Why We Created MYRA: My Personal Perspective
We recently launched our business - MYRA Center for Athlete Development.
MYRA was born out of necessity. Let me share why.
At MYRA, we have a bold vision: we believe everyone should have the opportunity to reach their full potential. You can read more about our mission here: Why We Created MYRA. But today, I’d like to share my personal story, the reasons MYRA holds my heart, and why I’m fully committed to our journey.
Athlete development and the pursuit of peak performance are balancing acts: complex, multifaceted, and often nonlinear journeys. In founding MYRA, we set out to fill a gap that we kept encountering – and that I experienced myself: the lack of support for athletes, especially when facing challenging periods like stagnation, injuries, struggles, mental disorders, underperformance or burnout throughout their athletic journeys.
Our passion goes beyond key performance metrics and who reaches the finish line first - we aim to “raise the tide for all boats”, helping more athletes realize their potential, gain self-awareness, and feel more fulfilled and resilient in the process.
On a personal level, my goal is to create a framework that helps others learn through experience and transform that experience into mastery.
I have made nearly every mistake you could imagine. Shifting from football to triathlon, I lacked a clear understanding of my current abilities as an (endurance) athlete, and I couldn’t grasp the demands of the sport (needs analysis). I was struggling with disordered eating and bulimia, followed my training plan like it was written in stone, had zero awareness of intensity control, and neglected the principle of progressive overload – which quickly led from rapid progression to stagnation, underperformance and burnout. I wasn’t self-aware enough to understand what I was missing (in addition to rest and more carbohydrates…). I thought a perfect plan existed somewhere and I would just need to find it and then blindly follow to success. Of course I was wrong. What I truly needed was a deeper understanding of the core (training) principles necessary for sustainable, long-term development.
However, even after consuming countless scientific articles, studying training principles and working with very smart people I continued to struggle. Primarily, by simply misjudging how much I could handle at the same time. Surprisingly, even Mrs. Multi-tasking herself cannot train 20h+ a week, do a PhD, sleep enough, be in a healthy relationship, have a social life, eat well, meditate, read books and God knows what else I was trying to do. I forgot that performance is not just about making do but about quality, adaptation and what happens between your ears. It took some time but through experience and many conversations with Øyvind Sandbakk and later Trond Nystad, I slowly began to incorporate fundamental principles into my approach – principles I now uphold both in my own training and everyday life. And so it happened that through my own – sometimes very painful –experiences, I developed a passion for building a framework that could benefit others. Alongside Øyvind and Trond, two world-class experts in sports science and coaching, and the rest of our team we began to conceptualise and shape MYRA, which now launched three weeks ago.
With MYRA Center for Athlete Development, we are building evidence-based systems that blend scientific rigor with practical experience to prevent and treat Underperformance. Our approach is designed to optimize performance and promote athlete well-being. Our first offering is focused on screening and identifying underlying causes of Underperformance, the option of a personalized consultation to aid recovery and the implementation of preventative tools through education and tailored support systems.
We have an ambitious goal that that everyone should have the chance to reach their potential. To that end, we work alongside organizations, federations and teams to co-create performance systems that develop knowledgeable and resilient athletes and teams. Whether it’s testing, performance programming or the implemention of support structures, MYRA integrates multiple elements of performance into a cohesive framework that promotes sustainable, long-term development.
Lastly, while we use data and the latest scientific evidence to guide our approach, we know it cannot fully capture the complexity of human performance and well-being. That’s why we take a deeply human-centered approach – listening, caring, and supporting athletes as unique individuals – because for myself I know that this matters! By addressing the gaps that data alone cannot fill, we believe that we are capable of creating connection and empowerment that are essential for success in sports and beyond.
If you’re interested in MYRA or have enjoyed my blog posts, I encourage you to visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter. We regularly share insights from myself, Øyvind Sandbakk, Trond Nystad, Rune Talsnes, and Silvana Bucher-Sandbakk on a range of topics, including recovery from unexplained underperformance, athlete development, performance optimization, the female athlete and general well-being.