#617: What Does Effective Athlete Support Look Like in Practice? – Gemma McGuinness

0:00Hello and welcome to another episode of Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 617 of the podcast. You're very welcome. My name is Danny Lennon and today we're going to be looking at a number of the elements that go into effectively supporting athletes in whatever their specific goal may be. And to go through this topic, I'm going to be talking with Gemma McGuinness, who is a performance nutritionist, is the co-founder of Verus Performance, has been a longtime coach at Davy Nutrition, and is also a former professional footballer. And so through her experience of not only helping a variety of athletes across many different sports, but also her direct experience of competing at sport at a high level and the types of environments that can support that.

0:46And so in this episode, we're going to be focusing very much on the practical application of ideas that practitioners can use in order to help the athletes that they work with. And so if you are supporting them in their nutrition, or as we will talk about many other areas of their performance that go beyond their direct sport training, let's say, then there is many things that might be useful to bear in mind. And I think even if you are an athlete at whatever level yourself, you can apply many of these ideas directly and be thinking about these and how you can apply them into your goals as an athlete.

1:23In the description box of this episode, you can find out more about Gemma and the work that she is doing, as well as finding out more about Sigma Nutrition Premium, which is our membership for those of you who use this podcast as an educational resource. The premium membership allows you to get detailed study notes for all our episodes, which you can use to go back and revise or to understand concepts more deeply. they'll have discussions around studies that might be mentioned use graphics have explanations of key terminology that might have came up in the episode and so on you also get edited transcripts to our episodes and a premium exclusive episode of the podcast each month that is only available to members so if any of that might be interesting to you and you want to get more out of your podcast listening then check out sigma nutrition premium like i said that is linked up in the description box where you are listening right now or you can just go to sigmanutrition.com but without further ado let's dive into this conversation between myself and Gemma McGuinness.

2:37A very big welcome to the podcast to Gemma McGuinness thank you so much for taking the time to come and join me.

2:43Gemma McGuinness: Thank you very much for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation. As am I. Lots of really interesting things to discuss, many of which I know that you have both spoken really well about and as well as a lot of your writing that I've really enjoyed reading as well. But before I get to any of that, Gemma, can you give people listening an idea to your work that you currently do, anything you're involved with, your academic background, anything else that might be relevant to what we get into today? Yeah, well, I am a performance nutritionist and I've just come off the back of my professional football career.

3:13Gemma McGuinness: So I grew up playing football all my life and played international level. I got into professional football later on. I had a good experience in terms of the challenges that I now work with athletes to support. More recently now I've gone into the business side of things and developing various performance where I'm working with athletes across multiple sports to help them with pretty much everything outside of their training and their actual sports performance at the lifestyle side of things and really leaning on the nutrition and behavior side to get them prepared as best as possible. Lots that I want to discuss within that.

3:49First, maybe let's start with some nutrition centered things, but as we'll talk about, we can't really isolate them as stuff. And this is one of the things I've really enjoyed how you've tried to transmit this idea to a number of your athletes of talking about nutrition as part of something that's within a broader system related to their overall performance as opposed to oftentimes and understandably what we might have in the nutrition industry is a focus not only on the nutrition but even on nutrient requirements for athletes tend to be a kind of sole front and center focus again maybe with good reason but maybe none of the other things get discussed in the amount of detail that would actually be useful to athletes can you give and this might be an overly broad question but what is the kind of that kind of philosophy behind your thinking around where nutrition fits within a broader

4:41Gemma McGuinness: system that actually be useful to athletes yeah i think it's a difficult one because depending on who you're talking to and what environment that you're in it can be positioned so differently so in a team sport setting I feel like it has come a long way to feel more like a priority nutrition being something that is closely linked to the improvements that and the priority that's placed on maybe their strength condition that's come a long way that there's a lot of value around for a long time nutrition was just something that was just set aside and it was nice to have you know you might put something in place with your meals to support your training and your performance the view that we take in any environment that I'm in or any client that I'm working with or athlete is viewing this as a much more of an investment that provides benefits that's linked to your performance but also benefits that's linked to your your health and just your general well-being throughout the day because I think if there's two focus especially with athletes linked in performance there's actually this kind of it's only for whenever I perform that I take care of my nutrition and then when I'm maybe not in season or when I'm injured or when I'm not finishing my career all of a sudden I haven't really thought about how I live with nutrition and how I interact with food and my day-to-day behaviors so this building up an opportunity to create a greater depth with nutrition and the skills that can be built both the mental skills is it's linked to behavior change that's linked to food choice putting meals together to support performance and creating this greater depth with clients and individuals to open up a conversation about nutrition that allows them to think differently about their choices and how they make choices.

