Leaders Performance Podcast The Leaders Performance Institute

When the US women’s national soccer team started tracking their menstrual cycles, it was seen as groundbreaking.At least part of their success in claiming back to back World Cup titles in 2019 was attributed to the fact they could adjust individual training plans and nutrition based on the data.Ellie Maybury was part of the USWNT backroom team that introduced this initiative and, more than half a decade on, tech support for female athletes doesn’t seem to have progressed as much as she’d have hoped. At least in soccer.“A lot of the technology we have absorbed into the women’s game has come from the men’s game or men’s sports environments,” she tells the People Behind the Tech podcast.“And maybe some of the processes and metrics that come with that get transferred as well.”Maybury, who recently founded Soccer Herformance, a performance consultancy for female soccer players, is in the hotseat on episode two of this series.She addressed the issues that hold back female high performance, from managing the lack of objective datapoints [4:50] and the importance of education for athletes who often misunderstand their own bodies through no fault of their own [26:20], to the need to take athletes on a journey while remaining honest about the limitations of research at the present time [17:00].Check out episode one:Paige Bueckers Proved Her ACL Injury Was Behind her at March Madness, but, as Andrea Hudy tells us, Questions Must Still Be Asked about the Injuries that Afflict Female Athletes (https://leadersinsport.com/performance-institute/podcasts/paige-bueckers-proved-her-acl-injury-was-behind-her-at-march-madness-but-questions-must-still-be-asked-about-the-injuries-that-afflict-female-athletes/)Joe Lemire LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lemirejoe/) | X (https://twitter.com/LemireJoe)John Portch LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-portch-696a4366/) | X (https://twitter.com/JohnPortch)Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-performance-podcast/id1124488318?mt=2), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4EKIUuWYk5SWWqRWRQfw3z?si=epSPBhLdREOwtHiGYJnvEg), Stitcher (https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/leaders/the-leaders-performance-podcast) and Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1124488318/leaders-performance-podcast), or your chosen podcast platform.

Paige Bueckers’ stellar performances at this year’s March Madness proved that her ACL injury is long behind her.She returned to action in November 2023 after 15 months out and drove UConn all the way to the Final Four of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.Behind the scenes, Andrea Hudy, the Director of Sports Performance (Women's Basketball) at UConn, was critical to Bueckers’ convalescence and is working (while pursuing a PhD) to ensure there are fewer such occurrences in the future.“My passion is trying to understand why people get hurt or the story behind their injuries and keep them strong and resilient for what’s unexpected or the challenges ahead,” she tells The People Behind the Tech podcast.Andrea speaks from her own experience of injury as a varsity volleyball player. Indeed, when anyone says she “played without an ACL” for six years – as Andrea tells Joe Lemire and John Portch – it makes you sit up and take notice.In the first episode of this new series, we discuss the questions that still need to be asked about female injury occurrence rates [18:00]. We also touch upon Andrea’s career in college athletics, which took in tenures at Texas and Kansas before she returned to UConn three years ago for her second spell [8:40]. Then, we broach her willingness to experiment with new technologies while concurrently seeking better insights from existing datasets [11:40]. Finally, she tells us why she can occasionally see herself as a modern, real-life Icarus [26:30] and much more besides.Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-performance-podcast/id1124488318?mt=2), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4EKIUuWYk5SWWqRWRQfw3z?si=epSPBhLdREOwtHiGYJnvEg), Stitcher (https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/leaders/the-leaders-performance-podcast) and Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1124488318/leaders-performance-podcast), or your chosen podcast platform.

David Dunne describes a perennial problem for practitioners in elite sports.“There’s a fundamental mismatch between what practitioners can deliver and what athletes actually want and desire,” he told Joe Lemire and John Portch on the People Behind the Tech podcast.“So we pivoted towards the COM-B model.”During this episode we spoke at length about Hexis’ continued growth following a successful seed round, technology’s ability to influence the evolution of the practitioner, and the fundamental union of academic rigour and those so-called softer skills.COM-B was a major part of that conversation. It has been integral to Hexis’ growth. The company used it in tandem with elements of design thinking which, as Dunne explains, stems from his time working for teams including Harlequins and Ryder Cup Team Europe. The model is a framework for understanding and changing behaviour. It was developed by Susan Michie, Maartje van Stralen and Robert West in 2011. The model posits that behaviour (B) is a result of an interaction between three components:Capability (C): this refers to an individual’s psychological and physical capacity to engage in the activity. It includes having the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities.Opportunity (O): this encompasses all the factors outside the individual that make the behaviour possible, including social and physical environmental factors.Motivation (M): this includes the brain processes that direct behaviour, such as habits, emotional responses, decision-making and analytical thinking.Listen to the full conversation.Joe Lemire LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lemirejoe/) | X (https://twitter.com/LemireJoe)John Portch LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-portch-696a4366/) | X (https://twitter.com/JohnPortch)Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-performance-podcast/id1124488318?mt=2), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4EKIUuWYk5SWWqRWRQfw3z?si=epSPBhLdREOwtHiGYJnvEg), Stitcher (https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/leaders/the-leaders-performance-podcast) and Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1124488318/leaders-performance-podcast), or your chosen podcast platform.

