• Subscribe to site feed

  

• Get the latest posts by email

  Enter your email address:

  Get fresh posts sent straight to your email inbox. We will never share or spam your email address.

• Categories

  • Announcements
  • Coach education
  • Coaching Tips
  • High Performance Coaching
  • High Performance Sport
  • Hot Topics
  • Leadership
  • Performance Psychology
  • Performance Science
  • Presentations
  • Sport and Parenting
  • Teams Development
  • Training

Expert Advice for Sports Coaching Success

High Performance on a Budget – can you create a high performance environment without spending any money?

By Wayne Goldsmith | In High Performance Sport

When clients ask me to work with them, it is usually to help them  become the best they can be in one or both of these two areas:

1. Help them to create a sustainable winning culture and / or:

2. Help them to create a world class high performance environment, (i.e. the things you can build and buy).

Although most of the time I get to work with professional sports and elite level Olympic teams, I am regularly asked to work with schools, amateur sporting clubs and part time coaches on a range of performance related issues, athlete attitudes, motivation techniques, leadership development, coach development exercises and sports performance enhancement programs.

Recently a client from an amateur but highly successful sporting Club asked me, “Wayne, we hear what you say about the best high performance environments in the world and about tools like GPS systems, ice baths, recovery centres, the latest video analysis systems and having a sports medicine team available 24 / 7. But we are all part timers. We gladly donate our time to coach the team and we have to fit our coaching around our jobs and our family. Our budget is minimal. Can we still create an effective high performance environment without spending any money?”

Yes, you can. Read more

The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform

By Wayne Goldsmith | In High Performance Coaching

What are we all chasing in high performance sport?

What is high performance coaching seeking to achieve?

Why do we focus so much on player leadership?

Why do we spend so much time talking about professionalism, standards, attitudes, commitment and passion?

Because we want to achieve one thing: we want to create an environment where our athletes’ Passion to Prepare is equal to or greater than their Potential to Perform. Read more

The Evolution of Leadership in Professional Sport: from coach to captain to collaboration.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Leadership

Leadership?

Lots of people talk about where leadership in sport is now.

But where did our current thinking on leadership come from? How did leadership in professional sport evolve?

And more importantly, where is leadership in professional sport going?

Read more

Creative Coaching: Teaching coaches to be Creative and Innovative.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In High Performance Coaching

Quick.

Write down your own list of the top ten skills of quality coaching. What does it look like? Something like this?

1. Communication skills;
2. Passion;
3. Empathy with athletes;
4. The ability to engage with athletes and inspire athletes to fully engage with the program;
5. Enthusiasm;
6. Technical knowledge;
7. An understanding of the relevant principles of sports science and sports medicine;
8. Energy;
9. Curiosity (which inspires a passion for learning);
10. A commitment to continuous improvement and accelerated learning.

You could add hundreds of skills to this list: experience, drive, initiative, the will to win, attention to detail, commitment, vision, determination, a strong work ethic…………there are as many desirable coaching skills as there are coaches.

But, in this century, there is one coaching skill to rule them all – creativity: creative coaching.

The question is…...can you teach coaches to be creative?

Read more

Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Performance Science

Remember how when we were kids everyone liked to eat cupcakes.

Then when we got older and a bit more health conscious we were told to give them up because of the sugar and flour and other stuff in them.

Then along comes a sports nutritionist who said “Muffins are a great food for athletes – nutritious, high carbohydrate energy foods”. So we all started eating them again even though they are basically still just big cupcakes.

What a big con.

Almost as big a con as Training Studies in Sports Science Research. Read more

Creating a Winning Culture in High Performance Football: the Building Blocks of Brilliance.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In High Performance Sport

Regular readers of this blog will recognise the phrase “High Performance Environment” - it something that has appeared many times in SCB blog posts and discussions.

A High Performance Environment is more or less things you can buy to increase the opportunity for athletes and coaches to perform to their full potential, e.g. facilities, equipment, sports science support, supplements etc etc ad infinitum.

