Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome back to the Slider Pi podcast where the Pi is the psychologically informed environment and the mission is to try and further our understanding of what that looks like in different types of performance settings. It's the first episode of 2025 and we're off to the races with a brilliant guest who I will introduce you to in a second. But first, a little upfront reflection for this, the 30-second episode of the podcast, which is going into its fifth year of existence. When I started the podcast in the chaotic COVID year of 2020, I was newly married, living in an apartment in Wandsworth, and still grinding away at my sports psychology charter chip alongside a day job, whilst just about managing to keep sporting endeavours ticking along and friendships topped up. Fast forward five years, and I've been a chartered sports psychologist for 14 months, and we count ourselves lucky to have two beautiful young children, a lunatic little black dog, and a garden for them to play in. So much to be thankful for, and yet, in identity terms, hugely challenging for building a second career. And it's tough to see others on LinkedIn or Twitter prolifically churning out research or podcasts or lists of career achievements while you're just kind of inching along. And during my qualification, I was part of an incredible supervision group chaired by Dr. Jonathan Katz and Dr. Brian Hemings. And in one of these group meetings, a fellow sports type trainee said the words, your life is what you pay attention to. And sometimes during times of mini identity crisis like this, I try and reset and reframe with this phrase. If I'm paying attention to things I care about, then everything else will hopefully come out in the watch. And others might be on a different path than trajectory, and that's fine. In the spirit of paying attention to the things that matter, maybe don't sign into LinkedIn 50 times a day. Now swing shotting across to our guest introduction. This is a man who is paying attention to lots of varied and interesting areas of sports psychology in his working life. Stuart Holiday, chartered psychologist, is a sport psychologist for GB Olympic swimming and runs his own practice, Focused Mind Coaching, with clients in sport, music and business. He's worked in elite sport environments for over 10 years at Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth level for archery, swimming and England netball, and Premier League experience with Liverpool FD. His real passion and area of expertise is endurance sport though, which is why he has a subsidiary of Focus Mind Coaching called Endurance Mind Coaching. Listed for runners, swimmers, cyclists or athlete. And he has co-written The Psychology of Running with Dr. Noel Brick, and in the music industry contributed to the book The Touring Manual. In this conversation, we really lean into the endurance side, and I was very fortunate to catch Stuart late at night after we've both put our two kids to bed. And despite being too tired, Dad, I'm delighted with the conversation and look forward to hearing what people take from it. As always, we'll dive straight into the interview and then come up for air again at the end for a full-time reflection. So, catch you again in 45 minutes for that. And in the meantime, let's get into it with Stuart Holliday.

Interview

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Stuart, thanks so much for joining SciSuppie. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Very well, thank you, Pete. Great to be here. It's been a pod I've heard for many years and spoken with you outside of uh the space uh for a while. So yeah, it's good to be asked on and uh flap my gums for a bit.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Good man, appreciate it. Um, for those listening, Stuart not only is very, very well respected and experienced practitioner, but also is just one of the most giving people I I know. He's spent so much time with me over the years, and particularly around my training, giving me tips and advice and and giving his time again for for the podcast. So it's it's much appreciated. Uh, we're also both parents to two young kids, and therefore it'll be interesting to see how a podcast recorded at eight o'clock at night after we both put our kids to bed, how that goes. Um, we'll we'll we'll see whether we can muster up a decent conversation for people.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, well, fingers crossed, Pete. Um I'm gonna give it my the best on my side.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Good stuff. Well, first question off the bat, not really question, just opportunity for yourself to tell people where they can find you online and whether there's anything that you're doing at the moment that's worth flagging, worth promoting. Floor's yours.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Great. Um usually this comes at the end of uh most interviews, so tell it up front is kind of a little bit of a I flipped it.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I flipped it recently. Get it in early before people drop off.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Okay, so I'll be I'll try to be as brief as possible because then uh hopefully we can get to the juicy stuff. But if uh people want to find me, I've got uh a company called Focus Mind Coaching, uh, which is focusmindcoaching.co.uk, um, and a subset of that is endurancemindcoaching.com, um, which is endurance sports specific. I do work with people across a number of different sports, but endurance is really the interest point for me where I really enjoy doing what I do. But they can f people can find me on Instagram, that is at FocusMind Coaching. On Facebook, I believe it's Focus Mind Coaching uh on there. I can put the link to you to put in the show notes if that's helpful. Yep. I am on LinkedIn as Stu Holiday, and I don't engage with Twitter or X anymore.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah, well, there's a lot apparently everyone's migrating to Blue Sky. That's I joined it last week, actually. That's apparently that's where where it's all happening now. Okay. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I think it's really important that you kind of have some presence, obviously, as a practitioner, and you know, so people know you're out there. Um, but I genuinely genuinely like kind of this format for kind of being able to explain what we do. And people can, you know, I've had a number of clients who said, Oh, I heard you on this podcast, or I heard your podcast with uh someone that you've hosted. So I've got the Focus Mind podcast as well. That's something which is quite a lot of overhead, as you will know yourself when you're doing the day job.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