“Everything is based upon the game for us,” said Ryan Alexander.“Understanding how the physical demands and fitness is going to be interpreted on the field as it is going to relate to the technical and tactical execution of a certain style of play.”Alexander, the Director of Sports Science at Atlanta United, was speaking to John Portch and Joe Lemire on the People Behind the Tech podcast ahead of the new MLS season, which began in late February.He also spoke about the club’s groundbreaking work with i-Brain Tech, a neurofitness training aid that has transformed their skills and cognitive training and led to players having “higher levels of conversations with their technical coaches."Elsewhere, Alexander explored:Finding the level of confidence in the data to challenge or support [9:30];Knowing when to take calculated risks with players [18:00];How i-Brain has been integrated into the players’ training plans [27:00];* His efforts to meet players and coaches at their 'level' when it comes to data [35:30].Joe Lemire LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lemirejoe/) | X (https://twitter.com/LemireJoe)John Portch LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-portch-696a4366/) | X (https://twitter.com/JohnPortch)Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-performance-podcast/id1124488318?mt=2), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4EKIUuWYk5SWWqRWRQfw3z?si=epSPBhLdREOwtHiGYJnvEg), Stitcher (https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/leaders/the-leaders-performance-podcast) and Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1124488318/leaders-performance-podcast), or your chosen podcast platform.

At November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Oval in London, a coach was overheard saying: ‘I have a team looking at AI but I have no idea what they do’.Gary McCoy is the CEO of Peak AI, which has been shortlisted in Sports Business Journals' list of the 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies of 2023.Peak AI uses psycholinguistics to enhance performance and Gary has a firm view on that coach’s comment.“If you don’t know what they do, go and lead them because they probably don’t know what they’re doing either,” he tells Joe and John on the latest edition of The People Behind the Tech podcast.“Artificial intelligence and data, as a general staple in sports, needs guidance,” he continues, “it needs transactional guidance to evolve the athlete.”Gary spoke at length about the need for coaches to fully engage with AI and also dipped into a range of areas, including:* Preventing the injuries that may be a consequence of practitioners “asking the wrong questions” [20:00];* The need for the sports industry to develop a collective ethos for using AI [23:00];* The significance of an athlete’s cognitive load on their ability to train and perform [30:30];* Why analysts who better understand performance will better understand how data transacts [46:50].Joe Lemire LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lemirejoe/) | X (https://twitter.com/LemireJoe)John Portch LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-portch-696a4366/) | X (https://twitter.com/JohnPortch)Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-performance-podcast/id1124488318?mt=2), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4EKIUuWYk5SWWqRWRQfw3z?si=epSPBhLdREOwtHiGYJnvEg), Stitcher (https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/leaders/the-leaders-performance-podcast) and Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1124488318/leaders-performance-podcast), or your chosen podcast platform.

Ben Baroody is a big believer in psychologist Michael Gervais’ idea that the apex of well-being and performance is human flourishing.“It means a lot to us,” he tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.“The aim and approach of all of our programs, processes, and our building blocks, is based on the foundation of the human psyche, the psychology of healthy minds and lives. And we try to take that evidence-based research and build it into baseball frameworks and development for the rest of the organization.”As the Texas Rangers’ Director of Leadership & Organizational Development, Player Enrichment Programs & Mental Health says, the goal is to unlock potential versus extracting performance.“That’s what we’re striving towards. It’s an aspiration that’s ever-evolving,” he says,Elsewhere in this episode, we cover:* How the Rangers have been the ‘victims of buzzwords on a wall’ [10:30];* The balance of challenge and support in the Rangers environment [23:00];* How Ben’s development as a leader helped him to identify imbalances in his own life [30:15];* Character development practices at the Rangers [37:30].Henry Breckenridge LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrybreckenridge/) | X (https://twitter.com/HenryBreck)John Portch LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-portch-696a4366/) | X (https://twitter.com/JohnPortch)Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-performance-podcast/id1124488318?mt=2), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4EKIUuWYk5SWWqRWRQfw3z?si=epSPBhLdREOwtHiGYJnvEg), Stitcher (https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/leaders/the-leaders-performance-podcast) and Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1124488318/leaders-performance-podcast), or your chosen podcast platform.