The Performance Margin 

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

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

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

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 most walks of life, people find themselves in high pressure situations. This often builds over time, with increasing workload, or responsibilities, at home or at work. Pressure builds and people’s fight, flight or freeze (also known as the acute stress response ) kicks in. Some crumble under the stress, some thrive and use it to motivate them. However, the aviation domain is one where pressure does not always build consistently. The Yerkes-Dodson Law, also referred to as t

When flying frontline operations, I frequently found myself working varying hours. Set shifts were certainly not a thing. One day we would be needed on task at 5pm, two days later we were wanted at 3am. The biggest difficulty I found in the cumulating fatigue was not necessarily tiredness , but alertness . I was going from needing to be asleep in the late morning to rest for a night sortie, to needing to be switched on at midday to be planning for a sortie I was about to fly.