So much of the world’s high performance sports dollars (or Yens or Yuans or Euros or Pounds or Pesos or Rands depending on where you come from), time, energy, focus and attention is spent on three things:

1. Talent identification;
2. Talent recruitment;
3. Talent development.

Or if you like, find them, sign them, refine them.

And most of the world has still got it wrong. There is a better way.

First item on the Talent Identification agenda…can we please change the name!!!

Let’s all agree to call it the ”Talent Management” Program or the ”Targeting Success” Program or something catchy like T.O.P. (Talent Optimization Program) but the term T.I.D. should be killed off, given a nice funeral and buried by the world’s sporting community once and for all.

Calling the overall process of finding, recruiting and optimising the performance potential of athletes “talent identification” is like calling a game of football “the kick off”. Finding talent is just the first step in a long, long process to turn potential into performance.

Number 2: Adopt an integrated approach.

There is too much focus on physical talent and physiological factors in all T.O.P.s all over the world. Success in high performance sport comes about from the integration and blending of physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural / family and genetic factors or…my “big six”:

• Physical abilities;
• Personality characteristics;
• Playing skills;
• Performance abilities;
• Pedigree (i.e. genetic makeup);
• Preparation ((i.e. environment, family, culture).

Number 3: Invest ten times more money on talent optimisation and talent development than talent I.D because Real talent is harder to hide than it is to find: Finding talent is not hard.

Open your eyes! It is not hard to find kids who are bigger, stronger, faster or more skillful than their peers. Finding them is not the challenge – it’s what to do once you have found them that is the tricky part. The protocols used to screen athletes for “talent” have been around for over 60 years – test protocols are not the problem. It’s creating an optimal, integrated talent development pathway to turn potential into performance that’s the problem.

Number 4: Make your objective measurements of talent more subjective and your subjective measurements of talent more objective:

This the real trick in all applied sports science. There are no totally objective, research proven, evidence based methods of testing which can measure the “talent” and potential of an athlete and guarantee their elite level competition performance success. And similarly, the old days of just looking at an athlete and using some mystical “eye” or instinct to accurately predict their elite level competition performance success are over. It’s the blending of the objective with the subjective that gives the best results in any T.O.P. process.

Number 5: Any investment in a T.O.P. for athletes must be matched by a T.O.P. for coaches:

Governments and sporting organisations will spend millions on mass T.I.D. screening programs and implementing T.I.D. testing protocols then allocate pittance to educating and developing the people charged with developing that talent to its full potential: i.e. coaches. That just does not make any sense.

Number 6: Educate parents and the talented athlete’s immediate cultural influences:

You play like your place! Athletes – no matter how talented – need people and places around them which nurture them, support them, nourish them and love them. It is critical to influence, support, educate and help the parents, partners and peers of talented athletes so that they can better create an environment which enriches the athlete’s real performance potential.

Number 7: Stop beating around the bush with genetic testing- just get on with it:

We all know its coming – let’s face it – it is already here and the whole industry of Sport Genetics is an unstoppable force. Once we get around the ethical, religious and philosophical zealotry surrounding the genetic testing of athletes, everyone will be doing it. My advice – do it now. Just get on with it or risk being left behind by your competition.

Number 8: You need to learn to recognise genius, uniqueness and difference:

Sport is about health, fitness and lifestyle. It’s about providing opportunities for people to play sport through the implementation of standardised systems, structures and programs. High performance is completely different! High performance is about providing unique opportunities for unique individuals to realise their full potential. Too many T.O.P.s fail because they fail to recognise genius. They spend millions finding and recruiting talented athletes, then force them into standard programs to fit a funding model or some mythical all encompassing athlete development system. High performance means being different, being unique, being an individual and thinking, talking and acting outside the box.

Number 9: It has to be a“non-system” system:

As per number 8 – there is no system you can create which will guarantee the success of your team, your sport, your club or your nation in high performance sport. That’s because greatness and uniqueness are intimately entwined and uniqueness does not flourish in a system. That’s why the best win – they do it their way, they do it uniquely, they do it differently to the rest….and any high performance sport system which discourages difference will fail.

Number 10: There has to be multiple entry (and exit) points:

Too many teams,  sports and even nations miss talent because of stringent rules about T.T.T. – Talent Testing Timing. Some of the biggest mistakes here include:

• Setting an age range – i.e. “we test kids aged 12-15″ years;
• Creating elite junior development pathways which are rigid and inflexible (i.e. “you are either in or out”);
• Testing for now and not for the future – i.e. looking for talent and potential to sustain the team’s current style or system of play without thought of evolving it over time;
• Relying on historical data to provide a framework for the future, i.e. using test data from talented athletes from the past to evaluate the performance potential of athletes to be successful in the future.

Conclusion:

• There is no doubt that an effective T.O.P. is important for the success of every sporting team, organisation and nation.
• However, the way it has been done to date lacks real sophistication, practicality and effectiveness and it is time the whole concept of T.I.D. was revisited, revamped and re-developed.

