Demystifying Mental Toughness is for people who want to reach their goals faster and are curious what high performing athletes and professionals do to fulfil their potential. David Charlton shares insights, strategies and stories from leading athletes, coaches, psychologists and specialists to help you perform to your optimum level on a more consistent basis. If you're a motivated athlete, coach, sport psychologist, mental game coach or executive listen in for proven and practical advice in this podcast.

Nick Grantham is a performance enhancement specialist. His career spans four Olympic cycles and he is a founding member of the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association and an accredited Strength and Conditioning Coach (ASCC). He has become recognised as a specialist in athletic preparation and has a wealth of knowledge in the physical preparation and injury rehabilitation of high performance athletes at the most elite levels; including professional sport, Olympic, Commonwealth, European, and World Championship standards.

Nick has worked closely with professional, National Governing Bodies and home institute medical teams assisting in the management, monitoring and implementation of injury management programmes. He continues to develop his knowledge of advanced training concepts and evidence based training principles. A sought after 'expert' he has presented seminars and practical workshops for the Football Association, BASEM, British Olympic Association and UK Strength & Conditioning Association.

In this episode, Nick and David go on to discuss where highly motivated and hard-working people can go wrong, challenges that they face and the importance of rest and recovery to optimise their performance levels. Nick goes on to share helpful information around the recovery pyramid which provides a structure for tailoring interventions and practical solutions. If rest and recovery is something you can improve on this is well worth a listen!

Essential Learning Points From This Episode

• Fatigue is multifactorial both physiological and psycho-social.

• In team sports the individuals needs can sometimes be ignored, an ice bath doesn't work for everyone.

• Look after your sleep, take care of your nutrition and body management first then look at other things such as compression garments, hydrotherapy…

• Be brilliant at the basics!

• If you can find ways to relax you're going to make better decisions when you train and compete.

• Being professional around rest and recovery can help the longevity of an athlete's career and help them maintain consistency of performance.

• Coaching messages and the organisational culture, as well as where athletes seek out messages can impact their perceptions around rest and recovery.

• Endurance athletes can be obsessed with putting in the miles where resting up or doing a short session may be a better answer sometimes.

• Athletes and support staff can sometimes lose sight of what is important and what actually drives performance.

• Look to monitor and measure with a training diary recording your day to day thoughts and feelings.

• Ask yourself the question - how do my current recovery strategies make me feel?

Useful Resources:

The Strength And Conditioning Bible