From being a 6 meter pole vaulter back in 2005 to coaching the 2024 Olympic gold medallist Nina Kennedy and 2023 World Championships bronze medallist Kurtis Marschall, Paul Burgess has transitioned from elite athlete to coach with huge success, particularly over the past 5 years. That journey, however, hasn’t been totally straightforward. In this episode, you’ll hear real humility from someone who has clearly stayed curious and driven to help his athletes perform at their best. We spo...

Eamonn Flanagan is the Head of S&C at the Sport Ireland Institute. In this episode, Eamonn shares deep insights from a career that spans elite Olympic (including track & field), Paralympic, and professional rugby environments. He is very well known for his work on jump or plyometric training with peer-reviewed research, online courses and much more on this form of training. We unpack a range of topics including: -Eamonn's career journey and some key perspective shifts along the...

Joseph Coyne, PhD is the Director of High Performance & Sports Development, Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar and Strength & Conditioning Coach, Elite Sport Program & Swimming, Bond University Joseph's experience in Track & Field extends far and wide; we dug into his time working with the Chinese athletics federation including his work supporting Olympic-level sprinters and jumpers alongside world-renowned coach Randy Huntington. Joseph shares practical insights on plyometric trai...

Dr. Chris Shambrook, is a renowned expert in performance psychology with over five Olympic cycles of experience. In this episode, Chris shares his journey from earning a PhD in sports psychology to working extensively with British Rowing, Olympic athletes, and high-performance teams across various sports and business settings. We explore the evolving role of sports psychology in elite environments, discussing how athletes and coaches can integrate psychological skills into daily training rat...

Athletics New Zealand track and field coach, James Sandilands is mainly known as the coach to the current World Indoor and Olympic champion in the jump, Hamish Kerr, but James's current crop of high level athletes spans far and wide from multi-eventers, sprinters, and horizontal jumpers. He is a former high jumper and hurdler himself with several years of experience as both a performance technique analyst and a strength and conditioning coach for High Performance Sport New Zealand. In this ...

In this episode, I chatted with Werner Prinsloo, the coach behind South African sprinting sensation Akani Simbine who in his third consecutive Olympic 100m final, at the age of 30, ran a national record of 9.82 seconds to finish fourth place. Werner shares his unique journey into coaching, from a corporate career to becoming a full-time coach for one of the world’s most consistent sub-10-second sprinters and his group of aspiring elite sprinters in Johannesburg. Key topics incl...

Josef Karas is a former Czech International Decathlete and a graduate of Kansas State where he worked under legendary coach Cliff Rovelto. Since transitioning into coaching, Josef has coached long jumper Radek Juska to 8.31m (NR), gold at the World University Games, Silver at the European Indoor championships and most recently, the Olympic final in Paris. Josef is a well known multi's coach working with 8,000+ point decathletes like Adam Helcelet and current world u-20 champion Tomas Järvin...

Glenn Smith is a former Canadian national champion and world championship semi-finalist in the 200m sprint. He holds a Master’s Degree in Exercise Science from the University of Texas at Austin and has nearly 20 years of coaching experience. His expertise spans developing All-American collegiate athletes and international-level competitors in the jumps, throws, multi-events, and sprints. A central theme of this episode was Glenn Smith's coaching philosophy, which emphasizes the i...

Being the Chief Physiotherapist to UK Athletics/British Athletics at the London Olympic Games (2012) is just one of many major roles that Gordon Bosworth has undertook during his professional career. He has played a key role in several national physiotherapy teams in winter and summer Olympic enabling Bobsledders like Kaillie Humphries to win Olympic gold. Gordon who owns his own practice 'The Bosworth Clinic' in Oxfordshire, England extrapolated many key theoretical insights, assessment tec...

Dan Pfaff is widely regarded as one of the most influential track and field coaches of all-time with over 50 years of experience. His thought provoking insights on sports performance concepts always come with a lot of dept and in this episode, He spoke about the rationale for having a holistic knowledge base and how coaches can develop that. From there, we dove into debriefing throughout the season so that coaches can make the athlete aware of the overall objectives to facilitate 'smoo...

