The Principles of Performance

Brett Bartholomew is a performance coach, best-selling author, keynote speaker, adjunct professor, and founder of the leadership development company Art of Coaching™ (formerly The Bridge Human Performance®). He holds a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from Kansas State University and a Master of Science in Education in exercise science, with an emphasis on motor behavior, cueing, and attentional focus in human performance, from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Brett has coached a diverse range of athletes across 23 sports, from youth to Olympians, in both team settings (NCAA and professional) and individually, and has supported Super Bowl and World Series champions along with professional fighters, including UFC competitors. He has also worked individually with members of the United States Special Forces community. Through Art of Coaching™, he now consults with corporations in the financial and tech sectors, medical professionals, and military and professional sporting organizations, helping leaders coach and communicate more effectively through a deeper understanding of human behavior, persuasion, and power dynamics. His coaching and speaking have taken him around the world, from China to Brazil and numerous stops in between. Brett is the author of the best-selling book Conscious Coaching: The Art and Science of Building Buy-In, which argues that while enormous attention has been paid to the science of physical training, comparatively little has been paid to the science of communication — and that learning to move people, not just their bodies, is essential to getting the most out of them. The book is now used by several universities to help train future coaches and professionals, and Brett has built out an entire course continuing where the book left off, diving deeper into the application of coaching science. Across his content and consulting work, Brett consistently returns to themes of authentic buy-in over compelled authority, reading and adapting to different athlete and client archetypes, and the idea that experience — not mere exposure to ideas — is what actually makes someone a credible coach. Links: Art of Coaching - https://artofcoaching.com/ Brett's Newest Book: The Antihero Advantage - https://theantiheroadvantage.com/ Social Media: @Coach_BrettB - https://www.instagram.com/coach_brettb/ Personal Website and Media Links - https://brettbartholomew.net/

Dan Pfaff is one of the most respected and influential coaches in the history of track and field, widely regarded as the original “Master of Movement.” A co-founder and senior lecturer at ALTIS, the Phoenix based training center and education platform for coaches and athletes, Dan has spent decades at the intersection of elite performance coaching and coach education, mentoring thousands of coaches and therapists around the world. He was mentored early in his career by biomechanics pioneer Coach Tellez, and has gone on to lecture in more than 27 countries and publish widely on biomechanics, training theory, and the art of coaching. Over his career in track and field, Dan has coached 49 Olympians, including 10 medalists, alongside 5 world record holders and athletes who have combined to set 57 national records, with expertise spanning sprints, jumps, hurdles, and combined events. Beyond track and field, he has consulted extensively with professional sports organizations across the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL, sought after for his rare ability to see movement dysfunction and technical breakdown that others miss. Known for an empathetic, thoughtful coaching style, Dan has become a sought-after mentor and educator across the broader sports performance community, not just within athletics. At ALTIS, Dan is the primary author of coaching education courses including Coaching the Short Sprints and The Coaching Eye, teaching his biomechanical assessment techniques and “have to have versus want to have” approach to program design to coaches worldwide. Across his teaching and writing, Dan consistently returns to a handful of core themes: coaches as “error detection and correction specialists rather than drill collectors, the necessity of a true 3D, holistic view of movement rather than isolated treatment of body parts, staying flexible with cue systems to fit the individual athlete, and the deep patience required to actually learn to see — a skill he describes as a process that does not happen overnight. Links: https://altis.world Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danpfaff/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/DanPfaff

