Welcome to Strong Girl Talk, where we dive into the latest in sports science, performance, and well-being—all with a focus on women and girls in sport. This week Sasha and Molly talk about their routines through Sasha’s 5 Tenants for Living a High Performance Life.

Reminder: We have preorders open for Power Up: A Young Woman’s Guide to Winning with Sports Nutrition by Stevie Lyn Smith and The Mirror Diaries: Finding Grace plus the accompanying workbook by Vanessa Coulbeck on StrongGirlPublishing.com now!

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📋✅ This week is also about routines, how to form new ones and how to break bad ones. Sasha and Molly talk about their routines, through Sasha’s Tenants for a High Performance life (you heard them talk about back on this episode about sport as a human right).

What are the tenets for a high performance life?

* Sleep Soundly

* Feed The Machine

* Get Moving

* Be Intentional

* Engineer your own Excellence

We dive into our habits for each of these using the research from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit - how you need at least 21 days to try something to start to create a new habit. Plus, Shane Parrish’s, The Science of Habit formation and Change.

We also talk about what happens when you fall off the new habit forming routine and the use of self-compassion (Don’t forget to check out Vanessa Coulbeck’s new book, Finding Grace, all about self-compassion and make sure you order the workbook that goes with it too!) And of course when it comes to Feeding the Machine Stong Girl Publishing Author Stevie Smith has a great book, Power Up, coming out shortly sharing her wisdom about how to feed your machine!

Remember, social media makes us think that everyone else is perfect all the time with their habits, but it’s just not true. As Neal Henderson once said ‘weaponize your strengths’ - so let’s start with what’s working well in your life and then pick one thing you’d like to work on.

🎾🏃‍♀️🚵🏻‍♀️🏉Sports Highlights:

Before we dive into the professional sports highlights, with cross-country season starting at many schools across Canada, Sasha put together some free resources. Plans for elementary, middle, and high school, plus a weekly video to give you some additional ideas for practice.

What a final at the US Open. This year, both the men’s and women’s champions were the defending 2024 Champions. Aryna Sabelenka took top spot to Amanda Anisimova.

The Rugby 15’s world championships continue with quarter finals this weekend. Canada is set to take on Australia, who beat out the US for the last quarter final spot, this Saturday. Top seed, England, take on Scotland Sunday afternoon.

UCI Mountain Bike World Championships continue in Switzerland. One of our favourite riders of all time, Kate Courtney, won the women’s marathon. After we recorded this episode, the women’s short track took place in Zermatt and there were Canadians on three of four podiums. Congrats to Isabella Holmgren defending her U23 title and Jen Jackson won the bronze in elite women's.

Sasha is heading to the World Athletics World Championships in Tokyo, Japan. Competition gets underway on Saturday. Sasha’s first event coverage will be of the women’s marathon. Make sure to follow her on instagram for daily updates.

A few new preorders have dropped on Strong Girl Publishing, don’t miss out!

Remember you can follow Molly and Sasha on Social Media including:

Molly - @mollyjhurford @stronggirlpublishing

Sasha - @SGollishRuns @Yellow_Running_Shoes

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