6:25Gemma McGuinness: It can present so much more of an opportunity for clients to just are people to enjoy their approach with their nutrition rather than feel like they are doing it for purely just the outcome of performance or linked to other outcomes that are very much kind of single focused. I really like that. So this, again, idea that many athletes might come with an idea that they're going to improve their nutrition or other aspects to help their performance. If there's too much of that focus solely on performance, then as you know, then it ends up getting connected to specific time points where performance matters most.

7:02So in around competition or certain key points of the season as opposed to a kind of common thread throughout their whole life which ultimately would make them a better athlete are there any good examples that that come to mind for you either from people you've worked with or hypothetical examples that might be useful to think about where an athlete might have had good practices around their performance let's say but in those other areas was maybe missing the understanding of what nutrition could do for them

7:32Gemma McGuinness: yeah i think in season or when i'm thinking team sport here i suppose i give those examples a lot as that's where i both played and largely work in and when it's in season especially in the early parts of a season for someone there's a big focus on a lot of changes like lifestyle changes to get the best out of the start of something new where motivation is high and that can be a good time for maybe dietary habits to be focused on that's going to support their performance it can be there can be really positive changes and this is often where I see a lot of even clients that come are it's at this kind of transition phase where they're trying to get performance benefits and they can see the value that nutrition might have on that but what can happen is parts of the season where they might pick up an injury and actually not know how to handle that maybe have never learned or have been introduced to other ways that nutrition could support that but we often see this kind of mindset with just not being able to deal with those kind of setbacks that are not supported in sport in general.

8:34Gemma McGuinness: And I think this is an opportunity to maybe change and shape the mindset of nutrition being a bit more of an investment in overall health and behavior. The same, and I kind of mentioned it there earlier, because I'm noticing it myself a little bit more and other people that I'm talking to is when you come out of sport. So a large number of people that maybe have come out of either professional sports or have recently retired or have played competitive sport for a significant portion of their lives and maybe had that structure and routine with nutrition because it was so linked to the structure and routine they had with their training.

9:09Gemma McGuinness: But then they're removed from that environment, removed from those types of conversations and the standards they might have had and living a completely different life and nutrition feels like it's just not fitting into that or they have this idea of the way that they should be eating and not actually able to carry that on. And I do feel like there's that investment part that's just deeper than performance that can be better understood when you open up those conversations of how does this link a little bit more to other areas that are really important to you? And this is, we often see it later in an athlete's careers, maybe more on the longevity side of things like pain-free, injury-free and being able to move differently, feel differently, energy levels, linking it to other things other than performance -specific outcomes, like how the energy levels you have specifically just in training or at the end of games that might be might put the prioritization for some athletes onto their nutrition but just being able to open up it to a bit of a wider lens of the impact of nutrition beyond that this this idea that you mentioned is really useful around you gave the example of athletes that are transitioning from actively playing to post career when they're finished or when they're transitioning into a different role maybe this could even be temporary situations if they have a long-term injury for example but particularly when they finish playing and it can have implications for their nutrition because there's now not it's not anchored in them being a a player or a competitor at that particular point and i think this actually connects to maybe a broader thing even outside of elite sport of around how our dietary habits often are connected to our identity in some particular way and so it's not just necessarily certain nutrient needs or an understanding of that there's these deep-rooted things that there's a lot of publications on around how it relates to identity and so presumably that part for those examples you gave is where a lot of that work would be done of how do we how does that person think of their identity now how does that connect to nutrition and the types of conversations you might end up having to have with them around those types of ideas yeah not that early stage I think those conversations I suppose I work a lot on an individual level and it makes it slightly easier to have those conversations with clients about the identity piece and the why have you come here today what is the goal and you can go a little bit deeper than just they want to maybe change their body composition for the sake of a performance goal or they want to feel better in their sport there can be conversations of why do you do your sport what type of athlete are you?

