Sound Mind Sound Performance

03/11/2025

Athletes & the Planet 🌍

Great athletes don’t just train their bodies — they train their awareness.
This cracked, sun-bleached court on a turtle conservation ground in Nusa Penida reminds me: performance and planet are intertwined.

How we move, how we consume, how we care — it all echoes.
To protect what sustains us is the ultimate act of endurance.

Every athlete should know: sustainability is strength.

28/10/2025

New!

Pressure doesn’t just test an athlete’s skill: it tests their nervous system.

New research by Carson, Robazza & Collins shows that performance isn’t just about “letting it happen.” It’s about knowing how to make it happen — consciously, calmly, and safely.

For athletes with ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), this means retraining the body to stay regulated under stress. Trauma-informed coaching now meets performance science — where safety becomes skill and control becomes confidence.

When athletes enter the arena, they bring more than physical skill — they bring memory. Not just motor memory, but emotional memory: the stored experiences of safety or threat that shape how their body performs under pressure.

27/10/2025

For the technical experts peer reviewed technique. Segment-interaction in sprint start: Analysis of 3D angular velocity and kinetic energy in elite sprinters. You can purchase your copy here.

The aim of the present study was to measure during a sprint start the joint angular velocity and the kinetic energy of the different segments in elite…

23/10/2025

Most self-care advice stops at candles and calm.
This guidebook goes deeper — into the science of regulation, recovery, and resilience.

A Guidebook on Active & Passive Self-Care teaches athletes, coaches, and high-performers how to recognise when their body needs activation and when it needs restoration. Backed by neuroscience and trauma-informed principles, it bridges psychology with practice — helping you build habits that sharpen focus, repair the nervous system, and prevent burnout.

This isn’t about “taking time off.”
It’s about training your recovery as deliberately as your performance.

Now available exclusively at www.winnersedge.com.au.


https://www.winnersedge.com.au/product-page/a-guide-book-on-active-passive-self-care

This guide and reflection book explores the science behind passive and active self-care, providing a balanced approach to optimising well-being for athletes with or without ADHD. Backed by textbook insights, the guide breaks down passive self-care—like meditation and mindfulness, which engage the ...

22/10/2025

Coaches, psychologists, and performance staff — the next frontier in sport isn’t strength or speed. It’s nervous system literacy.

Neurodivergent and trauma-affected athletes don’t need softer programs — they need smarter ones.

Ones that recognise fight, flight, freeze, and fawn as physiological states, not personality flaws.

When we build safety, predictability, and co-regulation into training, we don’t lower standards — we raise potential.

The most powerful coaching tool you’ll ever master is attunement.
It’s the science of safety before strategy — and it’s changing the way high-performance sport is done.

Talent is easy to spot. However, the nervous system, its wiring, its thresholds, and its history, are not.

21/10/2025

A client and I are just about to head overseas to help with turtle conservation and learn some motorcross.

Will the motorcross live up to this California trip I have on my bucket list. Who wants to come with?




MX Tracks in California - MX Dreams

Southern California has some of the best tracks in the world. Below gives you details of some of the tracks that you could ride as part of your MX Dreams California vacation package. Cahuilla Creek MX This track offers 3 tracks to choose from main, vet , pw. The main track is about mile long

16/10/2025

Most athletes train their muscles.
Trauma-informed coaches train the nervous system.

For athletes with ACEs or trauma backgrounds, performance often begins with survival — not strength. Their bodies stay on high alert, and key muscles like the glutes “shut down.”

Most people think performance starts with power. For trauma-affected athletes, it starts with safety.

15/10/2025

Most coaches train the muscle.
Few train the nervous system that commands it.

This video introduces the Toe–Glute Reflex Sequencing Principle and the RPR (Reflexive Performance Reset) Glute Test, two evidence-based methods for improving athletic performance through better glute activation. Coach demonstrates how curling the big toe can reflexively activate the glutes and create proper firing patterns essential for stronger hip extension, power output, and injury prevention. By testing and stimulating specific reflex points, athletes can correct faulty movement patterns and unlock their full lower-body potential.

Why Coaches Should Use This Science:

Glute activation isn’t just a warm-up—it’s a neuromuscular efficiency protocol. Research in applied kinesiology and neuromechanics shows that reflex sequencing enhances motor unit recruitment and restores functional movement chains disrupted by stress, fatigue, or poor posture. For coaches, integrating RPR and toe–glute sequencing ensures athletes move from compensatory patterns to optimal performance, increasing explosiveness, stability, and longevity in sport.

Coach’s Takeaway:
Toe–Glute sequencing = reflexive glute activation.
RPR = nervous system reset for performance and injury resilience.
The combination builds stronger hips, better mechanics, and a longer athletic lifespan.

In this informative video, Coach introduces the concept of the Toe Glute Reflex Sequencing Principle and demonstrates the RPR Glute Test. Discover how these ...

15/10/2025

Rest Recovery Gap Window Principle (by Cal Dietz)

After an intense training session, the body is still in a stress (sympathetic) mode. Applying recovery tools immediately (compression, cold tubs, etc.) can act as an extra stimulus and blunt the Recovery Response.

Dietz observed, via physiological monitoring (OmegaWave), that athletes who waited 2–6 hours post-workout before doing recovery methods recovered better the next day.
triphasictraining.com

The logic: that “rest gap” allows the nervous system and hormonal systems to downshift (parasympathetic take-over). Then, when you introduce light recovery (walk, sauna, light cycling), the body interprets it as restorative, not more stress.

Implementing it means:
• Don’t jump straight from hard training into active recovery tools.
• Wait 2–6 hours doing low-stress, neutral activities (eat, hydrate, relax) so the body “resets.”
• Then apply recovery techniques to amplify repair, circulate nutrients, calm the system.

The principle reframes “more recovery” into “better-timed recovery.”



https://triphasictraining.com/rest-recovery-gap-window-principle/

Rest Recovery Gap Window Principle by Cal Dietz | Oct 9, 2025 | BlogThe Rest Recovery Gap Window PrincipleTriphasic Training Principle 36 By Cal DietzBack in 2011, I stumbled upon something that completely changed how I approached recovery for athletes — something I now call the Rest Recovery Gap ...

15/10/2025

When an athlete shuts down, over-trains, or fights back — it’s not attitude, it’s adaptation.

The body remembers pressure. The nervous system repeats what once kept it safe.

Understanding the 4 F’s — Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn — is now non-negotiable for any coach working with athletes who’ve lived through adversity.

Read the full breakdown on how trauma-informed listening and presence can transform performance outcomes.



https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-fs-high-performance-traumainformedathlete-r6kcc

12/10/2025

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-bernsteins-theory-relates-trauma-elite-athletes-9cxpc