There’s my Top Ten Talent I.D. Tips for High Performance Sp0rt – the T.O.P. Approach….what’s yours?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011 – 2012, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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.

And because coaches know that hard training works – and all the other stuff is pretty much theory, fad or trend, they are reluctant to change their approach to training and incredibly resistant to any notion of tampering with their training methodologies.

Recovery….

Take for example the world’s obsession with recovery. Do we think things like hydrotherapy, massage and recovery nutrition strategies enhance competition performance? Yes.

Does it make sense that they should enhance competition performance? Yes.

Are they proven to enhance competition performance? No.

You could say the same things about “core stability / Pilate’s”, “vibration machines”, “sports supplements” and “altitude training for sea level performance” - good ideas, great concepts, interesting to talk about but not proven to enhance competition performance.

Hard work. The only way?

The only thing that has been conclusively demonstrated beyond any doubt to enhance competition performance is training.

So logically, any attempt by a researcher or sports science service provider to change the one thing coaches know works is likely to be met with blank looks, cold stares and a loud “no thanks”. Coaches think – “I am responsible for the performance of my athletes. I know that training hard works. So why would I risk my reputation, my job and the success of my athletes on anything that is not proven to work?”. And this has led to 20 years of frustration, fear and fighting between coaches and sports scientists all over the world.

However, it is also clear, that in many sports, coaching beliefs about the volume of training required to become an elite performer are more based on myth, anecdote and legend than they are on logic and practical experience.

Take for example the following training volume “myths and legends” of various sports:

• Distance running – 100 miles a week;
• Swimming – 100 kms a week;
• Diving – 100 dives a session;
• Tennis – 1000 hits a session;
• Cycling – 1000 kms a week;
• Many Olympic sports – 10 sessions a week / or 24 hours a week.

Many of these “volume myths” have grown out of “coaching conference story telling” where successful coaches share the secret to their success which then gets written down and copied by every coach in the room; coaches who mistakenly believe that copying the success secrets of others is the secret to achieving their own.

Over time, these “myths” become “training truths” – e.g. “if your swimmers are not swimming ten sessions a week they will never be successful” and like all myths, these stories get passed down from coach to coach, from generation to generation until they become accepted practice by the entire coaching community of that sport.

Now to More with Less.

Let’s look at the issues.

1. There is no one size fits all, magic formula, guaranteed to succeed, every athlete must do, mythical training volume which works for all athletes: Fact: all athletes are unique individuals;
2. Kids and parents (and coaches for that matter) have limited time to fit in all the opportunities and options that life offers: Fact: everyone has less time available;
3. There is an unprecedented explosion of ideas and information on the Internet that is free for athletes and coaches to access – anytime – anywhere: Fact: everyone knows what you know;
4. Our understanding of peak performance in sport has become increasingly sophisticated and we know more than ever about learning, training adaptation, genetic potential, mental abilities, recovery, nutrition and performance technology: Fact: we have the knowledge and information to train, prepare and compete more efficiently;
5. The ability and capacity of Generation Y and I athletes to learn has accelerated due to the integrated, collaborative learning environment social media now offers them: Fact: your athletes can and do learn faster than any previous generation.

Now put all these facts together……and what do you come up with?

We need to create an efficient, effective training, learning and development environment which provides the optimal opportunity for individual athletes to train, to learn and to improve at an accelerated rate.

Is this just about cutting back on training volume? Of course not!

I am with the coaches on this: let’s not reduce training volumes unless…..we create an environment at training which consistently embraces accelerated learning.

Just kutting kilometres and minimising miles is not the answer unless………we first ensure that every athlete is totally engaged in every aspect of the program and trains efficiently and effectively every moment they train.

Having training sessions off is not the solution unless…….we know that every athlete trained to the full extent of their ability and potential at every session they attended.

So, more with less is possible but it requires some fundamental changes in your performance environment, beginning and ending with athletes accepting greater responsibility for their own performance and coaches prepared to coach in collaboration with their athletes: a perfect performance partnership.
Times are changing: are you?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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Coach education is at the crossroads.

One thing is for certain, the way we have trained, educated and developed sports coaches in the past is not working. It has failed.

Let’s talk about a new approach in Coach Training, Education and Development: A Client Focused Approach.

Let’s talk about CoachT.E.D. (pronounced Coached): Coach Training, Education and Development.

And most importantly, let’s talk about training, educating and developing more coaches and better coaches: coaches who can provide every person involved in sport with the environment and the opportunity to develop a passion for sport, a life long love of physical fitness and activity and the chance to choose a path to realise their potential as athletes and human beings.

Coach Training Education and Development: hereafter known as COACHT.E.D. (Pronounced Coached)

The sporting world is desperately seeking two things:

1. More coaches;
2. Better coaches.

And, the world is also desperately seeking new and better ways of training, educating and developing those coaches.

