Posts Tagged ‘Coach education’

Ten Golden Rules about Presenting Sports Science information to Coaches

I have been to hundreds of coaching courses, coaching workshops, coaching conferences and coaching seminars. Invariably, the course convener invites a guest speaker with a specialist sports science background to talk about physiology, biomechanics, nutrition, psychology or another sports performance topic.

And, in all of the hundreds of courses, workshops, conferences and seminars I have attended, I have seen the same mistakes being made by the guest speakers. So I decided to do something about it.

The problem stems from the differences between the “two worlds” – the sports science world and the coaching world.

In the sports science world things are based on facts, research, validity and reliability measures, measurement, accuracy and evidence.

In the coaching world the key focus areas are results, performance, communication, instinct and “feel” – the art of coaching.

It is vital that the two worlds come together and share ideas and information but it just as vital that the two groups communicate appropriately and effectively.  Read more

Sports Employment: How learning Sports Speak can get you your Dream Job in High Performance Sport.

 

Whoopee!

You finished your Uni degree. