rower at three Olympic Games, Atlanta, Sydney and Athens (and I had the privilege of working with Cath throughout her career), with highlights including winning the World Championships in 2003 and an Olympic silver medal in 2004. As a diplomat specialising in conflict issues, Cath was posted to Sarajevo, Bosnia, Basra and Iraq, as well as leading in Whitehall on the UK...

This week’s guest former Formula One driver Mark Webber. During his career Mark won nine Formula one Grands Prix, finishing third on three occasions, while driving for Red Bull racing. Mark has also won the FIA World Endurance Championship with Porsche. In this interview I ask mark about how he’s making sense of his career now that he’s retired and hear all about a strange mix of feeling fortunate...

I would put this week’s guest into a very select place in the world of endurance, one that has combined four often distinct factors, first quality academic research, second in a topic that contributes to elite performance, third creates a paradigm shift that challenges how most of us think about training, and fourthly has been successfully applied to the non-elites, the serious amateur athletes or...

In this week’s episode I speak to a true innovator, pioneer and superstar of human movement – Sebastien Foucan. Sebastien was one of the founding developers of the discipline of parkour and later Sebastien stretched his practice to develop free-running – creative, acrobatic, exploratory, jumping, vaulting, rolling, climbing and interacting with obstacles and environments. Sebastien was also Bond b...

This week’s guest is Kit Holder, first soloist at the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Kit has spent his whole career dancing, he came from a family of dancers, he went to the Royal Ballet School and has performed at the highest level on stage and now is a choreographer for the Birmingham company. There’s a number of interesting angles that I took from this interview, one that he is working to the directi...

This week’s guest is Mel Marshall. As a swimmer Mel made five Olympic finals at two Olympic games’ and she is one of the most decorated swimmers for England at the Commonwealth Games. You’re likely to know Mel as much for her reputation as an elite swimmer as the coach of perhaps the most dominant swimmer on the planet at the moment – the imperious Adam Peaty. Mel has coached Adam from his pre-tee...

Dr Eva Carneiro is this week’s guest (I will give you Eva’s introduction in two parts). Eva is a Sports Physician and was one of the first eight pioneering doctors recruited nationally to the UK Sports and Exercise Medicine Specialist Training Programme. She worked in the New South Wales Institute of Sport in Sydney and at the Olympic Medical Institute in London in the build up to the Beijing Olym...

Nick Levett on talent development Have you ever found yourself stood along side parents or coaches shouting and barking instructions to their child? Or have you ever found yourself bursting out with commands or subtly taking your child aside to say, “Just do this”. If we have done this or seen this or felt the urge to help but done so in a clumsy way – then we’ve been an influence (perhaps not pos...

Caspar Berry is a former professional poker player, having been the poker advisor on the James Bond movie Casino Royale. Caspar is now a speaker on risk, not only understanding this area from the principles of the game of poker, but it’s underpinned with an economics degree from Cambridge University. In this discussion we talk about the parallels between poker and what we’re experiencing through t...

In this episode I spoke to Rob Pacey. Rob runs one of the most successful podcasts in Sport, the aptly named Pacey performance podcast, which focuses on strength and conditioning and training. He has curated close to 300 episodes since 2015 featuring some of the leading names in aspects of conditioning. In this discussion I was curious to find out what inspired Rob to begin recording episodes, and...

I’m excited to share, in this special episode, 7 key principles from my new book The First Hurdle on applying and interviewing for jobs in sports performance (and the sub-text here too is for those doing the interviewing too). The First Hurdle is a guide to searching, applying and interviewing for jobs in sports performance and is now available to buy for kindle or other e-reader here  https://sup...

We hope you and those close to your are safe and well. In this episode I spoke to Stef Reid, three-time Paralympic medallist, World Champion long jumper. Stef is a remarkable lady irrespective of the fact that at 15 years old she lost her leg to the rotor blade of a motorboat. For she has amongst her sporting accomplishments, also been a semi-finalist in Masterchef UK, was the first Paralympian to...

