Sport Performance Leadership: David Lasini - How to Lead in Performance Institutes

2025-02-03

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Episode 173: In this episode of the Sports Performance Leadership Podcast powered by Inform Performance, Pete McKnight speaks with David Lasini, a highly respected leader in strength & conditioning with 30 years of experience across Olympic, Paralympic, Commonwealth, and professional sports. Currently Head of S&C at Sport Northern Ireland Sports Institute, David leads a team of coaches supporting over 20 elite sports. His career spans the Victorian, Australian, UK, and Northern Ireland Institutes of Sport, with expertise in field hockey,...

Episode 173: In this episode of the Sports Performance Leadership Podcast powered by Inform Performance, Pete McKnight speaks with David Lasini, a highly respected leader in strength & conditioning with 30 years of experience across Olympic, Paralympic, Commonwealth, and professional sports. Currently Head of S&C at Sport Northern Ireland Sports Institute, David leads a team of coaches supporting over 20 elite sports.

His career spans the Victorian, Australian, UK, and Northern Ireland Institutes of Sport, with expertise in field hockey, athletics, rowing, netball, Australian Rules Football, Gaelic football, judo, soccer, bobskeleton, and more. He was also Senior S&C Coach for Australia’s National Hockey Teams (2009-2013) and played a key role in Team GB’s Performance Science for Tokyo 2021 and Paris 2024.

✏️Topics Discussed

▪️Key leadership experiences—from early mentorship to leading national programs

▪️ How his leadership style evolved—balancing collaboration with decisiveness

▪️Why self-awareness and emotional intelligence are crucial in high performance

▪️The importance of authenticity—staying true to your values as a leader

Future trends in sports leadership—tech, business acumen & well-being

Where you can find David:

•⁠ LinkedIn

Sponsors

VALD: makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training.

Hytro: The world’s leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport.

Teambuildr: A platform for any coach in any setting. Every day, thousands of coaches log into TeamBuildr to write training programs, build questionnaires and access athlete and client performance data. Teambuildr is a complete platform. Whether you're building your own programming, looking to create custom reports or give athletes a tool for accountability, they've built it out.

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