But it does mean that you can expand what you do and talk about. So when people ask you, What do you do in your job? What's it like to work with you? You can say, Well, go and have a listen to the podcast and see what you think. So that's where I would uh recommend people go. And I guess when you're saying plugging what I do, and we'll probably delve into this in detail in our conversation. So in the endurance mind coaching space, which is sort of the area we're looking at today, I on the website you'll find that I offer courses that I I tend to describe as bolt courses, because if you're doing an event such as a triathlon or a marathon or any other sporting event, I've had a long distance swimmer, for instance, so that's another way in which my work kind of travels in slightly different directions. You're likely to be doing somewhere between something like 8, 12, 14, 16, 18-week training blocks, so like quite long periods before your main event. And my course that I offer is one where I get people to bolt on their mental training as they're doing their physical training. Interesting. And that's my USP. That's my USP. And I've been doing that now for over three years, and I mean I I know we can't really talk about results and you know, kind of advertise because of our adherence to BPS guidelines.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

But you know, and also your own personal influence on athletes and their performance because you know, where does their work and how much they've done and your input sort of play a role, how much percentage key takes, you really can't. Um but it is really, really interesting seeing and hearing people qualitatively and quantitatives that they've made. You'll know from our training, you know, we're really asked hard hard by the examiners to demonstrate how you your input played a role. And yeah, I when I get the feedback from people and we kind of are really quite big on monitoring people's progress, yeah, quite qualitatively and quantitatively, and just getting that feedback on a constant basis. So that's that's another unique thing. Um and um so yeah, if people are interested in that, uh there is I I do a one-to-one version of that where Pete signs up for a marathon, we I don't know, 12 weeks worth of um sessions, so 12 sessions because 12 weeks, and then you follow it through. And I'm in the process of building that out to be an online course uh that people can have no me, although they will get like a video uh block every week.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Um There's not going to be a creepy AI version of you or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

I mean, I'm bad enough as myself, so God knows what an AI version of me would be like. I don't want to I don't want to put people through that. Um but yeah, um the idea is um that you you get a drop on the first day of the week, it's talking through a particular aspect of how we record what you're doing on top of what you're doing already. The thing that I don't want to do is overload athletes and make have to give them more stuff to do, yeah, uh as much as I can avoid. Because if you're doing endurance training, you're probably holding down some kind of work, even if you're a sponsored athlete, and then you're doing your training, which takes hours and hours and hours. So then to fit in something else feels like extra, so I keep it as light touches as feasibly possible, but then I'm telling people in your training this week, this is what we want you to be really focusing on and working on, and that's that's kind of like where it's different because it's like you're gonna do the training anyway. Yeah, what I want you to be doing from a psychology perspective is not interfering with what your coach is getting you to do, but I don't want to undo all the good work a coach may do with an athlete. Um, is bolt on this stuff. You're doing the training already. Talk to me about your site level that you're doing already, what kind of work you're doing, how you refine or tweak that, or how can we add in something that's gonna push you that extra one, two, three, four, five percent. So, yeah, um, that's that's the kind of big sell. And it's been a project which has just been longstanding to try and make that an online version. Um, and and joking aside about the AI, uh, I am actually using AI to develop it as an app and get it out there. But it's just taking a bit longer because as you just alluded to, two kids and a day job, it it's trying to fit it in. But slowly but surely we're getting there. And just at this time of year and going into the new year, this is where I really want to actually be putting my foot down on it because come the beginning of January, lots of endurance athletes will be hitting that first training cycle of the year for spring events.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

So we'll see what we can do. Well, all the best. I mean, the initiating and and developing those digital programs, there's a lot of effort and there's a lot of time, and there's a lot of elbow grease go into them. So we'll all be looking forward to to that when it's ready. The integrative work sounds really interesting. The bolt on I think if you look at applied practice literature, that's one of the biggest barriers that athletes have with not just sports psychology, but with all of the satellites of sport science, whether it's nutrition, whether it's SNC, you know, the other things that they're trying to integrate, meditation, etc., there's only so many hours in the day. So if your proposition is around how can we integrate that into what you're already doing, I I can see why athletes find that appealing. So really thanks for sharing that. And then just on the podcast front, for those that are listening, really do check out the Focus Mind Coaching podcast. I listen to it regularly. I listen to the Nick Steele episode this week, actually. And just selfishly from a podcast interviewer, I listened to Stuart and some of the questions that he asked his guests. And I find myself on my commute going, Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure whether I would have thought to answer to to ask that question. That's really Socratic. Well, that that's a really that's a really good angle on on that. So definitely check out the podcast. Thank you. Um let's slingshot straight into endurance, the psychology involved in endurance sports, because really fascinating area. More and more people taking up endurance sports, more and more people doing marathons. Well, it used to be, didn't it? It used to be that marathon was this kind of massive achievement. It doesn't feel like that anymore. If you've done a marathon, it's almost the kind of first step to the next thing. It's the ultra marathons, it's the the big rows, it's the doing marathons in the desert or the you know the north pole, etc. It's just such a huge world now, and you've got ultra ultra marathon influences all over all over Instagram and and the other social networks. So it's a huge, huge area. It'd be lovely to to kind of understand how you got into this area and just your your thoughts on it as an area from a psychology perspective. Like what are the interesting parts of working with people that are doing endurance sports from a psychology perspective?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

