• 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
  • Commonwealth Games
  • Crawford report
  • Creativity
  • Football World Cup
  • High Performance Coaching
  • High Performance Sport
  • Hot Topics
  • Leadership
  • Olympic Games
  • Performance Psychology
  • Performance Science
  • Presentations
  • Skills Development
  • Sport and Parenting
  • Sports Management
  • Teams Development
  • Training
  • Winning

October, 2011

Ten Tips to Make Sure Your End of Season Re-view is a Pre-view for Success for Next Year

Typically the end of season means a well earned rest, a few quiet drinks with team mates, some time with family and then… the end of season review.

Every team does some kind of season reflection or review – in most cases motivated by one or more “P” – Performance, Politics, Pressure.

• The Performance Review: is one motivated by a drive to improve the performance of the team – players, coaches and staff – for next season.
• The Political Review: is a review often driven by the Board or Executive to achieve a political agenda or philosophical shift in the club.
• The Pressure Review: is one forced on a team by media, fans, club, Board or other stakeholders as a result of a poor performance.

By far the most effective review is one that is deliberately and strategically placed in the team’s “performance cycle” each year and is embraced by coaches, players, staff, Management and Board as being an important and positive aspect of progressive performance from season to season. Read more

Recruiting a Head coach – how NOT to do it.

 

The issue of hiring the right head coach is a hotly debated topic in all the newspapers, television sport shows and Internet sporting sites.

So how do you go about finding the right head coach for your team?

Because there are thousands of ways of doing it right - let’s start with how NOT to do it!

Read more

Ten Golden Rules about Presenting Sports Science information to Coaches

I have been to hundreds of coaching courses, coaching workshops, coaching conferences and coaching seminars. Invariably, the course convener invites a guest speaker with a specialist sports science background to talk about physiology, biomechanics, nutrition, psychology or another sports performance topic.

And, in all of the hundreds of courses, workshops, conferences and seminars I have attended, I have seen the same mistakes being made by the guest speakers. So I decided to do something about it.

The problem stems from the differences between the “two worlds” – the sports science world and the coaching world.

In the sports science world things are based on facts, research, validity and reliability measures, measurement, accuracy and evidence.

In the coaching world the key focus areas are results, performance, communication, instinct and “feel” – the art of coaching.

It is vital that the two worlds come together and share ideas and information but it just as vital that the two groups communicate appropriately and effectively.  Read more

Hiring and Developing a Winning Coaching Team

Gone are the days of the “GURU” coaches.

Sure, the great names of coaching have all been “one man bands” – strong, decisive, authoritarian, leadership focused head coaches who controlled every aspect of the team’s performance.

However, elite sport has developed at an incredible rate over the past twenty years and the knowledge and skills required to win an elite sporting competition are greater than any one person can bring to the table.

Think of the advances in sports science, sports medicine, analysis, IT, nutrition, psychology and technology since the 1980s.

How can we expect that any one person can be THE expert in all performance areas plus coach the team, deal with the media, work with Club Board and Executive, recruit new players, talk to sponsors, meet the fans etc etc etc?

So – the Coaching Team and Performance Team concepts are born.

Read more

Coaching and Mental Toughness

There have been many attempts to define and measure mental toughness in coaching textbooks, academic literature and even in the popular media.

Words like “persistence”, “perseverance”, “determination”, “commitment”, “resilience” and “uncompromising” seem to be used to describe mental toughness: something which clearly means different things to different people.

For some people, mental toughness is about being able to maintain composure, calm and control in difficult situations.

For others, mental toughness is related to physical “hardness” and the ability to endure pain, fatigue and stress in competition conditions and still prevail.

There has been a lot of work from the academic sector to attempt to define and measure mental toughness, with most of the recent literature discussing mental toughness in terms of “situations” and that mental toughness is a complex set of different attributes expressed differently by people in different situations.

Coaches all agree however, that for competitive athletes, mental toughness is a highly desirable athletic quality: one which is as prized as outstanding physical abilities, excellence in skills and technical knowledge.

But how can you coach an athlete to be mentally tough? Read more

Sports Employment: How learning Sports Speak can get you your Dream Job in High Performance Sport.

 

Whoopee!

You finished your Uni degree. Bachelor of Applied Science in Sports Studies. Or Bachelor of Science in Human Movement. Or Masters in Exercise Science. Congratulations!!! Mum, Dad and Aunt Lucy are all proud of you. You did it!