Coaches Jeremy Lyons, Gerard O'Donnell, and Aideen Synott have created a high performing environment for sprinters in Ireland to thrive both collegiately and post-collegiately. Through years of hard work and collaboration, they've enabled the likes of Sophie Becker, Cillian Greene, and Jack Raftery to become Olympians, European medalists, and household names in Irish Athletics. In this episode, Jeremy and Gerard began by discussing how the club came to be and the characteristics they look fo...

CEO of Altis and world class sprints coach Stu McMillan came back on the podcast to talk about the importance of pursuing what is interesting to you as an individual, the core features of high level sprinting, trialing new methods with your athletes in an informed way, and much more. I hope you enjoy. Give Stu and Altis a follow if you haven't already. -Instagram: FingerMash and Altis -Altis Website: https://altis.world/ Support the show

Rolf Ohman is a coach and innovator with over 35 years of experience in global sports such as Track and Field; he was a high level decathlete before beginning his coaching career. Between 2016 and 2017, he served as Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center before becoming the Assistant Head Coach under Randy Huntington for the Chinese National Team in Sprints and Jumps, he then moved to a Head Coach role at the Hong Kong Sports Institute until the summer 2023. Now, Rolf is...

Jim VanHootegem has over 20+ years of experience as a collegiate coach working at schools like Texas A&M, The University of Oklahoma, and Arkansas. He has achieved great success with athletes like Fabrice Lapierre and Julian Reid -- both who have achieved medals at World and European championships. In his career so far, he has guided his programs to 12 NCAA team championships and 27 conference team titles as well as 72 All-Americans as an event coach, and another 55 honorees as a h...

Very few coaches can say they've had five athletes run 1.44 or faster in the 800m. Joseph Deng and Peter Bol (among several others) have risen to the top of the event -- thanks to the guidance of Justin Rinaldi. His group named 'Fast8TrackClub' not only highlights their aim, but it matches how they get there -- they run fast, all year round, but the devil is in the details, so in this episode, Justin unpacked his coaching philosophy which was born out of his own experience as an athlete, and...

Sports and Exercise physiotherapist, to many of Australia's top track and field athletes, Sam Leslie, discusses his multi-layered approach to rehabilitating and reducing injuries as well as improving event specific performance. Sam, who works out of MyPhysio Evolution, in Melbourne Australia, takes an evidence based approach to help establish timelines for the returning to full health and selecting methods that match the athletes characteristics and the current stage of the injury among oth...

Daniel Davey is the Founder of DaveyNutrition and has over 15 years experience as a Performance Nutritionist, 9 of which were spent in elite sport environments with Dublin GAA and Leinster Rugby. We sat down to discuss topics like fueling and recovery based on individual demands like event groups in Athletics as well as creating processes to make nutrition feel like a fun and sustainable experience. Daniel has been around several players who have been in the conversation of 'bes...

Coach to Olympic, Paralympic, World, European and Commonwealth Medalists, Steve Fudge has not just harnessed the talent of elite level prospects, but over the years he has developed a system that is building world class sprinters from a very earl stage in their career. In this episode, Steve spoke about how the initial movements at the start can impact the acceleration, the transition and max velocity 'phases'. When executed well there is fluid continuity from one step to another inste...

John is a well-known coach, content creator, and writer on all things athletics, but perhaps most pertinently, he has a massive aptitude for horizontal jumps training. In his first few years of coaching he guided two men under the age 20 jump over 7.70m in the long jump -- one became European Junior Champion. Since that time, he has guided several more athletes to jump 7.70+, 6.30+ (for women) and16.20m in the mens triple jump. John believes that specificity can be achieved early in the w...

Boo is one of the worlds leading track and field coaches, educators, and rehab consultants. He's coached world champions, he's delivered coaching education workshops around the world, and now he primarily helps world class athletes return to their best. Boo coached 17 NCAA champions in his initial 11 year stint at Louisiana State University. During that time he led Walter Davis to becoming a world indoor and outdoor champion in the triple jump. In 2018, he returned to assist the progr...