The Built For Pressure Podcast

Will Foden
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Fitness
  • Updated Weekly

This podcast is for leaders, business owners and executives to find their next 1%. This podcast will educate those who want to regain their edge, consistently perform during times that matter and turn potential into performance. - Human Optimisation - Peak Performance - Elite Mindset Strategy - Personal Development - Communication - Leadership Performance - Business Growth These are all parts of the bigger puzzle for the modern leader. This podcast is designed to connect and remodel what modern day leadership needs to become. We are placing the human at the forefront of the performance.

  1. 6d ago

    What a CEO Needs in His Corner to Lead a Global Organisation with Andrew Stoneham Knott

    Most leaders do not have a commitment problem. They have an infrastructure problem. Energy, stress and recovery all running on a system that never caught up with the demand. Andrew Stoneham Knott is back on the Built For Pressure Podcast, one year on from our first conversation. If you missed that one, the link is below. CEO of Miramar Global and part of the team behind Deepsky and the RISE platform, Andy has just had the best year in the company’s history with the core business growing at record pace. This episode is not about the numbers. It is about what sits underneath them. Last time, we talked about the reset. Energy back, routines rebuilt. On paper, Andy was doing everything right. So we went deeper. We cover what it takes to lead a growing global business while staying physically capable, present at home and clear in your decisions.  Andy shares what his blood work revealed, why his default setting of push was costing him energy, and the small, precise adjustments that changed it. In this episode: - Why one good year is not success, and what long term sustained performance actually requires. - Performance leakage, and how businesses and humans lose output when people cannot play to their strengths. - Scaling from 5 to 10 to 25 people, and the hangovers you carry from the business you used to be. - Family as a team sport, and why Andy refuses to separate business from home - What his GC Biosciences blood work flagged that nobody would ever see from the outside - Your demand signature, and why data finds what effort never couldLow energy availability, stress physiology and why training harder was degrading the engine - Recovery as a performance tool, not a reward. - Why performance is moving from a corporate perk to leadership infrastructure. - Why leadership capability and succession are back at the top of the corporate agenda heading into 2027 - RISE Signature, and why leaders at this level need a guide, not more information - The one thing a CEO should do this week Information is everywhere. Application is the currency.You do not need a bigger engine. You need a better one.And that usually starts with simplicity. Find out where your capacity is leaking. Take the Capacity Index, a short diagnostic built for leaders operating under pressure:https://bfp-capacity-index.netlify.app/ Links from this episode: The first episode with Andy: https://youtu.be/2nkqjVR650w?si=k330bioCVMkXokNt Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewstonehamknott/Explore RISE and the Signature programme: https://deepskyleaders.com/rise Connect with me:LinkedIn: @willfodenInstagram: @willfodenWebsite: https://www.builtforpressure.net This episode is for information only and is not medical advice. #LeadershipPerformance #ExecutivePerformance #BuiltForPressure

  2. Oct 7

    This Is The One Reason Why Your Performance Will Keep Failing You

    There's a reason your performance keeps failing you. It isn't effort, it's how you're applying it. Most founders, executives and athletes treat performance like a set of separate projects.  Get fitter. Get sharper. Make better decisions. Each one works on its own; none of them connects. In this episode I walk through the Mirror Model, five stages of development where every physical skill has a mental counterpart.  Strength and mental toughness.  Conditioning and cognitive endurance.  Technical skill and cognitive precision.  Tactical application and decision-making under pressure.  Strategic planning and vision. I share why resilience and chronic stress are two different things, the metrics you should be tracking instead of guessing, why I train decisiveness in moments that don't matter, and what professional rugby taught me about chasing a goal I never properly defined. If you're performing on paper but feel like something is missing, this episode shows you where to look. Take the Capacity Index: capacity.scoreapp.com builtforpressure.net