I mean, historically, it wouldn't have been something in my gift that you'd have thought I'd go down. I uh sports-wise, I was a I was a motor racing kid. My dad drove Formula Three well before I was born, um, made to give it up when he was uh getting in the family way by mum. And um, I mean it was in the days when it was super amateur. So I tell people my dad used to do some motor racing, and they they think now Lewis Hamilton, these amazing events, and it's like, no, no, drive to survive. No, it was more well, it was literally drive to survive because the rates of death that were happening at the time he was racing, he did actually race against Jim Clark, who is a legend in the sport, if you know anything about motor racing, uh, once and he he even drove at Crystal Palace. He there was a there was a motor racing course in the actual park of Crystal Palace, uh, which a lot of people don't know, so uh, but it was it really was um stick and saw this kind of stuff uh that he was doing, and I only relied on stories and anecdotes that I I was raised at the dinner table about this thing, and then like dragged to all these various races in the 80s where it was a really amateur, it had a despite the fact that he was on telly, it was a really amateur feel to it. You could wander around the pits and the paddock quite easily, you didn't need all the accreditations and passes. So I met a lot of the key drivers in the 80s just with my dad's blagging and uh you know using his son to kind of crowbar his way in, and we we had loads of adventures and fun. Uh, even took a coach to the Neurburg Ring for the first ever race there in the 80s. Um amazing. So yeah, you know, like the sport thing was there, we were season tea holders at United. So, you know, there was a big sport uh element in our family. My mum just adores tennis and Wimbledon, so I was surrounded by it, even though they weren't what you might call active participants, yeah. And so, long story short, yeah, what got me into sport was that, and then I didn't really participate uh growing up in the 90s, being into music, which is now another feather to my bow in terms of psychology practice. We might manage to get to there at some point, but um uh once I kind of got into my late 20s, early 30s, I was just wanting to get healthy and fit. Got into running, did a marathon well before it was the trendy thing to do. Yeah, and I'm not trying to pretend that I'm a trendsetter at all. Uh but I I just really sort of remember there was a line my dad that I thought as a throwaway, like he always said stuff like, uh, you know, give everything a try, uh see see what lands, and you know, if you've got a little bit of talent, then you know, go and nurture it. And to say I had talent in running might be extending it a little bit. I was I'm I'm okay. Um my final times where I've gone faster, very good, but I I would call myself a the best I ever was, was like a decent level club runner, by no means elite. Yeah, but I I learned the culture of the sport and developed developed and I was really into cycling as well. So I was following the Tour de France back in early 2000s when it was very heavily uh full of dopers, yeah. Um and even allowing for the the tarnishing of that, um of those events, I still was fascinated by how these people were putting themselves through it, whether or not they're on drugs or EPO or whatever. And yeah, from there, like developed that passion and it just became my normal, not not doping, um, but um going out and like running and cycling for my own mental health, well-being, with the I worked in tech at the time, a bit like you, but I was determined to get into sports psychology 2008, when I did my master's uh down at um Roe Hampton with Caroline Marlowe.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

And then it's just sort of a passion has evolved, and I guess as you do your practice, you sort of tend towards a certain area. So even though I've worked in archery, worked in paraswimming, worked in netball, worked in football, when I'm put on the spot, endurance is the thing which just sort of gives me that real curiosity and fascination. There's a there's a question later on where you're gonna ask me about books that are influential, and and I mean there's so many in our field, but it's one where there aren't a lot of sports likes who kind of go to endurance, maybe because if you're looking to go into the into it as a subject, uh not a subject but a career, yeah, there's not a lot of money. You know, if you want a job with an NGB, uh you're looking at something like football or rugby, league, legal union, or whether it's a structure like tennis, yeah, um, or golf where there's a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Uh if you're there's more and more money, as you were alluding, floating into the sports, but it's kind of scattered a lot more. It's not, you know, like I was talking to someone this week about how I'd like the the head of the Hokker Naz Elite team, which are out in Flagstaff, Arizona, Ben Rosario, one of the most amazing coaches you you could ever wish to read, if you ever get the chance. There's a couple of books by him. Inside a marathon is just a legendary book, which is basically a dialogue between him and his athlete as the athlete was training to get second seventh place in the New York Marathon many years ago. Well, I was lucky enough when I was over there to go meet him. He gave up an hour of his time to let me interview him on the psychology side. Their basic premises, Hocker, the sports brand fund uh team, elite athletes up at Flagstaff, which used to be the high performance center for uh USA Olympic team.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Once the Olympic team shipped out of that town, um, the people that had been employed sports science coaches were like, what do we do now? And so they became a center of excellence. And so, you know, for runners, if you're American, going over to Kenya isn't really an option for long periods of time. And you've got you know, a mile high up there, it's quite accessible. You can get to flag from Phoenix, Vegas. It's not a complete place out in the boonies. Yeah, so you know, a lot of people go there, um, and they've got amazing facilities through the university, which again they've got the university system, which is different from running in the yeah Europe and African countries. But it was really interesting, having worked in elite sport in the UK, to then look and see how a sports brand was paying a group of elite athletes to work together as a unit, even though it was an individualized sport, that was fascinating. We do not have an equivalent really in the UK or Europe. So I've got a niche which I have to work hard to stay in because it's not like there's an obvious brand or team out there that goes, oh, that guy, he's he's the go-to. Um, let's use him. But through diligence, perseverance, and hard work, I have begun to get a name and a reputation in the field. Um I'm not trying to pick myself up because it's really not, you know, we are not talking Trump-like levels of um significance here. It's the lowest level of significance that I could um uh claim to get because it's such a small field, really, where it's a weird one. Everyone knows in endurance sport, the mind is crucial, but it's quite new to sports psychology. Yeah, it's not embedded as a must-do activity or within a culture like you you're talking about on your podcast. So for me, there's a real tension there. Um, how can we have reach? How can we support even the elite? You know, the elite athletes do nowadays have access to sports psych. That that is happening more, but because it's so disparate, it's quite an interesting one to work in in my especially as a solo practitioner. I'm not um yeah within a company or organization um for this work. So yeah, I guess if you if you're into endurance sport, it's a real challenge. If you want to be a sports psych practitioner uh in this field, it's a real challenge. So maybe we're made for each other.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Yeah. Well, I think you're you're well within your right. Big yourself up a little bit. I mean, even if you just take the fact that uh the book The Psychology of Running, you wrote that with uh Dr. Nolbrick and you have a website and a practice dedicated to endurance psychology, and you're working with uh lots and lots of people in that that field. So I think that you're more than more than uh more than qualified to do that. I think the one of the things sticking out there for me in terms of kind of psychology within endurance sport compared to some other sports, certainly I think from a just from a kind of general population uh perspective, I think I think the the role of psychology in some sports is almost kind of quite obvious when you watch when you watch the TV. You know, if you've if you've watched a tennis player consistently put in first serves across a five-set tennis match, but then starts to break down at the crucial moments at the end of the fifth set, it it's very easy for commentators, for journalists, to for armchair critics to point at the TV and start to talk about psychology and what's going on in the mind. And I think if you compare that or golf or even you know, kind of football penalty taking, etc., to take running, for example, it's not hugely obvious where the kind of the psychology bit comes in if you're just watching it on the telly. I think there's probably just a kind of a layman's perspective or or perception that you know, why would you need psychology? You just put the shoes on and you get going, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Um that's very layman, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Well, well, I I I understand that, but um, I think just that that makes it even more interesting, actually, kind of digging beneath the surface in terms of the the role that psychology plays over very, very, very long periods of time, whether it's kind of emotional control, attentional focus, um, and then also just how it you know plays a role in training as well. You know, you've you've got really, really hard yards in terms of kind of pushing yourself to the point where you can start, you know, competing at a very, very high level against other people who are also training very, very hard as well. So the kind of the role of psychology in terms of the training as well, I think is really interesting. Please kind of slingshot onwards, you know. What once you kind of got into this this area, what have you learned so far? Where are the areas that people tend to want to talk about or want to focus on? Or are there areas that they didn't even know?

