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Posts Tagged ‘Coach education’

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

Creative Coaching: Teaching coaches to be Creative and Innovative.

Quick.

Write down your own list of the top ten skills of quality coaching. What does it look like? Something like this?

1. Communication skills;
2. Passion;
3. Empathy with athletes;
4. The ability to engage with athletes and inspire athletes to fully engage with the program;
5. Enthusiasm;
6. Technical knowledge;
7. An understanding of the relevant principles of sports science and sports medicine;
8. Energy;
9. Curiosity (which inspires a passion for learning);
10. A commitment to continuous improvement and accelerated learning.

You could add hundreds of skills to this list: experience, drive, initiative, the will to win, attention to detail, commitment, vision, determination, a strong work ethic…………there are as many desirable coaching skills as there are coaches.

But, in this century, there is one coaching skill to rule them all – creativity: creative coaching.

The question is…...can you teach coaches to be creative?

Read more

Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

Remember how when we were kids everyone liked to eat cupcakes.

Then when we got older and a bit more health conscious we were told to give them up because of the sugar and flour and other stuff in them.

Then along comes a sports nutritionist who said “Muffins are a great food for athletes – nutritious, high carbohydrate energy foods”. So we all started eating them again even though they are basically still just big cupcakes.

What a big con.

Almost as big a con as Training Studies in Sports Science Research. Read more

Sports Psychology: Integrating Mental Skills Training in Effective Coaching.

We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential part of being a successful athlete.

The ability to perform under pressure, the capacity to remain confident and resilient when competition conditions get tough, the skill to be able to relax and stay focused when feeling pain and fatigue in competition, concentration, visualization……coaches and athletes are unanimous that spending time developing mental skills is time well spent.

However, figuring out the best way to develop mental skills – particularly mental skills which can directly enhance the competition performance of athletes is another matter.

We all think working with a Sports Psychologist is a good idea but Sports Psychologists are like life partners……we know that having one is probably a good idea but it is next to impossible to find a good one. Read more

Can you achieve the same or better performance results with reduced training volume? More with Less Part Two.

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. Read more

The Five Stages of Coaching: Going from Beginner to the Best Coach You can Be.

There are coaching courses, coaching workshops, coaching programs, coaching presentations and coaching seminars.

There are mentoring programs for coaches, professional development programs for coaches, training programs for coaches and a million and one degrees, certificates and accreditation programs for coaches.

But what is coaching and what does it take to get really good at it?

What is great coaching?

And would you even recognise it even if you met it over a nice red wine and dinner? Read more

High Performance Sports Systems – The Non System System.

So Great Britain has an outstanding high performance sports system.

Australia had one a few years ago…and they hope to have it again.

The “Eastern Block” had some brilliant high performance sports systems – systems which influenced the development of high performance sport all over the world in the three decades since.

The Chinese have a huge one driven by State money and a very large population.

The French are doing some great things in theirs.

The US has a strong high performance system driven through the College system.

South Korea, Japan and India are growing theirs. Canada is re-building theirs.

The South Americans will be working hard to make their high performance systems the best in the world now that Rio has been announced as the host city of the 2016 Olympic Games.

South Africa is building one on the back of the Football World Cup.

Seems like every nation in the world has to have three things – a flag, a carbon policy and a high performance sports system.

Here’s the thing…..none of them do what they are supposed to do….none of them actually produce winners. Read more

Ten Qualities of Great Coaches – Presentation

A Sportscoachingbrain Presentation: Ten Qualities of Great Coaches

Yours to read, enjoy and use.

Wayne Goldsmith

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

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• 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

  • High Performance on a Budget – can you create a high performance environment without spending any money?
  • The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform
  • The Evolution of Leadership in Professional Sport: from coach to captain to collaboration.
  • Creative Coaching: Teaching coaches to be Creative and Innovative.
  • Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

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