As coach training, educating and developing takes too long to say, let’s adopt a new acronym – COACH-T.E.D. (pronounced Coached) – (note to coach educators everywhere – remember where you heard it first!).

What are the biggest five problems with CoachT.E.D. around the world right now?

1. Most people who coach or who are involved in some form of coaching do not even commence the COACH-TED pathway for that sport;
2. Coaches who do complete the first level of the COACH-TED pathway rarely complete all assessment tasks and the accreditation or licensing requirements;
3. Coaches who do complete all accreditation or licensing requirements rarely maintain their qualifications with updating requirements;
4. Coaches who do maintain their qualifications with updating requirements rarely move to the next level of accreditation, i.e. from “Level 1 to Level 2″;
5. Coaches rarely commit to ongoing learning and continuous improvement programs.

And what do we learn from these five problems?

It is pretty clear that what we are doing now is not working! The “levels” system has failed.

It’s a bit like saying, “We have a great restaurant, but not many people ever come and eat here. Those who do, don’t order dessert or stay for very long. Very few order some of the best things on the menu and almost no-one every comes back. But we have a great restaurant!!!!”

Well, it’s time to close the restaurant down for a while, change the decor, improve the menu, focus on customer service and make our “restaurant” the hottest ticket in town.

So what’s the solution?

There is solution…a client focused solution.

Here’s a five step plan to help you develop a Client Focused Approach to Coach-TED:

1. Clearly define and understand who your clients are: In most sports your clients are your athletes and their families.
2. Clearly understand what their needs are:  Importantly noting that not all athletes want or need to be placed on the performance pathway! Not every athlete wants or needs to be a world class athlete, a professional player or the next Grand Slam champion.
3. Ensure that your athlete development pathway reflects the needs of your clients: Importantly accepting that fact that there may be in fact two, three or more distinct and very different athlete development pathways depending on the needs of your clients, e.g. a Participation Pathway, a Performance Pathway and Peak Performance Pathway.
4. Create a Coach-TED pathway which supports and reflects the needs of your athlete development pathway: This is critical! It is essential that the sport’s athlete and coach pathways are heading in the same direction and at the same speed.
5. Align the athlete development pathway and the Coach-TED pathway: Noting that as the athlete development pathway is dynamic, is constantly changing and evolving based on the changes occurring in broader society, so too will the Coach-TED pathway be dynamic and in need of constant review and continuous improvement.

So why is this Client Focused Approach so important?

It’s simple when you stop and think about it.

Follow this logic trail….

• Governments, sporting organisations and coaches all over the world are trying to find new and better ways of attracting, developing and retaining “clients”, i.e. to get more people involved in sport and physical activity and keep them active for life. For governments this is about community health and well being. For sporting organisations it is about economic survival;
• Coaches are the front line - the ”face” of sport and the first (and sometime the only) point of contact with ”clients”;
• Therefore, for government programs to work and for sporting organisations to survive, it is imperative that coaches are trained, educated and developed to understand the sport’s clients, what their needs are and how to service them effectively.

In short, the future of sport as we know it may depend on our ability to adopt new and better ways of Coach-TED to ensure that sport’s “front-line soldiers” are equipped with the “weapons” they need to win the “war” against obesity, the societal trends towards inactivity and the shift away from organised sport.

Summary:

1. Time to face the facts…the “levels” system of coach accreditation is pretty much dead. We are just waiting for the formal burial. There has to be a better way, and there is.
2. The key to training, educating and developing (TED) great coaches is to ensure their training, education and development is relevant to then needs of the sport’s clients.
3. As coaches are often the “face” of the sport, (i.e. the front line of the sport which engages directly with the sport’s clients), it is vital that every coach is equipped with the skills, knowledge and abilities to play an effective role in servicing the needs of the sport’s clients and in doing so play a critical role in gaining, training and retaining more clients in physical activity and sporting programs.

For more information:

Any government sporting leaders or sporting organisations interested in discussing how they can develop a Client Focused Approach to Coach Training, Education and Development – COACH-TED should contact me directly on wayneATsportscoachingbrain.com
Wayne Goldsmith

Reminder that all posts on this blog are covered by Copyright laws. No posts may be republished or reproduced in part or in full without the expressed written consent of the author.

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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Recently I got an email from someone saying, “Hi Wayne. You seem to have a lot to say about what people are doing wrong in high performance sport. How about you “put your money where your mouth is” and post a list of things people can do to enhance the performance of their athletes, teams and programs.”

OK. I did.

