I speak with Simon Gelsthorpe in this week's episode. Simon is a clinical psychologist who specialises in emotions. He works with sports coaches and sports organisations to help them be more psychological in their coaching, thereby improving athlete emotional well-being and performance.

Simon is a visiting fellow at the University of Bradford with the Psychology Centre. He is also the developer of Emotionally Informed Coaching.

I'm delighted to speak with Dr Robin Owen and Prof Shuge Zhang in this week's episode.

Robin is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Psychology at Liverpool Hope University. His research aims to advance our understanding of anxiety, attentional focus, motor control, skill acquisition, statistical prediction, cognitive functioning, and talent identification/development.

Shuge is currently a research Professor in Sport & Exercise Psychology at Hunan University of Technology in China. He previously lectured at the University of Derby. Shuge is a chartered psychologist of the British Psychological Society and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His research interest is the Person x Environment Interaction in performance and health contexts.

In this episode, we discuss a fantastic paper Robin and Shuge contributed to which examined the impact of anxiety on performance in sports players.

I'm delighted to speak with Dr Alan McKay in this week's episode. Alan is an HCPC sport psychologist, researcher, and practitioner. He completed his PhD in sport psychology with the Football Association of Wales (FAW) and is currently working as a senior research assistant at the FAW Centre for Football Research, housed at the University of South Wales. In this role he helps to produce multidisciplinary, world-leading, applied performance science research to enhance the performance of Welsh athletes and organisations.

Alan also works within elite level sport at both Welsh Triathlon and in his own company Mindframe Performance, where he has supported athletes competing at both the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

In this episode Alan and I discuss behaviour-based approaches to mental toughness in sport.