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah, I mean, uh, if I can kind of actually having said that it's not me who were doing what I do, um, I'm not going to completely contradict myself and say that there's a brilliant project that I was very fortunate to kind of just uh hang on to the coattails of towards the end of my chartership process, and that was really headed up by I guess Andy Lane uh down at Wolverhampton University. And I was lucky enough to get in touch with him to get my practical module for what we have to do in chartership, and uh just thank you, uh Prof. Lane.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah, is this uh Andy Lane, Carla Meyer, and this this group?

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yeah, yeah. And no, I was this young buck with Dan Robinson, who is down at Wolves 2, just super keen. I mean, Dan's a massive participant. He ran in uh Valencia last weekend. He is another level on from where I am, run wise, um, and always has been. He's he's very focused, um, really just a super keen, and he would call himself running nerd. I've had him on my podcast. But then, like, yeah, those those practitioners, the key thing that they were doing was as a group, they got some funding to run a program called Resist.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

I remember this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Uh, I think it's Alistair McCormick from that group. He he came up with the acronym, and essentially it's about using psychological skills skills to prevent the uh slowing down or stopping, which is the overriding thought that when you're doing endurance sport, you want to do. And that's probably the hook that I'd probably say is most interesting to me is you're doing a sport. I mean, all sports timing if you're doing it well, you know, even those five setters and tennis you talked about, they're marathon sessions. But you know, if you are doing a marathon or more, or if you're doing even endurance rowing or a long row like Nick was talking about the other week, you are deliberately inducing fatigue and pain and suffering. And to make that choice when the human mind is actually one of protect oneself, be safe, I think that that's an amazing hook in just to start with. And then the thing that your mind, because of that safety mechanism that we have, of course, once you're 15, 20 miles into marathon, is going, what the hell are you doing? Slow down and stop. And it's the most override, you know, anyone who's running the distance will know and and been pushing their uh speed limit, will know that like that sensation is the thing that's kind of overriding everything else. So that's the key one that I kind of end up hearing from athletes about how can I suffer longer, how when I'm suffering, can I keep going? Elements around that. But that's a that's a huge, huge topic. But then, you know, like any sport, you get the usual thing of I can't convert what I do in training into a race, classic one. I get massive pre-race anxiety, doubt, um, over keyed up, whatever it might be, confidence and the usual things that as a sports psychologist you would get across sports. But yeah, I guess it's fundamentally marked by this crazy thing that why would you want to do that and put yourself through it and do well at it and train like crazy without any kind of guarantee that you're gonna deliver on the day? Because the more the further you go is in training for a long race doesn't necessarily mean that that's gonna convert over. But um, so from a site perspective, there's just a rich sea to um plunder, I guess. And that that's maybe for other sports sites they might find it dull as dishwater, but for me, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Yeah, was it a rich sea to plunder? A rich seam, a rich seam to plunder. I like it. Yeah, yeah. I think there's there's something interesting in there around this the human mind saying be safe, you know, maybe you should think about stopping. Again, the just from a kind of and I I I count myself as just a hugely ignorant to to this world. I don't run, I don't cycle, I don't swim. I haven't worked with athletes in in this world. I would look at these athletes on the telly and think that there's there's slightly probably a bit of kind of naive hero worshipping here that you know someone like Mo Farrah does doesn't have those thoughts. Maybe Pete, who's trying to drag himself around a four or five K run after work, is going, Oh bloody hell, this is hard. Maybe I should consider stopping, but that wouldn't even come into the minds of some of the elites. But I suppose like everything, we're all human. And I imagine you've probably been surprised to to peek under the hood of some of these elite guys in the endurance world. And there's probably quite a lot of people who you know that is something that that comes into their their heads. Maybe I should stop now.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

