Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Dr. Marco Cardinale, Head of Sports Physiology, Aspire Academy

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Marco Cardinale, the Head of Sports Physiology of Aspire Academy in Doha (Qatar).He started his career in sports science as a Strength and Conditioning Coach and went on to lead the sports science activities for the preparation of Team Great Britain at the Beijing, Vancouver and London Olympic Games.He has been an advisor to various companies (e.g. Polar Electro, Medisport and Technogym), government agencies (e.g. the European Space Agency) and professional sport organizations and national governing bodies in 5 countries (USA, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK) before working in Qatar.In this episode we discuss making the most of opportunities, how to avoid self-imposter syndrome, and his evidence based approach to coaching.There’s a lot to learn from Marco – he has a unique perspective that only comes from working all over the world, immersing himself in different cultures along the way._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. I still think there is so many things I don't know. But that's why I do what I do, to find out more, to learn.

So I see my job as being very fortunate because it allows me to learn. This is why my job as as being very fortunate because allows me to learn this is why i do what i do because i so i can learn something every day all right welcome back or welcome to the finding mastery podcast i'm michael gais. By trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist and the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the idea behind these conversations, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, from people who have dedicated their life efforts to understand the nuances of their craft.

And what we want to do is we want to understand what they're searching for, what their psychological framework is, which is really how they see the world, how they see themselves in it, how they explain events along the way. And we also want to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people.

It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs

or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach. It's about smarter, more human outreach. And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal.

For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will

support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day. One a day.

What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right, look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone

who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity.

And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. This week's conversation is with Dr. Marco Cardinale. And he's the head of sports physiology of Aspire Academy in Doha. And that's in Qatar. And he started his career in sports science as a strength and conditioning coach and went on to lead the sports science activities for the preparation of Team Great Britain at the

Beijing, Vancouver, and the London Olympic Games. And he's been an advisor to loads of companies, government agencies, including the European Space Agency, and professional sport organizations and national governing bodies in five countries, USA, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, before he started his work in Qatar. And in this episode, we discuss making the most of opportunities, how he's done it, the way he thinks about it, the structure that he puts in place to capture opportunities. And we also talk about this self-imposter syndrome. And we also dive into his evidence-based approach to coaching. This conversation is rich. There's lots to learn from Marco. So Marco, thank you for this

conversation. And he's just got a unique perspective that only comes from working all over the world, immersing himself in different cultures as part of the ecosystem that creates greatness. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. Cardinale. Marco, it's been a while since I've spoken to you last, so I can't wait to catch up on what you're up to. But also before we get started, is to spend a little time maybe unpacking for folks what exercise, phys and sports science is. And maybe you can walk us through some of the basic highlights of how you think about sport physiology and then we'll get into where you are and what you're doing now uh to explain to explain what sports science

sports physiology is is um uh it's an interesting aspect because i kind of evolved in my career i'm now head of sports physiology but in reality I've been probably a generalist sports scientist. So, if we can probably define sports science is the use of a scientific approach to identify areas of improvement for athletes and coaches, ranging from how they train, how they eat, how they analyze their performances to equipment development, what can they wear, what can they use to make them better. So over the course of my career, I've been exposed to a variety of ologies within sports science, you know, biomechanics and physiology, nutrition, etc. And at the moment, my role here at aspire academy in qatar is to look after physiology

and biochemistry what that means is that we uh we perform a series of activities to either evaluate the athletes assess their progress in terms of how their physiological profile changes as an effect of training and growth develop new technologies to assess athletes in training or in competition in terms of their physiological makeup or physiological responses, and identify markers that can provide better information to the coaching staff on how to individualize the training programs better. So hopefully this this can kind of summarize what i do okay perfect and you know you've got the way that i think about

sports science is that it's like an integrated piece of um or no an integrated hub where a lot of information comes in that you make sense of that information objective and subjective information that's coming in from the athletes or the environment and then you make sense of the information to push it back out to coaches and or athletes and does your is that sound right to you as well yeah it's uh it's a very good way of describing it i would say yes and then so are you spending more time giving the information to the athletes or coaches at your training facility? Or is it a blend between both? In my training facility, we have probably a bigger emphasis on the coaches because we deal with very young athletes.

So the information that goes back to the athletes is really simple, diluted, or interactive because of the nature of the athletes we have. We have athletes aged 12 to age 18. So what we give back to a 12-year-old is completely different to the conversations we have with the scholarship athletes that graduate after being 18 or to the 18 years old guy so for example in a 12 years old we wouldn't give too much detailed information about their physiology but we would explain simple things to them like okay you are now running at a very high intensity or a very low intensity look at what your heart is doing whether with a more experienced athlete there will be details about the pace they've gone and how the body was responding to that.

So that's the kind of focus for athletes. For the coaches, we try to generate enough information to guide, help them make the decisions that they take on a daily basis. Better probably by having a bit more information to base their their prescription on okay so i think you're in a unique situation but most people in sports science they they are walking into an establishment that has a storied history and a storied traditions like they're coming into a professional organization, like a professional football team or soccer team, whatever it might be. And there's like a history to the way the coaches coach. And so they're walking into the building saying, Hey, I think we've got some information based on science and objective measures and some

subjective measures, um, like self-report measures and trying to infuse that in the storied and the traditional way of coaching. And it's hard, it's really hard. And so did you have that same experience or was, were you at the ground level for the facility that you built or that was built around your, your athletes? It's actually, you know, I've, I've experienced that in other parts of the world but it's the same everywhere so actually the peculiarity of our place is that it was built 10 years ago so it's it's a relatively new concept but we are a multinational multicultural uh working

environment so i work with coaches and staff that comes from a plethora of countries you know so the added uh the added uh complication to to applying sports science in an environment like this is that you don't have one culture you have a myriad of cultures from coaching cultures to staff cultures that you have to deal with in order to get things done. So actually, this is a very interesting place to work because anything you have experienced elsewhere here is amplified because of this diversity. Okay, brilliant. Okay, so your history in in world level sport is unbelievable.

You're the head of science for Great Britain, for Beijing in 2008 Olympics, for Vancouver in 2010, for London in 2012. And I'd love to learn from some of those experiences. But before we get there, I'd like to go back and figure out and and how did you arrive at leading, um, multiple different countries? Because you had an influence in your native country as well of Italy. Like, how did you, how did you learn and what, what were you hunting for? Or what were you searching for that allowed you to become one of the world leaders in sports science and, and monitoring workloads and recovery and understanding hormonal responses to exercise so can we start early and one way

that's kind of fun is if you were writing a book up until now what would the the chapter headings of those books like how many chapters would you have or you know what would be the titles and you can start as early as you want and just to give a full picture right um yeah that's very interesting i would say okay let's name the chapters first so first is the the family environment uh because i think that that was important then my uh first university for my first degree in italy uh and then how i progressed into into the career and how I ended up in the different places because I think there is, in a strange way, there is some sort of path that has been happening.

