Mastering the Mind Podcast

Today we welcome double Olympian athlete, Marilyn Okoro, to the podcast. Marilyn takes us through where it all started and explains to us how she ended up in track and field. We then talk about Marilyn’s experiences competing at her first ever Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and what it was like being awarded a bronze medal nearly a decade later for the 4x400m event due to other teams being disqualified. This lead us to talk about issues related to doping in athletics and the adverse repercussions this can have for the honest and clean athletes such as Marilyn. We then go onto explore Marilyn’s experience with injury and how she managed to cope during this mentally draining period in which she competed whilst in pain. We then go onto speak about Marilyn’s experience seeing a sport psychologist and other various support systems which helped her throughout her career. We finish off by talking about how Marilyn is experiencing this transition period she is currently going through after having recently retired just a few months ago from elite sports.

We cannot thank Marilyn enough for being so open and honest when speaking about her experiences and the realities of being a professional athlete as well as how she is currently coping with the transition out of elite sports through her recent retirement. A HUGE INSPIRATION! Thank you Marilyn!

Hello everyone, today we welcome professional table tennis player and Paralympian, Jack Hunter-Spivey to the podcast who is set to compete this week at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics! ✅Topics Discussed:

🏓Growing up with cerebral palsy & how he fell in love with the sport of table tennis. 🗣Encounter with Tony Edge who taught Jack to love his disability, he was determined to make it at the highest level.

Hi guys, today we have a huge episode for you as we welcome Tessa Wullaert to the podcast!

⚽️ Tessa’s journey in becoming Belgium’s all-time top scorer & captain. 

In today’s episode, we welcome professional wheelchair tennis player, James Shaw, to the podcast.

Hi guys! Today we welcome english judoka, James Austin, to the podcast.

🥋How James got into Judo & how he went through the ranks, to then competing at the highest stage at the London 2012 Olympics .

We really enjoyed this episode as James asked us to share with him our experiences regarding with pressure and sports injuries as well as what our aims were with the podcast and what we hoped to achieve in the future, creating a lovely venue for discussion. Thank you so much for your time James, it was an honour.

Today we welcome Olympian Andreas Vazaios. Andreas has represented Greece in the London 2012 & Rio 2016 Olympics & in many other major european & international events.

🌱The growth mindset he has learned to develop, helping him cope with the pressures of competing for & representing his country during the OLY Games 🇬🇷

Ciao everybody! Today we're going international by welcoming Alessia Trost to the podcast!

🌎Experience of consistently representing Italy at major events such as european & world championships & has also competed at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Today we welcome Natalie Allport to the podcast. Natalie is an athlete, entrepreneur and former team Canada snowboarder!

🇨🇦How she got into competing in snowboarding, the dangers of the sport & the reasons why she pre-maturely retired.

WE. ARE. BACK. After weeks of grinding on university assignments, we are back with a FRESH episode! In this episode, we simply just take the time to catch up and talk about what has been going on in each other's life lately. We also talk about what type of sport psychologists we'd like to be in the future and what philosophy we resonate the most with for the moment (spoiler, we're the complete opposite). We then go onto discuss the topic of our research projects that we're super excited to work on over the summer and through which we hopefully make an impact to the sport psychology literature when completed! God it feels good to be back after 4 weeks and we're super excited to release the next guest episodes we've got lined up for you in the coming weeks! Take care guys!

Hello guys! Today we are welcoming Joey Hewitt to the podcast. Joey is a basketball players who’s played high level basketball back in the States being one of the most decorated alumni to graduate from Whitman College. He decided to pursue his basketball career playing in Australia, however, due to the arrival of COVID, his basketball season was ended pre-maturely. He has since moved to the UK to finish his studies by undertaking a Master’s degree at Loughborough University. In this episode we talk about Joey’s journey, his early encounter and practice of sport psychology helping him not only in his sporting career but in his everyday life, we talk about confidence being one of his favourite topics which he’s struggled with all his life, we also talk about identity in sport and the importance of being able to take positives away from negative experiences and setbacks in sports. Being involved in sport psychology in both America and in the UK Joey provides us with some great insight on the differences on how it is delivered to athletes. Banger of an episode, thanks so much Joey!