Host Vern Gambetta interviews Morgan Smith, senior performance coach for US Soccer's women's youth national teams, about evidence-based strategies for training female athletes.
9 Mar 2026TRANSCRIPT
296: The adaptation conversation (with Dan Cleather)
As coaches we like to think of the training process as predictable and controllable, but the reality isn't that straightfoward. As guest Dan Cleather explains on this week's podcast, we don't dictate training outcomes, we simply guide a conversation with the body. In the interview he looks at how to best guide that process, the role of overload, and rethinking recent trends in athlete profiling.
For more information on this topic, read the complete show notes at: https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2026/03/gaincast-episode-296-the-adaptation-conversation-with-dan-cleather/
The following links were also referenced in the podcast or provide some additional reading material on the topic:
The GAINcast is sponsored by GAIN and by HMMR Media. Join HMMR Media to get access to a vast library of online training resources, video, articles, podcasts, and more.
Cleather was previously a guest on GAINcast 269, together with John Goodwin, where they discussed force and speed.
Cleather's most recent book is The Practice of Change: The Art and Science of Training. This landed on Vern's top 10 list for 2025.
Previous books include The Little Black Book of Training Wisdom (https://amzn.to/4sEPLSF) (discussed here by Craig Pickering), and his series on force: Force: The Biomechanics of Training, Force 2: The Biomechanics of Sprinting, and Force 3: Strength Training for Endurance Performance (https://amzn.to/4rXuhA9).
Vern's own new book was recently released. Learn more and order here: Building the Complete Athlete.
23 Feb 2026TRANSCRIPT
295: Book review
Vern is a prodigious reader. On this week's GAINcast he discusses what makes his top 10 books of 2025 stand out, as well as some additional reading recommendations.
For more information on this topic, read the complete show notes at: https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2026/02/gaincast-episode-295-book-review/
The following links were also referenced in the podcast or provide some additional reading material on the topic:
The GAINcast is sponsored by GAIN and by HMMR Media. Join HMMR Media to get access to a vast library of online training resources, video, articles, podcasts, and more.
Vern's own new book was recently released. Learn more and order here: Building the Complete Athlete.
Vern discussed his top books of 2023, 2022 and 2021 on GAINcast 277, GAINcast 259 and GAINcast 231. You can also read his book lists from 2025, 2024 (https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2025/01/vern-gambettas-top-reads-of-2024/), 2023 (https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2024/01/vern-gambettas-top-10-reads-of-2023/), 2022, 2021 (https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2021/12/vern-gambettas-2021-reading-recommendations/), 2020 (https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2020/12/vern-gambettas-top-books-of-2020/) and 2019 (https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2019/12/2019-best-books-verns-picks/).
Inside a recent episode
297: The female athlete (with Morgan Smith)
Published 22 Jun 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And so I was a postdoc for Woosai Human Performance Alliance for two years, being able to do some really cool applied work with female athletes and athletes. team sport athletes. So that led me there, which I think my postdoc was pretty unique because I was able to work with athletics and I worked with professional teams really in the sports space. But it's like, how do we get the science and the research? How do we apply this? We speak the same language of athletes, of coaches, of athletic directors. How do we build this integration where it's not burdensome on the athletics department? It still has the rigor that we need in terms of research and scientific design and all of that. […]
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