GAINcast with Vern Gambetta

For decades, coaches have trained female athletes the same way they train male athletes — or worse, held them back entirely out of myth and misunderstanding. In this episode of the GAINcast, Vern Gambetta sits down with Morgan Smith, senior performance coach for US Soccer's women's youth national teams and former Stanford post-doctoral researcher, to tackle what we actually know about training the...

As coaches we like to think of the training process as predictable and controllable, but the reality isn't that straightfoward. As guest Dan Cleather explains on this week's podcast, we don't dictate training outcomes, we simply guide a conversation with the body. In the interview he looks at how to best guide that process, the role of overload, and rethinking recent trends in athlete profiling. F...

Vern is a prodigious reader. On this week's GAINcast he discusses what makes his top 10 books of 2025 stand out, as well as some additional reading recommendations. For more information on this topic, read the complete show notes at:  https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2026/02/gaincast-episode-295-book-review/ The following links were also referenced in the podcast or provide some additional reading materi...

Southern California is known for its earthquakes, but it was also the epicenter of track and field during the golden age of the sport. On this week's episode, longtime coach and author Larry Knuth looks back at the coaching scene in that era, reflecting on his own path to coaching, as well as the big names he worked with along the way. This episode isn't just a walk down memory lane, but a look in...

Hundreds of athletes, dozens of sports, and just one coach. Nick Garcia is a master of building an efficient and effective athletic development program. He joins us again on this week's GAINcast to walk us through his setup at Notre Dame High School, how he started the program, its critical success factors, and all the nitty gritty logistics of coaching. For more information on this topic, read th...

Alex Hutchinson is well known for his writing on sport science, but his new books goes in a different direction by taking a detailed look at exploration: why humans explore, how much we should explore, and methods of exploration. The topic might not be directly about sports, but it is directly relevant to coaches. Coaches are often weighing the question of when to try something new, and when to ke...

According to coach Dale Stevenson, technique is overrated. Technique is a tool, just like strength is a tool. We need tools, but we can't forget that tools are there to help us accomplish a task. On this week's podcast Stevenson joins us to look at his approach to technique in training, how that translates into session design, and much more. For more information on this topic, read the complete sh...

What are the demands of modern high school coaching? John Larralde calculated that he has just 43 training days to prepare his track athletes this year. Add to that a small student population, multi-event athletes, a young coaching staff, and little connection to the daily campus life. Some might see these as problems, but for Larralde that's no big deal as he describes himself as a problem solver...

Lachlan Penfold has worked with some of the world's most successful clubs across numerous sports from rugby to the NBA to water polo. While he is an innovative physical performance coach, one theme keeps emerging to him: the most successful clubs are built more on the strength of connection as the strength the body. On this episode of the GAINcast he looks at how to build a culture starting with a...

Last month we hosted the GAIN Coaching by Design Workshop. A recurring theme in the workshop was process. Coaching by design requires process. On this episode of the GAINcast, Vern Gambetta dives into his process which starts with defining what he calls the six abilities: trainability, adaptability, recoverability, durability, availability, and coachability. For more information on this topic, rea...