Mental Performance, Self-Compassion, and Sports Science Research with Dr. Sasha Gollish

Written By Stevie Lyn Smith

In episode 55 of the Real Fuel with SLS podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Sasha Gollish, a Team Canada middle- and long-distance runner, engineer, coach, and advocate for gender equity in sport.

Sasha has a unique background with PhD in civil engineering and decades of experience in athletics and research, she uses her skills and passion to lead community-engagement efforts at the University of Toronto’s Mental Health and Physical Activity Research Centre. 

Passionate about movement and belonging, Sasha co-founded Yellow Running Shoes and works to help young athletes thrive on and off the field. Sasha leads from a lens of kindness, compassion, compassion and empathy as a coach and human of ‘many, many hats’ as she puts it.

Mental performance for the everyday athlete

Throughout our conversation you’ll be invited to stay curious about how your mindset leads you through all aspects of life and sport— from adapting, staying present in adversity, and how to move forward towards your goals. Sharing her story of how she went from alpine skiing to a storied running career, including when she lost a shoe 100m into a 1500m race— and still finished.

She encourages using an abundance over scarcity mindset, which led to her recent project of developing Unstoppable, a mental-performance journal published by Strong Girl Publishing, designed to help athletes show up with confidence, focus, and resilience for every big goal that matters to them.

Bridging the gap between research and sport

This episode covers more than just the athlete mindset. It’s also about how using evidence based information to create resources can support performance, well-being, and long-term participation in sport. Sasha shares how her research work with young athletes and approach to coaching can help shape sport for generations to come, particularly for females.

It’s well-known that girls tend to drop out of sport between 13 and 18, but Sasha is asking the questions and bringing the awareness for the need to research what happens when girls reach age 17 and 18 and head away to university. For those who are passionate about youth sports, she is helping to drive the conversations on the impact of sports specialization and how young female athletes can be better supported. Spoiler, it goes deeper than just increasing money spent.

Sensationalizing the basics as athletes of any age

While we dive into some chatter about the high carb fueling trend in running and some of Sasha’s fueling mishaps in the past, we lean into how the basics are often neglected. Fueling is a key piece of performance in any sport but our conversation aims to sensationalize the basics like sleep, eating enough to support training and recovery, and using nutrition as a way to stay connected to family, friends, and teammates.

Many athletes overlook these basics and fixate on performance outcomes without considering how this may be impacting their health until they’re sidelined with injuries, sick all the time, or start to feel crushing fatigue and mental well-being deteriorate over time. We both share how past choices as athletes have impacted our health in one of these ways— whether it was low iron, high levels of inflammation, injury, or less than optimal bloodwork results as a cautionary tale to others.

Things will not go our way in both sport and life— Sasha emphasizes that working on your mental skills to be able to practice self-compassion as part of your journey is one of the most powerful tools that we can develop.

Top Takeaways

  • The importance of kindness, empathy, and self-compassion in and out of sport

  • How sport impacts our well-being

  • Using mental performance work to overcome adversity

  • Driving sports science research to support and keep young female athletes in sport for longer

  • Food as a way to stay connected, not just to improve performance

  • Mindset work is key for athletes of all ages

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Stevie Lyn Smith