I'm delighted to speak with Dr Robin Owen and Prof Shuge Zhang in this week's episode.

Robin is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Psychology at Liverpool Hope University. His research aims to advance our understanding of anxiety, attentional focus, motor control, skill acquisition, statistical prediction, cognitive functioning, and talent identification/development.

Shuge is currently a research Professor in Sport & Exercise Psychology at Hunan University of Technology in China. He previously lectured at the University of Derby. Shuge is a chartered psychologist of the British Psychological Society and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His research interest is the Person x Environment Interaction in performance and health contexts.

In this episode, we discuss a fantastic paper Robin and Shuge contributed to which examined the impact of anxiety on performance in sports players.

I'm delighted to speak with Dr Alan McKay in this week's episode. Alan is an HCPC sport psychologist, researcher, and practitioner. He completed his PhD in sport psychology with the Football Association of Wales (FAW) and is currently working as a senior research assistant at the FAW Centre for Football Research, housed at the University of South Wales. In this role he helps to produce multidisciplinary, world-leading, applied performance science research to enhance the performance of Welsh athletes and organisations.

Alan also works within elite level sport at both Welsh Triathlon and in his own company Mindframe Performance, where he has supported athletes competing at both the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

In this episode Alan and I discuss behaviour-based approaches to mental toughness in sport.

I am delighted to speak with Dr Erin Prior in this episode. Erin is a Chartered Sport and Exercise Psychologist working across a range of sports. Erin has her own sport psychology consultancy practice working with a wide range of athletes, coaches, and parents to enhance their psychological approach to their sport. She has worked with a variety of sporting organisations including the FA, The Wheelchair Football Association, Swim England, West Bromwich Albion, Aston Villa FC, and Leicestershire and Rutland Sport. Erin has also worked as a consultant for various universities including Warwick University, Coventry University, and Birmingham City University.

Erin is also a Lecturer in Psychology at Loughborough University. Her research focuses on athlete mental health, specifically sporting staff understandings and experiences of supporting athlete mental health and illness.

Erin graduated with a BSc in Psychology from Coventry University, followed by an MSc in Sport and Exercise Psychology from Loughborough University. In 2020, Erin returned to the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University as a Post-Graduate University Teacher to undertake a part-time PhD alongside teaching in psychology and sport and exercise psychology. Erin's PhD explored how staff within elite sport conceptualise mental health and mental illness, staff experiences of managing athlete mental health support, and an Olympic athlete's experience of living with bipolar disorder.

In this episode we discuss one of the papers from Erin's PhD.