The Built For Pressure Podcast

Ten months before I ran out as captain, a surgeon told me I might not walk properly again. That moment in the tunnel taught me more about performance under pressure than 18 years of elite sport and business consulting combined. And in this video, I break down exactly what it exposed. Most high-performing executives are not failing because of strategy.  They are failing because they have stripped t...

Every leader I have worked with hits the same ceiling. Not a strategy ceiling. Not a physical one. The one between your ears. The game outside of you will only ever go as far as the game inside of you allows. In this episode I sit down with Jay Hedley, founder of The Coaching Room and Head Coach, and the man who has shaped my own performance more than almost anyone over the last decade.  Jay works...

Leaving professional sport is one of the hardest transitions an athlete can make. On this week's episode, I sit down with former teammate and friend Alex Shaw, owner of Kickback Coffee. Alex played professional rugby for over a decade. Leicester Tigers Academy. Sale Sharks. Doncaster Knights. England age groups. He had the career, the identity, the structure. And then it ended. What he built next...

- Burnout isn't a discipline problem. It's an infrastructure problem. Most CEOs, founders and executives think they're failing because they're not working hard enough. The truth is the opposite.  They're treating every task as an elite-level goal acquisition framework, living in absolutes, chasing peak performance on a continual basis, and wondering why their sleep, energy, digestion and drive hav...

Dark energy has been a fuel source for me for years, and if you are a high achiever pushing yourself across mind, body and business, you have used it too. You might just not have named it. In this episode, I break down what dark energy actually is. Not motivation. Not discipline. The part of your ego that refuses to quit and is willing to burn everything to prove a point about who you are. I take...

Most people who talk about executive performance talk from the sky down. Self-help books. Spreadsheets. Mindset. I was built from the ground up. In this episode I tell the full origin story. County-level cricket, tennis and javelin as a kid. Leaving home at sixteen to chase professional rugby.  Captaining at National One. Signing my first professional contract at Doncaster Knights. And then, eight...

Last night my son decided sleep was optional. By 1:45 in the morning, I had given up on the idea of rest entirely. This morning my Garmin told me I had 4 hours and 5 minutes and a sleep score of 40. On paper, I was cooked. On paper, I also had a full business day waiting for me. In this episode I am not talking theory. I am walking you through exactly what I did, in real time, to manage a compromi...

The better you get, the harder growth becomes. Not because you are less capable. But because the game changes, and the version of you that was built to win the last game is not automatically equipped to win the next one. In this episode, Will Foden gets personal about the specific kind of friction that every elite performer hits at least once in their career, and why most of them do not have a fra...

My wife Rach was seventh in the world at 100 fly. On Saturday, she crossed the finish line of her first 70.3 Ironman. This episode is not a race report. It is an honest look at what happens to high performers when they leave elite sport and never redirect what it built in them. The athlete wiring does not switch off. It goes dormant. And without a target worthy of it, that same drive that built yo...

Most executives fall apart the moment they leave their routine. Here is why that is a systems problem, not a willpower problem. In this episode, I am recording on the go as we head to Mallorca for my wife Rachael's 70.3 Half Ironman.  Rachael competed for Great Britain in 100m freestyle swimming from the age of 14 and missed out on the Olympics by a tenth of a second. Now she is a mother and she i...

Most CEOs think pressure is the problem. It is not. The problem is the lack of infrastructure to handle it. In this episode, I sit down with Max Learmonth, founder and CEO of Forge Talent which is currently the fastest growing finance and accountancy recruiter in the UK, as well as a current client of mine.  Max is a former elite athlete, a CEO on a mission to change an industry and on a charge to...

Most people talk about resilience like it's something you read about. Mine was built on a rugby pitch, in a hospital in Hereford, on a sofa in Doncaster at 2 in the morning, and in four weeks watching my dad go from cycling 12 kilometres a day to unfortunately passing away with us by his side. This conversation with Colm on the Man Alive Podcast covers a lot of ground.  Professional and semi-profe...

Most leaders in 2026 are performing at 60 to 70 per cent of their actual capacity.  The question is why? And more importantly, what to do about it? In this episode I am talking about the one variable that separates leaders who sustain elite performance from those who gradually erode.  Not a strategy. Not talent. Capacity. I cover why the leadership environment has fundamentally shifted, what is ac...

