You'll know by now that I'm very open about how I struggled so hard to prove myself and my "success" when I was coaching in Olympic sport.

I did this because my definition of a great coach was so skewed towards results, the status of prestigious jobs and seniority.

I'd assigned such value and...

For a long while, I had thoughts of leaving my strength & conditioning career in high-performance sport.

I wanted to pursue a business with my wife that would give me control over my work & personal life for me and my family, allow us to travel whilst working, be my own boss, and provide...

One of the major struggles of my career, as well as many other performance support staff, is the inability to be present.

They're always thinking about what's next, whether that's career instability or progression, qualifications, the latest CPD, the stages of the season or Olympic cycle,...

The Story So Far

In part 1 of this series the focus was on how on an individual level, we need to actively engage in understanding what support we need as a man or woman, before developing technical skills for our role. 

Our past experiences lay down operating systems that influence...

The Problem

We are at a time of evolution within the high-performance sports industry we love.

The reason is that, more than ever before, we are hearing the real accounts of the cost of high-performance sport on the men and women supporting athletes at their own expense.

This is not new. Rather...

Professional football (soccer) is one of, if not the most, lucrative and widely played sports in the world. At a distance, it seems cutting-edge, with many coaches and performance staff wanting to “break in” to this elite of elite environments. 

My Own Story

My own career started...

As performance staff, our success is so often solely defined by external results, such as win-lose, KPIs, and other objective markers of success.

But underneath these external measures are our own stories within us. And that story is governed from day one of our life, childhood, and our...

One of the major struggles of the coaches I work with is that they can't be present. They're always thinking about what's next, whether that's career progression, qualifications of CPD, the stages of season, or Olympic cycle they're in. This leads them to being stuck in their head when they get...

The demands of high performance sport are making many men lose balance in their life. The cost of this is massive, from divorce, short-term relationships, absent parent, physical and emotional illness. From a coach I work with:

"My relationship broke down. I'm always away. I'm always down on...

Why is it so hard to set healthy boundaries?

The answer is unique to each of us.

One thing is for sure though, unshaped personal boundaries are a massive problem within performance support staff.

"I was working 6.7 days a week across a 12-month period, I wasn't seeing my kids or my wife and I...

I'm currently 120 interviews into speaking candidly with performance staff from around the world. This includes physios, SSCs, nutritionists, physiologists, performance directors, head of service and head coaches.

Many of them admit they solely focus their development through technical CPD. They...

Our personal sides are rarely discussed within our professional roles in elite sport. But whether we like it or not, they sit just below the surface and inform our every thought, feeling & action.

For me, this caused significant problems in my personal and professional life until I turned my...