11:44Gemma McGuinness: And then it can be, okay, how does life look outside of that? And where does nutrition show up when you're not playing your sport? And what else do you do outside of your sport? And they're things that I've faced personally, but also from teammates and throughout the years. It's not, I think it's something that I believe should be talked about a lot more in sport to allow for even just greater performance, but also a greater experience in sport. If someone gets a better idea of who they are as a whole person as opposed to just the type of player or athlete that they are because if those standards like we mentioned are just purely linked to I'm just an athlete and this is why I live this way and once that's taken away from you and you're not playing your sport or you're injured it's a whole different story then and being able to step into other areas of your life that you enjoy can make such a difference to even being able to come back and explore other areas and come back as a better athlete a better person's whole exploration is I do feel like it's a really important element connected to nutrition as well and someone's how they start to invest in other areas of nutrition beyond even just meeting needs it's now about creativity exploration of trying new recipes cooking skills sharing with others there's so much to be said for that especially now as I would less class myself as an athlete now like a footballer but I've gone through that period personally where I know what it's like to just feel like that's all that you are and then come away from it and actually being able to explore actually there's so much more going on here and there's other areas that I can explore and and build up and be able to deal with any setbacks that come your way in sport that are inevitable In your particular case, I'd be interested to note that given the timeline for when you decided to stop playing, you'd already already been a performance nutritionist at that point, working with people, likely aware of some of these things that you've just discussed and likely ahead of maybe many athletes who had never considered some of these concepts.

13:45and it's more of maybe a brute shock. But given that, were you still experiencing those types of difficulties with the change in identity despite maybe the rational awareness of some of these ideas? Or had you kind of pre-prepared yourself for that transition in a way that you are happy with how it came out? Or what was your kind of personal experience at that time point?

14:07Gemma McGuinness: Yeah, so I feel like I've had two different time points where I left, like I probably almost felt more pressure to leave whereas this was more of a decision when I was playing international level when I was younger when I was 18 I stepped away from football I actually got into bodybuilding for like two years so I was competing in that and then I thankfully got back into footballing by myself with a bit of a different mindset coming back into it where I felt like do you know what I'm just gonna go I'm gonna have fun I don't want to put too much pressure on myself but my natural personality is that I will put pressure on I'll do things I'll take things seriously and that led to a bit more of a okay I'm finding these old habits and mindsets kind of coming back into sport where I really care about my performance I am going to do everything that I can to make sure that the week is perfect and I'm going into games and ticking all these boxes I still found myself like why am I not enjoying the sport that I said I was trying to come back into enjoy again and it It was even linked into the nutrition where it was very disciplined, quite strict.

15:14Gemma McGuinness: I generally felt like when I was studying nutrition at the time that now I know all these targets to hit. And, you know, this is going to really help me and I'm going to know what to do to get the best out of my sport. And that mindset continued for a while. And then I was going on to start my master's in performance nutrition as I was gaining more interest. I was getting more knowledge. I was really reading up in lots of things and playing football at the same time. So I was like, I get to learn all this and apply it while I'm doing it. But it was very much applying the numbers, applying the exact things that I was learning and not really reflecting much on how it was actually showing up in my life.

15:53Gemma McGuinness: Not really reflecting the impact beyond just, I feel a little bit better in training. But I actually didn't feel much better going into games. I wasn't really, wasn't relaxed around food, felt more pressurized. so all that experience was in hindsight really really valuable to where I am now but at the time it was definitely still like what I hear from clients all the time is like okay I understand where you're at with that and then I stepped away went off to moved away to Vietnam for a couple of years I wasn't playing football I was still active training taking care of I always was invested in that but I also got to explore other areas of life where I just started to take more interest in different things and speaking to different people because I wasn't playing football.