So I'll start with the family environment first. I've always been a very curious child and I think this was helped by the fact that in our house, we were surrounded by books. My parents are both middle school teachers, and my father is a physiotherapist and PE teacher, coach, former athlete. So I always grew up in this environment where there were books everywhere about everything, because my mother was a literature teacher, is a literature teacher.

And so I had books about classics and Greek classics and Italian literature on one side, and then on the other side there is books about the human body and training and exercise and physiotherapy. And then my father was the, he opened the first gym, the first fitness center in town in 1972 before I was born. So I was a kid and I was going into his gym and seeing people exercise and then him treating patients for physiotherapy. So I still have memories of few local football players being treated by my dad in his treatment room. And I was outside waiting for when he was finished. So I kind of grew into this environment where it was possible to read. There was kind of an ethos of, you know, if you don't know something about something, you go and read about it, which was always good.

It's always what has been driving me. If I don't know something about something, I'll go and find out about it sort of thing. And then when he came to university, I was torn in between two interests. One was archaeology and history in general, and the other one was, of course, sports science. I ended up doing sports science. I graduated very, very quickly. I think I was possibly the youngest graduate in Italy. My first degree, I was 19 years old when I finished.

Yeah, from the university? Yeah, I was pretty quick going through the exams and going through the the thesis and everything else i never failed exams i got top marks i was very good in school always it sounds like it was that because you were ahead of the curve from learning from your parents or was that because you your iq is you know 198 or like what how do you attribute getting through a university experience by the age of 19 i think it's great i don't think i have anything special you know i've seen a lot of people that were i think a lot better than me and still a lot better than me but i i'm this kind of uh i think i i had a few setbacks in school. In high school, I changed high school because I had a few issues with the teachers there.

What does fear issues with teachers mean? What does that mean? I don't know. I was always very good in school. And then suddenly, at one point, one year, I was always very good at writing in Italian. Then one year, this teacher always marked me down. So I started having all these low marks for no reasons i lost uh you know i lost confidence and etc and then then i left

that school i moved to another school and what drove me after was okay i'll show you how wrong you were sort of thing so and i found this a consistent element in my life you know i was i had this when i was an athlete too and and you know when you change jobs when you move to a new challenge i'm always driven by you know anything negative i try to transform it into okay i'll show you what i can do or what I'll do. So I think I finished out of grit. I wanted to show that I was good at doing it and I wanted to do it well and I wanted to do it quick. It was kind of I set my goal. This is what I want to do and I'll try to get there.

So a little bit of a chip on your shoulder is that is that i kind of thrive on chip on the chips on the shoulder in a way um so yeah yeah i guess that that that's what it was uh but i was very fortunate because uh towards the end of my degree i met this professor uh which was the head of Italian track and field at the time, Bruno Cacchi. And he was very influential because he was a coach, but he was always incredibly interested in science. And we used to have this lab in the dungeons of the university, and it was a strength lab where he had these ideas and we were testing athletes. And, you know, he had all these journals in English that were amazing and all these books in different languages.

We didn't have a library at the time at the university. You know, that might sound weird, but the only sports science library in Rome was at the Olympic Committee. And you could only access it by appointment. And you needed to ask for an appointment a month before. So learning was a challenge. And if you really wanted to learn something, you really had to put a lot of effort. It was not on tap like it is now on PDF files just from your balcony. You know, you have to go.

Yeah. Okay. So how did you understand how to thrive there? Because in your family environment, you had books everywhere. And then you get to the university setting and to learn about the craft that you wanted to learn, sports science, you had to make an appointment with a government agency and it took about a month to get into. So how did you how'd you figure that out and maybe you're going to say no no it was grit again i was just driven by saying you know people doubted me people didn't believe in me so i'm gonna i'm gonna figure it out but maybe there's something else there as well yeah it's i i think well first i was i'm curious

so if i i want to know about, I'll go and find out. So whatever you put in front of me, I'll find a way to find out. But to me, it was very early I realized that if I want to be marketable, if I want a job or if I want to be relevant, I've got to learn and know something before someone else does. So again, there's a competitive element there, but I realized very quickly that I might get an advantage if I learn more than other people. Yeah. And I think that that's the whole setup with sports science, right? Is that whether it's a professional club or university setting or like a

national, um, facility like yourself is that if we can understand our athletes better than any other organization can understand their athletes, we're going to have a competitive advantage by not exploiting, but leveraging the information to train smarter, harder, better, faster, you know, to get, to get athletes that can do something significantly different than what they can do today. Yeah, that's probably it. And it was really driven by this guy, this professor would, you know, I spent hours sitting and chatting to him about everything.

And then he would go, have you read this? And then he would go and dig in his little library in this laboratory and come up with this journal that was in English somewhere. And, you know, my English at the time was incredibly poor. I could barely order a beer at the bar. And so for me, translating and reading, it took a lot of hours of deep practice. So I didn't realize until later on how important that was because I was completely immersed in reading. I learned a lot because of the difficulties I had. I really had to translate

every single word. So I was learning without knowing how much I was really learning at the time. Okay. So you've got a couple different accents. Obviously, you speak English, not with an English accent, but I think you've got some Brit in you. Obviously, Italian you speak. And then I know that you've spent some time, I think, in Sweden as well. Is that right? In Spain, I worked one year. In Sweden, I did a few bits and bobs, but I speak Spanish a little bit too, yes. Okay, so three or four languages? I would say confidently three, and then I can probably get by with a little bit of French in extreme circumstances. And I'm learning a bit of Arabic now, but it's difficult. Okay, and then that's all self-taught? That wasn't, you weren't taught by other people?

No, I did. What happened then in, when I was at this university finishing my first thesis, I came across this Italian professor called Carmelo Bosco. He was working in Finland at the time and he was my idol. This is the first guy that ever left italy to pursue sports science abroad he became one of the best in the world in in this field in neuromuscular physiology so for me this was like the you know when you play a sport or when you are a musician you have these idols that you have a poster in your room and you want to be like them

one day that was my guy and i happened to him there. And then the first thing he said is You've got to go abroad and study you you cannot stay here and and then There was another Italian professor that worked in at UMass in Boston Carmelo Bazzano And he was teaching us. And then he told me the same. He said, you've got to go away. If you're motivated like you are, you cannot stay here. So the realization that I had to go was so strong that I decided to invest in myself.

