Posts by stevemagness
When doing nothing is better than doing something.
I have a collection of physical therapists I reach out to whenever one of my athletes has a problem. If I can’t figure it out, then the next step is to reach out to one of these guys to find a solution One of them is John Ball, the well-known track injury guru out of…
Read MoreWhat can we learn from action sports?- An Interview with Brad Stulberg
In this episode, we’re coming to you in-person from Palo Alto, California. In the day after the Stanford Invite, Jon and I invite a special guest onto the podcast. Brad Stulberg is an expert in human performance. You might recognize his name from his regular work with Outside Magazine where he writes a regular column investigating…
Read MoreAn Interview with Danny Mackey, Head Coach of the Brooks Beasts
We have a special guest for this weeks episode, head coach of the Brooks Beasts Danny Mackey. Danny has numerous accolades, including coaching 800m runners Cas Loxsom and Nick Simmonds to spots on last years World Championship teams. In this episode, Danny traces his story in how he got into coaching and the lessons learned…
Read MoreTo Push or Settle: A look at Passion and Relentless Drive
When you grow up as a track athlete you are faced with the black and white nature of the sport. You instantly know if a race was successful or not based on the time run and the place given. No matter how much ruminating about the weather or pacing or tactics that might have accounted for…
Read MoreEpisode 28- The Psychology of the Big Breakthrough
The breakthrough is what we are all after. It’s what we spend months training for, visualizing, and dreaming about. But what’s the best way to get there, and how do we capitalize on it once we do. In this episode, Jon and I go through the psychology of a breakthrough. We start with defining a…
Read MoreWhat Actually Matters- Concepts or Details?
As I sat on stage with several world-class performers, ranging from sprint to endurance, I couldn’t help but feel a little out of place. I was speaking at the Canadian National Endurance Conference in front of some very smart coaches and academics. On stage were guys like Dan Pfaff, Derek Evely, and Nic Bideau who…
Read MoreRecovery Addict: How overemphasizing recovery creates dependency
On my glass shower door is a message scrawled across in black marker in my distinctly illegible handwriting that says “Look the other way.” It’s not some cryptic paranoid message, but instead it’s a daily reminder to consider other possibilities. I’ve found that, whenever we see everyone jumping on the bandwagon and all nodding in…
Read MoreEpisode 27- Training for the 800
We’re back with a new podcast for 2016! This time we jump straight into what you guys have asked for, specifics on training. For this episode, we divert away from the bigger picture and discuss training for the 800. We start with going through the different types of 800m runners and why it’s an event…
Read MoreA Case for Running by Feel- Ditching your GPS because of Ecological Psychology
In his book The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford outlines why this might be the case. He uses a reoccurring example in the world of modern pop psychology, the motorcycle, to illustrate this difference. When riding a motorcycle, there are two different ways of knowing how fast the motorcycle is traveling. The first is…
Read MoreA Message to Speed/Power/Conditioning Coaches about Endurance Development
This is likely to be a long rambling and disjointed rant. For this I apologize. How and when you learn something matters It seems like information should be information, after all facts are facts. It shouldn’t matter when we learn facts and theories, as it’s generally assumed they are independent, but this assumption is often…
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