16:36Gemma McGuinness: It was other sports that I wasn't looking at and that helped a lot. Not even realizing I was kind of doing that. That was just how I was living and what I was interested in. And then when I got back, I was like, I really want to get back into football. And I just had this, I suppose I was just a different, felt like a different person where I wasn't as obsessed. I found myself a little bit more relaxed and being able to view things through the lens of what's actually important here being able to sit down and actually reflect on how I want to show up how I want to go to training I don't want to put that pressure on myself again I don't want to have nutrition as almost ruling me so I think that question and really really helped and I still continue to do it and I've done it for years now I went from getting back into football to then come back into playing professionally moving over to the UK it was constantly being able to just challenge myself a little bit more but also I finally wanted other people to challenge me too whereas I wouldn't really have been accepting of that when I was younger it was kind of like this is the way I do it these are my standards and now being able to do that myself and feeling really strongly about it and being able to do that for others too and just being able to help create a bit more of a depth in the question and I've seen the difference that it makes when you actually ask an athlete like what does your best look like and what what you really want to get out of your sport and it just helps to open doors that are sometimes it's just simple questions that you can get so much more of a not just a buy-in but an appreciation for someone just taking an interest and yeah it makes such a difference in sport and how behaviors are then start to change.

18:13I mean I can only imagine that that change in perspective that you outlined and the huge benefit that I must have had for the several years of your career thereafter where you could actually not only be really involved competing at a very high level but also enjoying that process much more than unfortunately we hear other athletes report like I'm sure you're acutely aware of how many people say after the fact of they look back on a career look back on a period of time where they were playing really well and like I wish I'd enjoyed it more at the time and I was always I I wasn't really there, you know?

18:45And so that part must be huge. But one thing I do want to bring up, because you've mentioned it a couple of times, and I know it's kind of a core part of what you discuss is around standards. And you've talked about the importance of having these or setting appropriate standards. And I think maybe this is where some athletes need some clarity over that distinction between setting appropriate standards for them that are going to correctly challenge them versus the point where we might veer into some perfectionism. or in other cases which i know is super common oftentimes in amateur sport as well where you see coaches or others or maybe even athletes themselves set what seem like quite arbitrary rules let's say that require a lot of discipline and then that discipline is what's going to make the difference but also there can be things that require a lot of discipline might be a specific arbitrary rule let's say for one group of people that is distinct from actually creating certain standards for athletes that are appropriate to them so all of that is to say when you talk about athletes deciding for them what standards they want to keep what does that actually look like what distinguishes that just from trying to be perfect or trying to stick to a disciplined rule that

19:55Gemma McGuinness: someone told them they should yeah i think how you approach that depends on uh so speaking individually to an athlete would allow for a completely different conversation versus if you're a practitioner coming in to speak in front of a group versus if you're supporting the backroom staff and how do we create a supportive environment and actually put standards that the team can buy into but also the the whole coaching staff can buy into as well so there's definitely different approaches of how that would be how that would actually play out in real life I think one thing to really consider is can we think of what the goal actually is what what outcome are we actually trying to achieve and what standards are linked to that outcome so for i suppose i'll start with an individual client recently i had a a client come to me well recently it was about six months ago now and we've gone through a huge change and just what she's able to focus on right now and the initial stages she had a scholarship lined up there was a lot of pressure in her performances and her great her grades in school and there's a lot of things at play and she had her kind of pressure that she was putting on herself and then she had the manager that was also putting different pressure on the team of what they had to focus on and what really mattered we're not it's not just there's multiple places that all this pressure is created and these standards come from it's not just one place so it's first being able to the individual player will have their own individual like what they believe they should be doing or athlete and then if you've got managers creating different set of standards that are things that we have to do in this is what we have to stick to or these are the targets.