And then for one year, I did private tuitions for improving my English with an Irish teacher. So my English has been improving. That's what I thought. Oh, that's good. Okay. All right. So did you present to those two gentlemen as being highly motivated? Is that how you presented yourself at a younger age?

I think so. I think that's what they saw. They saw interest. You know, at the time in Italy, there were no postgraduate degrees in sports science. So my university career was pretty much finished. There was no master's, no PhDs, no opportunities to continue.

There wasn't such a thing like a research path. So I had to find one. And the only way for me to go was to go abroad. So I had to accept that I needed to learn another language and I needed to go somewhere. So these two were the kind of examples. So if these guys have done it, maybe I can do it too. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous.

When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO,

I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested, NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3. Protein, creatine, and omega-3.

And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentous has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order at LiveMomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, LiveMomentous.com and use the code Finding Mastery for 35% off your first subscription order.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Grey. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science.

Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Grey's in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great.

Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code Finding

Mastery 20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. I've got two questions I want to ask about this, the concept of mentoring. Do you still have mentors or do you, you know, the idea that you shared about having a poster on the wall and looking up to somebody? And then the related question is, I want to hear what it was like the first time you met that mentor of yours, or that maybe it wasn't a mentor at the time, but the person that you're idolizing or respecting. Well, rather than mentors now, I do have people I value that I get in touch with to bounce off a few ideas or ask for advice uh yes but in different you know i learned to find people in different fields at the time i was very

narrow-minded it was just about one particular element of sports science i was interested in whether now i can speak to people i'm fortunate enough that I've met people in different fields, with different expertise in different environments, so I can ask them advice about various things that are not only strictly related to one little aspect of my work. So that's what I do. In terms of my first impression, it was kind of a shock. So this guy, Carmelo Bosco at the time, he enters storms in our lab and he was really upset about something. And then he was trying

to show us how to use an equipment and he couldn't make this computer work. um i i helped him because i would i was really into computers so i i managed to fix everything and that that captured his attention so he said oh you you got somebody in sports science that can fix computers what's going on here so so we started to have a bit of a conversation and then what really got me was we got to a point in which the data were wrong and we needed to calculate something. And then he was so into this that he started writing on this board. And then he went, he continued writing this formula outside the board. And then he ended up on the wall. So it's complete nutter.

But it was amazing. So this guy complete nutter. But it was amazing. So this guy was just inspiring. He knew stuff so well, and he was so passionate about it that I thought, wow, this guy is just something else. I want to be like this guy one day. Not to that extreme, but I want to have this knowledge that he has. How does he do that? It's, it is, it is captivating, right? When somebody has such command of knowledge and,

and matched equally by curiosity with this incredible drive to understand and unlock a particular piece of information or challenge or puzzle, if you will, it is captivating. And with that in mind, when you saw that and now flash forward to you today, do you have that same command of content or knowledge or information that you saw in him? Or are you equally as maniacal as he was? No, that's not the right word, passionate. Let's just use the more bland word of passionate about yourself. I want to get a flavor for how you are operating now. I think I show my emotions in a different way probably than he did. I don't think I have the same command. I mean, his knowledge was deep.

I mean, this guy knew citations mnemonically. He knew the page numbers. This guy was just unbelievable. But to be fair, also, not to diminish his ability by any stretch of imagination, but, you know, the amount of literature that we have now under our eyes every day is just humongous. At the time, in the early 90s, there was probably a lot less scientific papers published on the topic. Now there is gazillions of papers, so it's

impossible to actually memorize like he did. I think I have the same passion, but I express it in a different way, probably. I'm much more reserved and contained than he was. He was just a free spirit.

Okay, and the center of your work, if I have it right, is around vibration as an intervention in and of itself. Is that right? That was my PhD. That was my doctoral degree with this guy. So I ended up doing a PhD with this guy after coming back so initially i went to the united states to do my master's degree thanks to a very generous scholarship from the u.s sports academy but also you know money i saved support from my parents but

also i i was fortunate i received a sponsorship from an Italian company, which I think is incredibly unique. From a good friend of mine, he became a huge friend of mine, Bruno Montanari. He has a company in Italy, a very innovative company. They developed equipment for physical education and physical activity made of rubber, and it's edible. So he's an innovator i met this guy to be chanbo and then i told him about what i was trying to do and then he said okay i'll support you and then he he pretty much supported me financially to go to go to the states and and pursue my msc and and he really wasn't asking for anything in exchange he said just just go and study do what you need to do and if you can support my my work fine if not i'll support you anyway and and that was so generous but incredibly important for me because i think without his support i wouldn't have been to the

states and probably i wouldn't be where i am now i wouldn't have had the same experiences and and every once in a while i i still get in touch with him. And I say, you must have been nuts. You know, you found this very young guy from southern Italy to go and pursue a master's degree in the States. And you know you might never get anything back. Why did you do this in the first place? So it's amazing.

What I learned is it's amazing how people can surprise you. I had the same feeling when I got my job at the British Olympic Association. I was very young. And then they give me this job of head of sports science. And sometimes I think, are you guys crazy? I'm young. my level of experience is probably not huge. And you have faith in me that I can do all that stuff. So I think I've been very fortunate that I met a lot of people that had faith in my ability to do stuff, probably because they saw the grit. But it's, you know, sometimes I think these people were probably crazy to to to have all this faith in me i don't know i love this i love what you just did marco because um

okay i i'm one of the ways that i measure success throughout the day is how many times my hair stands up you know and it's that moment of awe when it makes sense to me or something that I'm recognizing is important. And literally all the hair on my arms and my neck will stand up. It's, you know, the nerd in us will recognize it as a phylo or pylo erection. And so, so you just gave it to me. Okay. And what I think I just figured out from you is that you have an incredible ability to

get over your skis, right? To be ahead of yourself, to be in situations where maybe you're outmatched from the outset. It seems that way to you, but you figure it out. So you've got this amazing ability in multiple parts of your life that we've just been talking about where you're thrusted into a position or a situation that feels bigger than your capabilities. And I'd love to pull on that thread a little bit to say how it pick one, pick one of your stories, whether it's Qatar, whether it's the GB experience, a great Britain experience, maybe that's an easier one to do where you felt like oh my gosh this job or this expectation is bigger than what i'm able to do like you guys are crazy what are you doing hiring

me if you could pull on that thread a little bit how you managed your mind or your activities or your recovery strategies or whatever you would index in to be able to figure out how to be successful in that environment i'd love to know that but this happened to me twice i have to say so the first time was when i went to work in spain with tenerife volleyball club and with the dutch coach i worked in italy before it's a head of a mule and he's the current coach of the Dutch volleyball men's team and at the time we he was hired to coach this Spanish women's team a very ambitious team and of course he brought me over he said I need your help here and he said okay I want you to help me

also kind of give direction to the support staff I have. So, you know, here I am, a young guy coming from Italy with this funny English accent, and I'm working in Spain. And I have a medical doctor, a physio, and other people that have been historically with this club that has always been winning. And I had to work with them to help them, you know, provide the scientific support to the athletes. So that was the first moment in which I thought, man, this is going to be hard.

