The Coretex Athletic Review

What does it mean to be “in the zone”—and what happens before, during, and after that experience? In this episode of the Coretex Athletic Review, I explore flow through Achieving Flow: An Exploratory Investigation of Elite College Athletes and Musicians by Antonini Philippe and colleagues (2022). Drawing on interviews with 10 athletes and 12 musicians, the researchers identified three phases: prep...

This week, I examine a study by Lisa J. Rogerson and Dennis W. Hrycaiko involving five Junior A goaltenders and a mental-skills intervention built around centering and self-talk. The goalies learned to combine a single deep breath with task-specific cues, self-affirming statements and mood words to relax, regain focus and manage their internal dialogue during competition. Four goaltenders produced...

In this episode, I examine a 2006 research note by Ryan Gelinas and Krista Munroe-Chandler that organizes the mental side of goaltending around four psychological skills: • Concentration • Arousal control • Imagery • Self-talk We explore how a goaltender’s attention must shift between broad and narrow cues, why optimal arousal is individual rather than universal, how imagery can prepare athletes f...

Following last episode’s look at the Yerkes-Dodson Law, Episode 31 takes a more modern—and more sport-specific—look at performance under pressure. Using Vivien Valckx’s 2026 review From Choke to Clutch: Using Neuroscience and Psychology to Understand Performance Breakdown in Athletes , we explore what the research says may actually be happening when an athlete chokes. The review brings together sp...

The Yerkes–Dodson law is usually presented as a simple inverted-U relationship: performance improves as arousal rises, reaches an optimal “sweet spot,” and then declines under excessive pressure. The original 1908 paper did not actually test that relationship. Robert Yerkes and John Dodson studied how electric-shock intensity affected the rate at which dancing mice learned a visual discrimination....

The 10,000-hour rule has become one of the most recognizable ideas in sport, coaching, and skill development—but what did the original research actually say? In this episode of the Coretex Athletic Review , we examine the landmark 1993 paper by K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer that introduced the concept of deliberate practice . Rather than accepting the popular interpretat...

In 1975, Richard Schmidt proposed a new way to explain how we learn, adapt, and evaluate movement. Rather than storing a separate motor program for every action we might perform, Schmidt argued that we develop generalized rules—or schemas—connecting the situation we encounter, the movement we produce, what that movement feels like, and its eventual outcome. In this episode, I explore: The storage...

Elite athletes often speak openly about the psychological toll of social media. From abusive comments to relentless criticism, online negativity has become an unavoidable part of professional sport. But does that criticism actually show up on the field? In this episode, we examine a newly published study analyzing more than 1.2 million Instagram comments directed at English Premier League defender...

Returning for season 2: In this episode, I dive into the science behind athlete travel and explore why crossing time zones, long flights, poor sleep, dehydration, and disrupted routines can affect everything from reaction time and decision-making to recovery and injury risk. Drawing from the latest sports medicine research, we separate common travel fatigue from true jet lag, explain why eastward...

This week we explore the dissertation Music to Move You: Comparing Effects of Music Genre on Subjective Performance of Football Players in a Practice Setting by Devin DeTurk. Music is built into sport almost everywhere: bus rides, dressing rooms, warmups, training sessions, and competition environments. But does music simply get athletes "fired up," or can different types of music create...

Episode 24 dives into the strange and often overlooked relationship between sleep and athletic performance. This week’s paper explored whether a simple 14-day sleep hygiene intervention could measurably influence recovery, performance, and physiological stress responses in university soccer players. The findings were more nuanced than “better sleep = better everything.” Topics explored in this epi...

Episode 23 examines a comparative analysis of elite sport systems in four Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Despite sharing many similarities including strong grassroots participation, publicly supported sport infrastructure, welfare-state models, and broad access to sport, these countries have increasingly diverged in international elite sport performance and organizational...