21:32Gemma McGuinness: That's a different challenge to manage. But I think if we bring it back to the individual, if you can actually sit down and decide and really think about like, what is it that brings out the best in you and your sport? So what allows you to perform really well? And if we could actually just narrow that down to, well, what does that week look like then? So you've got a game at the weekend. What are some of the things that really matter in that week to allow you to express your best performance and you often hear you know the real things that come out there well when I take care of my sleep you know what actually that's one big thing or when I actually plan out my training and I have a bit of space to make sure that that happens and it's you might sound like basic things but if it comes from the individual and they're able to say that these are the things that matter and one of the things we do with individuals is okay can we create some level of flexibility with that so you've got maybe we class it as like good better best so like most people can set standards and say what their best looks like or what the ideal week looks like or their what they need to do and it can be a long list of things and that's fine to have that I think we need to know some people can hit really targets and or high target standards and feel good for a period of time but what happens if something disrupts that is that actually high standards if you can't if you can't stick to this whenever things go wrong is that high standards or is that just a lot of pressure that you're putting on yourself so it's how do we actually scale that and create a bit more flexibility within that so can we scale it back to what is just good look like what would some minimum standards look like for you to be able to go into your sport and actually still have a really good week and training in your sport and that takes so much pressure off from an individual to be able to like especially if it's coming from them it creates that autonomy in the plan allows them to see that there's a way of operating that what's above the line but there's also a way of operating that when things don't go well I've actually already decided these are the minimum standards that I'm going to set for myself and takes a bit of time to evolve that but not setting just rules that aren't allowed to change or not even having the conversation of how do we make them a bit more flexible just is how plans get set up for failure and then part of that is how do you deal with someone else is coming into the equation here that's maybe putting pressure on but is what they're asking the they're going to get the best out of you and I think if you can just come back to what is your you as an individual athlete what it gets the best out of you and that's just I know these this noise is going to come in and there's going to be other people talking about different things and different standards but how do you create them for yourself and how as a practitioner can you help the athlete to identify that as well this obviously connects a lot to the the planning that the athlete and their coach would go through together and i would imagine that it's relatively rare that an athlete particularly who's interested in improving their performance is going to come and say that they have no planning done, that they've never tried to put any plans in place, that they have just been freewheeling it for years.

24:39And most of the time people will try something, they'll acknowledge that planning is important, but maybe the way they've been planning or the process they've been using is more of the problem than actually trying to plan it or not. What are some of the main errors you would think that athletes can sometimes make in the way they've been going about planning or maybe said a better way what would that difference between an effective planning process versus one that maybe is suboptimal what would be the distinctions between those well i suppose the

25:10Gemma McGuinness: first one is to look at what you're planning for to know that the plan is actually aligned with what you're trying to achieve so that goal setting at this the start like identifying what's important here and just keeping it with the context of like okay i want to perform my best and be ready for the game at the weekend and get the best out of that bringing it back to like what what does a good week look like some of the places where i feel like consistency their ability to maybe show up consistently executing a plan is that they haven't identified the challenges so being able to to deal with when things just don't go to plan i because i delivered a workshop in this recently to our group and it was just how do you make the plan not fail and it's the response time so if something doesn't go wrong have you actually and do we have any skills here to actually help when things don't go to plan and you're able to just get slightly back on track so that might be something happens at the weekend do you know how to respond whenever that weekend you're coming back are you able to just have the next meal that's aligned with your goals and I've consistently seen this with clients is when that conversation is had and someone is able to say that themselves that when this happens that kind of in the research like if then implementation intentions like you're if something that inevitably comes up more consistently comes up that you find your position that you find yourself in quite regularly if they can identify what that kind of thing is it throws them off but then they go on to decide like what I will do the next time that this happens by pre-deciding it it might not I always say is like this might you might still not do the thing and that's okay but if you've at least started to practice this I guarantee you know in four four weeks time six weeks time you will start to notice a difference in just your thought patterns because you've you've tried to make a change some of the other things with the plan is reviewing it I like to nearly see that someone has maybe set a bit of an unrealistic plan at the very start but then because I know we're going to present it back and be like, okay, how did it go?

