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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
October 5, 2011 | Comments Off
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Coach education, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, Hockey, Netball, Performance Science, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Training, Triathlon
Boards and Sporting Organisations – The Ten Commandments of Being a Great Sporting Board Member
Boards can be the greatest asset to a Sporting Organisation….they can also be the biggest liability.
Lots of articles and books describe what a Board member is supposed to do from a statutory, legislative perspective but in general that’s not the problem.
The biggest problem in sporting Boards stems from Board members trying to influence the operational side of the Club.
Read this to learn why people often become Bored with Boards……….
October 5, 2011 | Comments Off
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Coaching, Cricket, Football, Hockey, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Triathlon
The Culture Combination: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation

There is no one thing that you can do which will guarantee success: no single change which, in isolation will create and sustain a winning culture in high performance sport.
There are however a combination of things that you can do to increase the likelihood of success: “The Culture Combination”: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation.
October 5, 2011 | Comments Off
Tags: AFL, American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Coaching, Cricket, Football, High Performance, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Sports coaching, Sports Management, Tennis
The Facility Fallacy
Here’s how it goes.
Your club has had another poor season.
People looking for answers come up with a lot of ideas on how to improve next year.
The management team determine that what the Club needs is a new high performance facility: new stadium, new meeting rooms, new computer lab, new medical facilities, a new gym and of course the obligatory new recovery facility.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
This is the Facility Fallacy. Read more
September 28, 2011 | Comments Off
Tags: American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Coach education, Coaching, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, Hockey, Netball, Performance Science, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Training
Performance Science and Why it’s time has come.
“In short science has its limitations. Western science is characterised by
reductionist principles; but we reach a point at which the reduction becomes
disassociated from the phenomena it is trying to explain” P.Jones 1998
It’s time.
It’s time for the Sports science industry to seriously change the way we do business.
It’s time we let go of the outdated, simplistic single cause / single effect model of research and embraced a genuine integrated, multi disciplinary approach to solving performance problems.
It’s time for Performance Science to come of age. Read more
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
September 28, 2011 | 8 Comments
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Coach education, Coaching, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, Hockey, Netball, Performance Science, Rugby, Rugby Union, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Training, Triathlon
Coach driven, Athlete Focused, Administratively supported? Isn’t it time we did something different?
Thanks for visiting the “Brain” today while doing your daily web surfing.
While you are in the surfing mood, go and check out some other sporting web sites.
Specifically check out the web sites of the funding agencies, Institutes and Academies of the major Olympics sporting nations.
You will see something like this – on all those sites:
“Our philosophy is to embrace an athlete centred, coach driven and administratively supported high performance environment”.
WOW – This is a fantastic philosophy.………for about 1993!!!!
Isn’t it time we did something different? Read more
September 7, 2011 | 2 Comments
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Coach education, Coaching, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, Hockey, Netball, Performance Science, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Training, Triathlon
Can you achieve the same or better performance results with reduced training volume? More on More with Less.
All coaches have five things in common:
- A love of the sport they coach;
- The passion and drive to be the best they can be;
- An unquenchable thirst for knowledge and learning;
- A desire to see every athlete they coach realise their full potential;
- 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
September 7, 2011 | 8 Comments
Tags: AFL, American Football, Archery, Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Coach education, Coaching, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, exercise, fitness, Football, Gymnastics, High Performance, Hockey, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Soccer, sport, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Training, Triathlon, UCNISS
English Premier League (EPL): Doomed to Fail.
Who doesn’t love to watch the English Premier League – the EPL?
The talent of the players, the drama of the contests, the excitement of the competition, the passion, the skills, the crowds, the coaches…it’s got it all.
Enjoy it while you can, because the English Premier League is doomed to fail…it is only a matter of time….
August 29, 2011 | 5 Comments
Five World Wide Trends in Sport which you ignore at your peril.
Having visited more than 30 countries in four continents in the past few years and spent time with sports leaders, coaches, athletes, sponsors, sports scientists, sports academics, sports medicine practitioners, sports administrators, government funding agencies and other sports professionals in many of the world’s leading sports systems,five world wide trends in society
(and by extension in sport) have become very clear and are screaming so loud that they can no longer be ignored.
Ignore them at your peril. Read more
August 10, 2011 | 16 Comments
Tags: AFL, American Football, Archery, Athletics, Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Coach education, Coaching, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, High Performance, Hockey, Lawn Bowls, Netball, Olympic Games, Olympics, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Shooting, Soccer, sport, Sports Management, Squash, Swimming, Table Tennis, Tennis, Track and Field, Triathlon, Weightlifting, Wrestling
Money (rarely) Matters: Why believing that Money is the Only Solution to Problems in High Performance Sport is silly.
I get asked to help athletes, coaches, teams and sporting organisations all over the world.
My process is simple.
Find out what the problems really are, find out where the problems really are, find out who the problems really are and figure out how to fix them: what I call the PPP approach – Practices (i.e what people do), Places (i.e. culture, environment) and People.
I look at lots of things: coaching, player talent and abilities, sports science, sports medicine, facilities, equipment, management, strength and conditioning and of course I look at the resources (money) available for the organisation to spend enhancing the performance of their high performance program.
Want to know how I know when money is not the real problem in the organisation?
When they tell me that it is. Read more
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
May 19, 2011 | 2 Comments
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Coach education, Coaching, Cricket, Cycling, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, High Performance, Hockey, Netball, Performance Science, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, sport, Sports Management, sports science, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Training, Triathlon