Dr. Jim Afremow is a sought-after mental game coach, licensed professional counselor, and high-performance consultant who has spent over 20 years helping athletes and high achievers unlock peak performance. He is the founder of Good to Gold Medal, PLLC, a leading mental training consulting practice based in Phoenix, Arizona, and previously served for nearly a decade as a senior staff member with Counseling Services and Sports Medicine at Arizona State University. He currently also serves as a Mental Game Coach with the San Francisco Giants baseball organization. Jim has worked closely with athletes across nearly every major sport — including MLB, NBA, WNBA, NFL, NHL, PGA Tour, and LPGA Tour athletes, Heisman Trophy winners, and Olympians — as well as business professionals, performing artists, and others in high pressure, high-stakes careers. He has served as staff mental coach for two international Olympic teams, the Greek Olympic softball team and India's Olympic field hockey team, and his work has been published in journals including the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology and Olympic Coach Magazine. Jim is the author of three best-selling books on sport psychology: The Champion's Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive; The Champion's Comeback: How Great Athletes Recover, Reflect, and Reignite; and The Young Champion's Mind, written specifically for student athletes. Across his books and his ongoing mental training content, Jim consistently returns to a handful of core themes: building genuine mental toughness without gritted teeth or forced bravado, the power of customizable pre-performance routines, learning to get into and stay in “the zone,” thriving as part of a team while staying humble, and — especially in The Champion's Comeback — how great athletes recover and reignite after injury, failure, or setback rather than being defined by it . Links: https://www.drjimafremow.com Twitter/X: @goldmedalmind — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

Tony Medrano is the CEO and co-founder of LongevityPlan.AI, a platform that combines wearable data, biomarkers, medical records, and lifestyle activity into a personalized “Digital Twin” — an AI-powered software replica of the human body built to predict, optimize, and personalize health, recovery, and performance in real time. Through its proprietary Digital Twin for Predictive Peptide Performance™ technology, LongevityPlan.AI delivers physician- supervised peptide protocols and personalized longevity recommendations to athletes, coaches, businesses, organizations, and government and military clients, with the mission of democratizing NFL- and Ironman-level performance optimization for everyday people. Before founding LongevityPlan.AI in 2025, Tony built a career at the intersection of law, business, and emerging technology. He is a three-time technology company CEO with two successful exits — including a $1 billion molecular diagnostics company and a mobile app platform company — and co-authored one of the first issued patents for mobile applications, helping shape the early mobile ecosystem before smartphones existed. He holds degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, along with a JD/MBA from Stanford University. Tony began his career as a U.S. Navy Officer commanding an emergency response team aboard a USN destroyer, and has since worked with organizations including NASA, the FBI, the U.S. Olympic Team, the NFL, NBA, and MLB. A three-time full Ironman Triathlon finisher (140.6 miles) who didn't take endurance sports seriously until he was dared into his first race at age 48, Tony credits daily peptide use with his ability to train four hours a day, five days a week at 55 — an age he calls merely his “chronological age,” citing self-reported metabolic and biological age markers well below it. He was profiled in a September 2026 Inc. magazine feature, “The Peptide Boom Is Coming for the C-Suite,” which examined how LongevityPlan.AI and a wave of telehealth startups are marketing peptides directly to entrepreneurs and executives, even as most of the compounds remain unapproved by the FDA and stuck in a regulatory gray zone. Tony's stated goal is to eventually bring peptide therapy into corporate benefits packages alongside things like gym memberships, and LongevityPlan.AI is already pursuing partnerships with enterprise and Fortune 500 clients. His most active online and press content centers on separating evidence from hype in the exploding peptide space (including widely discussed compounds like BPC- 157), GLP-1s, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and how Digital Twin technology can extend not just lifespan but healthspan. Links: https://longevityplan.ai Twitter/X: @TMedrano2 — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

