High Performance Sport

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

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

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

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

High Performance Sport:What are the “non – negotiables?”

What is High Performance?

I spoke at a conference once and after the formal side of the presentation I invited questions from the 100 or so gathered coaches and sports managers.

The first question from the audience was, “Wayne, you’ve spoken a lot today about HIGH performance. Will you be covering Performance at sea level (i.e. low performance sport)?”.

Many people think that the world of high performance sport is a bit mystical and magical and that it takes a lot of money, a PhD and a laboratory to do it well.

In reality, creating and sustaining a successful high performance culture is more about attitude than altitude, more about motivation than money and more about learning than a laboratory.

So, to help you understand what High Performance is really all about……. Read more

The Performance Clock – The Most Important Concept in High Performance Sport.

I often get asked, what’s the difference between sport and high performance sport.

Read the next 800 words and find out.

Read more

Ten Tips for Keeping your Relationship Healthy when you work in High Performance Sport

The term “Sporting Widow” (or widower) is almost a cliche in high performance sport as many, many relationships have fallen apart in the industry due to the demands and pressures of travel, preparation, competition, training camps etc etc.

This article is for all my coaching, sports science, sports medicine and sports management colleagues (and their long suffering partners and families) written after many years chatting over beers and lamenting the challenges of working on the road, away from loved ones trying to balance success in high performance sport with a successful relationship. Read more

Why Bench – marking is a waste of time in High Performance Sport.

Benchmarking.

It has become one of the Buzz words in high performance sport.

Benchmarking means that someone in an organisation decides to find out what the best people in the industry are doing, learn from them and usually copy what they are doing.

For example, coaches in professional football codes will sometimes visit successful programs in other codes – maybe even in other nations – to try and learn what they do and how they became successful.

Institutes and Academies of Sport and Government sporting authorities often send people to other countries to benchmark systems, structures, programs and innovations.

It seems like a good idea. Travel to see another program, get some instant solutions to problems and some new ideas to help enhance performance - seems like a great idea.

However………….. Read more

What is High Performance?

One of the most commonly asked questions in this business is, “What Exactly is High Performance?”

People talk about, write about, think about sports science, sports medicine, exercise physiology, talent identification, performance psychology, biomechanics, skill acquisition, elite coach development, recovery, sports physiotherapy, sports massage, performance analysis and all the elements and components of high performance sport, but what is it?

What is this thing called High Performance?

I can summarise it all in one word………Change.

People make High Performance seem a lot more complex, tricky and mysterious than it really needs to be. Sure there is some really cool technology and terminology involved – as there is in all industries – but the essence of High Performance is Change – or rather, accelerating the rate of it.

Read more