Performance People

As we head towards our 100th episode, we've been revisiting some of our favourite performance insights from previous guests. This week, it's Dr Megan Rossi on why gut health is so important to our daily performance. We cover the importance of the gut in our overall health, why stress and gut health are intrinsically linked, the growing research on food additives and the ways we can improve our dai...

As we head towards our 100th episode, we've been revisiting some of our favourite performance insights from previous guests. In this one, it's Tim Henman's unique advice on handling pressure. In such a gladiatorial sport as tennis, and as a Brit playing at Wimbledon with the whole country expecting you to win, Tim definitely knows what pressure feels like. Yet if anything, it brought the...

Steve Magness is a performance coach to athletes and CEOs, a running expert who has coached Olympians, and an author whose latest book, ‘Win The Inside Game: How to Move From Surviving to Thriving’, explores how high performers can transform their lives by learning to let go of the traditional outcome-based view of success. Steve discusses how constant striving led to burnout in his own life, why...

Martin Keown is one of the Premier League’s most formidable defenders, a leader in Arsene Wenger’s most successful Arsenal side that went on to go unbeaten in the famous ‘Invincibles’ season of 2003/4, in what would be his last season at Arsenal aged nearly 38.  Now an insightful pundit, and author of his recent memoir ‘On the Edge’, Martin talks candidly and entertainingly about what made hi...

Geraint Thomas is one of Britain’s most popular and successful cyclists, a Tour de France winner and double Olympic gold medalist who’s also known as a team man willing to give everything for the cause. Speaking direct from the massage table and in reflective mood, the man everyone calls ‘G’ looks back on the career-defining moment when he realised he could make the switch from Tour de France supp...

Jess Thom is Team GB’s lead psychologist, a sports and performance specialist who helps elite athletes to fulfil their potential, on and off the field. Jess shares some of the key mental strategies she uses to help her athletes excel, many of which can be applied to anyone looking to improve their everyday performance.  You’ll hear Jess explain how to handle your inner critic, when and how vi...

It’s been a big 12 months on Performance People and we thought we’d close it out the year with a selection of clips from some of our favourite episodes, many of which were recorded out in in Barcelona, where Ben Ainslie and his INEOS Britannia team were attempting to fulfil their ‘moment in time’ and bring the oldest trophy in sport back to Britain for the first time. We were joined by some stella...

As Liverpool’s Director of Research for over a decade, Ian Graham was at the heart of the data revolution in football, and his approach helped Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, the team he also supports, to win the Premier League and Champions League in his time there. Ian shares the stories and insights that helped them to win - why Brendan Rodgers left partly because he couldn’t get on board with the ne...

Tom Beahon is the co-founder of sportswear label Castore, which in less than a decade has grown in to a major global challenger brand, and can be seen on athletes and teams including Andy Murray, Red Bull Racing, Newcastle United and the England cricket team. Growing up, all Tom ever wanted to be was a pro footballer, but that particular dream ended when he was let go by Tranmere Rovers as a 19-ye...

Ed Jackson says he has lived two lives. For ten years he was a professional rugby player, who was defined by his physicality and performance.  But in 2017, at a family friend’s barbecue, an accident ended this old life forever. He dived into a swimming pool, not realising it was three feet deep. On the way to the hospital he had to be resuscitated three times. Not long after, he was told he’d...

Jacqui Oatley is a hugely respected sports journalist, commentator and presenter who in 2007 became the first woman ever to commentate on Match Of The Day. In fact, her career is full of media firsts for women, although all she ever wanted to do was the job she loved. A football obsessive from a young age, a serious knee injury in her twenties led to her reappraising her career. She retrained as a...

Now the dust has settled on the 37th America's Cup, it's the perfect time to look back on how things played out both on and off the water with the skipper and CEO of INEOS Britannia, Ben Ainslie. As well as some stories from the inside, Ben considers the highs and lows of his team’s journey to face off against the Kiwis, the details that he thinks made the difference and the biggest lessons, both...

A true rugby union hall-of-famer who ranks as one of the best scrum-halves who ever played the game, George Gregan is known for having the whole package - skill, creativity, tenacity, intelligence, sportsmanship and leadership. He is the seventh most capped player of all-time with 139 appearances for Australia, 59 of them as skipper. George puts these remarkable performance standards down to the m...