  3. Sep 30

    Eating Clean, Training Hard and Still Exhausted? This Is Why

    If you're eating clean, training hard, but still feeling exhausted, there's a bigger game at play here.  If that is you, your effort is rarely the problem. The system your effort sits inside is. In this video I break down why so many executives, founders and high performers do everything right on paper and still stall.  Most performance advice speaks in silos.  Your body is a fitness problem.  Your head is a mental health problem.  Your business is a leadership problem.  In reality it is usually one intertwined problem showing up in different places. What I cover: - Why an executive needs to understand the demand signature. As there's more at play- whether it's physical, emotional, professional, or psychological- board meetings, travel, poor sleep, and dehydration all matter when it comes down to recalibrating and gaining back energy.  - How to identify a constraint signature and recognise that's the thing holding you back when it comes down to elevations in your performance - Why chronic stress, a calorie deficit and high intensity training together can leave you gaining body fat while eating less. - How cortisol keeps blood sugar elevated, and why cutting carbohydrates can make the problem worse. - Why fat cells shrink but never disappear, and what repeated crash dieting does to your metabolism. - Why chronic stress is causing downstream effects on your sleep, performance, digestion, energy, mood, and emotions  - Seasons of performance. Why you should not sit in a deficit for longer than eight weeks, and why dieting year round breaks you down. - The sleep cascade. Better sleep drives better nutrition decisions, lower inflammation, steadier energy and better performance across the board. A thriving body is fuelled to perform. It is not starved to get there. If you are not measuring it, you are not managing it. Stop looking for the next supplement and look hard at the 20% of behaviours you repeat every day, week and month. FREE RESOURCES The Capacity Index Seven pillars covering the key behaviours behind your performance. Score yourself and find your constraint.https://bfp-capacity-index.netlify.app/ Executive Calorie Calculator Comment CALC below and I will send it over. It gives you your starting numbers on a balanced macro plan, the same approach I use to stabilise executives before anything else. If you have been training hard, eating clean and still are not recovering or performing, stop treating one piece of the puzzle. Find the constraint behind it and start there. 🔗 Connect with me:Linkedin: @willfodenInstagram: @willfodenWebsite www.builtforpressure.net #LeadershipPerformance #Highperformance #ExecutiveMindset #PeakPerformance #BusinessLeadership #EnergyManagement #ResilientLeadership #OptimizeYourself#mentalclarity #peakperformance #PersonalStandards#SuccessUnderPressure #EntrepreneurLife #ElitePerformance #ProductivityHacks #CEOHealth #sustainablesuccess  #leadershipdevelopment  #worklifebalance  #trainsmart #masteryourenergy

  4. Sep 28

    If You're the Biggest Liability in Your Business, Heres What To Do

    Most founders measure every metric in their business except the one running it. Them. In this episode, recorded on the move with the dog, I break down the checkpoints I use with every client to assess the asset that drives everything else. When energy drops, decisions slow and the business starts to feel flat, the problem is rarely strategy. It is the operating system underneath the skin. In this episode: Minimum standards. Why the basic behaviours are the first to go when pressure rises, and why they are the only KPIs that protect your output. I share my own non-negotiables, from six training days a week to protein at every meal and morning light through a Manchester winter. Physiology before psychology. Emotions are signals, not reality. When your physiology is right, your thinking becomes clean and you operate from power rather than force. The stories you tell yourself. How we delete, distort and generalise information, and what my time in the back row taught me about chasing every ruck instead of picking my shots. Stepping off the dance floor. How elite leaders move between first, second, third and fourth person perspective to see the bigger game. What winning actually means.  The minimum numbers you need to hit over the next 12 weeks to finish the year calm, focused and fulfilled. If you are struggling to see the wood for the trees heading into Q4, take the Capacity Index at https://capacity.scoreapp.com and find out where your capacity is leaking.