This week’s episode reviews a 2026 paper published in Sports Medicine – Open titled: Predictors of Latent Reaction Speed in Athletes: The Role of Performance Level and Stress Tolerance at Different Competitive Levels by Katrina Volgemute and colleagues. The study examines how reaction performance—modeled as a combination of stimulus recognition, decision-making, and movement execution—is related t...

Episode 21 takes a look at a research paper out of Lesgaft University in Russia exploring how goaltender training can be structured to better reflect the realities of game play. The article, “Structure of the Technical-Tactical Training Methodology for Ice Hockey Goaltenders aged 15–17, Based on Action Variability Under Conditions of Uncertainty,” proposes a four-block framework built around one c...

This week’s episode breaks down a 2005 paper from Applied Cognitive Psychology by Abernethy, Baker, and Côté examining whether pattern recognition skills can transfer across sports. The study compares expert and non-expert athletes in basketball, netball, and field hockey using a pattern recall task based on real gameplay sequences. The key question: Can expertise in one sport carry over to anothe...

For years, resistance training in youth has been surrounded by caution—concerns about stunted growth, growth plate damage, and unnecessary injury risk. But where did those ideas actually come from? In this episode, I break down two research papers examining resistance training in young athletes, with a focus on what the evidence actually shows. We look at how strength develops in youth, why improv...

What actually is perfectionism? In sport, it’s often treated as a positive trait—high standards, attention to detail, relentless work ethic. But this episode breaks down a foundational paper that challenges that assumption. Based on A Dual Process Model of Perfectionism (Slade & Owens, 1998), this episode explores how perfectionism isn’t one single construct, but two fundamentally different pr...

“Playing up” is one of the most common—and often unquestioned—development decisions in youth sport. In this episode, I break down a recent study examining how academy football coaches actually make those decisions. Rather than measuring outcomes, this research focuses on coach perception —what they look for, how they justify it, and where things can go wrong. We explore how factors like biological...

This episode breaks down a 2026 narrative review examining the physiological and performance effects of long-haul travel and jet lag in athletes. I explore the difference between travel fatigue and jet lag, the role of circadian rhythms and the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and why disruptions in sleep, hormones, and nervous system function don’t always translate into predictable performance outcomes....

Patreon: https://patreon.com/coretexathleticreview YouTube: https://youtube.com/@coretexathleticreview When people talk about NIL deals and athletes getting paid in college sports, it often sounds like something entirely new. A sudden break from the traditional model of amateur competition. In this episode I explore the long history of athlete compensation in American college sports using the rese...

In this episode I examine the research paper “Coaching Legacies: Influence Propagation Through Temporal Social Networks” by Gordana Marmulla, Geoff Dickson, Hagen Wäsche, and Ulrik Brandes. The study explores a fascinating question: can the influence of a coach actually be measured? Using more than a century of data from the Australian Football League (AFL), the researchers constructed a temporal...

In this episode, I walk through one of the foundational papers in sport economics: Who Wins the Olympic Games? Economic Resources and Medal Totals Andrew B. Bernard & Meghan R. Busse (2004) Review of Economics and Statistics The question is simple: If Canada has roughly seven times the population of Finland, shouldn’t that show up proportionally in medal counts? The intuitive answer is yes. Th...

In this episode of the Coretex Athletic Review, I head west to examine a 26-year longitudinal study tracking the physiological profile of one particular NHL franchise from 1979 to 2005. The researchers followed the team through five Stanley Cup championships, collecting pre-season data on body composition, anaerobic power, aerobic capacity, grip strength, abdominal endurance, and flexibility. The...

In this episode, I examine the physiological profile of elite ice hockey goaltenders through the lens of a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Exercise Science . While much of the goaltending literature focuses on perceptual and psychological performance — anticipation, reaction timing, and decision-making — this paper compiles the limited but growing...

In this episode, I walk through a recent doctoral dissertation from the University of Alberta examining the rise of independent (non-sanctioned) youth hockey in Alberta. Rather than debating which system is “better,” this episode takes a slower, more deliberate approach. The goal is to faithfully unpack the research as it was written , section by section, and understand how parents, coaches, and d...