On our latest episode we speak to the brilliant Marketa Simova. Marketa is a Performance Lifestyle Practitioner at the UK Sport Institute. As part of her role, Marketa supports the wellbeing of Olympic level athletes in swimming and diving, most of whom competed at Paris 2024. We spoke to Marketa fresh off the back of the games (3 days to be exact) to deepen our understanding of performance lifestyle and the detail of support that is put in place to support the wellbeing of Olympians.

There is a bit of a blur around the difference between performance lifestyle and sport psychology. On the episode we sought Marketa's knowledge and experience to explore this in more detail. In doing so, we get a border picture of how an MDT operates in a high performance context. Other highlights include Marketa sharing the implications of her PhD research and the consequences of a toxic performance environment.

This acts as the second episode of season 4 that was recorded in the Leeds Trinity University podcast studio. Thanks to LTU as always for having us down and to Marketa for chatting with us.

Find out more about Marketa via the following links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketa-simova-592438184/

Talking Points

1. Intro and welcome to episode (00:00)

2. Marketa's journey in sport (3:51)

3. The difference between performance lifestyle and sport psychology (11:03)

4. Mini case study (25:15)

5. 6 pillars of support as a PL (37:18)

6. Toxicity from media in sport (43:22)

7. Wellbeing of high performance coaches (45:49)

8. Toxic performance environments (52:49)

9. Closing thoughts (1:15:12)