It can't it comes into all our heads, you know. You mentioned Mo Farah, I'd I'd push it one notch on and go to Elliot Kichogi, who's the guy that did the sub two marathon, not marathon um test event in Vienna.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah, the Nike kind of hacked event, right? Yeah. Can can we get him under two? Yeah. I'm not I'm I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna comment. Um that wasn't from a judgment perspective. And I think they they were quite open, weren't they? Were like how how many tweaks can we make to this event to get him under two?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Exactly, exactly. And and then and then you know, subsequently there have been some very close times to that two-hour mark in the years since. If you look at him as an example, if you watch him in one of those, I mean he's won so many races, so many World Marathons, Olympic marathons, that event, he is really famous for smiling and for being quite a relaxed-looking guy. But anyone who knows anything about distance running knows that like he is in a world of pain when he's doing that event. And the thing that even an amateur runner could see that maybe a sports psych who doesn't specialise in this area is like the little tells and micro expressions that he was making that belied the amount of pain and suffering he was in. And you know, that's one example of like probably the most prominent, famous person out there. Because this is the thing because you've got your footballs and rugby than crickets, that's what makes the back page sports headlines that people, the general population know. I know Kip Choggy and all the people that I know in my world would, but probably down the pub, even you know, most people they're like, Who are you talking about? Oh, that guy that did that Sub Tzu thing, maybe you might get a handful of people. So it's still it's a little bit of an underground field still. You've got him. I mean, just to give you a flavour, I worked with an elite runner this week who um I've been working with this year. They did a prominent event somewhere in Europe, which I'm not going to disclose because it might give you away who that person could be. But they they had uh it was a 50-mile event, I think I want to say. So not like massively over the distance.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Technically an ultra, but just overly different.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Yeah, just over yeah, exactly. And they were I think the last 10 miles, their quads had seized and were in a root bit, and we we we debriefed what that last 10 miles was like, and they're a really super experienced, well uh honored runner with lots of titles and stuff. And they said that was easily the hardest race I've ever done because I had to just mentally wrestle through 10 miles of agony. So, you know, that's that I guess for the man in the street, it may be like, oh, they look like you know, Mofarra going around the track looks like so relaxed, and their style is so smooth and they don't look like they're suffering. And it's that thing that it's just that their mind is calloused so much through training. Um, the evidence shows us that they just they're better at hiding it, but they're still experiencing it and they can cope better. That's that's what you tend to find about pro-level runners and pro-level endurance athletes. They they still suffer as everyone else does, but they're just at coping with it.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, and how do they? So, what have you learned in terms of the people that you've worked with or the strategies that you've worked with people on in terms of coping, in terms of resisting that human reaction of wanting to, yeah, the urge to quit. If there's a a kind of an amateur runner listening to this, what what are the the kind of the go-to the go-to strategies?

SPEAKER_01 32:59

I mean, before we even get to the strategies, I'd just say that if you think about an elite pro in any sport, they're gonna spend more time doing the thing they do. So they've got that advantage over an amateur, they're used to discomfort. I I always with my athletes try and get them to talk through two different kinds of discomfort or pain. So, like I say, pain is when you like this girl, her quads were absolutely in bits, and like she could have stopped, but they were she was in a podium place. So the the motivation to keep going was strong, and it was strong enough to get to the finish and still do very well. And because they've got such an elite level of you know, body comp, um, endurance training, speed, etc., they can churn it out in a way that someone less trained would just be like, I don't need to do this, there's not enough riding on it, yeah, potentially financially, potentially honors-wise. But your your elites have longer time in training, they've probably been doing it longer, you know, like from a more younger age. And we know from sports psych that if you're used to going through certain experiences like pre-race competition nerves, if you're used to doing something which is uncomfortable, I would call that painful. And then uh no, so I call that discomfort. Like you you were in a race, Pete, and you found it uncomfortable, but you weren't injured, that's discomfort. But if you were about to quit because your hamstring's pinging like a guitar string, that's pain and you should stop. Yeah, so I'm really I'm really keen to kind of like because of duty of care as my practice, I have to be really explicit with athletes. Like, you're do gonna do something which is gonna hurt. I mean, it's the same thing with the boxer. You kind of have to then just say, you're on your own when you cross that line, because you've got to make the decision, throw in a towel or um step out of the race. It's not me to tell you what to do. You I can't be in your body having those sensations and experiences. You've got to use your judgment. You can't come back to me and say, You told me to keep going and I got injured. I mean, I've never had that because I'm probably so far on the safety side of things that you know people probably are a bit bored of me um giving that G of care, but I'd rather be that way than kind of a bit flippant and like, oh, you should keep going, come what may.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

And just on that, sorry, just to jump in on that judgment, are people in a place to make that judgment around that line between kind of discomfort or genuine like this this is something that could have you know quite serious repercussions? Are they in a place to make that because they've been over that line before? Like how many of these guys and girls have overstepped the line and does and does that then inform them in future races? Oh, I know I'm I'm getting to the point here where this is actually flipping from dealing with discomfort to I'm kind of actually putting myself in in danger?

