The Racquet Athlete Podcast

Rachel is an expert in the fields of health, sport, fitness, and education. Her special interest is intrinsic biomechanics and she heads up an organization that teaches fitness, health, and medical professionals how to screen and provide exercise interventions to prevent and manage injury as well as improve performance. Rachel works closely with her team on all health, fitness, and education projects.

We chat about various topics of biomechanics related to the general public and athletes.

Some questions included:

What is biomechanics?

How does biomechanics fit into sports?

How do you assess athletes biomechanics?

What does good biomechanics look like on an athlete?

And a few more...........

Simon is a sports psychology consultant who has and still works with high profile athletes. Simon also works with business leaders in their different challenges of business and life. Simon also gives keynote talks all around the world. His question which he asks people regularly is....How do we become the best in business , sport and life?. Simon has written 9 books most recently a fiction book called silence your demons which is helping people and is becoming a success. 

PODCAST CONTENT:

Yvonne moved to the "Garden of Ireland" Co Wicklow, about 15 years ago. Yvonne felt blessed to be surrounded by the rolling green hills of the countryside, with so much natural beauty. Yvonne adores being amongst nature and loves practicing yoga and meditation outdoors when the weather allows. Along with teaching yoga and meditation, Yvonne runs the big hit tennis academy with her husband.

 Yvonne is also a keen gardener and gets great pleasure out of growing food and flowers. Yvonne also enjoys hiking with her family and friends. And Yvonne loves taking pics (of sunsets especially!).

We talk about the following on the podcast:

 Clive is a world-recognized expert in athletic preparation with many years of experience as a Performance Director, consultant & S&C coach. In this time, he has established a reputation for integrating sports science, sports medicine & strength and conditioning into a player-centered and evidence-based program. He has applied this plan within Soccer (Columbus Crew SC, Liverpool Ladies, and consultant to Manchester Utd & Scotland FA), Baseball (Toronto Blue Jays) Rugby League (Widnes Vikings, England RL, Scotland RL), Tennis (20 years as a training facility manager and part of the Sports Medicine delivery team at Wimbledon tennis championships, consultant to individual players) & Track & Field (National coach to Scotland, Advisor to the IAAF, coach to Olympic athletes).

Clive is & Fellow of the UKSCA, and is accredited as an S&C coach by the UKSCA, the ASCA & NSCA. He is also accredited by BASES as a support scientist, & is a chartered scientist with the UK science council.

Clive has authored a number of papers, book chapters & Books, & regularly presents at a number of international conferences.

We chat about these in the podcast:

Clive's Background

Tennis Background

Fundamental movements of tennis footwork

Functions of movement skills 

Physical tools for footwork

Collaboration of the strength & conditioning coach & tennis coach

Needs analysis of the athlete

Minimal dose-response training in tournaments

Junior Tennis Training 

Athletic movement in tennis 

Build up training to reduce injuries

Recovery in footwork

Tennis Elbow

Great Memories in Tennis

Rob created Athletic Evolution to provide best practice in the athletic development and coaching of young athletes. He is dedicated to improving the quality of athletic development training delivered to young athletes. Rob currently leads the Youth Athletic Development for the Scottish Rugby Academy in the Caledonia Region. He has previously worked for numerous organisations including NYFA Sweden, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Team Palmer-Grimson Beach Volleyball, London Thunder Basketball, British Gymnastics and Leaf Studio School.

He holds numerous qualifications, including:

We chat about the following in the podcast episode:

We chat about the following on the podcast:

Mark Beaumont transitioned from sales to squash coaching. He is based in Scotland. Mark has actually been my squash coach for several years now and will be helping me progress and compete in the Scottish Squash Masters tournaments coming up and beyond. He has a lot of experience developing youth squash players and coaching adults too. These players he works with are all at different levels in the game of squash.

We chat about the following in the podcast:

The following areas were spoken about in the podcast:

What we chat about on the podcast:

Nathan started his squash career when he was just 10 years old - stumbling upon the game at his Dad's rugby club, hitting around on the court as a way to pass the time while his Dad was out on the pitch. Having fallen in love with the game, Nathan continued with his squash at the Old Pats Rugby Club, learning under Gary Powell.

As Nathan's talents developed, he moved down the road to East Glos when he was 13. Here he was able to train with England Junior National Coach, Fiona Geaves.  His time at East Glos saw him transform from a chubby teenager, narrowly being selected for the U13 inter-county team, to becoming the King of Europe, winning the European Junior Championships when he was 18.

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Nathan Lake joined the PSA World Tour in 2010.

What we chat about on the podcast:

Squash as a whole

Squash Goals

British squash compared to other countries

Altitude Training

Key Preparations

Taking emotion out of it, use more logic and informative thinking

What if planning for the schedule

Being a sponge for learning

Physical training aspects

Solo practice is key

Surround yourself with great people

Individual Goals

Raising the ceiling