Today’s podcast guest is Kevin Mulcahy. Kevin is a sports performance coach, educator, and founder of TMC Performance Coaching in Ireland. He specializes in integrating strength and conditioning with skill acquisition, ecological dynamics, and constraints-led coaching to help coaches develop more adaptable, resilient, and athletic performers.
On the show today, Kevin talks about using constraints to develop more complete athletes, helping gifted players move beyond their natural strengths, and designing practices that build decision-making, speed, and adaptability. He shares practical ideas for manipulating time, space, and rules to shape behavior, discusses balancing coordination work with game-based learning, and explains how individual athlete profiles, including explosive versus endurance-oriented players, should influence speed development, conditioning, and long-term injury prevention.
More from Kevin: www.profiledperformance.com
Today’s episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength and Lila Exogen.
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The Just Fly Performance Podcast is dedicated to all aspects of athletic performance training, with an emphasis on speed and power development. Featured on the show are coaches and experts in the spectrum of sport performance, ranging from strength and conditioning, to track and field, to sport psychology. Hosted by Joel Smith, the Just Fly Performance Podcast brings you some of the best information on modern athletic performance available.
Kevin Mulcahy talks about using constraints to develop more complete athletes, helping gifted players move beyond their natural strengths, and designing practices that build decision-making, speed, and adaptability.
He shares practical ideas for manipulating time, space, and rules to shape behavior, discusses balancing coordination work with game-based learning, and explains how individual athlete profiles, including explosive versus endurance-oriented players, should influence speed development, conditioning, and long-term injury prevention.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength and Lila Exogen.
View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/)
Topics
0:00 – Speed, Skill, and Constraints
5:30 – Coaching Dominant Players
12:58 – Time Constraints and Team Speed
14:20 – Playing Fast and Slow
17:21 – Fast Players Need More Tools
20:28 – Wave Drills and Game Speed
26:28 – Reinforcing Good Habits
28:00 – Coordination to Performance
30:25 – When to Isolate Skills
35:03 – Drills in Ecological Training
39:02 – Isolated Practice and Skill
47:15 – Coaching Strengths
52:47 – Player Profiles
57:32 – Conditioning Explosive Athletes
59:43 – COD and Acceleration Cues
1:03:03 – Constraints for Skill Development
1:09:38 – Tactical Minds Across Sports
1:14:32 – Warm-Up Games
1:20:52 – Explosive Athletes and Injury
Kevin Mulcahy Quotes
“It is not easy to constrain players who have exceptional abilities to try and develop the other parts of their lane.”
“The coach brought him over and said, ‘I don’t want you to use your speed today.’ And that’s such a great constraint if the player is willing to do it.”
“Sometimes you may show them a different way, and they ignore it or reject it initially. But over time, something drops, or they come up against a problem.”
“We have to learn how to play fast and slow. Can we control the game when the sh*t’s hit the fan, we’ve given away two goals in quick succession, they’re dominating our kickouts? Can we get the hands on ball and slow the game and switch the play and space our team?”
“I know from GPS, previously at higher levels and when I did have GPS, some of the guys in those practices ran faster than they ever did in the game.”
“I could be forever trying to teach a guy to use his feet properly that way, but it’s just something that cropped up. You can just keep messing with this stuff all the time. Players do not care. They like this stuff.”
“If they organically pick up this coordination through their own organization of their body, bingo. You’re designing good practice then.”
“Ecological dynamics doesn’t exclude drills at all. It doesn’t exclude isolated practice.”
“S&C is only a problem when it’s not there.”
“What I found over the years that works well is just do, if I have a new idea, just do it. And I’ve also realized that most of the time, at least, the players haven’t a clue what you’re doing. We overanalyze ourselves going, ‘Jesus, is this going to work?’ And it doesn’t matter. Once it’s kind of dynamic or fun or challenging or physical, they’re going to do it.”
“We would go after building their capacity through their strength, rather than make them run like a boxer from the 1970s.”
“To move a player from hating conditioning to thinking it’s okay even, just okay. And then obviously if they see benefit, like reduced injuries, or they actually can do more repeats in a game, well then it’s game over. They’re going to do it, and they’re going to do more.”
“If this explosive player, he’s 19, comes into the senior team, if you get him doing everything early and fast, and you don’t give them the chance to recover, you will injure them.”
“So, you do as much building specific work as humanly possible in the preseason. And I think eight weeks is an absolute minimum for those guys, because they find capacity a challenge.”
About Kevin Mulcahy
Kevin Mulcahy is a sports performance coach, educator, and founder of TMC Performance Coaching in Ireland. Working across Gaelic games and multiple field sports, Kevin is known for blending strength and conditioning with modern skill acquisition, ecological dynamics, and constraints-led coaching. Through his coaching, writing, and coach education programs, he helps practitioners design training environments that develop adaptable, resilient athletes while translating complex research into practical methods that coaches can immediately apply on the field.
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