SPEAKER_01 36:02

I guess the the more experienced people that they're they're more in tune with their bodies, they'll know, you know, like you can get through this, and or this is now getting a pain point, and they'll have a more discrete ability to be able to say, I've tipped into the injury, and you know, if you're a paid elite athlete and you're running injured, then you could keep going, but you're push potentially pushing your return date further back, which if you're motivated enough to keep going in the sport, a silly uh strategy because you're gonna have to, you know, it's better to step off a DNF, yeah, so that your body and everything can recover to do a race in the near future than absolutely go like the clappers, go all the way to the finish and be out for a year. Right, you know. So I think more experienced athletes would be more able to understand their bodies better than an amateur.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

And so I don't really have to have too many conversations with people about, you know, where's that line? You know, and I've never really had to do it. We just talk about like, you know, like I did a uh master's group of athletes, and I don't mean masters in terms of older, but like uh mastermind kind of people who had done amazing um endurance performances, probably a group of three or four of them. Um, we had a guy who just finished in the top three of a major marathon come and be their guest. And I said, Look, you know, we've got someone here where you can ask any question, nothing's off their mits, it's confidential. We had an amazing little conversation because I just stepped back and let people probe and talk about their different experiences. Yeah, every single one of them, when I said, What do you want to get from this call? They just like they'd all done really well in the in the last year, and they were like, I want to be able to suffer more.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Yeah, I want to push past like where my body might mind might be telling me when my mind is also somewhat shutting down in the latter stages of an event because you're not thinking straight. How can I override like the red line that's saying I'm running out of petrol? And I'm like, okay, that's gonna be an interesting one for me to come back to you all with next time. So, yeah, I think we could get a bit caught up in in that question, but it it's certainly kind of fundamental to the discipline, whatever your particularly bent of way of doing endurance is.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

And there's something so captivating in people who are leaning into that, who are leaning into the suffering, leaning into danger. It doesn't matter kind of what walk of life or aspect of culture, you know, the kind of whether it's your kind of Alex Honnold, you know, and his his free solo stuff, which is you know, incredible, or people catching big big surfs, or um, you know, in in kind of dangerous, dangerous circumstances, or just kind of someone in the NFL running into uh in into a guaranteed collision. There's just something human and captivating about people who are willing to lean towards that. Um and that's probably because the majority of us aren't aren't wired that way. Like we we do want to optimize for safety. That is the kind of the human condition, that is probably the default. So those who are leaning into it, it just becomes so fascinating that that that's that's what they want to get out of it.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

And I'd often say, like, the secondary thing that uh people I tend to work with come out with as a thing of like, why are you doing what you're doing? Like when logically the sensible thing is to sit on the couch and eat crisps, um is is they all turn around and they'll say, I just want to see what my body's capabilities are. Um you know, they'll often say body, and then you know they're talking to a psychologist, but then they'll correct themselves, say, well, body and mind, and how far I can go with it. And and I think that would lead us really nicely to like if you're if you're at all interested in um what Pete and I are talking about and you haven't switched off yet, um, the book Endure by Alex Hutchinson is absolutely awesome. And it's too it's not about a book about endurance sport, it's it's about the human capacity to endure. And he talks about things like Ernest Shackleton in the Arctic or Antarctic, whichever one it was. Uh he talks about people who get uh go on these massive trips 200 years ago in the American desert, the people who are pioneers and stuff where they're in the desert and their bodies are kind of really reacting badly to um the sun and lack of water. Yeah, um, and I think if you kind of hold that as a reference point, like what are we capable of? And then that's probably where the endurance mindset really, really begins, because then they're getting past and overriding that switch which says sit on the couch, eat crisps.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah, really interesting. You put in the show notes the phrase intense relaxation. Um anything anything that is contradictory or or dichotomous like that is is always something you you want to talk about as a as a as a podcast interviewer or or host. Where did this kind of phrase come from? Is this one of your own concoctions? Is this something that's kind of quite is is this a a kind of turn of phrase within the endurance world? Where does how does intense relaxation figure into things?

SPEAKER_01 41:16

I don't I honestly don't know where it came from. I'm probably I'm probably gonna go down the line of it, no brick, or give him that as a as a guess. An honor, um, he'll probably then turn around and say to me, I'll never, I've never said it, and I got it from someone else.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

I'm having a I love it, what is it moment, um, which you which you get from time to time where you you see two words together and you're like, oh, that is there's something there. What is that?

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Definitely maybe. Um, yeah. I I think I was talking in context of these long events that people do, and even the rowing that Nick was talking about, I think I can't remember, was it five, 2K, 5k or something? That's over relatively quickly for an endurance event, maybe it's 20 minutes or something, but it certainly counts as endurance when you think about sport uh running. I mean, endurance can mean anything over 400 meters theoretically. So even an 800 metre is done in a few minutes is is endurance sport. But what Noel is sort of the master at is the whole thing about attentional focus, and he talks a bit about in our book um from research that he he was looking at comparing work of what amateur-level runners and athletes do compared to the more elite. You need to be able to be super focused uh in an event at certain points, and then a bit like a torch beam, need to be able to then kind of go through long periods where you're completely relaxed, but there's a sort of intensity to it that you've got an awareness and you're not drifting off. So I think that's for me, that is like the key. You if you if you were to do an endurance event and be mega focused and having attentional control, you'd burn all your matches by a tenth of the whole event. So you need to kind of keep an intense relaxation for a lot of it, and then be able to dial it up when required to really channel into this is a really hard bit. We need to get through. Let's dial up the um attention, let's dial up like um real, real focus, and then once you're over that wave of whatever it is, be able to go back to that more relaxed state. And again, playing with that and being good at it is probably for most endurance athletes a lifetime's work.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

