What can doctors learn from athletes about training for performance with Dr Alice McNamara and Dr Charlotte Durand

08/30/21 • 122 min

2 Listeners

In S2E12 I am delighted to welcome Dr Alice McNamara and Dr Charlotte Durand to the podcast.
Alice is sport and exercise medicine registrar in Melbourne, Australia. She is also a dual world champion rower with over a decade of experience on the Australian women’s rowing team. She qualified for the lightweight women’s double for the London Olympic Games and attended the Beijing games as an alternate.
(Full Bio in episode. )
Charlotte is an emergency registrar working in Darwin, NT. She is also a triathlete and competed for Australia in the 2018 ITU world triathlon finals. (Again full bio in episode.)
In this conversation we discuss their respective backgrounds and careers to date in both sport and medicine and use as a platform to explore the themes of optimising performance and supporting wellbeing for doctors ( and indeed anyone looking to do this in their life). Alice and Charlotte use their experiences in sport and apply the performance lens to their medical training. They cover periodisation, deliberate practice, visualisation, coaching and mentoring and setting boundaries and recovery goals, topics familiar to listeners to this podcast. We explore parallels, similarities and differences between the athlete and doctor-in-training experience. Alice explains the concepts of physiological overreaching and the pathological overtraining syndrome and we compare and contrast to the profession syndrome of burnout.
In the second half of the conversation Alice speaks about her research with the AIS exploring female athlete heath and we discuss the Relative Energy Deficit in Sport ( RED-S), introducing concepts of energy availability in both female and male athletes, elite and recreational. This leads on to a more general conversation about fuelling and hydration for shift work and attention to self care and basic needs at work in the clinical environment.
The central themes of performance and wellbeing weave through this entirely of this conversation and both Alice and Charlotte share valuable perspective including many pearls and takeaways from their considerable experience and expertise.
I learned a lot from this conversation and it is a joy to listen to Alice and Charlotte share their authentic lived experience of performing and integrating sport, work and life as both athletes and doctors with a medical and sports science and psychology framework.
References and links :
Dr Alice McNamara
https://twitter.com/alice_mac6
https://www.instagram.com/_alice_mac/
Australian Institute of Sport FPHI website :
:Female Performance & Health Initiative | Australian Institute of Sport
ais.gov.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/11/687.long
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33065594/
Dr Charlotte Durand
https://www.instagram.com/chardurand/
https://twitter.com/char_durand
https://www.acemprimarypodcast.com
Ted Lasso and #medlasso Dr Mark Shapiro MD Into the Space Podcast

Disclaimer: The cont

The Mind Full Medic Podcast is proudly sponsored by the MBA NSW-ACT Find out more about their service or donate today at www.mbansw.org.au
Disclaimer: The content in this podcast is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care professional. Moreover views expressed here are our own and do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or other official organisations.

Disclaimer: The cont

Previous Episode

A Psychologist's guide to life and running with Luke Pryor.

In episode 11 Season 2 I'm delighted to welcome Luke Pryor BPsych (Hons) MPsych (Clin), MAPS. Luke is a clinical psychologist based in Queensland. He is also an impressive ultra runner.
Luke has a background in human movement, sports and exercise science and has worked with elite and recreational athletes and teams. He found himself increasingly drawn to the mental aspects of performance which led him to undertake extensive further training leading to a Masters in Clinical Psychology in 2012. Over the past decade Luke has worked in public and private practice and has experience in several areas including anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction and sports psychology and performance. Luke uses evidence-based therapies including cognitive behaviour therapy, motivational interviewing and has particular interests in compassion focused therapy and mindfulness, which we discuss here.
His professional background and interests make him very well placed to work with runners, athletes and individuals aiming to get and stay active, providing assistance with the mental and psychological aspects of the their sport, health, and exercise and performance.
Most recently Luke and his partner Kara Landells, who is strength and conditioning coach, have combined expertise and their passions for trail running hosting Resilient Runner Retreats.
In this conversation Luke takes us on his professional journey to date. He describes the challenges of working as a mental health clinician through a global pandemic, a time when our collective stress and anxiety has increased and his services have never been more in demand. Luke discusses the practises, tools and advice he has prioritised for his clients and patients through this period. We explore self-compassion and mindfulness based strategies and a practical approach to self-care in challenging times.
In the second half of the conversation we discuss Luke's why, where and what of running and explore the mental aspects of running and sporting performance. Luke uses running as a metaphor for life and we visit topics including motivation, self-awareness, identity, purpose and authenticity. It is perhaps no surprise that runners attending the resilient runner retreats come away feeling they have explored much more than their sport. I throughly enjoyed our conversation and am looking forward to attending a future weekend!
Find our more about about Luke Pryor :
https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-pryor-48b28176/
https://www.instagram.com/littlemadrunner/
Resilient Runner Retreats:
https://linktr.ee/pryorl/
Other Links discussed here :
Mindful Self-compassion Kristen Neff
https://self-compassion.org
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/resilience-project-from-page-to-podcast-to-home-school/id1513559414?i=1000513818626Dr Sophia Shih's Bruny Island Tiny Home:read an article about this idyllic escape with air bnb and video tour link noted at the end.
Disclaimer: The content in this podcast is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis o

Next Episode

Communication in crisis, the value of deep work, dealing with trauma and other lessons from the newsroom with Melissa Clarke.

In S2 E13 I am delighted to welcome Melissa Clarke to the podcast. Melissa is a political reporter with the ABC, working at Parliament House in Canberra. It’s a job she has had, with a few interludes, for more than a decade. She reports on politics, parliament and national affairs across a range of radio and television programs, as well as ABC digital news site. Melissa’s reporting experience spans beyond politics though, having been a foreign correspondent based at the ABC London bureau, reporting from Pacific nations, and reporting in-depth on issues including the environment, national security and justice - and the occasional bushfire. Away from the work, Melissa is a dedicated runner who has experienced a brief period of success at the high performance level, but has had a lifelong passion for running, endurance challenges and the great outdoors.
In this conversation we discuss and explore Melissa's work as a reporter and I draw some parallels with my own profession and day-to-day work in the emergency department, particularly with respect to the need to respond to ever-changing circumstances and crises.
As both doctor and amateur podcaster, I was keen to glean some tips from an expert on interview skills and communicating under pressure.
Indeed through this conversation I found some additional parallels but also broadened the lens and perspective through which I viewed her role and indeed modern media more generally.
Melissa is an avid reader and we explore how she navigates the need to read widely and consume all forms of media as part of her work with both a professional and personal yearning to cultivate deeper work and reading.
Naturally as fellow runner and lover of endurance pursuits and the outdoors, we discuss her why of adventure racing and how she cultivates time and space for self-care outside a job which could be 24/7, if she let it.

Links/ references:
Melissa Clarke
Twitter @Clarke_Melissa

Dart Center for Journalism an Trauma
https://dartcenter.org

Melissa's recommenced reads:
We Were Not Men Campbell Mattinson
https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460713150/we-were-not-men/

Power without Glory Frank Hary
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/power-without-glory-9781741667615
Why Die? The extraordinary Percy Cerutty maker of champions
https://www.percy-cerutty.com

Sky Runner Emelie Forsberg
https://www.emelieforsberg.com

The Secret Race Tyler Hamilton
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-secret-race-9780552169172

What I talk about when I talk about running Haruki Murakami https://www.harukimurakami.com/book/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-running-a-memoir

Endure Alex Hutchison