Every quarter we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In this edition we look at the latest research on factors influencing team vs. individual performance more, examples of turning coaching failure into future success, and how to implement pressure training.
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Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve written extensively about some key performance aspects of the World Cup; how to prepare for performance in the heat and altitude, how to manage travel and time change, how to manage load, and how to handle the pressure of a penalty shootout. At this stage of the tournament, the teams that are doing well are undoubtedly going to be those that are getting these things right. But I’m not the only person who has been writing about the challenges of the World Cup – researchers have been busily publishing papers on the topic too. This article, the last in my World Cup series, pulls out the best of these, and tells us what we can learn from them—and how we might be able to apply these aspects to our own work with athletes.
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Having looked at the influence of heat and altitude and travel and match demands at the 2026 World Cup, I’ll now turn my attention to the next topic in my World Cup preparation series: preparing for pressure.
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For decades, coaches have trained female athletes the same way they train male athletes — or worse, held them back entirely out of myth and misunderstanding. In this episode of the GAINcast, Vern Gambetta sits down with Morgan Smith, senior performance coach for US Soccer’s women’s youth national teams and former Stanford post-doctoral researcher, to tackle what we actually know about training the female athlete.
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Having looked at the influence of heat and altitude on performance at the 2026 World Cup, and what can be done about it, I’ll now turn my attention to the next topic in my World Cup preparation series. This is something that affects many of us in today’s world: travel, jet lag, and travel fatigue.
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Preparing for the World Cup means preparing for some of the most unique demands in sport. In this multi-part series I’m breaking down each one in detail, starting with an article on preparing for heat and humidity that could influence performance at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This article looks at another environmental factor: altitude.
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Every four years, the men’s FIFA World Cup takes over the world of sport. Football (I can’t quite bring myself to call it soccer) is probably the closest thing we have to a genuinely universal sport, with cheap equipment, simple rules, the ability to play almost anywhere. It is culturally embedded across Europe, Africa, and South America, with growing popularity in the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, and North America. Football truly is a global sport, with an estimated 270 million people involved in organised versions of the game, and many more playing in parks and streets across the globe.
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Every quarter we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In this edition we look at the latest research on inspirational speeches, lessons from motor sports, and more.
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I love cluster sets. I’m just going to state that at the beginning of this article so you know my bias. But this isn’t just an opinion piece based on my experience with them. I’ve done a ton of research to show you the what, when, why, and how that underpins this potent set-and-rep configuration. I hope this article can be a comprehensive guide to cluster training. But before we get into that we’ll start at the beginning to understand what constitutes a cluster set and how it differs from traditional strength training.
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