I mean, am I ready for this? And this wasn't helped by the fact that this club was so popular. It's the most successful club in the history of volleyball in Spain. And it's such high-profile people. That was popular with the press. So the first time I landed in T people that was popular with the press. So first time I land in Tenerife, I've got the press giving me, you know, giving an interview and my Spanish at the time was pretty useless. So quick learning curve to get there.

So that was the first one. And we did very well. We won the league, won the Spanish Cup, got into the Champions League finals. It was a great season how did you do how did you manage that first day that first week i i was helped by the fact that you know i knew the coach already uh we we were always speaking in english even if we were working in italy um and i knew knew two players in the team. There was an American player and an Italian player that I've known from previous jobs, previous interactions.

So that kind of was helpful, but it was a big task. I realized very quickly, it's like, okay, these guys want to win everything. It's a club that has always won everything. They would easily have 5,000 spectators in the hole. It's a big deal for the island of Tenerife. It's huge. It's important. So what I tried to do was to try to understand the environments. Who are the key people here?

Who do I need to work with? And one of the challenges in the team was that, if you can call it challenge, we had a multiple Olympic champion, one player that has been inducted in the Hall of Fame of volleyball, Magari Calvajal from Cuba. And, you know, the story was that people said that she wasn't terribly keen in, you know, in doing strength and conditioning, in doing physical preparation. And then actually it worked out very well. I mean, Magali, she was the kind of player that you recon, the champion, you know, they know when they have to get things done. You know, they might spare energy at times to safeguard their career, you know, to try to extend it as much as possible. But when the chips are down, they know they have to work hard. And then with her, that's exactly what happened.

You know, there was a bit of reticence at the beginning, but I think it worked well afterwards. So for me, it's always in a new environment. What I try to do is I try to understand it. I keep my head down. I take notes. I ask questions. I try to see how things operate, how people communicate, and then I try to intervene. Probably becoming older, I'm probably more impatient than I was before. I try to do things a bit quicker than I probably should.

When I was younger, I tried to listen a bit more. But I guess it's the more experience you make, the more you think you can speed up the learning phase. And you want to get things done very, very quickly. So this is how it happened. And then with the British Olympic Association, I was first employed as a research manager, trying to run the research element of the Olympic Medical Institute. And then within one year, Sir Clive Woodward was employed. And then one day, Clive calls me in his office and says, from tomorrow, you will be the head of sports science. And you will be working with me on my new program.

You will be working under me. And, you know, the first thing you think is, wow, Sir Clive Woodward has got time to speak to me. That's already pretty amazing to me. And then the other thing, he wants me to lead this element. That's scary. Am I up to the task is he is he insane so that that was uh it was pretty frightening because of course at the time we knew that the

long-term goal was to be fourth in the medal table we we surpassed the goal and we were third in london but it was a daunting task. It was a huge vision. And then I have the most important guy in British sport in a room telling me that I'm heading sports science. And we're going for it. That was scary. That sounds great. And I get the fear piece of it for sure.

How did you deal with it? What did you say to yourself? What did you do to be able to manage that sense of overwhelm? Uh, you know, of course I take the challenge on because it's a great opportunity. And, and, and I have to say, I particularly enjoyed working with Clive because he's the kind of person you can have conversations about everything. You know, he's a, he's a very avid reader and consumer of knowledge from everywhere. So he reads about everything.

So that has always been incredibly interesting. And he was the most supportive boss I've ever had. He would back me up on absolutely everything. So I always felt not only safe but empowered with clive but you know the initial the initial fear thing goes okay i'm i'm up to it but then the way you leave it is always you know i i kind of fluctuate always between moments in which i think yeah i'm good at doing this you know, why should I fear it? I'll get on with it.

I'll find a way. And then moments where you feel you are completely inadequate and you think, are they right? Maybe I'm not up to scratch. But I think fear is important because fear forces you, at least with me, you know, I don't withdraw on fear. Fear forces me to find the answers. You know, if I know I'm not prepared for something, I've got to work to make sure I'm prepared.

So fear forces me to find out things, to gather information, to gather intelligence. And also fear puts you on your toes. The moment you think that you know it all is the moment that you finished, I think. So you need to have that element of knowing that you don't know. And I think that's what drives me still. I still think there is so many things I don't know that that's why i i do what i do to find out more to learn so i i see my job as as being very fortunate because allows me to learn this is why i do what i do because i so i can learn something every day

yeah that is the gold dust that you just sprinkled all over this conversation is really good, Marcos. Thank you for that. I've never heard somebody describe fear as a forcing function for gathering information. And when you're using those words, I'm nodding my head saying, yeah, that's exactly right um and whatever type of fear that is fear of um a funky sound in the closet at midnight when you're not sure what it is you know you want to gather more information to find out what it is or fear when you're at the um you know skiers in the back country about to drop off a 30-foot cliff you know into a spine that hasn't been ridden yet like there's you need to gather more information yeah i i love exactly how you just described that. And then if we could drill one level deeper, when you would entertain a bit of that imposter syndrome and you'd have those negative thoughts about like, okay, am I going to be exposed? I don't know if I know what I'm doing here. No, no, no. I am skilled. I do have some command of this stuff. I've been studying it a long time.

