Performance Process: Finding a way with Mehdi Kordi
Spin Cycle
Escape Collective
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's Performance Process, we talk to Mehdi Kordi, PhD and Head Coach (Track Sprint) at the Dutch National Cycling Federation. Kordi recently coached Jeffrey Hoogland to a new Kilo World Record, and having spoken with him for our optimising deep dive looking inside that new World Record, we knew we had to get Mehdi on the podcast.
In this episode, Mehdi talks us through his unique route into coaching, including a detour into researching CPR techniques for use in space on the one-way mission to Mars. He also breaks down the benefits of an inquisitive mindset and how to harness it. There's a discussion on the importance of improvement-focused process goals and why ultimately everything still hinges on binary results, and the challenges of coaching Olympic athletes from a different country.
Slightly worryingly, Mehdi explains why track cycling is so dependent on the Olympics and why its days at the Games might be coming to an end, and his take on the challenges the UCI faces in ensuring a level playing field.
The Performance Process is a members-only podcast from Escape Collective. If you're not a member, you'll need to become one (insider or supporter level both apply – monthly or annual both apply) to listen to the full show.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Performance Process, everybody. I'm Kayle Fretz, joined as always. |
| 0:17.0 | Actually, I'm really joining you, Ronin. Let's be honest, Rona McLaughlin. |
| 0:21.0 | Well, especially this week because the episode of're about to hear I was kind of, I'm going to say |
| 0:25.2 | Flying Solo because it's a bit of a segue to the guest that we're about to introduce. |
| 0:29.5 | But no, it's not at all. |
| 0:30.5 | Let's start that again. |
| 0:31.5 | No, it is. It's a good segue. It's a good segue. Today we're talking about a new kilo world record. So a kilo for those who don't know is a standing start 1,000 meter track event. |
| 0:45.1 | The new record is 55 seconds. |
| 0:47.5 | There was actually quite little about the kido |
| 0:49.4 | and they end up. |
| 0:50.0 | Well, you know, we're still gonna talk to somebody related to that. We're also gonna talk, we're still going to talk to somebody related to that. |
| 0:53.2 | We're also going to talk, we're going to talk coaching, we're going to talk thinking outside the box. |
| 0:56.0 | We're going to talk tech doping today. |
| 0:58.4 | Ronan, who are you speaking with? |
| 1:01.0 | Well, that was the thing. |
| 1:02.0 | The reason I was saying same flying solo there was because |
| 1:03.8 | uh... a clash in calendar last week meant that i had to record this |
| 1:08.0 | podcast solo with medi kordi who he's a coach for jefriaglans who just broke the Kilo world record. |
| 1:15.1 | We spoke to him last week for an article that we did on that new world record and looking into |
| 1:20.1 | some of the optimization that went into it and then we got many on the |
| 1:23.5 | podcast to cover a few more things about that world record that we didn't |
| 1:26.6 | touch on in the in the article specifically in terms of the the sort of power |
... |
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