Dr. Marco Cardinale, Head of Sports Physiology, Aspire Academy

Marco Cardinale (0:00)

I still think there is so many things I don't know, that that's why I do what I do, to find out more, to learn. So I see my job as being very fortunate, because it allows me to learn.

This is why I do what I do, so I can learn something every day.

Michael Gervais (0:27)

All right, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, I'm Michael Gervais. By trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist and the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the idea behind these conversations, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, from people who have dedicated their life efforts to understand the nuances of their craft. And what we wanna do is we wanna understand what they're searching for, what their psychological framework is, which is really how they see the world, how they see themselves in it, how they explain events along the way. And we also want to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft.

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Okay, this week's conversation is with Dr. Marco Cardinale and he's the head of Sports Physiology of Aspire Academy in Doha and that's in Qatar.

And he started his career in sports science as a strength and conditioning coach and went on to lead the sports science activities for the preparation of Team Great Britain at the Beijing, Vancouver and the London Olympic Games. And he's been an advisor to loads of companies, government agencies, including the European Space Agency and professional sport organizations and national governing bodies in five countries, USA, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK before he started his work in Qatar. And in this episode, we discuss making the most of opportunities, how he's done it, the way he thinks about it, the structure that he puts in place to capture opportunities. And we also talk about the self-imposter syndrome and we also dive into his evidence-based approach to coaching. This conversation is rich. There's lots to learn from Marco. So Marco, thank you for this conversation. And he's just got a unique perspective that only comes from working all over the world, immersing himself in different cultures as part of the ecosystem that creates greatness.