Yeah. But you know, I don't, oh my God, this is a big job. I don't know if I can deal with it. There's lots of pressure. How would you get out of that, that civil war, that standing civil war within yourself from the negative thought to the positive thought to the negative thought or, you know, yeah. Like how would you work with that and spend more time moving over to positive frames of mind? I think it's when you reach a point in which you go, okay, this is what I know and I accept it, but I also accept this is what I don't know. And the worst case scenario, you can always say, well, I know nothing about this, but I promise you I'll go and find out or i'll find somebody that knows more than i do and i'll make sure they do it for us so this this this this has always been and i was fortunate in my previous job at the british olympic association i could do that you know i didn't have to be the the source of all knowledge i had the ability to tap into a lot of other people that could provide the knowledge that

I didn't have. And I think that's very important. I always tell, I had a few PhD students or young staff that work with me, and I always tell them two things when they are too worried about this kind of stuff. I say, well, the first thing is that, believe me, in 10 years' time, everyone would have forgotten what you said unless you murdered somebody in that meeting room or in that environment. And the other one is that there is no shame in saying, I don't know about this, but I'll find out. I don't think there is anything negative when you admit that you don't know about something. I don't see it as a sign of weakness. I see it as actually a sign of honesty. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle.

They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you, that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating. If you're ready to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body.

I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple. And they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to

calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code Mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash Finding Mastery. Okay. So you toggle people's fear two ways. One is you help them with perspective, getting the long vision from 10 years down the road, like it's going to be fine unless you murder somebody. And then the other thing that you do is you help them stay curious and you give them permission to say, I don't know. And in there, and you're reinforcing the drive to go figure things out, to go acquire information and to make sense of it. So what are the things, Marco, that are keeping you up at night? Like, what are the things now that you are wanting to understand more? It's, you know, I'm working with young athletes, but I'm also a parent. And my child is heavily involved in sport.

What I'm really trying to understand is what is appropriate. How can we improve the way we prescribe training or we train young athletes to make sure they either have a very good career as professionals afterwards and or they have a champion. That's an incredibly tiny percentage of the population. These are the super gifted people. Only 10,500 people go to the Olympic Games. The rest of the planet watches them. It's a tiny group of people. It's very special. I have this interest as a parent and as a scientist because I think somehow the scientific literature, the knowledge about how to train young athletes is full of inaccuracies.

It's completely full of urban legends or traditions that have been passed on. But I think in general, around the world, we do a lot of things wrong probably with young athletes. And it doesn't help. The research that comes out at the moment is actually relevant for the general population, you know, kids that play a little bit of sport. But now we have sports academies around the world. We have kids that are full-time into full-time training, training 10 to 20 hours a week of sports training.

So I think we need to get better at this. So this is the thing that kind of drives me. How do we learn more? How do we do things better? If there was one or two pieces of, you know, frameworks or points of reference or pieces of knowledge that you would like to install, I know it's not really possible, but install in the next generation of parents or this generation of parents for the next generation of athletes, what would you want them to understand? If you could just drop something in their heads or their hearts oh well understand

first to see the big picture and the long journey so a child during doing sport is never about them becoming a champion you know that might happen or might not that's the that's part of the journey it's about making sure that the child gets on the journey to be physically active and do sport. And also think about the health of the child. I think sometimes that is kind of missed. Pushing their kids to the limit, doing a lot of things that shouldn't be done with kids at certain ages, hiring takes care of itself if if there is the predisposition if there is the fire if there is the the coaching if there is the right environment and if there is the the genetic makeup to make that happen um but it's completely different in this part of the world where sport is a relatively new thing and so for many families

sport is not seen as a career here yet so the kids don't get that kind of pressure but they get the the different pressure of sport is not an important thing you need to pursue your education and your working career first so it's it's kind of fascinating. But if I could install something in parents, that would be first the care about the health of the child and seeing their involvement in sport as a long-term project. like a selfish question i've got a child that's nine and he's in school from eight to three typical hours in america and then when he when he gets home what should his after-school activities look like is it sport and exercise different forms of exercise twice a week three times a week five times a week you know they run around at school a bit but you know that's only for 45 minutes or whatever you know frequency pe or recreation are but see see that's the that's the thing here if we look at the recommendations the ioc recommendations and

some generic recommendations they say the children should practice no more than their age so a nine years old child should do nine hours a week of of of training but what is training you know when i was a child i used to ride my bike from 2 p.m and go and play with other friends football and i used to come home around 7 30 so that was from 2 to 7 it would would be a good five hours of training. I would be riding bikes, climbing trees, playing soccer, play hide and seek. It was physical activity. It was non-codified, was not coached, was deliberate practice of doing stuff. And then on top of that, probably two, three times a week, I would be playing handball

because that's the sport I was doing. Whether now, I think our kids have lost that element of deliberate play and everything is very structured. So, you know, my child does sport in school and then he does all sorts of other things. But what I try to encourage is for him to be active in whatever he likes or whatever he likes to do. So if being active means painting or playing a game, that's being active. That's good to me. It doesn't necessarily mean being in a structured coaching environment.

It might be, okay, let's go down to the pool and have some fun. Let's go and play a game. Let's go and kick the ball somewhere. It's always, it's most of the times triggered by him. I have a 10-year-old child, so it's more or less the same age. So I would go with the flow. If the child wants to play, I'll encourage that. If the child wants to do any activity, I would definitely encourage them.

Because if they are tired, they will try not to do any activity. They say, Dad, I'm very tired. I'll stay on the bed and read a book instead or I'll watch TV. But what we need to avoid is that children become not tired of being tired. If you can pass me this thing, tired of being tired, so they're lying on the couch because they are tired of being on the couch, and so they stay on the couch. We need to encourage them to be active and explore and do different activities. And ideally what we want, and that's what research seems to indicate,

apart from from few sports where early specialization is probably a necessity, they should be exposed to a variety of sporting and motor experiences so they get better at moving. And then eventually when they choose their passion, they will become better at whatever they like to do. You know, my son is funny as we're talking about our kids right now.

My son is funny is that he loves to go to do sports performance training. I could take or leave sport itself right now. So he's like, I don't know if I want to play basketball, but yeah, dad, I like going in training with other nine-year-olds in the gym and kind of moving around like a dynamic warmup and doing all that stuff like pulling sleds. I mean, there's no weights on the sled, but that type of movement he loves. And so I'm nodding my head going,

yeah, this is really good. Good for you. Very good. Yeah, very cool. Okay. So Marco, how, okay, you've got a, you keep coming back to this word grit how do you think about the concept of grit i i think it you know it's about knowing first first of all you you need to know

why you're doing something you know great per se it's it's like like it could be flagellation. You know, you do it to yourself to arm yourself. That's not good use of grit. To me, it's knowing, you know, where are you going with it? You know, for me, it was, you know, I mentioned knowledge. I knew I wanted to learn something. And I needed to have, I had all these brick walls built in front of me. And I needed to go through them to get to that knowledge because it was the only way to get it.