27:22Gemma McGuinness: And there's no judgment attached to it. There's just simply let's do a review. You do your review for your performances after the game. You have a look at how you played, how you performed. Let's just do a review on how you prepared. And that can, because that brings back to like, you're doing so many things well that they might not have acknowledged. Look what you changed. You actually added protein in here. You had your carbohydrates before your training session. There's so many little things you've done really well. maybe you're putting all the focus on this one area that didn't go right so let's just focus on that for next week it's not just this one way of planning but it's like how do we get someone to consistently engage in a process and then you'll find your way with it we see lots of different ways that people plan like i do in a digital calendar it's someone else does it and they might have a whiteboard for the family with all the meals and there's lots of different ways and if the conversation is just kept alive the engagement in that process and the excitement of it as well i just i think if it's left to your own devices sometimes it can be difficult for anyone to consistently stick to something new i i know i have to get someone involved and things that are novel with these things where we're trying to improve towards a certain goal and we want to know that we're on track and we might measure a few things we might do a review all these things we've talked about it seems that in performance nutrition particularly this can become very challenging to select the correct let's say outcome measures to make sure that it's actually supporting what we want it to support that is in other areas it's more straightforward if you have someone who is coming with the sole goal of losing weight we have a very clear thing that they can measure to see are the things they're doing with their diet working towards that direction similarly with health markers we can measure someone's blood pressure etc whatever it is to see over time with sport and particularly the athletes that you work a lot with where they're in maybe team sports or more sports where performance outcomes are dictated by so many different factors there's not that direct connection we can say that performance directly was impacted by this one thing as we'd have with those other areas i mentioned and so within that we have to kind of decide how do we know that what we're doing is helpful to this athlete how do we know that what we're doing and the way they're being supported is allowing them to perform at their best when we have performance metrics that are have so much uncertainty in them and even when we're best prepared performance might not be where an athlete might want for other reasons so given all that how do you talk through this with the athletes you work with how do you decide what constitutes success let's say from their nutrition perspective and how to assess that over time given that ultimately in the back of their mind they're always thinking about performance outcomes in competition or games etc i did a recent assessment of uh the goals that people set and i think there was over 100 people that's in the pre-conselt form and i just looked at the line down where we asked what's the primary goal and we allow them to like choose as many as they like but we're saying the word primary and there's I think the average was five things so five things it's or some more contradicting each other as well so choosing a goal it can be really or choosing a clear outcome is a challenge in itself that has to be looked at like what actually do we want to focus on right now to improve or what really would really matter because a lot of those things can happen as a byproduct so I think when it comes to nutrition there's always the it's said a lot so much and with practitioners and in this space about how subjective the change might be and how difficult it is to measure I think in sport one consistent measure that we can see if nutrition linked to performance is energy levels that's very often what people are are coming for and to improve but it's also one of those things that you can get an early win with that especially if someone is coming with uh there's able to describe maybe dips in performances being specific in when you ask them about how they how does their training session feel how does those red days you know when you said you're training in the evening after a work week something that you can target is energy levels and i feel like it doesn't take long especially if someone actually engages and they're bought and they make the changes that being an easy measure and an easy win one other thing is i think when we're linking these are trying to measure progress that it's not just one thing so are we able to kind of broaden the this might be the outcome that we're looking to achieve better energy levels but could we also alongside that could we also measure a couple of other things so that could be meal preparation it could be the things that they've also identified that they're struggling with challenge clear challenges that they would like to improve so obviously not putting it on them to make these changes but I noticed that you your cooking skills uh you rated those low is there any interest there in improving that and sometimes you get the kind of the eyes light up at different things if you start to talk about here's two other measures alongside energy levels that we're going to also target.

32:47Gemma McGuinness: And that's just what we'll focus on for this phase. And once you break it down and there's, okay, look how, because we're maybe identifying the winds along the way, look how many other areas you've also been able to improve. And we've been able to measure, you've said that you've gotten better. Maybe the speed of meal planning has gotten so much faster. You don't have to think about it as much. And that's another measure and I know it's not directly linked to performance outcomes but I think if we've got one or two performance measures that we could have whether it's energy levels or it is maybe intensity in training then just a lot exploring other ways that we can measure progress as it's linked to their enjoyment of the process too that they're actually building skills and they're they're finding other things that they can get interested in too.

33:36I wanted to come back to one thing you mentioned right at the outset Gemma and that was this point about so it's disconnecting the idea in athletes mind that nutrition is only something of importance that those key performance times are only connected with performance and that there can be these other benefits on other areas of their life that ultimately would make them a better athlete but also just will be better for them generally for health purposes for their enjoyment of life etc one of the things that can often happen in sport is around behaviors or ways of thinking that maybe traditionally in the past were thought as being really dedicated in sport or often praised for athletes that had these very strict dedicated types of behaviors or ways of thinking that could also oftentimes veer into areas that now we know could be problematic for those other holistic areas around health that whether that's generating some type of anxiety or rigidity or implications for how they think about food etc for you do you are there any examples that come to mind or have you seen this in ways of thinking with certain athletes where there are these maybe things that have been ingrained culturally in us for sport for a period of time that were connected with dedication or whatever that ultimately could