It's just super fascinating, isn't it? This tension between relaxation and and intensity and how do you get that balance? The thing that I'm thinking of is a friend of mine who did a a marathon in in Jordan, ultra marathon over a number of days in in Jordan a few years ago. And he he spent a lot of time training with a watch, just knowing how far and how fast he could go on his big training runs. And he purposely w he was doing big distances in his training, but not up to the the the level of what he'd be having to do and he was doing it a lot quicker than he knew he w would have to run at the event. And then when he got to the event he actually didn't I don't think he wore a watch or if he d if he did, he he didn't look at it. And he spent the the the three or four days just kind of just running free, just kind of knowing broadly you know what he's probably doing in terms of pace, but not feeling the need to check his watch every two, you know, two to three minutes, and and having probably more of a kind of just proprioceptive relationship with with running and having kind of trained at such a a decent speed actually just kind of being able to run almost like not within himself but run at a pace that he was a lot slower than what he was used to. And he ended up finishing very, very highly. And of course, you can kind of pull apart all of this kind of anecdotal stuff versus actually what you know what was his his training like, and in terms of his kind of his his natural ability as a as a runner and his form and all of this stuff. But I just having listened to the story, I just can't get out of my head that maybe just not checking the watch every two to three minutes, and if you extrapolate that over hours and hours and then days, that would that kind of that psychological saving of not having this kind of internal dialogue around oh, what is my time, etc. But actually just being able to kind of lose yourself in the race, whether that actually had a a kind of a positive impact for him.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Yeah, and you've got to think about it, like kind of the pros will have a much better internal clock and judgment on their speed, their pace, what they can hold. I mean, there's loads of things like lactic threshold, VO2 max tests and stuff that people can get now, heart rate stuff, and more sophisticated, so the top-end people can have a much better gauge of what their capabilities like and what they can hold. You talk to cyclists, you know, it's all about STP and everything like that. So there is a lot of the physical that comes into it, but then psychologically, there's so much trust, and you know, the people who can run without you know, your your mate sounds like he's probably somewhere but towards the professional level thinking of a pro because he he could gauge that if he's not looking at his watch, but he's pushing himself hard, he's not gonna blow up, and again, that's always a fear with people doing endurance sport. If they if they burn their matches too quickly, I'm gonna blow up and it's gonna just stand in currents, gonna hit the wall again. Another massive rich seam of research there. Um, how do you either avoid the wall or climb over it or through it if you get there? What you know, like most I think nearly every endurance athlete they will have had to have a day where they've had to do that. But there's ways in which you can mitigate it. Probably not enough time on the podcast to talk about that. So you know, like despite the fact it seems like, oh, you know, put one front in put one foot in front of another for 26 miles. That's simple. You can see there's just so much more complexity that we can spend days, months, years uh looking at.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yeah, fascinating. Fascinating stuff. Look, I I think it's one of these conversations that we're gonna have to have a part two at some point down the line to uh to go off on some other other threads. I just really wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about the book before we we wrapped up. So psychology of running, you wrote it with Dr. Nolbrick, one of the researchers and sports psychologists involved in the resist initiative that was also mentioned in our conversation. The floor is yours. What is the book about? Give us a little kind of teaser about what's in it and why should people check it out.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

I mean, the the strap line says that it's a book that looks to provide the insight into why running is such a popular form of exercise and competition, which again probably doesn't serve us quite well enough what it actually is. It answers the questions about why do people run, how can I improve by running performance, and will it will running help you feel better? So that's like very high level, but it's a small book, it's only got just over a hundred pages. It's from it's on it's in the psychology of everything series by Routledge. Um you can buy one of our one of the books from anything from the psychology of gardening to the psychology of chess to the psychology of sex, I think it's in there. Yeah. Um, depending on who's listening to this, you can take your pick of what you probably fancy from there if you don't like the sound of our book. Um, but it was so much fun to get involved. The whole point of it is to bring academic research to a wider market, which is exactly my sweet spot. I I found doing academic work so dry and difficult because I could get my head around why it was done in that fashion, but it just felt like it was being this high-level language that was quite difficult and inaccessible. And you're thinking, who's this for? It's almost serving like the people who were just like doing research to keep them in a job and keep them going and going. That might sound deeply cynical and um void me from many research projects in the future. But my my thing was how do we can make it real? And and a lot of running research, the problem was a lot of it have been done with you know, uh students in universities who weren't runners, and then like getting them to do a test and then using that to say, well, what we found in this study was the the group one of runners, group two of runners, and it's like, okay, one, it's a lab-based study, two, you use people don't even do it as a sport, and three, you know, you're making quite wild claims. And Noel and Andy and Carla and everyone's drive with the resistors actually to try and really get research that was actual real life research done on real life runners that was pertinent and in the field. Um, so with through that and kind of other researchers from around the world also taking that attitude, there's enough good stuff out there, but how could it be distilled down? Now we've got this massive running boom into something that you know your average plodder or park runner or interested in a marathon person could pick up and have as a primer to kind of like where do I start with the psych side of running?