So that to me was great, was I know where I'm going. I know it's going to be hard. I know I'll have obstacles, and I know I'm going to fall, and I'm going to hurt myself to get there. But I will try my best to get there. And then when I get there, I'll find something else. So I think that's great. And I've seen it expressed in different ways in other people. I had this athlete, a volleyball player, she won the beach volleyball league in Italy. She was possibly the smallest player I've ever coached. She was tiny, she wasn't tall, but she was the hardest

working volleyball player I ever worked with. To this day, she's coaching now. She is fitter than an athlete. So that grit is there. She is not going to give up trying to be as good as she possibly can every day so the way i visualize it is that okay you you know you've got um some talent some skills some abilities uh what you should try to do is try to the best you can be and then to be the best you can be you've got to apply yourself you've got to have that drive otherwise you will you will regress so so great

for me is this is is is the ability to never give up you know continue pursuing things even if they look difficult or they might not come or you might fail it's it's about continuing you know i would have never dreamt of working abroad if If you asked me in 1993 when I got my first degree, what do you think about working abroad? I would have said, yeah, maybe one day. And then here I am having worked in different parts of the world. So you never know what's next. But what you know is that if you work hard for something, something good will happen. I love it.

Okay. What have you come to understand? Like what is the one or two things? And I know that's a big question, but what have you come to understand about humans getting better? And you've come from a sports science perspective, you come from an exercise science, I'm sorry, exercise physiology perspective, a traveler of the world and explore, you've got a predisposition for grit. You've got, um, this ability to get over your skis and be step into a role that seems bigger than what you're capable of and you figure it out. But from, from an actual scientific perspective of studying humans and world-class humans and, uh, humans, um, let me say that better world-class performers.

There might not be good humans, but we're class performers. What are, what are the one or two things that you've come to understand that the rest of us can use maybe in our lives to, to get better as well? I think having seen many people that accomplished incredible things in sport and, and in few other fields uh what i noticed it's you know it is not true that people that accomplish something uh are fearless they're actually full of fears it's you know there's feel of failure all the

time there is fear of not being adequate you know every everybody's got fears they're not fearless but what what i noticed and and that's probably what drives me to a certain extent is is that they accept the fact that it is going not it's not going to be a linear path there's going to be difficulties there might be challenges there might be failures but they accept that hey you know at the end of the day i can look at myself and say i tried but also they accept the fact that no matter what any positive or negative experience that you make on the journey it's going to be a learning experience so that that's how i see it you know i i fail to few take quite a few things still and i've i've done failures in the past and

i'll do in the future but if i can reflect back on those and learn something i i feel i'm better anyway so i i think many of these people don't see failure as uh as a negative and that's that's why they probably have that it's it's the acceptance of the fact that you are on on a journey and failure is part of the journey from a scientific standpoint but by the way marco beautifully said i mean like you're dropping gold dust and sprinkling it all over this so it's wonderful wonderfully insightful and the way that you choose your words to describe it is um is artistically uh done so i the nuance and the texture the way you're describing it speaks as much or even larger to the your deep understanding of the concept so I'm listening and nodding and smiling going oh I love it thanks for that buddy cap this is what I really feel it's I'm not making this up this is our way function

in a way yeah and I can tell like that's that's jumping through this conversation now if you put your science hat on and when you collect data and information from multiple sources, and one of those sources is going to be obviously right in your wheelhouse, like what are the markers, the blood markers, the chemistry markers, the physiological markers to better understand the athlete, or maybe even predict better courses of training. What are you collecting from a science of psychology? How are you collecting information there? Because it's one of the sweet sciences where you can't see it. You can't see psychology. And there's some challenges in that. So what are you guys doing in Qatar in Aspire on the psychology side? Well have a psychology department that covers all those elements.

Of course, you're familiar with all the confidentiality aspects. And my colleagues use a variety of tools, from psychometric tools to one-to-one observational elements, consultations, and all that kind of stuff. So it's very important for our boys because a lot of these activities are targeted to make sure they learn, as well as solving issues that might be impairing performance. But from my personal experiences in previous jobs, also with senior athletes, is as a scientist, I am more inclined to look at measurable things. I like numbers, I like graphs. The use of

psychometric tools has got for me a very important space because allows you to kind of quantify few aspects. When it comes to other elements, I'm not qualified as a psychologist. But the way I probably worked in the past is, you know, I was a coach. I coached a national team. I was a team. I coached a national team. I was a team handball coach. So coaching groups is the way I kind of work with staff and is always the way I kind of work with other people. You need to try to find things that can help the people around you, in front of you, or working parallel to you.

So you need to find what excites them, what can push them. But also you need to find out what the issues are when there are issues. And, you know, it is very, very important to identify what elements can help you avoiding certain conversations or avoiding certain aspects but one of the things that i also seen in in sport is that sometimes there is an over emphasis on on the psychological elements in a way that you know some people think that you guys can can come and fix things quickly like okay these things is not, nothing else is working.

The psychologist will fix it. Like there is a magic wand. It's like a nightmare scenario. Yeah. But that kind of, that's the kind of language that, you know, you hear in the world of sport. Or you see the opposite.

You see a huge reticence in the use of psychology because people go uh you know it's all airy fairy stuff it's hugging trees and you know there is no substance to it so i i kind of sit in the middle i think it depends you know there are elements that can be incredibly helpful at the time and the place but that's the same for every ology you know there are there are elements of physiology that are completely irrelevant in some sports for most of the time. So we do, I think the guys that work here do a pretty good job with all the things that

they have to face. And, you know, we have another challenge here. Most of the psychometric tools that are available in the literature are not validated in Arabic. So you have this challenge of being able to communicate effectively with young athletes that speak English as a second language. So sometimes it becomes very challenging to do things that you would normally do in the Western world here. Yeah, for sure. That's a problem. They don't have an easy job. I think they do very well with the challenges they have.