1. Train harder;
2. Train smarter;
3. Train harder and smarter;
4. Improve your leadership skills;
5. Consistently out-prepare everyone in your competition;
6. Dream bigger;
7. Believe in yourself;
8. Back yourself;
9. Get up faster when you are knocked down or face adversity;
10. Get tougher mentally;
11. Never accept the first “no” from a sports administrator or bureaucrat - just fight harder;
12. Become outstanding at finding and retaining talented athletes;
13. Develop the most creative thinking skills in your sport: the best ideas win;
14. Be more passionate about success than anyone else in your sport;
15. Never become complacent: success is a moving target;
16. Enthusiasm, passion, desire and attitude are contagious diseases: are yours worth catching?
17. Use sports science intelligently, effectively and with intent;
18. Get to know your athletes better than they know themselves;
19. Collaborate with your athletes - don’t coach at them;
20. Listen;
21. Take care of your own health – physical, mental and spiritual;
22. Be committed to intelligent change and continuous improvement;
23. Make friends far more often than you make enemies;
24. Develop a network of coaches in other sports and speak with them regularly;
25. Leave your ego at the door - ego kills progress and limits creativity;
26. Read books by great leaders, great thinkers and great philosophers: there are lessons to be learnt everywhere;
27. Go back and read Number 1 on this list again – you have to work harder than anyone else;
28. There are no short cuts: anything promising double figure improvement (e.g. 10% or more) in high performance sport is more fictitious than Lord of the Rings and you aren’t a hobbit;
29. Develop a group of close friends outside of your sport and don’t talk to them about sport;
30. Sleep and eat well everyday;
31. Find a sports science network group who respect you, want to collaborate with you and will grow with you;
32. Adopt an integrated approach to identifying and developing talent: physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural and genetic;
33. Teach one new lesson to every athlete every day;
34. Give and seek feedback often;
35. Hate losing – but learn from it, grow from it and improve as a consequence;
36. Take smart risks with your program, your ideas and your coaching;
37. See an athlete’s parents as partners in performance not as adversaries or just paying clients;
38. Create the culture you want to coach in: start with your own attitude then “infect” everyone around you;
39. Accelerate your learning faster than your opposition: from learning comes change, from change comes improvement, from improvement comes winning;
40. Take up another passion - i.e. other than your sport – to focus your mind and intelligence on;
41. Get to know the techniques, skills, rules and regulations of your sport better than anyone in the world;
42. Learn from the legend coaches of your sport - to see further than giants, you must stand upon their shoulders;
43. Keep records, refer back to them often and learn from them: those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them;
44. Find a mentor - someone whose skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes and philosophies are complimentary (i.e. different) to your own;
45. Find someone to mentor: nothing teaches like teaching;
46. Become a master of the Internet, social networking and all current forms of communication: communicate the way your athletes want to be communicated with;
47. Don’t think, speak or act in absolutes.…there is no such things as “always, “never”, “must” and “only” in high performance sport: challenge everything!
48. Learn enough about sports science, sports medicine, technology and strength and conditioning to look your staff in the eye and challenge them with a level of credibility and understanding;
49. Hire intelligently: hire on attitude and passion, then train the skills you need;
50. And number 50………an oldie but a goodie….never, ever give up. Persistence and perseverance usually beat talent, money, facilities and potential.

There you go.

What are your top 50? Let me know – let’s see if we can add another 500 to my list!

Note: The Sports Coaching Brain mentors many high performance coaches in professional and Olympic sports all over the world. YT

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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.

Getting Sport into Perspective:

First of all you have to get sport into perspective.

Imagine the world and everything in it was a bucket of sand: that’s all the people, the money, the institutions, governments, buildings, resources….everything.

Sport is roughly a teaspoon of sand in the bucket.

And we know, that if you look at sport as a whole across the entire world, the vast majority - over 80% - of that teaspoon is related to football (soccer).

And the other 20% of our single teaspoon of sand from our bucket is motor sport, basketball, the Olympic Games, golf, tennis, swimming, ice hockey, baseball, the NFL, the AFL, the NBL, the NHL, rugby, rugby league, cricket, netball, shooting, billiards, snooker………..everything else in the world of sport lives in that 20% of that teaspoon from our bucket.

So ignoring what’s happening in broader society is insanity. Making strategic decisions about your team, your sport, your national sports program without first taking into consideration the broader international social, political, economic, geographic and population trends is like wanting to go swimming but not wanting to get wet.

It’s different here:

Now quite often I will do a strategic planning presentation about this topic – about where sport actually fits in the world and how it is totally connected to and subject to all the broader social trends happening across the planet and there is always someone in the audience who will say, “That’s great Wayne, but you don’t understand it here. Our sport is different. Those things don’t apply to our sport. Our culture is unique“.

That’s like saying, “Look the rest of world might need oxygen to survive but we don’t – we don’t really live on this planet”.

