An athlete as keynote speaker – without the sports clichés

In the end I was training six to seven times a week. Nobody manages that on motivation alone; it takes routines that hold even on days you don't feel like it. Before that, a knee injury ended my nine years in gymnastics. Both shape my talks more than any medal: sticking with it and starting over. So there's no hero story and no pep-talk slogans. Your audience gets scenes from training and the questions that come out of them, which they can apply to their own lives, at the office, in an apprenticeship or at university.

Young people rarely listen to someone almost their own age who already stands in front of an executive board. I'm 21 and combine training, work, studies at Robert Gordon University and military service. That's what 'Routines that hold' and 'Taking responsibility early' are about: how to organise a full life, how to take on roles that seem too big, and what happens when a plan doesn't work out. For schools, vocational schools, apprentice events, universities and trainee programmes, I adapt language, examples and length to the age group.

An athlete as speaker doesn't have to stay on stage. The running workshop takes you outside: a warm-up as in elite sport, drills and technique, then a group run at everyone's own pace, for all levels. It suits team events, health days or preparing for a corporate run. If you'd rather stay indoors, choose the talk 'Recovery is performance': in elite sport, rest is part of the training plan; at the office it's often seen as weakness. I show what a working day can borrow from that, without anyone having to be an athlete.

For training in physiotherapy, medicine and sport, I tell the story from the other side of treatment. What goes on in your head when your knee ends a career? What does it take to relearn load in a new sport, up to seven sessions a week? And which questions should professionals ask their patients? The talk 'From injury to the U18 Europeans' is deliberately not a motivational speech, but an honest inside view for people who support athletes through exactly this phase.