The High Performance Project - Talking Sports Technology, Sports Science, Elite Sport & More

Skylar Richards is the current Director of physiology and science at Orlando City SC. Skylar has a wealth of experience within some of North America's most recognisable sports organisations in particular within the MLS.
Skylar started his career with a primary focus on injury prevention through scalable detection and recovery strategies for athletes. These strategies focus on increased training availability and physiologic monitoring which has been a strong focus for Skylar throughout his career and industry experience.
As a strong advocate for truly understanding the needs for athletes to succeed, Skylar speaks on his belief that the industry seems to far to often confuse the definitions of a data analysis and data scientists. The importance is placed on being able to resources your high performance department with the right people to nurture a successful team or even better athletes.
Skylar's work focuses heavily on the recovery and prevention techniques for elite soccer in the United States, and in 2015 founded a partnership between national clubs to open the first US professional soccer recovery lab highlighting the prevalence of soft tissue injuries and immobilization, nutrition and anti-inflammatory modalities within the MLS and beyond.
Skylar brings a huge amount of knowledge to this podcast and the Lumin Sports team appreciate the time, sharing his experiences and knowledge.

Join us for Season 3 of The High Performance Project powered by Lumin Sports. On this first episode we chat with ultra athlete and adventure seeker Tim Franklin. After successfully running a marathon in his own home, climbing Everest without even leaving his apartment building, Tim has now set his sights on completing his most grueling challenge to date. #timrunstheworld was a initiative set up by Tim and his team to smash the around the world running record. This journey will see Tim run 26,232kms across 22 countries and five continents in less than 430 days.
During our chat with Tim we understand what got him into endurance events and ultra challenges and quickly learnt it had a far deeper meaning. Tim is happy to admit that he was no angel child and went through some dark times because of his lifestyle and habits, Tim recognised he had to make a change and says 'Moving saved his life".
Tim hopes that through him sharing his journey and crazy challenges he can encourage people to get moving and be confident in their own journey and remove any limiting beliefs they have.
We thanks Tim for his time and wish him a safe journey in his around the global challenge. to learn more head to@timmyrfranklin on instagram

Olympic Gold Medalist Alex Hill joined the podcast to speak over his success at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and his journey into the sport of rowing. Growing up from very humble beginnings in Loxton North, Alex was your typical river kid, and always showed a strong liking to the water. However his passion for rowing was lost for a brief period during his high schooling in Adelaide. It was a piece of feedback given to him from a school rowing coach that made him double down on the sport and from there he never wavered from there. Fast forward after 11 years in the sport he now holds a silver medal at the Rio games and recently the gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 games.
This episode explores a provides a great insight into Alex's journey into the sport of rowing and what drives him to continue to compete at the highest level. It was amazing having Alex in the studio for this episode with the Gold Medal even making an appearance.
To learn more head to luminsports.com or follow @luminsports on socials.

Jake Giannakis - Head of Strength & Conditioning at Essendon VFL and High Performance Manager at the Academy joins the podcast to speak about his last 12-24 months in the world of high performance sport. Jake has built a wealth of knowledge in the sports science and high performance industry through his time spent with AFL teams Collingowood, North Melbourne and now Essendon.
Working alongside some of some of the industries best and most respected people has allowed Jake to find his passion and desire to develop and teach the future stars of Australian Football. Jake was also one of the founding members of 'The Academy' a full time elite sport passion school that provides and mixture of sport and regular curriculum schedules to provide pathways for elite sports candidates.
We throughly enjoyed this chat with Jake with plenty of good topics of conversation coming from the chat.
To listen to more of the episodes from The High Performance Project and the team at Lumin Sports - head to www.luminsports.com to learn more.

Stuart Gollan is the Lead Sports Scientist from the Adelaide United Football Club. 'Stu' as he is commonly know within the Lumin Sports team is a lover of all things performance and formulating ways to allow the human body to perform at its peak. Stu has worked within the world game now for a number of years now, before this completing internships with the Port Adelaide Football Club, working as a post graduate scholar at the Australian Institute of Sport and tutoring up and coming undergraduates in Applied Exercise Science with the University of South Australia.
As we have learnt through many of our High Performance Project conversations that everyones journey is different and Stu's is no different. He entered the industry quite late compared to most and has quickly made his way to leading a organisations high performance department. Stu puts this down a relentless pursuit of excellence and ability to network and be willing to try his hand at almost anything in the field. There were plenty of good takeaways in this conversation for anyone aspiring for a career in the sports industry or even simply having a dream or in pursuit of a goal and enabling a clear mindset to achieve success.
Stuarts story is a humble one and we had plenty of fun having him in for a podcast, a very educated and driven individual, it was to finally sit down with Stuart a great asset and friend of the Lumin Sports.
To learn more: Head to luminsports.com or connect with us via Facebook or Instagram
To follow Adelaide United this upcoming season head to: https://www.adelaideunited.com.au/

"Supporting people in their quest to flourish during and beyond their sporting careers", this is the mantra that Chris Lynch summaries his work with some of the worlds best athletes, in particular within his current role at the Australian Cycling Team.
For close to 10 years Chris has been working to not only develop and support those around him, more importantly himself. His has for many years worked closely with athletes to build their mindset, resilience and professional capabilities to compete at the highest level and furthermore develop them as individuals for their careers beyond their sport.
Join us in this episode as we gain a deeper understanding of Chris' day to day and what his role entails and some of the strategies you can use to be better equiped to perform at your best.
Listen today on your favourite podcast player or read more at luminsports.com or @luminsports on socials.

