Training, Performance & Human Factors - Articles for Endurance Athletes

If there is one pattern that connects almost every recreational endurance runner I work with, it is this: their easy runs are too fast, and their hard sessions are not hard enough. It sounds like a contradiction. Athletes who are motivated, who train consistently, who care about their performance - running too hard on recovery days and not hard enough on quality sessions. But it is one of the most common and most damaging training habits in amateur endurance sport, and it has

Most runners don't have a speed problem in the marathon. They have a pacing problem. I see it regularly with athletes I coach - and I've made the mistake myself. The first 15 kilometres feel easy. The pace feels generous. The crowd is loud, the legs are fresh, and the effort feels well within range. So the pace creeps slightly. Then a little more. By 28 or 30 kilometres, something starts to unravel, and the final 10 becomes a very different race from the one that was planned.

February is always a nice month. January feels like a year in its own right, then we’re graced with a 28 day month to skip us straight into Spring. The weather also turns, generally, as we move away from the consistent rainy days and find some breaks with some sun. But February hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows in my world. My almost one year old has been having an amazing time at nursery, so much so that he’s decided to collect every illness possible and share with us at

I’m currently coaching an athlete to sharpen his 5k time before we move to a Tough Mudder focus from Spring. It’s early days, even though we’ve been training together since November, but the ‘serious’ coaching has started since being back at work in the New Year.   When we started off, I was prescribing his workouts on a spreadsheet. It was the same way his last coach did it, and it’s a free, uncomplicated way to tabulate his training plan. It had his paces, distances and an

In safety critical work, fatigue is a hot topic of discussion. Risk management often identifies it as a threat to safety and leaders are beginning to understand (and appreciate) that actively managing peoples’ rest is key. The same applies to performance. Athletes train regularly, subjecting their body to increased physical loads, with the aim of improving their performance. This improvement comes from the body’s ability to rebuild stronger, and where does that rebuild occur?

In every high-performance environment - whether it’s the cockpit, the boardroom, or the running track - feedback is the currency of improvement. Yet too often, feedback is misunderstood. It’s treated as criticism, or worse, ignored completely. The truth is that feedback isn’t about judgement; it’s about adaptation . It’s the mechanism that allows humans to refine skill, improve focus, and make better decisions under pressure. That’s why I developed the Focus Feedback Cycle -

Stress has a bad reputation. We hear the word and immediately think of overwhelm, fatigue, or burnout. But in both sport and business, stress is not the enemy - it’s the stimulus for growth . What determines whether we thrive or crumble under pressure isn’t how much stress we face, but how well we manage, recover, and adapt from it. That principle sits at the heart of the Performance Reservoir Model , a simple yet powerful framework that explains how humans convert stress in

This month I’ve had quite a focus on adapting to change. I’ve introduced my ADAPT model , looked into why we as humans are resistant to change and how change helps athletes to improve their performance . Now I’m taking my own advice and pausing to see how I’m making changes to continue growing as a coach and athlete. In the past, I’ve worked with a triathlon coach who got me over that initial hurdle of juggling three sports in one event, and we worked well together over this

Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya holds the male world record for the marathon. His time? 2:00:35. He can run 42.2km (26.2 miles) in seconds over 2 hours. That’s running 2:51 per km (or 4:36 per mile) for 2 hours. Not only was he the first person to get under 2:01 for the marathon, but he also ran the second half faster than the first half (called a negative split). While training for this feat, Kelvin would have put his body through progressive stress, time and time again. Breaking dow

We, as humans, are creatures of habit. It’s a mindset embedded within us from our days as hunter gatherers (and probably well before that). Habits and routines are good for us, as we operate more efficiently on ‘autopilot’, with our prefrontal cortex not having to work overtime making every single decision we make on a daily basis. It also keeps us safe. Being predictable, always collecting the same tried and tested wild fungi that didn’t kill us, taking the same hunting rout

Change is the only constant - in sport, aviation, and life. Yet most people treat it as something to survive, not something to train for. Just like physical conditioning builds strength, mental conditioning builds adaptability. That’s where the ADAPT Framework comes in - a simple, evidence-based method for building resilience through small, sustainable steps. A - Assess Before you can change your response, you need to understand it. Notice where your resistance comes from:

As humans, we know a remarkably large amount of what’s going on around us. We see everything, hear everything, taste everything, smell everything and feel everything. So why don’t we observe everything? Think back to the last time you went to a supermarket. If you went in for some apples, you’re probably fully aware of how much the apples were, how many they had, and which type had any special offers on them. But what about the peaches? Did they have any? Or oranges? It is l

In high-stakes environments - like aviation, emergency response, sport, and leadership - we talk a lot about situational awareness. But too often, we only talk about it after it disappears. One moment you're tuned in. The next? You miss a cue, overlook a signal, or lose track of what matters most. So why does situational awareness fade? And more importantly, how can we rebuild it when the pressure’s on? 1. Situational Awareness Isn’t a Switch - It’s a System Situational awar

Aviation is one of the safest industries in the world - not by accident, but by design. Through decades of hard-earned lessons, aviation has created systems and cultures that prioritise safety, performance, and trust. These same principles, especially around communication, non-punitive reporting, and learning from error, hold powerful lessons for sport and business. In this post, we explore what coaches, managers, and leaders can borrow from the cockpit to build stronger, saf

I joined the RAF back in 2016, after the findings of Haddon-Cave’s Nimrod review . The changes to culture were already well and truly progressing, and by the time I had completed training, I was in an organisation that was living and breathing Just culture. Whether everything was spot on is a different discussion, but I hadn’t experienced life before. Flying training through a civilian school showcased a different attitude to culture in aviation Creating this Just Culture do

The crossover between sport and professional performance is one that I hold at the core of my coaching philosophy. It’s why I train athletes and professionals with a similar approach. Lessons identified in one area can be related across and applied to enhance performance. Let me prove it to you... In mid-May, I packed my bike onto the back of my car, loaded up my wetsuit and running shoes and made my way to Burghley House in Stamford. The whole way my stomach was churning wit

In today’s fast-paced world, we send more messages - but understand less. Whether it’s a WhatsApp from a coach, a safety note in aviation, or an email to your boss, written communication is efficient… until it isn’t. Without tone, context, or instant feedback, even well-intentioned messages can cause confusion, mistrust, or worse - critical mistakes. In high-stakes environments, relying solely on written communication isn’t just risky - it’s reckless . The Illusion of Clarity

In aviation, sport, and leadership, few things erode trust faster than blame. In high-performance environments, where human error is inevitable, the way we respond matters more than the error itself. This article explores how blame destroys psychological safety, how Just Culture offers a better path, and why distinguishing between honest mistakes, risk-taking, and negligence is crucial for any high-performing team. This was the Mansfield 10k back in September 2024. I was in d

As human beings, we are all fallible. Mistakes occur, despite knowing every Human Factor at play and identifying the potential for errors to creep into our daily avtivities. Still, they happen. In the complex and high-stakes world of aviation, safety is the top priority. To maintain and continuously improve this safety, the aviation industry relies not only on technology, regulation, and training but also on culture. One concept that has emerged as a cornerstone of modern saf

How many times do we see it in our day-to-day lives? Whether its an email to our boss that they took the wrong way, or a text to a family member where our dry sense of humour is misconstrued for being confrontational, we find that communication breaks down quite frequently. As it happens, that second one happens far too often between my mum and I… Despite technological advancements and decades of Crew Resource Management (CRM) training, communication failures in aviation are