Just A Cup

n this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with Derek Covington, one of Canada's most experienced Olympic and high-performance sport leaders.

Derek's career has taken him from being a national-level track and field athlete chasing his own Olympic dream to helping build the systems behind athletes competing on the world's biggest stage. His high-performance career has spanned nine Olympic Games and included leadership roles with Athletics Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee.

As Director of Olympic Preparation with the Canadian Olympic Committee, Derek helped national sport organizations develop customized preparation strategies designed to give Canadian athletes and coaches the best opportunity to perform when it mattered most.

But this conversation goes beyond medals and podiums.

Bryan and Derek explore an important question facing sports organizations today:

Can you pursue extraordinary performance while still protecting the well-being of the people responsible for producing it?

Derek believes the answer isn't choosing between performance and well-being. The best systems recognize that the two can—and should—strengthen one another.

The conversation explores what Derek has learned about creating high-performance environments, supporting athletes through pressure and adversity, developing trust, and understanding the individual behind the performance.

They also discuss mindfulness and self-awareness. Derek's own journey into mindfulness changed the way he thinks about performance. Rather than treating mindfulness as simply another technique, he sees it as a way of helping athletes and leaders become more aware of how they respond to pressure, uncertainty, distraction, and difficult moments.

Another major theme is the evolution of athlete development.

Athletes today have more information, technology, resources, and autonomy than ever before. Derek discusses why the future of athlete development may require moving beyond traditional centralized systems toward environments that are more personalized and responsive to the individual. His current work through NStride continues exploring new approaches to human performance.

Derek and Bryan also talk about coaching, leadership, mental health, organizational culture, measurement, and why simply adding a wellness program isn't enough if the environment creating the stress never changes.

That's where this conversation gets interesting.

High performance isn't simply asking people to do more.

Sometimes the better question is whether we've created the right environment for them to become more.

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Host: Bryan Fetzer

Guest: Derek Covington, MSc — Olympic and High Performance Leader, Founder & CEO of NStride, and Technical & High Performance Director with Athlétisme Québec.

Derek previously spent seven years with Athletics Canada, including responsibility for the national team program, and later held Olympic-preparation leadership positions with the Canadian Olympic Committee. His work has increasingly focused on building environments where performance, mental well-being, mindfulness, and athlete development operate together rather than as competing priorities.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow Just A Cup, leave a rating or review, and share the episode with an athlete, coach, performance professional, or leader interested in creating healthier—and better—high-performance environments.

#JustACup #DerekCovington #Olympics #HighPerformance #AthleteWellbeing #Mindfulness #MentalPerformance #AthleteDevelopment #Leadership #TeamCanada #Resilience #Bleav

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In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with Lt. Col. (Ret.) Ken “Air Force Ken” Corigliano, an Air Force veteran, executive, world-record athlete, author, entrepreneur, and competitor whose life has been built around tackling challenges most people would probably prefer to watch from a safe distance.

Ken’s story is anything but ordinary.

His career includes decades of service in the United States Air Force, intelligence and technology leadership, deployments overseas, elite endurance competition, obstacle-course racing, American Ninja Warrior, and becoming a finalist on Netflix’s Ultimate Beastmaster. His current work also reaches into AI, technology, innovation, human performance, and decision-making.

But the accomplishments are only part of the story.

Bryan and Ken explore the adversity behind them—including a devastating cycling accident that resulted in significant injuries and a traumatic brain injury while Ken was pursuing elite-level triathlon. He would later continue military service while navigating the physical and cognitive effects of those injuries.

That experience creates a much deeper conversation about resilience.

Ken’s philosophy isn't built around needing to be the most talented person in the room. It is about doing the best you can with what you have, continually improving, and refusing to allow one difficult moment to determine what happens next.

Bryan and Ken talk about goal setting, discipline, preparation, stress, recovery, confidence, purpose, and the value of pursuing difficult things intentionally.

They also explore how physical training can become more than fitness. For Ken, athletics became a way to understand and train his response to stress—creating controlled challenges that prepare the body and mind to deal with uncontrolled ones.

