If you're looking for the winner's edge, or the drive that will keep you committed to taking regular exercise, then check out Rudolph Alleyne.

He has worked with, studied and advised elite athletes including a number of West Indies team cricketers and international level Bermuda sportspeople.

As a former athlete himself he has seen the sport from both the inside and the outside, and he has an impressive background in sports psychology and exercise physiology, including a PhD in kinesiology.

Now he has teamed up with Glenn Robinson, at the Ashlan Clinic, in Hamilton, with the intention of offering workshops in the coming months.

But what difference would it make to a person if they utilised sports psychology and exercise physiology training?

"It means you are planning and knowing what you are doing in your training. You know what systems you are working, such are aerobic and anaerobic – and that can be very important," he explained.

Mr. Alleyne uses basketball legend Michael Jordan as an example of a great athlete who utilised the services of a sports psychologist and a trainer to reach his highest potential.

"You can point to any top athlete in any sport who has a trainer and exercise physiologist to become the best that they can be. In cricket Australia, South Africa and England have centres where they have sports scientists that give them the ultimate edge."

But for some people there is a stumbling block to be overcome first, and that centres around the connotations and associations they attach to the word psychology.

"Cricket as a sport has been slow in embracing sports psychologists. From the West Indies' perspective I found they were slower than other nations to use sport psychology. For some, they thought it meant that there was something mentally wrong with them. So it was seen as taboo," said Mr. Alleyne.

Nevertheless, he looked at elite cricketers from his homeland Barbados while studying for his PhD at Temple University in Philadelphia. The cricket players were either current or past West Indies team members.

"Some of those players had an understanding of the need for mental toughness, but for others it was new to them."

Illustrating the difference, he said: "If you have two athletes on the starting line who have trained for the same hours and the same days and are genetically on a par, etc, the thing that separates the winner is their mental toughness.

"It is as equally important for the elite athlete as it is for the 'day-to-day' athlete. Some days you get up and you don't feel up to working out. It is about keeping the routine and relating to the importance of doing so."

Mental toughness is something Mr. Alleyne knows about, intimately. While training for the 2002 Philadelphia Marathon he ran 20 miles non-stop on a treadmill. He said: "I had to completely focus and doing that helped me out when I was reaching that point in the race."

Regarding exercise physiology, he said: "That has so many parts. It can be looking at how a muscle contracts, what sort of things cause fatigue, the importance of proper hydration, the impact of moving from sea level to a high altitude. Some people do not pay attention to that and just get up and go for a run each day."

Mr. Alleyne was once a talented schoolboy middle distance runner capable of 2.04 for 800m. He became a teacher at 18 and today works as a biology teacher in Bermuda. He has combined his love of biology and sports in his quest to find the edge an athlete needs to reach their true potential.

While at university he worked with collegiate athletes, teaching them also about life skills, discussing topics such as drug and alcohol problems in sport and planning for the future.

He also worked in the field of executive coaching, which he says has many similarities with sports psychology as it covers such things as dealing with stress and personal feelings for those working in areas of corporate management.

Since arriving in Bermuda, Mr. Alleyne has worked with a number of the Island's international level athletes, including cricket players, footballers and a triathlete.

Together with Mr. Robinson at Ashlan Clinic, in the International Centre on Bermudiana Road, he now intends to offer a number of workshops in the coming months that will be of benefit to athletes and the average keep-fit enthusiast alike. The workshops will look into areas of sports and exercise psychology and physiology.

Further details on Mr. Alleyne can be found at the Ashlan Clinic website at www.mindbodywellnessonline.com