  5. Sep 16

    If You Want To Achieve Big In Q4, Action This

    Setting a goal and attaining it are two very different things. Most ambitious leaders have the first part sorted. Very few understand the mechanism underneath the second. This is the exact goal framework I use inside Built For Pressure with CEOs, business owners and athletes who operate under sustained pressure.  It starts with a principle I learnt 10 years ago. The definition of done. If your goals are written in grey, emotional language, nothing upstream will ever produce the outcome you are asking for. The targets have to be objective. The route to get there can be as messy as it needs to be. What we cover: - The definition of done, and why vague goals never get finished. - High hard goals. Ambitious targets that stretch you just beyond your current capacity, built on the goal structure Steven Kotler lays out in The Art of Impossible. - Clear goals. The daily, weekly and monthly behaviours that turn a big ambition into something you can actually attain. - The gap. The most uncomfortable exercise a leader can do, measuring what you say you want against what you are actually doing. - Why your physical, personal and professional goals should be built in that order. - Boundaries and standards. Why your diary tells the truth about your priorities, and why training that is not in it will not happen. - Realign and recommit. How to stack wins and build the momentum that compounds. Download the free worksheets here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EFSiXCePob1p6rFJbQx8uaMKLVdxzO3A/view Set aside 15 minutes, work through them honestly, and look hard at the gap between your clear goals and your current week. That is where you start. About Built For Pressure Built For Pressure provides performance infrastructure for leaders operating in high-pressure environments. We work across physiology, recovery, mental performance and leadership so you can perform when it matters. 🔗 Connect with me:Linkedin: @willfodenInstagram: @willfodenWebsite www.builtforpressure.net #LeadershipPerformance #Highperformance #ExecutiveMindset #PeakPerformance #BusinessLeadership #EnergyManagement #ResilientLeadership #OptimizeYourself#mentalclarity #peakperformance #PersonalStandards#SuccessUnderPressure #EntrepreneurLife #ElitePerformance #ProductivityHacks #CEOHealth #sustainablesuccess  #leadershipdevelopment  #worklifebalance  #trainsmart #masteryourenergy

  6. Sep 1

    What Elite Performers Actually Do Differently With Ex Military Sniper Turned Performance Coach Shaun Kober

    Everyone wants to know what elite performers do differently under pressure.  The answer is almost always disappointing, because the work that decides the outcome was done months earlier, in conditions nobody was watching. Coach Kobes, aka Shaun Kober, has tested that idea in places most people will never see or even comprehend. I have been lucky enough to call this man a friend for nearly a decade, and I have watched him grow and evolve as a coach and an elite practitioner. Six years in the Australian Army as a sniper taught him more about pressure and performing when it matters than any book ever will. Three deployments across Iraq, Timor and Afghanistan, then a career coaching elite fighters to world titles. In this episode I wanted to understand his process, and the difference between good performers and great ones. What actually separates the elite when the pressure arrives. A few of the concepts we cover: The gap between your expectations and the level of your training is the real differentiator under pressure. Shaun takes this from a military setting all the way through to helping Petr Yan win a world championship. Everyone has a fight, flight or freeze response, and none of us know which one we own until we are in it. If you have not trained to work inside that response in real time, you will not be effective when it counts. The third is the one I think most leaders get wrong. Shaun explains that coaching professional athletes is almost never about lighting a fire. It is about applying the brakes. General population need the opposite. They need pushing. Elite performers need to learn how to steer in real time with more precision. Then there is the personal piece, and I think most people will take strength from it. When you are handed compromising circumstances, how do you find acceptance and keep moving? After a serious spinal infection at the start of this year, Shaun has not only come back to perform, he is chasing a professional MMA debut before he turns forty two. Other lessons and experiences in this episode: - Growing up as the eldest of six with no electricity or running water, and leaving home before he turned fifteen - The crossroads between professional rugby and the army, and why he chose the harder path - How Shaun built a performance coaching career with world championship fighters - His coaching philosophy, and what it actually means to meet people where they are - What Live Train Perform is as a company, and what is coming next If you run a business, none of this is about fighting. It is about whether the system underneath you can absorb something you did not plan for, on a day you did not choose. Shaun been educated alongside each other in many different circumstances, and I have been a guest on his podcast, Live Train Perform, more than once. I can promise you will take something from this, from his experiences and from his story. Links to Shaun below. Instagram: @coach_kobes YouTube: @livetrainperform Website: https://www.coachedbykobes.com/ Built For Pressure is a performance partnership for founders and executives operating under sustained pressure. The Capacity Index scores you across seven pillars in under ten minutes and shows you where your own baseline sits right now. Link: https://bfp-capacity-index.netlify.app/ 🔗 Connect with me: Linkedin: @willfoden Instagram: @willfoden Website www.builtforpressure.net