The “Big Five”:

The following Five World Wide trends in sport apply to all sports, all athletes, all coaches, all sports managers, all government sporting bodies, all National Federations, all international Federations and every person who has any interest in any aspect of sport in any country in the world:

1. The demise of volunteerism.Volunteerism is dead. Stop throwing money at namby pamby programs to increase volunteerism. It is over. It is full time. Elvis has left the building. People in this century barely have enough time, money and energy to do the fundamentals of their own lives without giving up a lot of it to amateur sport for nothing. The extension of this is that many of the amateur sporting clubs around the world will collapse and fold within the next twenty years leaving many sports with a network of larger more professional and semi professional clubs to work with – i.e. the “Super Club” concept. Start planning for this fundamental change in the sporting landscape now!;
2. The “more with less” attitude of society. Think about this for a moment. Look at your own sport. Do you honestly believe that in the future athletes and parents will actually commit more time, money and energy to your sport? We can barely keep them engaged with the amount of training, preparation and competition we are demanding now. Where in society do you see people prepared to work harder for the same return? Not on this planet! Demanding more from athletes to achieve more will not work. And demanding more from athletes to sustain current levels of performance will not work. We will all have to find ways to enhance performance, improve athletes and teams but do it in less available time – we have to figure out how to achieve more with less;
3. The changing world of communication, connectivity and collaboration. Anyone on the planet can connect with anyone else on the planet and can learn anything, anytime, anywhere and for free. This means that your sport must be committed to open, honest, transparent, ethical standards and to the paradigms of integration, co-operation, communication, collaboration and partnerships. The old days of secrecy in sport are gone. The sports who will grow and flourish in the future will adopt an attitude of “we” and “us” and reject the ancient sporting philosophies of “me” and “I”;
4. The revolution/s in coaching. Coaching is one of most rapidly changing industries on the planet. The old ways of training coaches by forcing them to complete boring courses and workshops heavy with inappropriate content are over. So too are the old autocratic “do it my way or take the highway” methods of coaching. Coaching is about collaborating, partnering and  building sustainable, dynamic sporting environments with coaches, athletes and parents / partners working together as a team to achieve peak performance potential. The world is desperate for coaches who can thrive in this century and who are prepared to work with – as opposed to coaching at – athletes;
5. The changing demands on the sports marketplace from families and athletes. Families have no spare time: that’s a fact. So to say to a family, “If you want to play our sport, you must totally commit to 10 training sessions a week and give up 6-10 weekends a year for competition (and pay for the privilege of coaching and competition)” and expect them to buy in is lunacy. Within a few short years sports like swimming, gymnastics, diving, rowing and others with huge training and competition demands will either be forced to radically change the way they do things or they will perish.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Where will you sport be in 20 years? In 30? In 50?

And, more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

Without a genuine and urgent commitment to intelligent, strategic change many sports will not survive the next 20 years, let alone the next 90….your sport could be one of them.

You could go from making history to just being another part of it, lost in the trillions of pages of on line resource materials to be searched for and studied by your great great grandchild in 2110 to pass their school project on “ancient sports”.

Too often people yell and scream and demand that national governing bodies, international federations and governments take the lead in these broader issues: stop yelling, stop screaming and start acting.

You can’t change THE world but you can change YOUR world: start today with the “man (or woman) in the mirror”.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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Motivation is something many coaches talk about.

Some read about it and try to learn the secrets of motivation in a bid to help their athletes achieve the impossible.

Others spend money on motivational speakers to try and motivate their athletes through a passionate team talk or an explosive, emotional pre-performance presentation.

Others attend courses, go to workshops and enrol in mental skills programs to learn the mysteries of motivation.

Coaches….don’t waste your time and money.

No one can motivate anyone to do anything.

You need to understand Motivation and Coaching.

Motivation and Coaching: Understanding Motivation.

Motivation is desire. It is the “fire” that fuels great performances, outstanding victories, persistence, perseverance, determination and drive.

It is the explanation for why some athletes have a winning “attitude”.

It is the rationale behind “mental-toughness”.

It is the strength and the character that allows athletes to overcome adversity, setbacks, disappointments, injuries and non-selections.

It is the seemingly endless energy driving athletes to complete even the toughest, most challenging and most exhausting workouts.

Motivation is the cornerstone of success for every great athlete and every great athletic achievement.

Coaches constantly seek the magic pill or the miracle ingredient or the breakthrough technique to motivate their athletes and it is all a waste of time: you can’t motivate anyone to do anything. And besides….motivation is not your job.

Motivation and Inspiration: There is a difference.

What most people think is motivation, i.e. the motivational speaker talking about money, power, success and glory is actually inspiration.

The two can work together, i.e. you can be inspired to change your behaviours to help you realise a dream, but there is a difference.

Inspiration is something that comes the outside: from listening to another person or being involved in an event or through observing something which triggers an emotional response.

Motivation, however, comes from within. Motivation is a fire: a fire which is ignited by a dream and discover their own motivation: to find their “fire”.

It is the coach’s role to inspire athletes to feel confident in themselves and to feel empowered to let their “fire” free.

Motivation is a powerful ally for coaches and an important aspect of successful coaching.

How do you help athletes find their Motivation?

Simply: do nothing.

Just watch. And listen. And observe.

Motivated athletes stand out like a street light at midnight in winter.

The athlete who arrives early to help set up the training environment.

