Posts Tagged ‘Baseball’

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

The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform

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.

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

Crawford Report on the Future of Australian Sport – What does it mean for you?

Well – the wait is over.

The Crawford Report on the Future of Australian Sport has been released.

Check it out at http://www.sportpanel.org.au/internet/sportpanel/publishing.nsf/Content/crawford-report

(While you are there, check out my own submission – which if I don’t mind saying so was about 90% right): http://www.sportpanel.org.au/internet/sportpanel/publishing.nsf/Content/Wayne+Goldsmith

So….what does it all mean? Read more

Daily Athlete Training Environment – D.A.T.E.

OK – Someone had to do it. It was almost toooo obvious.

From this moment forward, the term “Daily Training Environment” no longer exists in sports terminology or high performance sports culture jargon.

Goodbye – you are the weakest link.

Say hello to D.A.T.E. – Daily Athlete Training Environment.

Think of all the Government sporting policies and strategic planning documents around the world that now have to be edited and changed!

Why D.A.T.E.? Read more

Coaching = Engagement.

We have all done it.

We have all been involved in debates, discussions and deliberations about what coaching is.

Some people say it is about teaching and learning skills. Others say it’s about sports science and applying a scientific method approach to planning and periodisation. Others say it’s about communication and caring. Still others believe coaching is about emotions like passion or it’s about values like commitment, honesty, integrity, humility, courage and discipline.

To add to the confusion, you get the coaching “zealots” who are promoting one type of coaching philosophy over another (in an effort to create a commercial success from their theories about coaching) who are convinced coaching is about the ABC Technique of Coaching or Homer Simpson’s Guide to Effective Coaching or some whiz bang made up word like Coaching Readiness for Accelerated Performance (I hope you spotted the acronym)!

Coaching is about one thing above all others…engagement. Read more

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 Crawford Report on Australian Sport – a preview from the crystal ball….

So, the time is almost at hand.

The release of the report all Australian Sport has been waiting for over a year…the Crawford Report - is due any day now. (You know it is about to be released because the politicians are trying so hard to deny the final report exists).

For those of you not familiar with Crawford, take a look at http://www.sportpanel.org.au/internet/sportpanel/publishing.nsf

If we had a crystal ball, I wonder what will be contained in the report……..I wonder….I wonder….(imagine a fade out here like those movie ”dream” sequences). Read more

Teaching Skills – A Performance Focused Approach to Teaching Skills.

What’s the difference between learning sports skills to play sport and learning sports skills to win in competition conditions?

Playing the sport is about learning and executing the skills of the sport.

Winning in competition is about executing skills to a high level of mastery, at high speed, in fatigue conditions and under pressure and consistently making the right decision about when, where and how to execute the skill.

So, why do so many coaches insist on teaching the basic skills without progressing them from playing level to performance level? Read more

Recruiting a Head coach – how NOT to do it.

With the end of the season for Southern Hemisphere sports fast approaching and the Northern Hemisphere football codes getting ready to go, the issue of hiring the right head coach is a hotly debated topic in all the newspapers, television sport shows and 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

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