The Brain and Power Podcast: Recent Episodes
Elliott Richardson
The brains behind athletic training and performance featuring interviews with athletes, coaches and experts
Referees are the most scrutinised people in sport. Thanks to the advent of instant replays, every decision they make can be scrutinised and analysed in extreme slow motion.
Refereeing takes a special type of person to turn it into a career but that’s exactly what NRL referee Grant Atkins has done.
Since beginning as a referee in his local Penrith district at the age of 14 he has climbed the ranks to reach the professional ranks and finished the 2017 season refereeing in the Rugby League World Cup.
It’s a tough job that requires both physical and mental training. Atkins explains referees are put through the ringer in the pre-season much like the players. They’ll be asked to row at full pace while being told information they’ll later have to recall.
Just like all human [...]
It’s the worst experience a professional athlete can go through on the field. Their knee buckling under them and an audible “pop” sound coming from the area.we3
The Anterior Cruciate Ligament is the major piece of tissue providing stability to the knee joint. When it tears it’s hard for someone to walk let alone sprint, jump, land and change direction.
Similarly, ankle injuries are incredibly common in athletes and can keep them out anywhere from one week to six months.
For physiotherapist Mick Hughes, his job is to get his athletes back to full function and fitness.
In years gone by the default treatment for an ACL injury was surgery and then waiting nine months for it to repair. Nowadays Hughes says, they can assess the extent of the injury and rehabilitate the inj [...]
Dani Stevens has been throwing a discus since she was four years old. In that time she’s won world championships and gold at the Commonwealth Games but Olympic gold still eludes her.
Stevens was always interested in athletics and took naturally to discus and shot put.
In 2005 she went to the World Youth Championships in Marrakesh, collecting gold. The following year she took gold in the World Junior Championships in Beijing before taking Bronze in that year’s Commonwealth Games.
By 2009 Stevens reached the top of the sport when she became the youngest ever female discus World Champion at the age of 21.
She set her sights on the London 2012 Olympics to achieve her ultimate goal of Olympic gold. However, she was unable to find her peak form, finishing 12th overall. [...]
Isaac John always had his eye on making it to the NRL. Born in Hamilton, but growing up in Tokoroa, a town of less than 10,000 people near Hamilton, New Zealand he was always around rugby league.
A talented junior he represented the Junior Kiwis at the age of 18 and played for the New Zealand Warriors Under 20s side in 2008. Come 2009 and he was playing in the NRL for his boyhood club.
After two years in the NRL he took up an option to head to England with Wakefield Trinity Wildcats for the 2012 season where the initial move was difficult.
He only spent a season in England before returning to the NRL with the Penrith Panthers and linking up with former mentor and Warriors coach Ivan Cleary. There John played the best and most consistent football of his career.
He was reward [...]
Will the Aussies be able to take the final six wickets needed to win the Test or will the English break records and make history by chasing down 354 runs?
By his own admission, Jerrad Tyson was never the most talented football player growing up. Born in Hobart, his footballing prospects were also low. The only professional sports team Tasmania had at the time was their cricket team.
Jerrad worked hard though, determined to make it as a professional footballer. Although originally an outfield player, Jerrad found himself between the sticks when his team needed a goalkeeper and quickly found he enjoyed the position.
As a teenager he moved to the Gold Coast to play with the Sunshine Coast in 2008 and then the Brisbane Strikers in 2009 in the National Premier Leagues Queensland. In 2010 he realised his dream when he debuted for Gold Coast United.
But professional football is a tough world and Gold Coast United failed financially putting him and his teammates out of work in [...]
A quick analysis of Jarryd Hayne’s return to Parramatta and a preview of the Second Ashes Test
In 2014 Heath Davidson wasn’t even playing competitive tennis. He’d walked away from the sport in 2005 at the age of 18.
By the middle of 2016 he was a Paralympic Gold Medalist.
Heath contracted Transverse Myelitis as a child - a neurological condition that inflames the spinal cord - and became a paraplegic.
Although confined to a wheelchair, Heath was as active as could be and enjoyed his sport. At the age of 14 he took up wheelchair tennis and found he not only enjoyed it but was good at it.
After four years though Heath decided a career in tennis wasn’t for him and concentrated on a regular career.
A decade later he decided he’d have a crack at making it in wheelchair tennis and enlisted a tennis coach as well as stre [...]
Low carb or no carb? High protein or high fat?