The football player who stays behind to help clean up the gym.

The swimmer who, at the end of a hard training set asks the coach for more.

The field hockey player who encourages her team mates every time they try something new.

The basketballer who asks the facility manager to leave the lights on for another five minutes so they can practice 20 more free throws before they leave.

Motivation will, given the opportunity, express itself….if you allow it to.

Subtle Coaching: The path to Motivation.

Too many coaches over-coach in a bid to motivate their team. They believe that the key to motivation lies in constantly talking, “psyching-up” and providing a high energy, high enthusiasm coaching environment.

Motivation does not work like that: in fact, it’s just the opposite.

Try, giving your athletes some free time. Tell them, “Hey guys, you can do whatever you like for the next 30 minutes. Work on an aspect of your performance that you enjoy”. Then stand back and watch them.

People, by their nature, given free time, will do the things they love to do, which are for the most part, the things they are also good at: their strengths.

Watch what your athletes do during their free time. Chances are, they will go straight to their strengths and in doing so provide you with a doorway to their dreams and a window to their motivations.

Know thy Athletes.

Every coach needs to get to know his / her athletes.

Try scheduling a five minute one on one session with a member of your team before each training session and another five minute “one on one” with another athlete after each training session. Over a few weeks, you can arrange to spend some quality one on one time with everyone in your team. Talk with them about school, family, their life, their dreams, their concerns, their favourite movies – anything – just get to know them and to understand what it is that fuels their preparation and performance.

Because motivation comes from the inside, it is by nature a personal thing.

The key to better understanding what motivates your athletes is to get to know them as human beings.

Summary:

Motivation is like digging for gold: it can be difficult to find but if you persevere and persist until you find it, the rewards are immeasurable.

Coaches cannot motivate athletes: rather coaches must seek to provide the environment and opportunity for athletes to discover what it is that motivates them as individuals.

However, if coaches understand their athletes and what it is that motivates their athletes, great things are possible.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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The great philosopher (and possibly football coach) Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

That being the case,  (and with apologies to Stephen Covey) – what are The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Coaches?

What are the things that great coaches do every day that makes them great?

Make training more challenging and more demanding than the competition your athletes are targeting;

Great coaches realise that competition is not the time to find out where your athletes’ physical and mental limits are. Training needs to be more challenging and more demanding – physically, mentally, technically, tactically, emotionally – than the competition your athletes are preparing for.

Example: A few weeks before a major international professional Tennis Championship I observed a leading professional player play 6 sets of 9 games (i.e. first player to 9 games with a 2 game lead, e.g. 9-7) and against 4 different training opponents (one left handed and three right handed), i.e. as opposed to a standard competition match of 5 sets of 6 games against 1 opponent. His coach made the training practice tougher, more challenging, more demanding and more difficult than any tournament match could ever be. Result…he won!

Learn and develop as a coach at a faster rate than your athletes;

Great coaches realise that success is a moving target and to stay relevant they must be committed to life-long learning, honest personal and professional evaluation and continuous improvement.

Example: A swimming coach realised that two of the athletes in his team had the potential to be world record holders but that he had not coached world record holders previously. He raised some money and invited two world class coaches from other nations to come and honestly review his coaching and his program regularly to ensure his knowledge and skills were also world class. Result: One world record.

Accelerate your rate of learning faster than your opposition;

The Internet has insured that there are no secrets in sport. Everyone knows what you know. Anyone can get anything, anytime, anywhere and for free. Everyone is learning something everyday. Great coaches understand this and strive to accelerate their rate of learning faster than their opposing coaches.

Example: A high performance rugby coach with an outstanding success rate at the highest level spent one month each year, immediately following the end of the competitive season traveling the world learning from other coaches in other sports in other nations to ensure his rate of learning and development was superior to other coaches in his sport. Result…the most outstanding coaching record in professional rugby.

Enhance your creative thinking skills;

Creativity is the defining difference between good coaches and great coaches. Good coaches can follow programs: great ones invent winning programs and in doing so create new directions and new ideas which in turn change the sport. Copying kills. Following others and trying to duplicate their success is a recipe for failure.

Example: One leading track and field coach I know enrolled in a creative class of some kind every off season. One year it was “Improv” comedy classes. The next year it was “Creative Writing”. The following year he took up Piano. He realised that his capacity to create and to understand creativity was the key to his future success. Result: Some of most innovative and creative training programs the sport has ever seen.

Coach individuals – even in team sports;

There are no true team sports left. Every significant moment in every sport is “person on person” and with performance analysis now at the level of millimeters and fractions of seconds, every athlete’s strengths and weaknesses are well known by their opposition. Great coaches engage with athletes and inspire them: they inspire them to consistently prepare with passion and to realise their full potential.

Example: A national football coach invited two world class triathlon coaches to attend his pre-season training camp. His thinking was that triathlon was all about individuals being pushed to their physical and mental limits in training and competition and that for his team to become the best in the world, each individual within that team must also be the best in the world. Result: World Champions.

