About us

If you are more interested in getting a bit more active for the benefit of your long term health, we have sister site (Activity and Health) that provides information on different activities and sports, how they can contribute to improving your health and offers coaching support to help you make lasting changes to your lifestyle.

Our offer

• Training programs and coaching to busy people to improve their stamina/endurance.
• You get advice on the right training sessions for the limited time that you have available.
• You get help and a sounding board to create fitness or performance targets that are realistic and achievable.
• When the unexpected interferes with your training, we are there to use our expertise to help you.

Why Scientific Performance Coaching?

• In 2012, our founder, Graham White, an exercise physiologist, decided that it was time to share his extensive experience of getting the most out of limited training time with others. He has competed at running (5000m pb, 16:01; Marathon 2:53:01), race walking (50 km pb 4:13:18 and 6th at 50 km, 1998 Comonwealth Games, Malaysia) and more recently in cycling and duathlon (25 m TT pb 59:50), he also rides a mountain bike.
• Coaching methods used are based on the science.
• Our advice and training programs are based on scientific evidence and knowledge passed on by National Coaches that Graham has worked with.
• You get to see the scientific evidence and paid members of the site can contribute to discussion that puts the evidence into the context of real training.

How we work with you

We are Internet based to keep costs down and to enable flexible communication, e.g. email, Skype™, Google Talk. We use carefully designed questionnaires to capture relevant information so that our direct communications with you can get straight to the point. When you sign up for a coaching package you will complete a questionnaire to capture some information about your event(s), constraints on training, what facilities are readily available to you and your current training and performance.

We use the GROW coaching methodology to tailor your training and set your performance goals. It is an iterative process and the first discussion will be by telephone or Skype call.

Cut the jargon and put the information in context. It can be hard to assess the quality of the research leading to a new discovery. Many studies report huge performance gains from a particular training or nutritional strategy but how does it relate to highly trained athletes? Many sport science studies are on under-graduate students who are not very active and responses can vary. It took many studies over several years to provide firm evidence that caffeine improves endurance performance in some but not all people. Some jargon is inevitable but we provide quick links to explanations of the terms used. We also listen to your comments on the site and will revise articles to make them clearer.

The Website has an online eBook on the scientific basis of training and performance, including nutrition that is under development, currently full access is free on registration. All we ask is that you provide comment on the pitch of the topics. We want this book to bridge the gap between the one column inch 'news from sports science' and the expert review pitched at PhD sports scientists and to address general fitness, fitness specific to cycling,running or walking.

The site also hosts an athletics and cycling blog where hints and tips on equipment reviews are posted.

How to sign-up

We offer three tiers of coaching support, ranging from a get you started package with monthly email reviews to a fully personalized package where you have phone access to Graham between 08:00 and 20:00 seven days per week. Full details are on the Coaching Packages pages. We only accept payment by PayPal. PayPal handles all aspects of the financial transaction, ensuring security of your card details.

Future Developments

We are developing an online training diary, where you will be able to upload and download your data.It is your data and we do not wish to tie you into using one product for recording your training data.  We want this to be accessible from your Android or iOS device. In the meantime we can support clients who use electronic data recording through already established online training diaries or review files of your key sessions/competitions with SportTracks, a software package that can read  most data formats.

Contact us

Please use the form on the Contact us form to send in any questions about the services offered. The Contact Us tab will appear on the top menu after your have created an account and validated your email address.