Another major theme is the importance of the people around you.

Ken has consistently emphasized that high achievement is rarely an individual accomplishment. Mentors, family, teammates, friends, coaches, and people willing to believe in you can dramatically alter the direction of a life.

Today, Ken continues applying those lessons across technology, AI, human performance, entrepreneurship, and decision-making. His official work includes the development of World's Best Tracker and speaking on decision advantage in the age of AI.

This conversation is for athletes, veterans, entrepreneurs, leaders, coaches, and anyone who has ever wondered whether a setback means the story is over.

Ken's life offers a pretty clear answer.

Not even close.

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Host: Bryan Fetzer

Guest: Lt. Col. (Ret.) Ken “Air Force Ken” Corigliano — USAF veteran, executive, world-record athlete, entrepreneur, author, speaker, and human-performance competitor.

#JustACup #AirForceKen #KenCorigliano #Resilience #MentalToughness #USAirForce #HumanPerformance #AmericanNinjaWarrior #OvercomingAdversity #Leadership #Bleav

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In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with Jamey Mroz, Founder and CEO of Mroz Leadership Consulting, for a conversation about leadership, mental performance, team culture, and what separates good performers from great ones.

Jamey's career has taken him through some of the highest levels of American football. Before launching his leadership consulting business, he served as Director of Sports Science for the Cleveland Browns and worked with organizations and programs including the Cincinnati Bengals, New York Giants, New York Jets, Vanderbilt, Boston College, Harvard, and others.

Those experiences gave him a front-row seat to something that applies far beyond football:

Talent is important. But talent doesn't automatically create performance.

Bryan and Jamey explore the mental skills that allow athletes, executives, and teams to perform consistently when expectations and pressure rise.

They discuss confidence, self-awareness, resilience, accountability, emotional control, focus, and mindset management—skills Jamey now teaches athletes and business leaders through his consulting and coaching work. His approach includes identifying mental skills used by elite athletes and translating them into practical tools for executives and organizations.

A major part of the conversation centers on leadership and culture.

Jamey often uses the phrase “Attitude reflects leadership.” If the energy, attitude, communication, or accountability inside a team isn't where it should be, leadership has to look at the environment it is creating.

Bryan and Jamey also talk about trust. Great leaders don't simply hold a title—they develop credibility through their competence, how they treat people, the standards they establish, and the consistency with which they show up.

The conversation moves naturally between the locker room and the boardroom because, as Jamey's career has shown, the scoreboard may change but many of the human dynamics do not.

Athletes need clarity.

Employees need clarity.

Teams need trust.

People need to know what is expected of them—and they need leaders willing to hold themselves to the same standards they expect from everyone else.

The episode also explores mental toughness and why it shouldn't be confused with simply ignoring problems or pushing harder. Real mental toughness includes learning how to respond to adversity, control what you can control, manage pressure, maintain confidence, and reset when something goes wrong.

Whether you're coaching a team, running a company, leading a department, developing athletes, or simply trying to become a better leader yourself, this conversation offers practical lessons from someone who has spent his career studying performance from inside the arena.

Different scoreboard. Same people problems.

And fortunately, those can be coached too.

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Guest: Jamey Mroz — Founder & CEO of Mroz Leadership Consulting, former Cleveland Browns Director of Sports Science, leadership coach and mental-performance consultant.Recommended Episode Title

#JustACup #JameyMroz #Leadership #MentalToughness #MentalPerformance #TeamCulture #HighPerformance #ExecutiveCoaching #AthleteMindset #NFL #Bleav

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In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with Gary Miller, an Olympic ski coach, entrepreneur, author, and longtime student of elite performance.

Gary has spent decades around athletes competing at the highest levels of sport. That experience shaped a simple belief: great performance usually isn't one massive breakthrough. It is the accumulation of small decisions, habits, and advantages repeated consistently.

Gary calls it the Point.Zero.One advantage—the idea that the difference between good and great can come down to a fraction of a second or a seemingly small behavior that compounds over time.