34:51Gemma McGuinness: be counterproductive absolutely there are i mean so there's many different personality types across sport and one of the typical personality types is that kind of discipline mindset and maybe tendencies towards perfectionism and that approach can serve the athlete in so many ways for such a long period of time like it can be such a beneficial way of living to create consistency with training and build routines and be able to say no to certain things that would allow them to stick to what they believe you know is really important to them but then there is almost a spectrum where it dips into it it actually doesn't serve them up to a certain point I think sometimes it's maybe just not evolving an athlete maybe not allowing themselves to evolve especially if it leads to maybe creating more stress and anxiety and maybe a little bit more pressure even in performances and when it when it relates to I suppose a keeper within nutrition and being disciplined around food and strict around food choices and no longer able to maybe go out with friends and family and you're not able to relax around food just being able to maybe present the idea to a client and ask the question like is this serving you or are you being a little bit led by these standards that you're setting for yourself or this this kind of disciplined route and what It can often lead to these disordered eating habits and not having any sense of freedom or being able to try different things within nutrition.

36:27Gemma McGuinness: And I'm thinking, I suppose, more so with females, where I see a lot definitely present in males. But I'm thinking both the clients I've worked recently with and also what I see in the changing rooms and kind of the ways that things are communicated. it can be very challenging because you're you're in sport and you're you've got the mindset of being disciplined and all of these things seem like a good idea and they seem like the right way to do things but I think it comes back to what I said at the very start like if an if an athlete can create the ability to be a bit more reflective or to actually look at being able to review how they're doing things and is it helping I think all we can do is is raise better ask better questions and present other ways of thinking but if we're allowing ourselves to maybe if we feel dictated by our um our routines or or what we're doing as it links to nutrition if we can be a bit more reflective with that and allow ourselves to just step back and is there another way that I could do something to get more from another area of life that would allow me to express this in my sports or feel a little bit more relaxed I work with many clients that present disordered eating habits.

37:44Gemma McGuinness: And it naturally comes from that athlete environment mindset. And there is absolutely a different way and a different approach. And it's just about the right type of support and being unafraid to have those conversations. I think that's probably what's missing a lot in sporting environments in particular, where maybe we don't have the skills or expertise to handle conversations like that, especially at amateur levels anyway. and I think with females in particular if we're able to hold conversations and not when it comes to body composition for example now that's kind of taken out of the equation which is a positive thing but there's still many questions from athletes and they want to know and understand things and I think that piece is just missing like how do we create an environment where that curiosity is catered for and we're allowed to have these types of conversations that feel safe to have and it's more of a learning rather than a fear around it when we think about athletes and having the environment they're in there's obviously certain situations where that is dictated by external factors if they're in a certain organization or a certain team or the resources around them but there's other parts of maybe their environment that they can create for themselves by maybe who they work with or their own practices or things they can try and mimic from other environments that we would consider to be high performance environments based on that and based on your experience of seeing different environments things that athletes should have around them in order to get their best performance possible again another broad question but for you what exactly is a high performance environment what makes a particular environment a high performance one i think this is different for every setting i think one of the good measures of if it's a high performance environment is how safe does it feel to raise concerns so if there are problems can both the staff and the the player or the athlete just openly raise that without feeling judged or like there's a bit of pressure on whether they're going to get picked at the weekend I think that's a good kind of gauge of you can get a sense of that pretty fast if you're in any environment like should I ask this question should I not I think for in any environment if that if it feels okay to do that it's a really good opportunity to make positive changes and get good group buy-in and feel like there are things that an athlete might feel really strongly about and it will be okay to have that conversation.

40:13Gemma McGuinness: I think that's a, there was a, when I came into my final season there with Bournemouth, there was one of the questions that were asked at the very start for the leadership group of if the women's team have this blank piece of paper and we're to create the best possible environment, what would that be? So let's not look at, you know, we can look at other teams, but let's not just look at the way things have been done. This is a women's team. We're not going to compare it to the men's and what they have done. We're just going to build it from like what this group right now can create for maybe set up for the future groups as well.

