Jon Norfolk is head of coaching at one of Great Britain’s most successful Olympic programmes, British Cycling. Jon is another of our guests that has experienced competing and coaching in different cultures and environments. Having worked previously with the Australian Track Cycling Team and been head coach of the hugely successful GB Paralympic cycling programme, he was also both an International cyclist in his own right and also cycled as a tandem partner including setting a world record in the...
Jun 08, 2022•49 min
Scott Drawer is the current Director of Sport at Millfield School, one of the UK’s leading independent school’s. Before that he was Head of Research and Innovation at UK Sport and also held positions as Athletic Performance Manager at the Rugby Football Union and worked in the Sky Performance Hub in Cycling. I first met Scott in his role at UK Sport almost 15 years ago as I asked him to help me tap into the amazing work being done across the UK sport innovation and research network to help the E...
Jun 01, 2022•58 min
This week its part 2 of my chat with former footballer Robbie Elliott. Robbie spent two decades as a professional footballer, playing over 140 times for Newcastle United and over 250 appearances in total. Last week we chatted about his own playing career and some of the iconic managers he worked under including Ossie Ardilles, Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalgleish, Sam Allardyce and Sir Bobby Robson. This week we focus on his career post playing from his role at Newcastle in the sports science departmen...
May 25, 2022•34 min
After last weeks chat with Darius Charles, we stay on the football theme with another ex Professional footballer, Robbie Elliott. Robbie had almost two decades as a professional footballer, playing over 140 times for his beloved Newcastle United and over 250 appearances in total, which also included spells at Sunderland, Leeds, Hartlepool and an eventful four years at Bolton Wanderers. Over his career, he’ worked under some iconic managers including Ossie Ardiles, Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, S...
May 18, 2022•42 min
This week I’m delighted to bring you a chat with someone who grabs life by both hands, former footballer Darius Charles. Darius retired from professional footballer just a matter of weeks ago after playing professionally for sixteen years for the likes of Wycombe Wanderers, Brentford and most recently, AFC Wimbledon. We talk about how he feels about that and also the journey football has taken him on personally. His mum had him when she was sixteen years old and Darius has had plenty of obstacle...
May 11, 2022•1 hr 5 min
This is the second part of the conversation I had with Leinster Rugby senior coach, Stuart Lancaster who has held senior leadership positions at many levels of the game including being the former England Rugby head coach. In part one we chatted about the foundations of culture, putting teams together and knowing your own personal strengths and weaknesses. In this episode we jump around a bit again and touch on subjects like managing time and energy, continual learning and the art of teaching, bu...
May 04, 2022•43 min
Todays show is the first part of another brilliant conversation, this time with rugby coach Stuart Lancaster. Stuart is currently coaching Leinster Rugby and he’s held leadership, management and coaching positions at many levels of the game including being the former England Rugby head coach. I’ve also worked with Stuart during my time at England Rugby and have coached against him during his time at Leeds and we discuss that time in both our lives later in this show. He’s a wealth of knowledge a...
Apr 27, 2022•40 min
Thanks to the following for their great questions which formed the basis of this week’s Ask Me Anything show. On Twitter - Brad Allen, Simon Young, Bruce, Luke O’Mahony, Jack, Chris, Nimi, Tuma On Instagram - Richard Mortimer, Emma, Sala Through LinkedIn - Hannah Behan, Andrew M, Rod Bannister, Lucas O’Ceallachan, Mark Leppard, Neil Thomas, Chris Latterell, Martin Prior, Via email - Ben, Shelley Show Notes: Loughborough University - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/ Plato - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 13 min
It's part two of my conversation with former Met Police Superintendent, John Sutherland. From sieges that shut down London, to the time he got things very wrong when communicating to his team and his own personal battle with his mental health, this is another cracking episode, and we pick up from where we left off, talking about Leadership and perhaps it’s most important trait. Show Notes: Jurgen Klopp - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Klopp Chief Superintendent - https://en.wikipedia....
Apr 13, 2022•34 min
John Sutherland joined the Met Police in 1992 after receiving the baton of honour, presented to the outstanding student during an officer’s basic training. He quickly rose through the ranks and as it says on the back cover of his first book 'Blue', experienced all that is extraordinary about a life in blue: saving lives, finding the lost, comforting the broken and helping taking the dangerous people off the streets. With the highs came the lows and in 2013 John suffered a major nervous breakdown...