Rebecca Hay is a sports dietitian with over two decades experience as well as being involved in Masters cycling and was involved in international sailing.
With many years of experience in research and practice behind her, Rebecca is incredibly knowledgeable in sports nutrition with an ability to bring simplicity to an industry which often has many different, contradictory voices in it.
In this episode Rebecca talks through balanced diets, eating for performance, making weight and consulting on The Biggest Loser Transformed.
Rebecca also works with The Athlete’s Kitchen, a business designed to bring the expertise of experienced dietitians to the regular public.
The Athlete’s Kitche [...]
Alex Volkanovski was once a rugby league prop playing in New South Wales’ Country Group 7 competition.
A premiership winner in 2011 with the Warilla Gorillas and Michael Cronin medalist for the competition’s best and fairest player in 2010, Volkanovski took up Mixed Martial Arts in 2012.
After going 4-0 as an amateur, Alex turned professional and won multiple local titles in the featherweight, lightweight and welterweight classes before becoming a two-time Australian Fighting Championship featherweight champion.
He amassed a 13-1 record with a 10-fight win streak before signing on with the premier international MMA company, the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2016.
Since debuting in the UFC in November 2016 he’s extended his win streak to 12-0 and will take on Humbe [...]
Christian Woodford is the founder of Woodford Sports Science Consulting and prepares amateur athletes to take the next step toward a professional career as well as work with elite athletes to improve their performance and assist in injury prevention.
Woodford has built his business from the ground up in Melbourne and focuses on injury prevention as well as performance enhancement. For the past 15 months he has had former NRL player Sandor Earl in the gym preparing for a comeback to the professional rugby league ranks.
Christian is incredibly passionate about the fitness industry and has a wealth of information and research behind him.
He also speaks about his time working for Maryland University in the United States which gave him an insight into how Australian sport can improve their junior athlete programs.< [...]
Please note there were some technical issues that affected the quality of the recording on Sandor’s end but I did my best to rectify the issues. This episode was also recorded before the Melbourne Storm announced they had signed Sandor.
In 2013, professional rugby league player Sandor Earl’s career came to a shuddering halt. He was charged and found guilty of using and trafficking banned substances and suspended for four years by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.
At 23 years old a rising career was put on hold and Earl was left two choices. Give up on ever returning to the NRL. Or bide his time and prepare to launch a return four years later.
The former Canberra Raiders winger chose the latter and headed to Thailand to give himself time and space aware from the fishbowl of Sydney.
Throughout his teenage years Christian Marchegiani struggled with his weight, bullying and anger issues. He headed down a dark road and found himself in court after a brawl that saw some of his friends stabbed.
The judge gave him a choice: go to jail or join a boxing gym. Christian opted for the latter and began a career that has taken him around the world.
In this first episode I chat to Christian about his teenage years and what led him to start the now world renowned THUMP boxing courses followed by HIRT (High Intensity Resistance Training).
As Christian explains, THUMP started on the second floor of a mechanic’s garage with the bare essentials and grew to being taught in 12 countries and the course material translated into six different languages.
He started the busine [...]
For world champion surfer Mick Fanning, stress management is key. While the world of competitive surfing looks glamorous, it’s filled with wipe outs, heart pumping rides and, in some cases, sharks.
So how does Fanning cope with times of high stress and perform at the top of his game? He works with stress management and breath control specialist Nam Baldwin.
Based on the Gold Coast, Nam runs Equalize Training Company and has clients including Fanning, Stephanie Gilmore, the NRL’s New Zealand Warriors and business professionals.
While the boardroom and rugby league field may seem worlds apart, Nam says the body will react the same way regarding his stress situations by engaging the flight or fight response.
He focuses on teach his clients how to control their breathing, w [...]
Joe Murphy was once the skinny kid who came off the bench to fill in on the wing for the last 10 minutes of games.
After hiring Rocky II on VHS and then watching all the others he embarked on an off-season training regime that saw him pack on the muscle to go from the bench to star back-rower.
Murphy’s career was sadly cut short with him on the cusp of turning professional but he took the disappointment and used it to fuel his passion of fitness and rugby league.
He began his personal training career by bouncing around from gym to gym, client to client and just making ends meet. Eventually he settled at one gym and began planning to turn his true passion into his job.
In 2016, the League Fit Academy was born in Sydney’s inner west with Murphy concentrating on developing [...]
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