40:45Gemma McGuinness: And I think simply just being asked that question by the staff and the head of performance being asked as players, what does good look like? What can high standards mean as a team? getting that involvement from the players themselves is a really good way to because you can start to call out if we said that these standards this is what we're going to hold to so if I don't do it and I'm the one that said then it's very easy to feel like actually do you know what I'm right it's rather than I've been told what to do and I didn't do it I'm just I'm gonna kick up a fuss maybe about I don't agree with that in the first place so you can't simply just hand it over and give all the free reigns to the players there has to be the authority in place and the clarity of the roles but I do think the involvement of players and trying to create a somewhat of a leadership style player-led leadership within a group has huge benefits and it's very easy for me to say that and answer it in this question but it's incredibly hard and you need some some really strong leaders to actually create that type of environment but i've i've seen it i've seen it done really well i've seen it done very poorly i've experienced it in both sides of things and yeah i think it's a real expertise and skills and a leader that has to be very self-aware to be able to create that type of environment and groups of background staff and players that need to be somewhat the same as well or at least have a good strong group that can set the examples, then they can be followed.

42:15In a similar vein to that question, but maybe if we keep it to perhaps people listening who are practitioners themselves, either performance nutritionists or dietitians or nutritionists broadly, but started working now with people within sport, or maybe people who are generally health professionals who, again, might be working with athletes. When it comes to anything around effective support for those athletes, beyond the things that are typically done are there things that you have found over time that maybe oftentimes might be missing or that you found to be particularly useful either when you were playing or as a coach yourself that you think would be useful for any practitioners to bear in mind when they want to have this more well-rounded holistic athlete support that gives them the best opportunity to perform as opposed to something that's overly narrow or what are the things that come to mind that you think maybe are underappreciated sometimes?

43:08Gemma McGuinness: I think being able to educate, like nuggets of education and being able to create a sense of why for a lot of things, I think is just not recognized enough of how valuable that is for many athletes. A lot of the problems I've experienced as a player, just listening to other teammates across the years has been just lack of understanding why we're doing this. And there are so many small opportunities. it doesn't have to be this big slideshow presentation but there are so many little opportunities to just this is why we're doing this this is why we're doing this check-in in the morning this is why we're doing the wellness it's going to be really helpful and here's what we found the past four weeks like little insights that are related to them as players are so so valuable and I feel if this was just paid a little bit more attention to and not felt as there was this big thing that has to be done or implemented or a massive change it's such a small thing that can make a big difference to a player just better understanding what they need to do and also why they they need to do it and then that coming back to just is it okay then to ask a question if you know for a follow-up before i get to my final question for anyone listening that might want to find anything you've got on the internet where they can find you uh social media any of your other projects going on let them know any of the places on the internet they can go and find all your work yeah on instagram is probably the main place to find me for just the social media side of things it's jem mcginnis i somewhat regularly write on sub stack jemma mcginnis and then i'm currently building various performance so you'll find that in variousperformance.com so that's the main places for me perfect that will be linked up in the description box for everyone listening so you can go and check all of that out with that jemma that brings us to the final question that i always end the podcast on and it's simply if you could advise people to do one thing each day that might have a positive impact on any area of their life what might that one thing be i'm gonna say just decide what you'd like to do for the day what needs to happen what would you like to do i think plan the day ahead a little bit give yourself a bit of a chance before the day starts to do that with that jeremy guinness thank you so much for taking the time to come and talk to me and for all the work you're doing uh really appreciate you doing this thanks so much stanley it was great to chat

45:36thanks so much for listening in to today's episode i just wanted to remind you about sigma nutrition premium created with the goal of allowing you to more deeply understand the material you're hearing on the podcast episodes themselves to be able to retain more of that after you've finished listening or reading through the notes and then be able to easily and efficiently revise over that so that in the future you can be able to remember that information to be able to reuse it to be able to create your own content or ideas using things that you have learned at the core of the subscription is our detailed study notes that you get to each episode you have your own premium podcast feed that appears on whatever app you already use and you get these extra premium only episodes so for full details on this then check out the link in the description box wherever you're currently listening right now or just go to sigmanutrition.com and you can see all the details there i hope you do come back for the next episode regardless and until then have a great week stay safe and take care