Most leaders are white knuckling their way through performance. More meetings, more output, more pressure. And wondering why nothing changes. In this episode, I break down the three drivers that actually determine how well you lead yourself under sustained pressure.  I Recorded this in the Peak District before I went for a wild swim. I needed to talk about how to lead yourself as we're headingin t...

Most people end a quarter and immediately move on to the next one. No review. No interrogation. No honest look at what actually happened. That is exactly why they keep getting the same results. In this episode I walk you through the seven-area quarterly performance audit I run with every client. This is not a feel-good check-in. It is a structured, honest interrogation of the operating system behi...

Most professionals are training harder, working longer, and wondering why they feel worse. This episode is the honest answer. I sat down with Chris Jillard, coach of nearly a decade and someone who has built his practice through the same bottlenecks I see every day working with executives, founders, and high-performing professionals.  We covered the real problems. Not the ones people talk about on...

The Accelerator Is Not Your Problem Most high performers I work with are not struggling because they lack drive. They are struggling because they are running a system that was never designed to sustain the pressure they are asking it to carry. In this episode, I am talking openly about what I am personally working on heading into the back end of Q1, how I have been decompressing and what sharpenin...

Our next intake starts next week heres how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8LN8QYrZ00  In this episode, I break down what real mental toughness looks like when chaos hits without warning, drawing on my account of being in the UAE when missiles flew overhead amid an outbreak of conflict in the Middle East.  I was over in the UAE visiting and running a session for those I work alongside. ...

If you want to learn more about how to work with me heres the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5OZIWgqBzFowqoYTLpJD9fBwVyFDeB7nIVPrQGoeg0/edit?tab=t.0 In this episode of the Built For Pressure Podcast, I go deep into a challenge that most ex-athletes, CEOs, and driven entrepreneurs quietly wrestle with: How do you know when your current way of operating is no longer serving you? For high...

Take the Grow Drivers Assesment: https://bfp-growth-drivers.scoreapp.com/ If you want to learn more about how to work with me heres the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5OZIWgqBzFowqoYTLpJD9fBwVyFDeB7nIVPrQGoeg0/edit?tab=t.0 You’re progressing on paper but why do you feel so bored and uninspired? Revenue is up. The team is stable. You’re in ok shape. On paper, everything looks fine. So wh...

If you want to learn more about how to work with me heres the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5OZIWgqBzFowqoYTLpJD9fBwVyFDeB7nIVPrQGoeg0/edit?tab=t.0 Control Your State, Control Your Decisions  If you are a business leader making high-level decisions in high-pressure environments, this is for you. Most leaders do not lack intelligence or experience. They lack state control. What I mean b...

If you want to learn more about how to work with me heres the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5OZIWgqBzFowqoYTLpJD9fBwVyFDeB7nIVPrQGoeg0/edit?tab=t.0 If you are running a business, leading a team, or carrying serious responsibility, this question matters more than you think. How often do you actually review your past performance rather than just pushing forward on fear and just doing mor...

If you want to learn more about how to work with me heres the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5OZIWgqBzFowqoYTLpJD9fBwVyFDeB7nIVPrQGoeg0/edit?tab=t.0 If you are a founder, entrepreneur, CEO, or someone who genuinely values their performance, you already know this is the bottleneck. Results do not lie. Excuses do. In this episode, I do something different. Instead of giving you another li...

If you want to learn more about how to work with me heres the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5OZIWgqBzFowqoYTLpJD9fBwVyFDeB7nIVPrQGoeg0/edit?tab=t.0 Leaving rugby was the best thing that ever happened to my career. And I know that sentence will land hard for a lot of athletes and high performers who are either approaching the end of their sporting career or already living in the afterma...

In this episode, I sit down with Adam Adshead of Factory BJJ, an elite level coach, competitor and gym owner who has built one of the most respected BJJ environments in the UK. This conversation is about finding freedom inside elite level, performance. I've worked underneath Adam and his team for the years, and Factory BJJ not only delivers a world class environment, but there is also a deep cultu...