Ensure that every athlete that you work with out prepares (in every aspect) their opposition;

The days of winning by having the “fittest” athletes are over. Sport is so multi-dimensional that winning comes from being the best in every aspect: training, preparation, skills, attitude, recovery, gym-training, sleep, travel management, nutrition etc etc. Great coaches know this and strive to create winning environments where a culture of excellence underpins everything and everybody.

Example: An international level swimming coach arranged for every swimmer is his team to learn how to shop for the right foods, how to cook, how get better quality sleep, how to meditate and how to manage their time, so that their non-training acitivites were at the same high standard as their training and preparation. Result: 3 swimmers in the Olympic team.

Adapt your training plans and programs to optimise their impact on each individual athlete at every training session;

The best coaches plan: they plan meticulously and with great attention to detail but, ultimately they also understand that the core goal of every training session is to ensure it provides the optimal environment and opportunity for their athletes to prepare.

Example: A track and field coach, preparing a middle distance running included an even paced 1000 metre run at a relatively easy pace in every warm up. He would assess how the athlete completed the “test” run: measuring heart rate, stride rate and RPE for the run and comparing them to the results of previous workouts. He would then change the workout based on the knowledge of the athlete’s capacity to complete the workout. Result: National Champion at 800 and 1500 metres.

Performance practice – not practice makes perfect;

Everyone practices and lots of coaches believe in the “practice makes perfect” approach. But great coaches take this a step further: performance practice makes for perfect performance. Want to master a skill? Adopt the “practice makes perfect” approach. Want to master a skill so that it can be executed the right way at the right time in a competition? Then follow the “performance practice” philosophy.

Example: A successful college basketball coach has three rules. Rule 1: Teach the basics of the skill in under 2 minutes. Rule 2. Allow each player to learn the skill by doing it. Rule 3. Make the skills practice as close as possible to game speed, pressure and intensity as soon as possible. Result: 5 State College Basketball titles in 11 years.

Adopt an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to talent development and performance enhancement;

Athletes are only athletes for an hour or two at most each day. For the other 22-23 hours each day they are human beings. Many coaches concentrate on preparing the athlete to perform: the great ones prepare the human being to be all they can be, then, as a result, the athlete will perform.

Example: A high school hockey coach had a philosophy about people: “Treat people the way I would want to be treated”. She made the commitment to arrive at training 10 minutes early each day and spend ten minutes one on one with a player to talk about their school, their pets, their family, their hobbies – anything except hockey. She also stayed back every training session to spend ten minutes with another player. As a result, every two weeks, she had got to know every player in her team as a human being which completely changed her perspective and approach to preparing them. Result: Undefeated Champions in their League.

Lead.

The great coaches are leaders. They dare to be different. They do things that others are not prepared to do. They drive change. They thrive in creative conflict situations and fight hard for what and who they believe in. They take risks. They are comfortable talking about winning: it is, after all, what they were born to do. They are individuals. They are unique. They are the best because they are prepared to lead and with it accept the responsibilities that come with leadership.

Example: A swimming coach believed his sport needed to change. He felt that traditionally there had been too much focus on endurance and threshold training and not enough focus on speed: he would dare to be different. He introduced speed training in every training cycle all year round. He broke the mould of the traditional approach to periodisation, i.e. one week microcycles and developed training cycles focused on each individual’s adaptation capacity. He challenged his athletes to race more than any athletes in the history of swimming at international level. Result: 4 Olympic Gold Medals.

These are The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Coaches…..so what did you do today?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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There are sporting kids.

There are sporting coaches.

But the critical people in the sporting equation are sporting parents.

This presentation helps every parent understand how to be a Gold Medal Sporting Parent and how to help their child realise their full potential.

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And don’t forget to contact us and ask about our Sporting Parents seminars…..a must for every parent.

© 2010 – 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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Every coach, every athlete, every media commentator and every fan will tell you that the fundamental element of all sports is skill.

Kicking and passing in football.

Throwing and catching in cricket and baseball.

Diving, turning and finishing in swimming.

Tackling and passing in rugby and rugby league.

Passing and shooting in basketball and netball.

Learning, practicing and mastering the basic skills of sport is one of the foundations of coaching, sports performance and athletic training.

However, just learning the skill is only the first step in the process. Only fools believe that “Practice Makes Perfect” if the goal is to win in competition.

Athletes do not fail because their skill level is poor: they fail because their ability to perform the skill in competition conditions is poor and that’s a coaching issue.

There are 7 Skills Steps You Must Master in Every Sport to be successful.

So what is Sports Skill?

There’s always a “definition” nut out there: someone who has to read a definition of something before they will engage with it.

So to keep all you definition devotees happy, “skill” for the purpose of this article, is defined as:

“The ability to perform a sporting skill consistently well at speed, under fatigue and pressure conditions in a competition environment“.