Apr 06, 2022•41 min
My guest this week questions the idea of what success is and how most people can look at sport and life in a very different way. Laurence Halsted is a double-Olympian, a fencer who achieved European medals as well helping to take the GB fencing programme from amateur to professional and qualify for an Olympics in the team event for the first time in the modern era. He’s a former performance director for the Danish Fencing Federation and now Director of Mentoring at The True Athlete Project as we...
Mar 30, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Dr. Jim Loehr is a world-renowned performance psychologist and cofounder of The Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute. He has worked with hundred of world-class performers from the arenas of sport, business, medicine, law enforcement, military and much, much more. Sport clients have included tennis players Jim Courier, Monica Seles and Andre Agassi, golfers Mark O’Meara and Justin Rose, boxer Ray Mancini, Ice hockey stars Eric Lindros and Mike Richter and Olympic gold medal speed ska...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 19 min
In part two of my discussion with Craig White we go into Transcendental Meditation, centering, flow states, the roles of breath, sound, touch and movement and much, much more, but we start by talking about Embodied Learning - what it means, and how it works, as well as the sensation we’ve all felt, our gut feeling. Show Notes: Alan Watts - https://www.youtube.com/c/AlanWattsOrg/videos James Haskell Podcast episode with Craig - https://apple.co/3CKiKeL NLP - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-li...
Mar 16, 2022•48 min
Craig White's credentials in rugby are impeccable. Roles at Wasps, Ireland, Wales, The British and Irish Lions as well as his journey with the Uruguay team at the last Rugby World Cup, fill his CV. He started in strength and conditioning but has added so much more at places like Bolton Wanderers Football Club, where he acted as consultant to manager Sam Alladyce. Relating to the Bolton part of his life, there is some swearing in this section of the podcast. We don’t usually include swearing as w...
Mar 09, 2022•56 min
Andrew Milburn retired from the US Marine Corps in 2019 and has since gone on to write the highly acclaimed memoir ‘When The Tempest Gathers: A Marine Special Operations Commander At War’. As an infantry and special operations officer, Andy has had operational command at every rank which included leading the multinational special operations task force given the mission of defeating ISIS in Iraq. This has obviously led to some very dangerous situations and from all his experiences, he shares with...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 6 min
This week's podcast comes from one of the most inhospitable but beautiful places on earth as we chat to explorer, Wendy Searle. A mother of four with a busy job, Wendy wanted to show others that extraordinary is available to everyone. She is the seventh woman and fourth fastest in history to ski solo and unassisted from the coastline of Antartica to the South Pole. The 715 mile route took her 42 days, she fell over every day, lost 12kg in bodyweight, had moments of pure elation and moments of pu...
Feb 23, 2022•59 min
This week's guest is professional tennis player, Olympic medallist and founder of the brilliant High Impact Athletes organisation, New Zealander, Marcus Daniell. The chat you're about to hear is a very honest one from someone who's learnt so much from the journey he has taken. It's easy to think that being a professional athlete means that, not only do you know everything about preparation and performance, but that you also have an entourage around you to help and guide you. For the huge majorit...
Feb 16, 2022•1 hr 1 min
So, It’s series three and for my first guest of the re-branded 'Culture & Performance Podcast' I thought it would great to kick off with a best-selling author and speaker and someone who’s recognised as one of the world's foremost figures in leadership, team culture and performance, Allistair McCaw. For over 25 years Allistair has worked with some of the most successful people, teams, colleges and organisations in the world. We first met when we were both presenting at a conference for Paris...
Feb 09, 2022•59 min
Series 3 starts on Feb 02 with a re-branded podcast 'Culture and Performance with Ben Ryan' which will encapsulate all things that Ben holds dear with regard to his approach to coaching and life. Over the course of the series we'll hear from people from the world of sport, the Armed Forces, world-leading psychologists and people that push adventure to the extreme and through it all, aim to bring you tools and tips that you can apply to your own life. Details of how you can listen and interact wi...
Jan 19, 2022•2 min
Ben will be back in a few weeks time with more great conversations in Series 3. In the meantime, please check out past podcast episodes as well as some of the books that Ben recommends in this short summary. Listen & Subscribe to The Ben Ryan Podcast: Ben’s Website - http://benryan.co.uk/bio/ Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ben-ryan-podcast/id1553400216 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3iUL1eLA7HFKt5gxO7Uf4j?si=oN9YN6uFRSSGbO6kR01ONQ Amazon Music - https://...
