I’m delighted to speak with Dr Karen Howells and Holly Bradshaw in this episode. Karen is a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She is a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and a registered Practitioner Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).  Karen regularly provides sport and performance psychology support to athletes from a wide range of individual and team sports competing at a variety of levels.

Holly is the British record holder in pole vault and recent Olympic bronze medallist winner at the Tokyo Olympics. Holly is also a Sport Psychology MSc student at Loughborough University and has co-authored a new paper along with Karen and Mathijs Lucassen entitled “Abandoned to manage the post-Olympic blues: Olympians reflect on their experiences and the need for a change”. It’s this fascinating paper that we discuss.