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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Every quarter we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In this edition we look at the latest research on team building, balancing stress and recovery, changing the perception of competition, and major championship preparation.
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Athletes are generally under large amounts of strain. This can be physical in nature, such as the strain produced both by a single training session, or the accumulated strain of a number of training sessions within a training block. More recently, we’ve started to understand that strain can also be non-physiological in nature, with a link between increased stress and under-performance becoming more established. New research helps us further understand the connection. Read more
Whilst we may have previously considered the brain and body and separate entities, it is no longer viable to do so; the research is now clear that the brain plays an important role in moderating risk factors associated with injury and illness, and, from a performance standpoint, it is often psychological factors that most differentiate the performance of elite athletes on competition day. Read more
Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. Athletes often complaint about small niggles, but how seriously that needs to be taken has not been researched much. In this month’s edition we start off by taking a look at new research on the topic, plus updates on the art of coaching, performance health, youth sports scaling, sports psychology technology, and high pressure training. Read more
Whilst athletes and coaches have long focused on the physical aspects of performance enhancement, such as training program design and exercise selection, it is only relatively recently that we have started to pay attention to how stress and sleep might also influence both the magnitude of adaptations seen following a training program, and competition performance. Based on this recent research, we have an increased understanding of the need to account for psychological stress, including, in the case of younger athletes, academic work load, when developing optimal training programs. Read more
Pole vault is one of the world’s most dynamic sports, requiring elite levels of sprinting, jumping, and gymnastics from athletes. Herbert Czingon has been coaching the event for decades as both German national coach and now Switzerland. He joins us on this week’s podcast to talk about how his approach to planning for the complex event has changed over the years to better identify the individual needs of athletes, plus a discussion on the unique demands the sport requires from athletes. Read more
In recent years, the individualized training movement has grown in momentum. Coaches no longer debate the need to individualize training; instead we often focus on the best methods for individualization. Individualizing the training process is something that is very interesting to me. My doctoral thesis is built around how of genetic testing may prove useful in the development of individualized training programs. Another area that I want to look into here is that of stress, the individual response to stress, how this affects our psycho-emotional state, and how that can alter our training responses. Read more
In the March edition of Sports Science Monthly we look at new research across a variety of areas including the impact of coaching behavior, Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome, nordic hamstring exercises, genetic testing, monitoring fatigue and more. Read more