And, you know, most of our psychologists have been here long enough, so they know this culture very, very well. Very cool. So you once gave a lecture at a Sports Analyna conference, and you talked about the importance of moving coaches to an evidence-based approach. And, you know, okay, so I'm right there with you. I love that concept. And I'm imagining right now somebody in a workforce, and they've got an idea, and they want to pack and they know they're on to something and they passionately want to share that with other people in their organization, maybe their bosses or their bosses' bosses or some other divisions. And they know that if there could be a wider adoption,

there could be a rising tide where everybody benefits. And how do you help people recommend that change who are nervous about that change? You know you're onto something. So I guess the point in question would be, how would you recommend starting the conversation with somebody to move in the direction that you know is beneficial? And you can keep it right in your wheelhouse, which is helping coaches value evidence-based information. I think it comes down, to me it's always coming down to doing the due diligence you know whatever

idea whatever concept first you've got to build okay what knowledge do we have about this that can convince somebody to go forward it's no different from doing investments you know why should I invest in this well there is a bit of history on this stock options that they are likely to go this way and and we know this is this might happen so it makes sense to invest in here so it is no difference so fact finding gathering data gathering information where possible and and you know in sports to me there are two elements that that are. First, is it going to do any harm? Is it going to impair performance or is it going to harm the athlete? So it's not worthwhile, no matter what, no matter how good it is.

And then the other one is, of course, is it legal? Because if it's illegal, it's not worthwhile. But the way I always encourage people if they have a good idea is to, okay, let's build the evidence. And it's not a way of stopping them from progressing. Because I think the process of gathering evidence to justify the intervention allows you to reflect on what actually if is it going to work for real. Sometimes people read alpha things somewhere and they go, oh, this is a good idea. Let's go with it. But but actually they haven't reflected on it properly so by pushing them back and saying okay

why don't you go back and you structure this idea so we build enough evidence so this coach or this director or this manager can actually think oh yeah this is, this is really good. So let's reflect on this. So I go through two steps. First, there is the idea, and then the other one, okay, let's kind of picture it. Let's see how it looks like. Let's gather the evidence, and let's see what are the chances that this thing might work. Some people might say that that might stifle innovation, but probably this kind of filter, in my eyes at. But sometimes you don't have the luxury of time and, and the luxury of patience to, to, to, to exhaust all the options. So you have to be sure that at least one or two of the mad ideas that somebody has are actually going to be manifested in actions. Otherwise, that's it, you're not going to be able to progress any further. Okay, well said.

What are the best ways to quantify load? Well, it's a very good question. I wish I had it because this is the daily battle we have. In some sports, we are able to measure certain things that can give us a pretty good information. For example, if you are an endurance runner, middle distance runner, there is a lot of things that we can measure that can tell us few things. So for example, how long you ran, that gives us information about the volume. Okay, I ran 10K today and I ran 15Ks yesterday. So that tells us how much activity you've done.

Then if we measure the heart, it's going to tell us, okay, but how hard was that run for your heart? And then if we measure speed with GPS, we can go, okay, but how fast were you running as compared to your maximal running? And that was your pace, where you're going slow, where you're going fast. So in some sports, we now have enough information that can help us getting a good picture of what is happening to your body while you train, but also what are the consequences. But in some other sports, we are limited by either the technology or the relevance of the measurements. If I think about acrobatic sports, in gymnastics, you're doing an exercise on the rings and it's like, what are you going to measure there?

You're limited by what the athlete can wear and what you can quantify. In many sports, you're still relying on asking the athlete, how was it. But that only tells you their perception. It doesn't tell you what they've actually done, how hard it was. In other sports like, I don't know, I think about throws, throws events in athletics, you know, javelin throwing. You throw your javelin, the only thing you can really measure is how far you throw the javelin and how many times you do. But javelin throwers do all sorts of other training activities.

What is relevant to measure that is going to help you have a better training prescription? So this is the kind of holy grail. I don't think there is a definitive answer. But the way I look at it and the way we try to look at it here in Aspire is let's quantify what the athletes do and let's look at the consequences on their body. And then we look at how they compete. That gives us three indicators of how things are progressing. And that should help us having better information. So it's a bit of a retrospective analysis uh it's like building the martyr scene you know as somebody gets killed and you have to build what happened before so you learn um so that that that's the way we're doing it at the moment we are trying to document as much as possible

training and we document how the athletes progressed so when we review each individual athlete with the coaching staff we you know we have this okay this is what we have this is what's happened this is where things are going and then the coaches have the expertise to to devise ways of coaching because that's their job you know they we have some excellent coaches here so it's uh i think this is the way we're going but it's a holy grail i don't think anybody has got an answer yeah no sports has got its intricacies its peculiarities and some sports are more fortunate than others because technology allows some measurements in other sports it's you know half pipe snowboard you tell me how to quantify workloads because i you know there's few things we can measure but a whole lot of things that probably don't make sense okay so if we narrow that down to cognitive workload and the the impact on the

nervous system the brain and the nervous system do you have any metrics or ways that you're thinking about cognitive load well that i have to say the brain fascinates me you know is that scenario physiology where i would like to spend the next few years understanding a bit because now the tools to measure and quantify brain activities are becoming more accessible more accurate more precise so i still look at it in in a very uh logical mechanistic way uh because i'm not uh i'm not a psychologist probably but i know that our staff looks a lot into the cognitive load you know that there's a lot of questionnaires or semi-structured interviews that they do uh with the athletes um I think that element is probably kind of well documented. You know, it's about asking at the end of the day,

if I can simplify what psychology does, and apologies for bastardizing it, but at the end of the day, it's about extracting from the person what their feelings are. And, you know, in a very simplistic manner. I know it's more complicated than that. But I think the element that is missing is what is actually happening in the brain. It's, you know, because one thing is their perception or their feeling or their experience of it.

And the other thing is the biology of it it's okay what and the two are completely connected but i don't think we have very good ideas of the biology yet i was hoping yeah i was hoping you'd maybe you were cracking that thing open yeah that that's the that link is fascinating to me, you know, how thoughts drive emotions and how they impact movement and, and behavior. And from an athlete perspective or a mover perspective, we know that when we move up the chain of impact thoughts, thoughts, drive emotions and emotions and thoughts together impact movement. And if we can crack that link open, um, you know, I think it's going to be a 10x benefit of understanding

the human experience but it's not we're not there yet we're just not sadly not yeah sadly not okay so marco um how about this question where does pressure come from uh i think it's mostly self-imposed at times. Sometimes it's external. It might be the peers. It might be the people you work with. Sometimes it's self-imposed. If I reflect on my ways of working,

I think sometimes I self-impose, trust that it's unnecessary. I should probably get better at doing it, at deflecting it. But pressure comes from, you know, everything. When I was working in the UK, there was this huge expectation of success at the Games in London and the different stakeholders and the company. You could feel that, you know, it was tough. There was this huge cloud hanging of pressure

of delivering at the games and then the press and everything else. I don't have the same here. It's a completely different thing. But I think sometimes we over-exaggerate pressure that is around us and that's not healthy. We should probably learn how to diffuse that. That would be a good, healthy thing to do. But sometimes you are in working environments that put a massive amount of pressure. The sporting world is full of pressure. You've got to win.