In this episode I talk to Dr Andrea Furst, performance psychologist at Mental Notes. Andrea has had a highly successful career supporting some of the highest performing teams to the highest performances. She has worked in Australia, where she originates from, Singapore and now based in the UK. She has supported the Australian kayak team, Singapore sailing, GB Hockey and is widely sought after in p...

The next few special episodes of the podcast will break away from the normal regularity as we capture, produce and air some relevant content to the COVID-19 crisis. In this episode I talk to Professor Louise Burke, Chief of Nutrition Strategy at The Australian Institute of Sport, where she has led the nutrition support work for Australia since 1990. Louise is certainly one of the world’s leading d...

Phil Skiba on exercise and health during COVID-19 crisis The next few special episodes of the podcast will break away from the normal regularity as we capture, produce and air some relevant content to the COVID-19 crisis. In today’s special episode I talk to Dr Phil Skiba, Director of Sports Medicine for the Advocate Aurora Medical Group in Chicago, one of the largest in the United States and one...

057: James Cracknell on Endeavour   A note about Coronavrius We, individuals, groups, communities, society look up to sporting heroes, we revere and admire their dedication, their persistence, their focus, the sacrifices they make to make the most of their often rare genetics and to do so on the greatest performance stage. As the world battles Coronavirus, we’re all going to be required to make sa...

056: Malcolm Brown on a career in coaching and lessons from the Brownlees This episode’s guest is Malcolm Brown a Performance Coach based at the Leeds Triathlon Centre where he has partnered with Jack Maitland in coaching the Brownlee Brothers, that’s Alastair and Jonny – two of the greatest triathlon racers of all time.  He was previously the head endurance coach for UK Athletics, coaching athlet...

The dynamic of retirement, transitions and change for athletes is rightly receiving much greater attention as athletes speak up and openly about their experiences – none more so this episode’s guest Lizzie Simmonds. Former international backstroker, two time Olympian, European champion – Lizzie has taken it upon herself to  write and speak about her experiences since her retirement in 2018 and now...

Duncan French is the Vice President of the Ultimate Fighting Championships. Mixed martial arts is a sport that has had an accelerated rise into the public consciousness over the last couple of decades. It seems to have captured the imagination, created interest and intrigue about the unpredictability of the contest. And so has followed a professionalisation of the bouts, the events, and the suppor...

Sue Backhouse, Professor of psychology and nutrition at Leeds Beckett University is this week's guest. Sue is an expert in the complexity around two huge areas – eating and cheating. Everyone’s a nutritionist these days, everyone’s a psychologist and everyone has an opinion on the issue of doping. Three emotive, convoluted and noisy areas for Sue to tackle. What Sue’s research does is something qu...

This year we have the Olympic games – the World’s biggest sporting event. But in quick succession is the Paralympics, now the third largest sporting event. Some quip that the Olympics is the warm-up or the test event for the Paralympics. Well this week’s guest is one of the greatest stalwarts and servant of the Paralympics, my good friend and close colleague Nik Diaper. It’s difficult to overstate...

This week’s guest is business consultant James Glover. James is a world champion white-water rafter, former performance lifestyle practitioner and head of support for the sport of triathlon in Britain. In these sporting support roles James began to explore and research some deeper concepts of human performance and found himself drawing upon some emerging and quite powerful principles being applied...

Welcome to episode 50, a mini milestone for us and not long ago we've ticked over 50,000 downloads so thank you to all for tuning in and sharing what you've learnt from each episode - it encourages to keep producing more content for you. While we've hit some mini milestones, this week's guests has been part of some projects that have grown to become phenomenally successful. Tom Williams is Parkrun...

Jason Laird has worked in Premiership football, ballet, judo and now gymnastics and as such is one of the most experienced physiotherapists in the UK. What I have always admired about Jason is his ability to get to the crux of a matter and begin to explore it, develop solutions and adapt. In this interview you’ll hear about Jason’s early passion for physiotherapy, we talk about doing the hard yard...