Paolo Menaspà is a world renowned sports scientists that has worked within some of the best sporting organisations and alongside of some of the most successful athletes in the world. Paolo has spent a lot of his career in particular in the sport of cycling. His work centres on research and development of strategies to best support athletes in pursuit of their goals. Paolo's previous role with the Australian Cycling Team included work with national coaches and the performance support team to identify and implement performance enhancing solutions across multiple disciplines in the lead up to the recent Olympic campaign.
Earlier in his career Paolo spent 7 years at Mapei Sport (Italy) where he worked along with several top level athletes and teams, including Cadel Evans (four time Olympian and 2011 Tour de France winner), Alex Zanardi (former F1 driver and four time Paralympic gold medallist) and Juventus FC (Italian Serie A team).
Outside of these organisations and work with elite athletes, Paolo has spent time lecturing at Edith Cowan University where he has also completed his PHD in Philosophy and Sports Science.

In this conversation we speak through his experience and journey through the industry chatting through his learnings and biggest challenges.
We also speak through;

• Italian heritage and coffee culture
• His experience and work with Cadel Evans
• Working under Aldo Sassi in the "Lab" - the power of influence and experience
• Being apart of the start of Green Edge Cycling team, Australia's first professional cycling team.
• His current role now at the Australian Institute of Sport as Chief Science Officer

Paolo story is a journey of courage and hard work, one for any up and coming sports scientist to envy. Listen to this podcast today on your favourite podcast player.
Listen and read more from Lumin Sports at www.luminsports.com or on all your favourite social platforms.

Jed Altschwager is a Para Rowing Athlete apart of the Australian Rowing Program. The South Australian lost his left leg in 2015 during a workplace accident. Jed himself describes it as 'his foot was squished and taken off' and post rehabilitation the Adelaide-local identified strongly with the sport of rowing. Jed's mindset and rehabilitation story is one to be admired, his strength through adversity and his gratitude for life is unprecedented.
Jed speaks in depth about the emotions and struggles he encountered during his recovery and although he admits this was an incredibly difficult phase of his life he shifted his focus onto what opportunities this now offered him. Fast forward to now and Jed has now cemented his spot on the sport of Para Rowing in the SASI Program and at a national level. Altschwager went on to win a silver medal in the PR3 Men's Single Scull at the 2018 Australian National Championships along with two silver medals in the 2018 and 2019 PR3 Mens Pairs World Championship.
Outside of rowing, Altschwager has the opportunity to tell his story to local schools in South Australia and spread his story of mindset and gratitude, a true inspiration and story for all to admire.
Lumin Sports thank Jed for sharing his story and his time on this episode.

The main man from Stanley Street Social joins us on the podcast to review and unpack the 2021 Tour de France. One of our most in depth episodes to date and it's fair to say that things may have gotten a little off track at times, however when we chat cycling, we go all in.
In this episode Alex shares with us his thoughts and opinions on the Tour de France 2021 and explains a little more into the changes that the race has gone through over the past few years and what this means for spectators, commercial relationships along with the riders and teams. Cycling 'nuffie' or not, we all are guilty of spending some time watching the tour each July as it rolls around, for those in the Oceania this often means late nights in front of the TV. This chat dives deep into the juicy stuff, our predictions and our ratings of riders and teams and how we anticipate the tour and sport to look into the future.
You won't meet someone as passionate about the sport as Alex or "Alby" as his known by his peers, and it was great to chat with him during our favourite time of the year Tour de France time.
Viva La Tour!
We would love to hear what your thoughts were on this years tour and if you predicted any of the results, follow us on socials and stay up to date with all things The High Performance Project at luminsports.com/media

Melody Cooper is another one of Australia's favourite "Adopted Kiwi's". Now working and living in Australia and working for the Australian Basketball Players Association as Head of Multicultural and Community, Mel now leads the programs, awareness and projects and initiatives that players are involved in outside of the game working towards changing the narrative in indigenous and multicultural education.

In this episode we speak through Mel's playing days and olympic experience with Hockey New Zealand the "Black Sticks". Furthermore her time spent in business admin and leading teams. To say the least Melody is a high performing individual always looking to develop individually and facilitate the development of those around her. We thank Mel for her time and joining us on the podcast.
To listen to this episode and more head to www.luminsports.com or head to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to listen today, stay up to day with all things Lumin Sports follow @luminsports