People drone on and on and on about skills in sport.

“It’s all about the fundamentals” some say.

Others insist, “Skills are everything”.

Hard to disagree but……there is a huge difference between learning a skill and learning to perform the skill consistently well at speed, when you are fatigued, under pressure and trying to execute the skill in front of thousands of people.

Performance Practice:

Want to learn and master a basic sports skill? Find a coach, learn how to do it then practice, practice, practice.

Want to learn and master a basic sports skill so that you can enhance your performance under competitions conditions….then practice, practice, practice will not cut it: you need Performance Practice.

Performance Practice is a logical, systematic 7 Step process that takes athletes from the execution of the basic skill to being able to perform it under competition conditions.

The 7 Skills Steps of Performance Practice:

Skills Step 1: Perform the Skill. This is the first, and unfortunately for most athletes, the last step in their skills learning program. Coaches come up with a drill, athletes copy it, try it, learn it.

Skills Step 2: Perform the Skill very well. Skills mastery comes from regular practice combined with quality feedback from coaches and may incorporate the use of video and other performance analysis technologies – including the best one of all…the coach’s eye! 

It is about here that most coaches stop coaching the skill, believing that if the athlete can perform the skill really well, and it looks like it does in the coaching textbooks then they have done their job.

Wrong.

The job is not even 30% complete.

Skills Step 3: Perform the Skill very well and at speed. Name one sport where the ability to perform sports skills really slow is a winning strategy! Technical perfection at slow speed may look great for the text books, but unless the skill can withstand competition level speed (and included in that is competition accelerations, competition agility requirements and competition explosiveness) then it is not competition ready.

Looking technically perfect at slow speed is great for the cameras but it is even better for your opposition who will have run around you and scored while you are receiving accolades for winning the “best-skills execution” competition.

Skills Step 4: Perform the Skill very well, at speed and under fatigue. Think of the “danger zones” in all competition sport. The last 20 metres of a 100 metres freestyle. The last 5 minutes before half time in football. The last play in the game. Many, many competitions come down to the quality of skills execution during the last 5% of time and being able to perform fundamental skills when tired, dehydrated, glycogen depleted and suffering from neuro-muscular fatigue is a winning edge in all sports.

Skills Step 5: Perform the Skill very well, at speed, under fatigue and under pressure. How many times do you see athletes miss simple targets or drop balls or make errors at critical moments – “danger-zones” in competitions? There is no doubt that emotional stress and mental pressure impact on the ability of athletes to perform skills with quality and accuracy  – (read more about the emerging field of “psycho-physiology!!”). But….this is a coaching issue. Incorporate the element of pressure in skills practices in training and ensure that training is more challenging and more demanding than the competition environment you are preparing for.

Skills Step 6:  Perform the Skill very well, at speed, under fatigue and under pressure consistently. Being able to perform the skill under competition conditions once could be luck, but being able to do it consistently under competition conditions is the sign of a real champion. Consistency in skills execution in competition comes from consistency of training standards. Adopting a “no-compromise” approach to the quality of skills execution at training is a sure way to develop a consistent quality of skills execution in competition conditions. Unfortunately many athletes have two brains:

• Training brain- the “brain” they use in training and preparation. This “brain” accepts laziness, inaccuracy, sloppiness and poor skills execution believing that “it will be OK on the day” and everything will somehow magically be right at the competition;
• Competition brain – the “brain” they use in competition.

The secret to competition success is to use “competition brain” in every training session.

Skills Step 7: Perform the Skill very well, at speed, under fatigue and under pressure consistently in competition conditions. This is what it is all about. The real factor in what makes a champion athlete is their capacity to perform consistently in competition conditions.

Performing a basic skill well is not difficult. But add the fatigue of 75 minutes of competition, the pressure of knowing the whole season is on the line with one kick, the expectations of the Board, the coach, the management, team-mates and tens of thousands of fans and all of sudden that basic skill is not so basic: it becomes the equivalent of juggling six sticks of dynamite.

Practice does not make Perfect:

In the old days, people would say, “Practice Makes Perfect”. We now know that is rubbish.

Some people moved on and said, “Perfect Practice Makes Perfect”. Only true if the goal is to perform skills well for the textbooks.

The real issue now is “Performance Practice Makes for Perfect Performance”.

Practice consistently under the conditions to be experienced in competition and success will follow.

Summary:

1. Just learning and mastering sports skills is not enough: it is no longer “Practice Makes Perfect” or “Perfect Practice Makes Perfect”;
2. Coaches and athletes must spend as much time, energy and effort learning to perform the fundamental skills of their sport in competition conditions as they do to learning and mastering the basic skill;
3. Coaches should progress athletes systematically through the 7 skills steps to ensure they can perform fundamental sports skills in competition conditions: to do less is to rely on luck, the bounce of the ball and some good fortune – none of which are strategies for consistent success.

Want to learn more about the 7 Skills Steps?

Contact me now.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010 – 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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