          Jeremy Frisch is a nationally recognized leader in youth athletic development, physical literacy, and long-term athletic development (LTAD). He currently serves as Director of Athletic Performance at Teamworks Sports Center in Acton, Massachusetts, and is the former owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Massachusetts, which he built into one of the most respected youth training facilities in the country before selling it after years of successfully developing athletes of all ages. He is a 2007 graduate of Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in health science and physical education, and was a member of the football and track teams at both Worcester State and Assumption College. Jeremy previously served as assistant strength and conditioning coach for the College of the Holy Cross athletic department, where he worked directly with the men’s basketball team and served as strength coach for men’s and women’s soccer, lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis, and women’s track and field. Before Holy Cross, he was sports performance director at Teamworks Sports Center and Competitive Athlete Training Zone, a speed and strength coach at Athletes Edge Sports Training, and completed a strength and conditioning internship at Stanford University in 2004. He is certified through USA Weightlifting, USA Track and Field, and StrongFirst (SFG1), and is a physical education and youth football coach at Clinton High School. A frequent and influential podcast guest and clinician, Jeremy has built his coaching philosophy and content around a consistent set of core themes: filling the developmental holes left by modern childhood’s lack of unstructured play — the climbing, jumping, and rolling that used to happen naturally — by hiding coaching objectives inside genuinely fun, game- based activities; the importance of tumbling and rolling skills for both athleticism and injury/risk management; age-appropriate coaching that resists treating young athletes like miniature adults; and pushing back against early sport specialization and over-coaching in favor of broad physical literacy. He created the Youth Athletic Development Master Class and Kit to help coaches implement LTAD principles, and continues to advocate for balancing controlled chaos with safety in how young athletes are trained. Links: https://achieveperformance.training Twitter/X: https://x.com/JeremyFrisch?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremy_frisch17/?hl=en Speed Demons: https://jeremy-s-site-6521.thinkific.com/products/courses/speed- demons-youth-athletic — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

          David Putrino is the Director of Rehabilitation Innovation for theMount Sinai Health System, Director of the Abilities Research Center (ARC), and Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Trained as a physical therapist in Australia, David went on to earn a PhD in the neurophysiology of motor control before moving to the United States to study computational neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and MIT, and later to develop “bleeding-edge” brain-computer interface technology at NYU under Department of Defense funding. He has also served on faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Burke Medical Research Institute. At the Abilities Research Center, David runs a hybrid research lab and clinic that develops and rapidly deploys technologies designed to help people across every level of human performance realize their full potential — from exoskeletal robotics and brain stimulation to motion capture, virtual and augmented reality, wearable technology, and implantable devices. He is affiliated with Mount Sinai’s Center for Post-COVID Care, one of the first major multidisciplinary Long COVID treatment and research centers in the US, and leads Performance360, an initiative applying elite human-performance modeling to help everyday people push their own limits. He also consults on high- performance research with partners including Red Bull High Performance, the Brooklyn Nets, MLB, and the English Premier League. David is also the “Chief Mad Scientist” of Not Impossible Labs, an organization that rapidly develops disruptive, often crowd-sourced technological solutions for high- impact humanitarian problems. His work has been featured on ABC, in Sports Illustrated, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, TIME, Wired, and the Los Angeles Times.   Links: https://profiles.mountsinai.org/david-f-putrino https://notimpossible.com — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

          Dr. Neil Paulvin is a board-certified osteopathic physician practicing in Manhattan, and one of the most recognized names in longevity and regenerative medicine, often referred to as “The Peptide Doc.” He holds board certifications in Family Medicine, Osteopathic Manipulation, Functional and Integrative Medicine, and Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine through the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), and is a member of the International Peptide Society. His practice combines conventional and functional medicine with advanced diagnostics to help patients optimize longevity, recovery, and performance. Dr. Paulvin specializes in peptide therapy, hormone optimization, mitochondrial health, brain health and cognitive optimization, sports medicine, and the brain-gut connection, taking an evidence-based, root-cause approach to precision medicine rather than chasing trends. He has helped Fortune 500 executives, Olympic athletes, top trainers, and A-list celebrities recover faster from injury, optimize their health, and improve performance, and he sees patients in person in Manhattan as well as via telemedicine across multiple states. He is the host of the Life Optimized podcast and a frequent guest across major health and biohacking media, where he breaks down the science behind peptides and other widely discussed longevity compounds. His work has been featured in The New York Post, Nutritious Life, and numerous podcasts and publications covering biohacking, longevity, and human performance.   Links: Home Life Optimized Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life- optimized/id1647288049 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drpaulvin/?hl=en LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-paulvin-a437021a/ — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

          Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports. Joel spent 8 years as a strength coach at the University of California – Berkeley, working across swimming, tennis, water polo, and track and field, and has 17 years of experience coaching track and field at the NCAA, club, and private level. He earned his BA in Exercise Science from Cedarville University and his MS from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and was himself a NAIA All-American track and field athlete. A s a track coach, Joel has guided athletes to NCAA All-American honors and multiple national championships, including a national champion in the women’s 55m dash. As a strength coach, his programs have helped 5 athletes reach Olympic berths, resulting in 9 medals and a world record performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In 2011, Joel started Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark to bring relevant, research-informed training information to everyday coaches and athletes, and in 2016 he launched the Just Fly Performance Podcast, now one of the leading shows in the sports performance field with over 500 episodes featuring experts across strength and conditioning, track and field, biomechanics, and sport psychology. Joel is also the author of Speed Strength: A Comprehensive Guide to the Biomechanics and Training Methodology of Linear Speed, and creator of the Elastic Essentials training course.   Links: https://www.just-fly-sports.com Instagram: @justflysports — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

          Darryl Edwards is a London-based movement coach, author, speaker, and founder of the Primal Play Method®, an evidence-informed approach to physical activity that draws on exercise physiology, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and play psychology to make movement enjoyable, adaptable, and easier to sustain across the lifespan. Darryl holds credentials including FCIMSPA (Chartered Fellow with the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity), FBSLM, DFSEM(UK), and is an ACSM Cancer Exercise Specialist®. Through his work in exercise oncology, he founded Movement Oncology, applying the Primal Play Method to support people navigating cancer treatment and recovery with confidence, adherence, and safe movement progression. His April 2019 TED talk, “Why Working Out Isn’t Working Out,” has been viewed more than a million times, and his work has been featured across documentaries, TV, radio, podcasts, and international press. Darryl is the best-selling author of Animal Moves, Paleo Fitness, Paleo from A to Z, and My First Animal Moves — a children’s picture book encouraging kids to move more, sit less, and decrease screen time — and has released a range of Animal Moves fitness decks for adults, juniors, and fitness professionals. In 2025, Darryl received the US Play Coalition’s Stephanie P. Garst Distinguished Service Award, recognizing his advocacy for physical and social health through playful movement. Links: https://www.primalplay.com Instagram: @fitnessexplorer TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/darryl_edwards_why_working_out_isn_t_working_out_jan_2 — – Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/

        Mickey Brueckner is the Founder and CEO of The ANNEX Sports Performance Center in Chatham, New Jersey, and has spent nearly two decades focused on building better athletes. He founded The ANNEX in 2006, growing it from a basement gym into a 14,000-square-foot, all-encompassing performance facility that has since expanded to a second location. Prior to founding The ANNEX, he held coaching positions at The Garage at HealthQuest and Gill St. Bernards School. A former collegiate baseball standout who was once projected as a 5th-round pick in the 2003 MLB draft, Mickey’s career was cut short by a season-ending elbow injury that required two Tommy John surgeries. That experience redirected his path into coaching and shaped the philosophy behind everything at The ANNEX: train smart, protect the body, and develop athletes who are built to last. His specialty is training overhead throwing athletes — pitchers, quarterbacks, and position players — and his approach to arm care, mechanics, and strength development has helped athletes at every level, from middle school to the pros. He currently also serves as head coach of QB Country New Jersey. Over the years, Mickey and his team at The ANNEX have worked with Super Bowl MVPs, World Series champions, Cy Young winners, and thousands of amateur and professional athletes, including Boston Red Sox pitcher Rick Porcello. He also hosts the MTB Performance Project Podcast, where he sits down with fellow coaches and performance professionals — past guests include Lee Taft, Danny Foley, and Tim Riley — for conversations on speed development, coaching methodology, and the idea that knowledge only becomes valuable once it’s actually applied. Across his own content, Mickey consistently returns to a handful of themes he’s most passionate about: arm care and overuse injury prevention in throwing athletes, the balance between development and winning in youth sports, and giving young athletes “permission to learn as much as permission to fail.” Links: https://www.annexsportsperformance.com https://qbcountry.com/new-jersey/ — Get your FREE eBook and Webinar at www.foreverclientformula.com The Principles of Performance is proud to be recognized by FeedSpot as one of the Top 30 Fitness Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/fitness_podcasts/ We have also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Strength Coach Podcasts on the web by MillionPodcasts: https://www.millionpodcasts.com/strength-coach-podcasts/