SPEAKER_03 50:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

So that was the that was the ethos behind it. And then it's really cool because at the beginning it's got an evolutionary perspective of like, why the hell do we run? And it's like the stuff in there which I was learning, and I've kind of been in the field for a while. So, you know, and it's interesting and um fascinating that side. Then we go into talking with people who are very high-end people of how they use skills and strategies which are evidence-based that me and Noel know about, to be able to say, you know, here's what the research says, and then here is a real life person where they used it and this is how it helped them. And then there's other, and that's kind of like obviously for the performance side, but then also running can be really helpful from uh well-being and enjoyment side. So again, how can we make it so it's not this intense activity where you're just feeling like you're pushing against a brick wall? Um, so we looked at the enjoyment aspects of the sport and then went into a bit more broader. We're looking at like what's the actual overall well-being mentally, you know, we've got this crisis in the UK of and elsewhere of people who are feeling pressed down, largest mental health crisis in years. So basically, we just wanted to be able to like answer those questions and sort of look at a more societal point of view, projects that people could understand. So, we do about a project that was used by a group in America called Girls on the Runs to improve female mental well-being and support and connection. So that sounds like a lot, and it is it's a small book that packs a big punch.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

I don't know how you got it all into a hundred pages. It sounds sounds dense with uh insight and and revelation, but very light on pages. So you've done well there, yourself and Noel.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

It's um a really nicely concise book. We try and keep everything kind of above board in terms of like not too high flouting language, so it's understandable. And I'm really proud of how we've taken really big difficult concepts and tried to make it accessible to anyone who runs and to be able to get something out of it. So we've got a guy who is like really, really high-end runner at one point, and then somebody who's like a five-hour marathon runner talking about their enjoyment of the sport as well, so you know, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

Brilliant. Well, look, if you're listening, you're into your running, or even if you're considering getting into your running or you've been into running for years and you want to get better at it, you're looking for those marginal gains, go and pick up this book. We'll put the link in the show notes. The analytics for the podcast says, you know, depending on the episode, anyway, anywhere between 20 and like 50% of people are still listening at this stage. So if you're still listening, thank you. And go and buy the book, we'll put the the link in the uh the show notes. Um this thing shot us nicely onto the last question, which is what's one book, podcast, movie, or TV show that has impacted you the most? Now you can't say your own book, yeah. Um, and I know you mentioned a fantastic book earlier, the book in Dure. So you can't use that either. Right. So is there any other book, podcast, movie, or TV show that has impacted you personally or professionally?

SPEAKER_01 53:44

Okay, um, by having this conversation, I have realized I mean, we we and you both have talked about how good Finding Mastery is for selling sports psychology to a wider market. Um, the Des Linden particular episode, who's a US uh marathon runner, that's worth checking out. So go down that route. And uh Michael Gervaise is just I'm jealous of his voice.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

I'm jealous, I'm I'm jealous, I'm jealous of his mind and I'm jealous of his voice, and he yeah, he does a fantastic podcast. So yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 54:13

So I'll say that. And then also just like you've reminded me, Matt Fitzgerald, who is an American coach and writer, and just really amazing runner as well. And he he's he he takes really academic knowledge and puts it into accessible form for keen runners. So the the book that would jump out for me there is combining him with Ben Rosario, who was the person I spent uh that time with in America, wrote a book, Run Like a Pro Even If You're Slow, and that is genius. So go down that route and um pick it up.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

All these books have got great names as well. Run Like a Pro even If You're Slow. Yeah. How can you not pick that one up? Look, Stuart, thank you very much I know we've gone a little bit over time, and uh you've got the benefit of having a babysitter and being able to go out and socialise this evening, which I'm very jealous of. Um so thank you so much um for giving up your time. It's been brilliant. We'll have to do a part two down the line because this area is so interesting and just really, really well done. And congratulations for all the the work that you've put out there for for people in this this area and the stuff that you're doing within it. And just yeah, lots and lots and lots of well-wishing for the future and growing it even more.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

I'll do my best, Pete, and thanks for your support, the podcast, and thanks everyone for listening if you've got this far.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

Good man. Thanks, Stuart. Okay, all right, thanks a lot, Pete.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_00 55:37

There we go. Another slice of pie in the books, and as always, a lot to chew on, mull over, pontificate, and all the other turns of phrase for having a bit of a think. So reflection time. Thank you again to Stuart for sharing his knowledge and experiences here. Stuart was a rich team of insight to mine, if you will, which thanks to Stuart I now know is an idiom taken from mining. Always learning. The key thing that stood out to me was Stuart's concept of the bolt on, which is this notion of integrating psychological work into an existing training program. I thought this was interesting because there's a little slice of literature within sports psychology, and in fact, the sports sciences in general, which talks to the importance of integrating psychological work into physical training in order to improve its impact, but also to avoid giving athletes just another thing they have to add into their busy schedule. Of course, this will depend on the sport, the professionalism status, existing cultural acceptance of psychology, among many other things, but nonetheless, it makes sense to me to make the introduction of inverted commas new work as easy as possible within existing schedules. And as Stuart describes, many high-level traites will be holding down a day job, even if they are sponsored, so time is often at a premium. And then there were just loads of other terms of phrases and takeouts from Stuart. I thought the turn of phrase, their minds are callous, was a brilliant description of the acquired skill of resisting the urge to stop or slow down, but couched within the language of running. And the other one I liked, the safe thing to do is sit on the couch and eat crisps, was an equally good dinger of a sound bite, and something that probably popped into my head on a daily basis when juggling multiple career, health and family balls, all whilst sleep deprived. Finally, I liked Stuart's soundbite, give it a try and see what lands. It's a lovely value, if you could call it a value, or perhaps just a general intention. It goes back to the heart of my psychological framework on the nature of change and growth. But fundamentally, however we are thinking at a given point, it's assertive behaviours, making positive steps, trying new strategies that moves us forward towards goals and values. So it was great to see this emerge from the conversation as well. So, first Ice apply for 2025 in the bag. Next up, we have a second instalment with Dr. Martin Turner chatting all things REBT. So stay tuned for that one. Until then, that's it for now. And if you have been, thanks for listening.