Bryan and Gary explore what athletes at the Olympic level understand about preparation, resilience, recovery, focus, and responding to adversity.

Talent matters. But talent alone doesn't determine who succeeds.

Gary has coached athletes ranging from developing competitors to Olympians, and his experience has shown him that one of the biggest differences between average and elite performers is what happens after something goes wrong. Great performers learn from adversity instead of allowing a bad performance, injury, or setback to define them.

The conversation also looks at an often-overlooked part of high performance: recovery.

Athletes build recovery into their training because they understand that constantly pushing harder eventually reduces performance. Gary believes executives, entrepreneurs, coaches, and other high performers can learn a lot from that approach.

Bryan and Gary discuss energy management, sleep, daily routines, light exposure, circadian rhythm, travel, and the biological side of performing consistently.

Gary's work with HumanCharger USA has also led him deeper into the relationship between light exposure, the body's internal clock, alertness, energy, and performance. HumanCharger is designed as a portable bright-light device intended to support circadian alignment and alertness.

The conversation ultimately comes back to a principle that applies far beyond Olympic sport:

Performance isn't something you suddenly turn on when the pressure arrives. It's something you build long before that moment.

For athletes, coaches, executives, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in becoming a little better every day, this cup has plenty in it.

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Host: Bryan Fetzer

Guest: Gary Miller — Olympic Team Coach, entrepreneur, author, performance coach, and creator of the Point.Zero.One Performance Model.

#JustACup #GaryMiller #PeakPerformance #Olympics #Resilience #Recovery #MentalPerformance #HighPerformance #Coaching #AthleteMindset #HumanCharger #Bleav

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Dr. Amber Murphy: The Science of Speed, Sprint Mechanics & Injury Prevention

In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with Dr. Amber Murphy, Ph.D., CEO of CompuSport and co-author of The Science of Speed: Practical Applications for Track and Field & Team Sport Coaches and Athletes.

Amber has spent more than two decades working in sports biomechanics and alongside the late Dr. Ralph Mann, an Olympic silver medalist and pioneer in the scientific study of sprinting and human performance. Today, she continues that work through CompuSport, helping athletes and coaches better understand movement using performance data, proprietary AI, and 3D modeling.

Bryan and Amber dig into one of the biggest questions in sports: What actually makes someone fast?

The conversation explores sprint mechanics from the start through maximum velocity and fatigue, why two athletes running the same time may need completely different corrections, and why coaching speed involves much more than simply telling someone to move their legs faster.

They also discuss the relationship between biomechanics and injury prevention, including why poor movement patterns can contribute to hamstring and Achilles problems. Amber explains how objective data can help coaches identify what may be limiting an athlete and build a more targeted plan rather than relying entirely on observation or guesswork.

The episode also explores talent identification. What characteristics indicate speed potential? How much can mechanics be changed? And how should coaches balance what the data tells them with the very human side of developing an athlete?

A major part of the conversation centers on The Science of Speed, written by Amber and the late Dr. Ralph Mann. The book translates more than 30 years of original research on elite athletes into practical applications covering sprint mechanics, starts and transitions, hurdling, fatigue, relays, team and winter sports, injury prevention, and talent identification.

Whether you coach track and field, football, soccer, rugby, baseball, or another sport where speed matters—and let's face it, speed tends to be pretty useful—this episode offers a much deeper look at what athletes and coaches can learn when experience and science work together.

Host: Bryan Fetzer

CompuSport works with athletes and coaches to analyze movement and identify performance limitations using athlete data, proprietary AI, 3D modeling, injury-prevention insights, and individualized improvement plans.

#JustACup #TheScienceOfSpeed #AmberMurphy #SportsScience #Biomechanics #SprintTraining #SpeedDevelopment #TrackAndField #AthleteDevelopment #InjuryPrevention #CompuSport #Bleav

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In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with Pauline Leung, founder of Flow Grounds, Certified High Performance Coach, mindfulness teacher, and former longtime L’Oréal executive.