Oct 27, 2021•6 min
It's two for the price of one on this week's podcast as I'm joined by two world-class operators. The first, Martin Buchheit, I have known and worked alongside in a Nike research and innovation group for the past five years. Until recently, he was head of performance at PSG FC, from the outside at least, one of the best jobs in football. Martin’s now working for Kitman labs, a company using analytics research to help sports teams find out what works and what doesn’t and also in a part time capaci...
Oct 20, 2021•1 hr 7 min
For today’s show, It’s the awesome Heather Fisher. Heather recently finished her stellar International Rugby career that’s included winning a World Cup winners medal at XVs level, playing in the Rio Olympics for GB Sevens as well as winning a bronze medal in the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She has also repressed her county in Bobsleigh and off the field, she’s on new adventures now that’s also included participating in Celebrity SAS who dares wins. We cover a real spectrum of topics that includes w...
Oct 13, 2021•54 min
For today's show it's the irrepresible Chris Skelley. Only a couple of months ago he won Judo gold in the visually impared under 100kg category at the Paralympics in Tokyo. He's also a European and World Champion. Chris grew up playing rugby and competing in Judo from the age of five, but in his teenage years his sight began to suffer due to Ocular Albinism and that led to a huge change in his life, in every area. We talk about that and how it's fuelled his positivity and fashioned the path he's...
Oct 06, 2021•50 min
Today’s show its the last in a three-part series with former rugby player Aidan McCullen who these days is an executive coach, host of the weekly podcast, the ‘Innovation Show’ and author of new book ‘Undisruptable’. Last week we talked about discipline versus talent, manifestation and positive thinking as well as his own very successful professional playing career and how that has helped shape a lot of his current thinking. This week we get into subjects like feedback, both giving and receiving...
Sep 29, 2021•44 min
Today’s show is the second of a three-part series with former rugby player, turned exec coach, podcaster and writer, Aidan McCullen. Last week we talked about nutrition and breathing and how he is ever-evolving as a father and husband by learning new things each week and this week we discuss Aidan’s playing career, from being capped with Ireland, Leinster, his arrival in France with first Dax and then his dream club, Toulouse before finishing his career in England with London Irish. He’s so good...
Sep 22, 2021•34 min
Aidan McCullen played professional rugby for over a decade, including huge clubs like Leinster and Toulouse and was capped by Ireland too, but since his playing days he has transformed himself into one of life’s great learners and communicators. From hosting his own amazing podcast 'The Innovation Show', which is listened to by none other than Bill Gates, to lecturing, coaching executives and writing his first book, Undisruptable, we dip into lessons learnt from all of those facets of his life a...
Sep 15, 2021•40 min
For today’s show, I chat to an athlete who's just returned from her first Olympic Games , open water swimmer, Alice Dearing. When we met in a small park in Camberley in the south of England, she was still unpacking all of what she’s been through from being part of the hugely successful team GB to her first Olympic final and how she would approach it again. It was fascinating to listen to her talk about all of that, how she deals with the ridiculously early morning training and volume as well as ...
Sep 08, 2021•50 min
It’s the second part of the chat I had, walking through Richmond Park in South London, with Olympic Silver Medallist and England and Team GB Rugby Sevens Captain at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympic Games, Tom Mitchell. We discuss building values from day one, putting time into relationships, confidence and lack of it and life after professional sport, but we started by speaking about how do you convince an athlete that filling in a questionnaire or turning up on time for a meeting is eventually go...
Sep 01, 2021•32 min
Tom Mitchell, Olympic Silver Medallist and England and Team GB Rugby Sevens Captain at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympic Games is this week's guest. It really was a great conversation and having originally given Tom his international debut when I coached him with England, we had well over a decade of collective experiences to unravel and explore. Recorded during a sunny walk through Richmond Park in South London, Tom talks about his return from the Tokyo Olympics and missing out on a medal after cl...
Aug 25, 2021•55 min
As a cricketer, Jeremy Snape achieved international honours with England as well as captaining county side Leicestershire, but it’s perhaps for his work in sports performance that he’s best known for these days. Post playing career Jeremy founded Sporting Edge, a company specialising in inspiring individuals, leaders and teams to deliver their best and this was the crux of the conversation when we met. Jeremy was great company and his wealth of experience energised the conversation. We had a fas...
Aug 18, 2021•1 hr 1 min