However, creating and sustaining the worlds best high performance environment is of little meaning if your team is not winning.

A high performance environment: i.e. having the fundamental elements of best practice in high performance sport, is merely the framework – the skeleton on which to hang a winning culture.

You need both: the high performance environment provides the opportunity for athletes, coaches, management and staff to perform to a high standard: a winning culture drives the standards and behaviours that take full advantage of the high performance environment.

A high performance environment provides the potential for success: a winning culture turns potential into victory.

Check out this great Prezi I just presented at the AFL National Coaches Conference – let me know what you think.

Click on the Full Screen Icon on the bottom right of the Presentation screen to get the full effect.

WG

Sports Psychology: Integrating Mental Skills Training in Effective Coaching.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Performance Psychology

We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential part of being a successful athlete.

The ability to perform under pressure, the capacity to remain confident and resilient when competition conditions get tough, the skill to be able to relax and stay focused when feeling pain and fatigue in competition, concentration, visualization……coaches and athletes are unanimous that spending time developing mental skills is time well spent.

However, figuring out the best way to develop mental skills – particularly mental skills which can directly enhance the competition performance of athletes is another matter.

We all think working with a Sports Psychologist is a good idea but Sports Psychologists are like life partners……we know that having one is probably a good idea but it is next to impossible to find a good one. Read more

Can you achieve the same or better performance results with reduced training volume? More with Less Part Two.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Hot Topics

All coaches have five things in common:

1. A love of the sport they coach;
2. The passion and drive to be the best they can be;
3. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge and learning;
4. A desire to see every athlete they coach realise their full potential;
5. An unbreakable devotion to their philosophy on training volume.

Why this obsession with volume of training? Why do coaches resist any attempt from sports scientists and others to reduce their training volume? Why do coaches resent any implication that they are training their athletes too hard?

Because, in spite of all the research and all the literature and all the advances in sports science, sports medicine and performance technologies, the ONLY thing that is proven – beyond doubt – to improve performance is consistent hard training. Read more

Sporting Parents: Supporting Sporting Kids. Follow me on Twitter!!!

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Announcements

Owing to the huge number of requests I get for posts, articles and ideas from Sporting Parents, I have started a new Twitter Account called…Yes – you guessed it….Sporting Parents.

I will be adding a Sporting Parents Tip every day and will use Tweets to educate, inform and help parents of kids who play sport.

WG

The Five Stages of Coaching: Going from Beginner to the Best Coach You can Be.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Coaching Tips

There are coaching courses, coaching workshops, coaching programs, coaching presentations and coaching seminars.

There are mentoring programs for coaches, professional development programs for coaches, training programs for coaches and a million and one degrees, certificates and accreditation programs for coaches.

But what is coaching and what does it take to get really good at it?

What is great coaching?

And would you even recognise it even if you met it over a nice red wine and dinner? Read more

Next Page →

• 
• Search for:

• About this Blog

  Expert advice, ideas, innovation and inspiration for all sports coaches and team managers - from 'grass roots' through to elite and high performance levels. All posts are written by Wayne Goldsmith, AKA the "Sports Coaching Brain". If you have a question or comment about any post, please add it to the comments section.

• Recent Posts

  • High Performance on a Budget – can you create a high performance environment without spending any money?
  • The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform
  • The Evolution of Leadership in Professional Sport: from coach to captain to collaboration.
  • Creative Coaching: Teaching coaches to be Creative and Innovative.
  • Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

• Links

  • Business Coaching Brain
  • Coaches Info Service
  • Excelsior Group
  • Inner Tactics
  • Moregold Performance Consulting
  • Rugby League State of Origin- Article Sydney Morning Herald
  • Sporting Parents Twitter
  • Sports Coach Tips Twitter
  • Swim Coaching Brain
  • The Science of Sport
  • The Sporting Brain Twitter