Professor Russell Foster is one of the world’s leading experts on sleep and circadian health.  He explains how modern lifestyles have disrupted our natural body clocks and why many of us aren’t getting the quality sleep we need to perform at our best. More importantly he goes through ways  to get back into the rhythm.  As Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University, Rus...

Brett Gosper is a leading figure on the business side of global sport, having been CEO of World Rugby during a pivotal era, and now, in a key role at the NFL as Head of Europe and Asia-Pacific. It’s a career that has come full circle as Brett recalls the moment when, as a promising rugby union player, he was on the verge of breaking in to the Australian national squad with the rest of his 20s alre...

Adam Jones is a former Major League baseball player, a five-time all star and four-time Golden Glove who retired a fan favourite and local legend for the Baltimore Orioles having spent 11 happy and successful years there. He was even given a ceremonial send-off in front of fans and dignitaries when he retired to mark his time in the city. Rewind to 2008 though and few would have predicted such an...

Kenyan long-distance runner Eliud Kipchoge is a two-time Olympic marathon champion who has run four of the fastest 10 marathon times in history.  In this latest episode in our ‘A Moment in Time’ series of Performance People with the Inside Tack podcast, Eliud looks back to his most memorable achievement - the INEOS 1:59 Challenge, when he became the first runner to break the two-hour barrier...

Ellie Aldridge was on track to be a dinghy sailor when a chance to try kiteboarding ahead of its Olympic debut came up. Quickly, she had to choose which sport to focus on. It was a decision that would change her life. Just six years later she became the sport’s inaugural Olympic champion in Marseille. In the latest episode in our ‘A Moment in Time’ series of Performance People with the Inside Tack...

Hannah Mills is already one of British sailing’s all-time greats, a double gold medallist and double world champion, she’s currently on-board strategist for the Emirates GBR SailGP team and skipper of the British Athena Pathway team in the first ever Women’s America’s Cup in Barcelona. In this latest episode in our ‘A Moment in Time’ series of Performance People with the Inside Tack podcast, Hanna...

If you’re one of Manchester United and England’s greatest full-backs, and a pivotal figure in Sir Alex Ferguson’s golden years, you have a lot of good moments to reflect on, but for Gary Neville, one night in Barcelona stands out above all others. In the latest episode in our ‘A Moment in Time’ series of Performance People with the Inside Tack podcast, Gary took us back to the Nou Camp in 1999 for...

John Bertrand is the America’s Cup skipper who led Australia to an historic against-the-odds victory over the USA in their own back yard in 1983. It’s been dubbed ‘The Race of the Century’ and is the subject of a Netflix film of the same name. In the fifth episode in our ‘A Moment in Time’ series of Performance People with the Inside Tack podcast, John takes us inside this incredible story to reve...

Entrepreneur, investor and Team Principal + CEO of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, Toto Wolff started his career as a racing driver and instructor in his native Austria before turning his attention, with phenomenal success, to business.  He later combined his expertise as an entrepreneur with his passion for motorsport, as an investor in Williams F1 before leading the Mercedes F1 team into...

The Importance Of Breaking Down Your Big Dream Into Smaller Steps | George Russell George Russell is one of Formula One’s hottest young talents, now in his third season at Mercedes alongside Lewis Hamilton. In the third episode in our ‘A Moment in Time’ series of Performance People with the Inside Tack podcast, George reflects on the key stepping stones that took him from karting as a kid with his...

With an astonishing seven Formula One Driver Championships, 201 podiums and 105 race wins, Sir Lewis Hamilton’s career record is unparalleled in the history of his sport. His prodigious natural talent combined with a relentless will to win saw him become the most successful rookie in history back in 2007 and he’s never looked back, except to check his rivals in the mirror. In the second episode in...

As the summer of sport moves towards the 37th America’s Cup, we look back to the remarkable 2013 edition in a special episode of Performance People with the Inside Tack podcast. Oracle Team USA were 8-1 down and going nowhere against Emirates Team New Zealand who needed only one more win to lift the Auld Mug. Enter Ben Ainslie, who was brought in as tactician in a last-gasp move to try to change t...