I’m delighted to speak with Dr Phil Kearney in this week’s episode. Phil is one of the world's leading skill acquisition specialists. He is Interim Course Director of the Masters and Applied Sports Coaching course at the University of Limerick. Phil completed his PhD at the University of Limerick, exploring the application of skill acquisition principles to children’s learning of fundamental movement skills. He subsequently taught at the University of Chichester, England, where he was programme coordinator for the BSc Sport Science and Coaching, before returning to Ireland. A Fellow of the Higher Education Authority, Phil is passionate about skill acquisition, and inspiring the next generation of sport scientists and coaches to apply the core principles of skill acquisition in the development of athletes. Phil is also co-founder of Movement and Skill Acquisition Ireland.

Phil and I speak about what skill is and how it can be developed through session design and coach behaviour.

I am delighted to speak with Dr Ellie Gennings in this episode. Ellie is a Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching based in the Department of Sport and Event Management at Bournemouth University. Ellie is interested in children's wellbeing, children’s rights and safe sport.

Ellie completed her PhD in 2022 in which she measured children’s wellbeing developing a wellbeing scale.

In this episode we discuss a fantastic paper Ellie led on entitled “A critical examination of children’s well-being and well-becoming in a professional youth football academy”.

I’m delighted to speak with Dr Peter Schneider in this week’s episode. Peter is an expert in high performance environments and transitions. He was most recently the mental performance coach at RB Leipzig helping them to win 2 DFB Cups and 1 Supercup.

Peter’s focus is to help create talent development environments in which athletes, coaches, and parents are provided with the necessary information that leads to success at the professional level.

Peter’s area of expertise includes talent-development environments, transition into professional sport, group processes, coach-athlete relationships, and mindfulness in soccer.

In this episode Peter and I discuss a range of psychological topics and Peter shares his experiences working with RB Leipzig in the German Bundesliga.