Pauline brings a unique perspective to performance and leadership. She spent 19 years at L’Oréal, building an international career across Europe, Asia, and the United States. She rose from Marketing Intern to General Manager by age 30 and later moved into Human Resources, giving her firsthand experience with leadership, organizational culture, pressure, and the demands placed on high-performing professionals.

Today, her work focuses on helping people perform at a high level without losing their health, energy, purpose, or sense of self along the way.

Bryan and Pauline explore an idea that sounds simple but is often ignored: you cannot consistently perform at your best if you are constantly depleted.

The conversation looks at the connection between energy and performance, why recovery matters for leaders just as much as it does for athletes, and how mindfulness can become a practical performance tool rather than something reserved for meditation rooms and quiet weekends.

Pauline explains why high performers often become very good at achieving while becoming less skilled at recognizing what their success is costing them. The constant meetings, deadlines, expectations, decisions, travel, and pressure may not look like physical training, but they still create a very real demand on the body and mind.

That leads Bryan and Pauline into a deeper conversation about mindful leadership—developing the awareness to understand your own energy, emotions, habits, and reactions before they begin influencing everyone around you.

They also discuss Pauline’s decision to leave a successful corporate career and build something of her own. After nearly two decades at L’Oréal, she chose to take what she had learned about leadership, high performance, mindfulness, and wellbeing and apply it in a different way through Flow Grounds.

The episode explores purpose, confidence, career transitions, entrepreneurship, and what happens when your definition of success begins to change.

Pauline’s philosophy brings together high-performance practices, mindfulness, energy management, and real-world leadership experience with a simple goal: helping people succeed in a way they can actually sustain.

For executives, entrepreneurs, coaches, athletes, and anyone who has ever caught themselves saying, “I’ll slow down after this week,” this conversation may hit close to home.

Because somehow, there is always another week.

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Host: Bryan Fetzer

Guest: Pauline Leung — Founder of Flow Grounds, Certified High Performance Coach, mindfulness teacher, and former L’Oréal General Manager and HR leader.

Pauline describes leadership as something that consumes physical, mental, and emotional energy much like athletic performance. Her work encourages leaders to treat recovery, sleep, movement, mindfulness, and intentional habits as performance strategies rather than luxuries.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow Just A Cup, leave a rating or review, and share the episode with a leader, entrepreneur, coach, or high performer who could use a reminder that success works a lot better when you still have some energy left to enjoy it.

#JustACup #PaulineLeung #HighPerformance #MindfulLeadership #Leadership #Mindfulness #Burnout #EnergyManagement #ExecutiveLeadership #SustainableSuccess #FlowGrounds #Bleav

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n this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer sits down with former professional footballer Duncan Watmore for a conversation that goes well beyond what happened on the pitch.

Duncan’s path through football was never exactly conventional. He came through non-league football with Altrinchambefore earning his opportunity with Sunderland, eventually competing in the Premier League and representing England at the U20 and U21 levels. His career would later include stops at Middlesbrough, Millwall, and Rotherham United.

But some of the most important parts of Duncan’s story happened when he was not playing.

Bryan and Duncan talk openly about experiencing major ACL injuries, the long road back, and what rehabilitation demands mentally as well as physically. Returning from injury is one thing. Learning to trust your body again, dealing with uncertainty, watching teammates continue without you, and rebuilding confidence can be an entirely different battle. Sunderland documented Duncan’s return from his first ACL rupture and later his comeback from a second ACL injury.

That leads to a larger conversation about resilience. Is resilience simply being tough enough to keep going? Or is real resilience knowing when to adapt, ask for help, change direction, and redefine what success looks like?

Duncan also shares how education gave him something outside football to continue developing. Alongside his playing career, he earned a first-class degree in Economics and Business Management and later continued his education at the postgraduate level, adding another dimension to his preparation for life after the game.

The conversation takes on even more relevance as Duncan enters his next chapter. Following his retirement from professional football, he joined PEAK4 as Head of Elite Performance and Business Development, helping translate principles from elite sport into practical strategies around performance, recovery, resilience, leadership, and wellbeing.

