Coaches in Focus: Di Sheppard
Welcome to Poles & Crocs
We’re a UK-based bunch—mostly men—brought together by a shared love of running in all its forms, strength training, and combat sports. But more than that, we’re here for each other.
First and foremost, this is a brotherhood—a place to move, reflect, and grow in good company.
Poles & Crocs isn’t just about performance. It’s about psyche. About what it means to stay alive and whole in a world that often doesn’t give men the tools to do so. We’re personally intimate with the effects of suicide—and we won’t shy away from the hard lessons we’ve learned.
This is our space to discuss movement, mindset, recovery, and resilience honestly.
It’s also a space to spotlight the coaches and athletes who inspire us—people who do things a little differently and whose philosophies offer something deeper than medals or muscle.
Coaches in Focus
Di Sheppard
If you haven’t heard of Di Sheppard yet, that’s about to change.
Tucked away in the world of Australian track & field, Di isn’t a household name—yet. But among those who know, her reputation is quietly building. And with good reason.
One of her young athletes, Gaut Buil Gaut, recently broke the Australian men’s 200m record. At just 17 years old, he’s turning heads across the globe—not just for his blistering speed but for the relaxed, graceful way he moves.
“We know the job is not done yet…we haven’t even reached the base camp of Everest” Di Sheppard following Gout Goutt’s record breaking 20:04 200m’s at the Australian All Schools Championship
Flow, Resilience, and the Wisdom of Letting Go
He doesn’t look like he’s sprinting. He looks like he’s gliding.
Behind that glide is Di.
More Than Performance
This isn’t a story about producing talent. It’s a story about how Di produces humans—resilient, aware, adaptable humans who just happen to run really, really fast.
Her approach isn’t built on ego, hype, or hard edges. It’s grounded, honest, and deeply intuitive.
She’s not trying to dominate a system. She’s listening—to the body, the mind, the rhythm—and helping athletes do the same.
From Bracing to Flow
Many of us from my generation in the strength and conditioning world were raised on Charles Poliquin’s phrase, “You can’t fire a cannon out of a canoe.” It makes intuitive sense, and of course, it’s very quotable. We must have a stable base of support for generating power and force.
It’s certainly true in a lot of contexts, but like a lot of quotes, it’s an oversimplification. Not least because we’re comparing a canoe to a very sophisticated self-organising system: the human body.
Moreover, somewhere along the way, that idea evolved into a culture of over-bracing—tensing everything in the name of control. Bodies, minds, expectations. Locked up, tight, and over-managed.
Di offers another way.
Fluidity as Strength
Her style is fluid and responsive. She doesn’t just teach movement—she teaches release. Recovery. Trust. And most importantly, rhythm.
Her warm-ups are subtle diagnostics. Her cues adapt moment to moment. If one doesn’t work, she’ll switch to something unexpected—whatever gets the message through.
There’s no force. Only flow.
Resilience, Reframed
In Di’s world, resilience isn’t about gritting your teeth and pushing through pain.
It’s about rhythm, recovery, and perspective.
A bad race? You’ve got 30 minutes to vent, then it’s done.
“Dwelling on things that can’t be changed doesn’t help anyone,” she says.
That mindset alone separates her from most coaching paradigms. She builds durable people, not just medal contenders. In other words, she demands Mastery, not Medals.
Training the Whole Human
Her athletes don’t just train muscles. They train awareness.
She has her athlete’s repeat daily affirmations like “I am good. I am great. I am invincible.”
Breath work. Pool recovery. Laughing mid-session. Checking in, tuning in.
Di sees the nervous system as part of the athlete.
Mental load. Emotional tone. These matter. These affect stride, rhythm, and posture.
Progress over perfection.
Self-awareness over stiffness.
Listening over forcing.
Strength, Reimagined
This isn’t the bulging-vein kind of strength we associate with strongmen or powerlifters. It’s the kind of strength you see in elite sprinters—the type that emerges from split-second timing and trust in the body’s ability to know. To know when to stiffen and when to let go!
Its strength born from coordination.
And coordination is born from rhythm.
It’s beautiful.
And it’s real.
See It for Yourself
Di isn’t just building athletes.
She’s cultivating humans with flow at their core.
Watch 17-year-old Gaut Buil Gaut’s record-breaking 200m.
Witness the result of Di’s philosophy in motion:
In Conclusion
You can see the fluidity in Gout Gout’s ‘unusual’ style. His spine is more like an engine, twisting and turning, driving power out from his core to his extremities rather than the braced stiff spine we’re used to seeing. But I’m also talking about Di’s flexible coaching style, which has been happy to incorporate this more natural solution to maximising force production. Finally, I’m also talking about how rigid ideas about ourselves and the world show up in how we move.
Let it flow, guys.
Let it flow in your running and see how that softens some of your more cruel thoughts about yourself.
Let your mind flow and pay less attention to the content of those thoughts; they’re only thoughts, after all.
Just let it flow Brothers!
*There’s some confusion surrounding the spelling of Gout Gout. His father has commented that it’s a misspelling of the family name due to transliteration from the Arabic ‘Guot’. This has not been corrected by the Australian Athletics Asociation. Gout remains his ‘official’ name.
**Perhaps take a conscious look at the comments attached to the clip. Some deep-seated racist bigotry is playing out. I’d urge you not to dwell here but just notice the hostile world Gout Gout has to inhabit and overcome as part of his overall training load.
Wonderful to know there are such people as Di. Another such coach (that no one has ever heard of) is Jerzy Gregorek of The Happy Body - the importance of softness with strength, being a master not a fatalist etc etc. I’m prompted now to write some more about him. Thanks David.