The moment that you don't win, then you're doing something wrong in the eyes of the managers and the directors so it's uh it's a high pressure environment it's not for everybody a lot of people outside the sporting world think that sport is a glamorous business there's nothing glamorous about it especially when you start losing it's it's glamorous the day after you win but you know the day after you win doesn't last very long because at some point you're going to lose again. I think it's very important to understand how to handle pressure, but I would say that

many times it also comes from the inside. Is there a word or phrase that cuts to the center of what you understand most? And really what I'm looking for is, do you have a philosophy that guides you? I quite like Muhammad Ali quote when he says the will has to be stronger than the skill. So I think in everything we do, and that's one of the traits I actually look in staff when I employ them their willingness to do things and get things done and overcome adversity and and you know

and be open to try things it's to me more important than the skill per se. Who said that? Muhammad Ali. Oh, Muhammad Ali. Okay. Yeah, good. I've never heard that quote from him. That's phenomenal. So to me, the will is to be stronger than the skill. Is there a word or a phrase that cuts to what you

understand most? No, well, understand most uh no well what that's probably a combination of things rather than a word or a phrase it's i think the main thing is being fair honest and good it's good because good comes back to you so if you do good if you're honest uh sometimes you might hurt people you know probably some people would describe me as being brutally honest i because i'm brutally honest with myself too uh and sometimes being brutally honest you know my heart people but that's not, you know, long term. I think it's honesty. So honesty to yourself and, you know, honesty and humbleness, it's important. You know, knowing what you don't know and knowing that you have to learn something every day is very important to me. And then, Markov, we dig under the surface and we say, you know, as a man, what are you searching for? What are you most hungry for? What is driving you more than anything else? How do you respond to those thoughts? I think my curious mind drives me to not being afraid of exploring.

So what I'm looking for is to try to make the most out of my life. So the most, probably my greatest adventure in life has been life so far. So what drives me is to look for experiences and learn and move on and progress, keep progressing. I see this as a journey. I don't see an end. I don't see, okay, once I get to do that, that's it, I'm done. I can pack up and I'm done. I see it as a journey where I'll try to do as much as I possibly can with the opportunities that will come my way until time comes that I'll have to leave. And to me, it's a very important legacy.

I hope that when time comes, I have left something useful behind. How will you know? I will never know. That's the beauty of that. But what I can probably think of, well, I have family, so I would hope my child will learn something from the experiences he has with me and looking at me.

So I hope I do something good there. But the other thing is, you know, in a very simple manner, I can go, okay, this is my experiences, and then whoever will look at them, they can decide to take some, use some, improve most of it, or completely skip it. But at least even the people that will skip it would have learned that

there were things that were not useful so that is still learning there so i i hope i i leave my experiences behind for people to to move on and do better i love it and then for people like yourself that are working hard or even you know some of the athletes that you're working with that are really pushing in and they have a particular way that they want to carry themselves and be in relationships and they're working their asses off to get better um at their craft and at relationships what is the strategies that you recommend for recovery um yeah i struggle i struggle with that you know you go through phases where it's so um intensively embedded in what you do that you forget about the need to recover for me it's recently what i found is that i need external interests that that keep me you know focused on something else um so for athletes

actually today i was doing a training session with an athlete one of our athletes one of the senior athletes that is currently injured and and i was explaining to him that he needs to find something that rocks his boat because he cannot spend his day just moving from a bed to a training venue and then back to the bed and then in between have three meals you know he's got to think about the future he's got to think about himself and he's got to develop other interests also to keep his sanity so that that's the kind of advice i always gave to people that i saw really too narrow focused on their performances, you know, find something that excites you. If it's painting, if it's listening to the

music, if it's reading, if it's doing whatever, just do it. Cooking. At the moment, what's rocking my boat is triathlon. I have embarked in training. I haven't trained for many years in a structured manner, and now I've got my bike, I go swim every day, and I alternate a swim and a run, and it's really helping me. I find it really therapeutic in de-stressing, de-compressing. So, yeah, my advice would be to find something. Okay. Brilliant. Marco,

thank you so much for like just diving in and being authentic and, and transparent and really, you know, searching to find the right words to match your inner experience and your, your insights and your understanding. So this has been, been this has been fantastic i just have one question left which is how do you think about articulate or even define the concept of mastery it's interesting i think it's when it's when you see somebody doing something that is wow, not only in the execution of what they do, but in the passion they transmit in the journey. So, you know, it can be a painter, it can be an artist, it can be a sports person. So it's what they do, but also if they transpire this deep knowledge

and deep passion about what they do and how much effort they put in it, to me, that's mastery. And I've seen it in so many of the athletes or the people I had the pleasure to work with. There were some masters in their fields, and you you could see that yeah is that do you think that there's a one habit or that masters of craft have um shared with you that have helped them be passionate i i think is the acceptance that there is always the possibility to improve that that's what i kind of observed in in people that i think are masters in their fields or in their activities. This thing that they accept that you can always add something, you can always learn something, or you can always develop something better and the application to find that little thing that is better.

I think that's what I learned from these people. God, i love it where can where can people follow your work um i i still try to publish few things every once in a while um research-wise so all the research work that we do here at aspire academy we try to to publish it in peer-reviewed journals of course um i have a blog but the time dedicated to it it's minimal i think this year i only wrote two blog articles so every once in a while when time comes i might write something there and then i write i use twitter these days which i find incredibly interesting for communicating despite the 140 characters that go in it so these are the three

places okay good and your twitter handle is marco underscore canarly score cardinal yes yeah and that's c-a-r-d-i-n-a-l-e okay good and so for everyone listening thank you and marco thank you so much for the time and the insights. I mean, there's just pearls of wisdom all over this. So folks can follow along for this conversation by downloading on iTunes and under Finding Mastery. And then you can also go to our website, findingmastery.net. And you can also go to our community that is being built.

It's called findingmastery.net forward slash community and um you can find me on social at michael gervais twitter and at finding master on instagram and um marco no books in the in the near future nothing like that for you well the book the strength and conditioning book um biological principles and practical application we are we are thinking about a second edition at the moment. You are, yeah. But we'll see how that pans out in the next few months. Okay, good, good, good, good. Okay, Marco, thank you so much for your time and sharing your insight and pearls of wisdom.

Just so good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, take care. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no- cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button

wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday, punch over to findingmastery.com

slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick

reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.