You have a nice shiny new degree, a huge brain full of ideas and intelligence and a heart full of optimism, passion and drive just itching to enter a career in high performance sport.

So you start digging through the Sports employment adverts, you visit the sports jobs web sites and you sign up for a few sports career update newsletters.

And you wait.

And you apply for a few jobs.

And you wait.

And maybe you get an interview.

And you wait.

And then, six months after graduation you find out that maybe getting a job in high performance sport wasn’t as easy as you thought and you might want to start learning lines like, “Would you like to Super Size that today, Sir”, “Can I tell you about our blackboard specials today Ma’am” and “Did you have discount coupon to get 4 cents off your fuel purchase?”.

So to help you get in and stay in the world of high performance sport, here is a guide on how to read those all too appealing job advertisements in the high performance sports industry. Read more

Hello Tennis Parents – balancing love and 40-love

 

Hello Tennis Parents.

Put your hand up if you answer “YES” to two or more questions in the Tennis Parents Ten Question Quiz:

• Do you believe your child will be a successful, well paid professional tennis player?
• Do you tell other parents that your child is “a high achiever”?
• Do you talk about tennis at least once a day with your child over meals or away from the court?
• Are you prepared to sacrifice your child’s education so they have a great chance of becoming a professional player?
• Do you regularly ask the coach to work your child harder or to change something about their game?
• Do you get emotionally involved in your child’s successes and failures on the training court?
• Do you allow your child to show a bad attitude, poor sportsmanship and / or a poor temperament (e.g. racket abuse)?
• Have you ever argued or fought with parents of other kids about the results of a game?
• Do you refer to your child as “my son or my daughter the tennis player”?
• Have you spent more than $500.00 on a single tennis racket for your child?

Well, here’s the bad news. If you answered “YES” to two or more of the above, the chances of your child becoming a successful professional tennis player are…………………NIL or very close to it. Read more

What’s the difference between Medicine and Sports Medicine?

I was recently asked to talk to a group of students about high performance sport. We discussed all the “usual” topics: talent identification, sports science, elite coach development and sports medicine.

One of the students asked me, “Is there a difference between Medicine (as in general practice medicine) and Sports Medicine as it exists in high performance sport”? Read more

How to Develop World Class Coaches

OK. Let’s talk about how to develop world class coaches.

Grab a piece of paper. On one side of the paper, write down the characteristics of a great coach.

Does your list include any or all of the following:

• Outstanding communicator
• Visionary
• Leader
• Innovator
• Negotiator
• Conflict resolver
• Media manager
• Public relations genius
• Team developer
• People manager
• Technical / tactical / strategic skills of the highest order
• Philosopher
• Politician
• Futurist

OK - now turn the page over and write down a list of all the coach education programs which cover the above?

Is this side of the paper blank? Yes? Then we can begin. Read more

Sustaining success! The Coach’s Holy Grail.

 

Many coaches will say they want to be successful.

No they don’t. Not really.

They want to be successful again and again and again and again and again. They want to Sustain success and Always have a competitive program, winning athletes and quality players.

So how do you it?

How do you Sustain Competitiveness And Sustain Success? 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

  • Exploding the Home and Away Myth
  • Coaching in the Century of Entertainment
  • The Rebuilding Phase..the biggest cop out in sport.
  • The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform
  • Sports Coaching in 2030 – Future (coach) Shock – Where will Sports Coaching be in 2030?

• Links

  • Business Coaching Brain
  • Changing NSW State of Origin Culture – Article Sydney Morning Herald June 2010.
  • Coaches Info Service
  • Evolution of the Athlete Conference
  • Excelsior Group
  • Inner Tactics
  • Mental Games – AFL Grand Final Reply 2010
  • Moregold Performance Consulting
  • Performance Science: Integrated Sports Science.
  • Rugby League State of Origin- Article Sydney Morning Herald
  • Skill for Kids – A great innovation in educating sporting kids, coaches and parents
  • Sporting Parents Twitter
  • Sports Coach Tips Twitter
  • Sports Performance Science
  • Sun-Herald article on Mental Myths
  • Swim Coaching Brain
  • The Genius of Inigo Mujika
  • The Science of Sport
  • The Sporting Brain Twitter