  7. Aug 27

    The Four Shapes Imposter Syndrome Takes In Leaders And How To Break It

    Imposter syndrome in executives is not a sign you are out of your depth. It is evidence you are operating past your current capacity. In this episode I break down what imposter syndrome actually is, why high performing leaders misread it as weakness, and the three stages I use with CEOs and founders to move through it without freezing. Most people treat the feeling as a verdict on their ability and I'll explain to you why its not. It is what happens when you stretch into territory you have no evidence for yet, and your brain fills the gap with worst case scenarios. Handled properly, it becomes a performance signal. Handled badly, it becomes a freezing mechanism that stops you taking action on the thing you said you wanted. I cover the four shapes it takes in leadership: the perfectionist, the expert, the soloist and the visionary.  I cover why self worth and self belief are two separate systems and what happens when you confuse them.  And I cover the part almost nobody accounts for, which is that your physiology dictates the pace of your psychology. When you are under slept, under fed and running on adrenaline, imposter syndrome does not just appear. It magnifies. Mental performance trains exactly like physical performance. Progressive overload. Specificity. Repeated exposure. Most leaders never train it, then wonder why it collapses under load. Take the Capacity Index and get a scored read on where your system is currently holding and where it is leaking:https://capacity.scoreapp.com 🔗 Connect with me: Linkedin: @willfoden Instagram: @willfoden Website www.builtforpressure.net

  8. Aug 19

    The Reason You Feel Flat Despite Achieving More Than Ever

    Seeing as it's the anniversary of the Copenhagen Ironman, I thought I'd take you back to my experience of that race, but more so some bigger lessons that I've learned from it.  I finished Ironman Copenhagen in 2023 with one lung collapsed for the final 16km. For years afterwards I would not call myself an Ironman. I'm don't saying that because of modesty.  It is what happens when your identity is welded to a single achievement, and the achievement doesn't land on the terms you set. In the previous video on my channel, you'll see that I literally survived the last Copenhagen Ironman in 2023 with an exercise-induced pulmonary oedema, with one of my lungs fully collapsed for 16K.  Link here if you've missed it: https://youtu.be/nkS0-wZfApc?si=Fpr7RGF_mAuwCYFZ  This episode is about why that happens, and what it costs you. Most leaders answer the question "who are you" with what they do.  For years, it used to always be about the title. Professional rugby player. Business owner. Founder. Dad. That answer feels solid until the thing you do stops going your way, and then the whole structure moves underneath you. Identity is not a fixed object. It is a generalisation of your beliefs, values, and standards. That means it is trainable, measurable, and most people have never looked at it directly. What I cover in this video: - Why achievement is an elite edge and also a trap, and how to keep the edge without being owned by it. - The difference between a narrow identity and a broad identity structure, and why the narrow version is exactly what gets you off the floor early on and exactly what plateaus you later. - Being committed is imperative to achieve a high-hard goal, but recognising your boundaries and systems behind that is more important. - Why your old values are almost certainly no longer matched to your current behaviour, and why that mismatch is the real reason you feel flat, reactive and frustrated despite the results on paper. - The reason why you need to have a high level of standards to execute on a consistent basis to build sustainable performance, rather than being all in and all out  The actionable takeaway is simple. Open your calendar for the last seven days. Read it as a stranger would. That document is telling you what you actually value, not what you say you value. Where the two do not match is where your performance is leaking. If you're struggling with a plateau in your performance and unsure why you can't sustain the behaviour you know you should be operating with, maybe you don't need more insight into your process. It's how you frame your current scenario, and what you need to execute is the most important thing for you to learn.  🔗 Connect with me:Linkedin: @willfodenInstagram: @willfodenWebsite www.builtforpressure.net #LeadershipPerformance #Highperformance #ExecutiveMindset #PeakPerformance #BusinessLeadership #EnergyManagement #ResilientLeadership #OptimizeYourself#mentalclarity #peakperformance #PersonalStandards#SuccessUnderPressure #EntrepreneurLife #ElitePerformance #ProductivityHacks #CEOHealth #sustainablesuccess  #leadershipdevelopment  #worklifebalance  #trainsmart #masteryourenergy

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This podcast is for leaders, business owners and executives to find their next 1%. This podcast will educate those who want to regain their edge, consistently perform during times that matter and turn potential into performance. - Human Optimisation - Peak Performance - Elite Mindset Strategy - Personal Development - Communication - Leadership Performance - Business Growth These are all parts of the bigger puzzle for the modern leader. This podcast is designed to connect and remodel what modern day leadership needs to become. We are placing the human at the forefront of the performance.

Information

  • Creator
    Will Foden
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2021