Bryan and Duncan explore how an athlete handles the transition when the sport that shaped so much of their identity is suddenly no longer the daily routine. They discuss purpose, identity, leadership, sustainable high performance, and why the lessons learned through difficult seasons may ultimately become more valuable than the easy ones.

For athletes dealing with injury, young players wondering what comes next, coaches trying to better understand the people behind the performance, or leaders navigating their own career transition, there is a lot in this conversation.

Sometimes the next chapter is not about replacing the last one. It is about using everything it taught you.

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Host: Bryan Fetzer

Guest: Duncan Watmore — Former Premier League and England youth international footballer; Head of Elite Performance & Business Development at PEAK4

Duncan joined PEAK4 following his retirement from professional football. His work now focuses on helping individuals, leaders, and organizations translate lessons from elite sport into sustainable physical, mental, and emotional performance.

#JustACup #DuncanWatmore #PremierLeague #Football #Resilience #ACLRecovery #MentalPerformance #AthleteDevelopment #Leadership #LifeAfterSport #PEAK4 #Bleav

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In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer welcomes Vin Infante, LMSW, a mental-performance and executive coach, licensed psychotherapist, entrepreneur, and former FDNY firefighter.

Vin’s career has placed him in some very different rooms—from mental-health facilities and therapy sessions to the firehouse and conversations with founders, executives, and organizational leaders. Those experiences have shaped his straightforward approach to understanding pressure, adversity, identity, and sustainable success.

Bryan and Vin discuss the important relationship between mental health and mental performance. While the two are connected, they are not interchangeable. Mental performance is not about ignoring stress, suppressing emotions, or pretending everything is fine. It begins with understanding what is happening internally and developing the awareness and tools to respond more effectively.

The conversation also examines what resilience really looks like. Resilience is often portrayed as simply pushing harder, but Vin explains why genuine resilience also requires honesty, recovery, perspective, and the willingness to address what is happening beneath the surface.

Vin introduces his TMC Method, which combines elements of therapy, mentoring, and coaching. Rather than forcing every person or situation into a single approach, the model helps determine what kind of support is needed at a particular moment. Sometimes a person needs to understand the past. Sometimes they need guidance from someone who has walked a similar road. And sometimes they need a clear plan for moving forward.

Bryan and Vin also explore how identity affects behavior, decision-making, confidence, and leadership. For high performers, success can create its own pressure. The higher someone climbs, the fewer people may fully understand what they are carrying. Without the right support and self-awareness, achievement can gradually become exhaustion.

Other topics include emotional regulation, burnout, self-talk, personal responsibility, leadership under pressure, and the difference between appearing strong and actually becoming stronger.

This episode offers an honest and practical conversation for athletes, coaches, founders, executives, and anyone trying to perform at a high level while protecting their mental well-being. There is plenty to unpack—fortunately, it still fits inside one cup.

Host: Bryan Fetzer

This conversation is intended for education and general awareness. It is not a substitute for individualized therapy, diagnosis, or professional mental-health care.

Enjoyed the episode? Follow Just A Cup, leave a rating or review, and share it with someone who may need the reminder that strength is not about carrying everything alone.

For guest suggestions, partnerships, or show inquiries, connect with Bryan through the Bleav show page or his social-media channels.

#JustACup #VinInfante #MentalPerformance #MentalHealth #MentalResilience #Leadership #ExecutiveCoaching #EmotionalRegulation #Burnout #HighPerformance #SelfAwareness #PersonalGrowth #Bleav

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In this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer talks with Daniel Levy (CEO, Propel Pro) about leveling access to high-quality coaching: connecting athletes with top coaches, speeding up feedback cycles, and giving clubs a scalable way to support development year-round. We cover platform design, coach QA, parent education, and smart pilots with youth organizations. Daniel also shares lessons from recent partnerships (e.g., Vermont Soccer Association/ODP and collaboration with Manhattan SC coach Ray Selvadurai) and how Propel Pro is gearing up for a broader 2026 rollout.

00:00 – Welcome + the gap Propel Pro set out to solve (access + timely feedback)

04:00 – Building an “all-sports” marketplace without chaos: coach vetting, SLAs, and quality control

10:30 – Youth club pilots that work: Vermont SA/ODP and the Manhattan SC collaboration playbook

18:20 – What parents actually need to know (expectations, timelines, and avoiding overtraining)

24:45 – Coach enablement: feedback templates, video norms, and milestone tracking

31:00 – Pricing, traction, and the road to a larger 2026 launch window propelpros.com

38:10 – Rapid-fire: favorite youth-development drills, metrics that matter, best advice for multi-sport kids

44:30 – Where to find Propel Pro + how to collaborate (clubs, DOCs, and coaches)

Note: Timestamps are approximate—adjust once you finalize chapters.

Propel Pro (official site): https://www.propelpros.com/ – mission, early access, and staff.

News/Partners: Vermont Soccer Association + ODP; collaboration with Ray Selvadurai/Manhattan SC.

Update post (Daniel Levy): recent partnerships & platform vision.

Daniel Levy (LinkedIn): background + company updates. LinkedIn

Bleav – Just A Cup (show home): https://bleav.com/shows/just-a-cup/ Bleav

YouTube – @coachfetzjustacup: https://www.youtube.com/@coachfetzjustacup youtube.com

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n this episode of Just A Cup, host Bryan Fetzer talks with Volleybird co-founders Cassandra Toroian and Tracy Thomas about launching a sports-lifestyle brand that actually serves players: curated boxes of premium gear, wellness, and recovery picks—delivered on a simple cadence—across tennis, pickleball, padel, and golf. We dig into product curation, unboxing delight vs. utility, and how community feedback shapes the next drop. The duo also shares how Ruley, the E-Referee uses AI to translate ref-speak into plain English so games keep moving (and friendships stay intact). We hit startup lessons, supply chain sanity, female-founder realities, and why coffee-shop brainstorms with athletes are an unfair advantage.

00:00 – Welcome + why lifestyle brands win when they solve real on-court problems

03:00 – Volleybird origin story: from player frustrations to curated surprise boxes (sports covered + cadence)

09:30 – What’s in the box? Balancing premium, practical, and “fun” (and how feedback loops work)

16:45 – Ruley, the E-Referee: clearing up rules instantly so games don’t stall (tennis/pickleball/padel/golf)

24:15 – Community building and content: why short how-tos and unboxings convert casuals into fans instagram.com+1

31:00 – Startup realities: supply chain, seasonality, and pricing a bi-monthly experience that lasts

38:20 – Female-founder insights: momentum, mentorship, and measuring traction

44:10 – Rapid-fire: favorite court/course essentials, apps they love, and the best product feedback they ever got

47:30 – Where to find Volleybird & Ruley + how to collaborate

Volleybird (official): https://volleybird.shop/ VolleyBird

How Volleybird Works (cadence, sports, subscription): https://volleybird.shop/pages/how-it-works VolleyBird

Volleybird Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/volleybird_shop/ instagram.com

Ruley, the E-Referee (AI rules assistant overview): founder/brand posts & updates LinkedIn

Cassandra Toroian bio/overview (background + ventures): https://dontbuythebull.io/about-cassandra-toroian/Cassandra Toroian

Tracy Thomas (profile): https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-thomas71 LinkedIn

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YouTube – @coachfetzjustacup: https://www.youtube.com/@coachfetzjustacup

Host: Bryan Fetzer • Guests: Cassandra Toroian & Tracy Thomas (Co-Founders, Volleybird; Co-Founders, Ruley)

Like the episode? Rate & review on Apple/Spotify—that’s how other players and coaches find us. Apple Podcasts

Guest suggestions or partnerships: DM Bryan on Instagram @coachfetz or connect on LinkedIn. instagram.com+1

Volleybird, sports subscription box, pickleball box, tennis subscription box, golf gift box, padel gear box, Ruley E-Referee, AI sports rules, women founders in sports tech, Bryan Fetzer, Bleav podcast

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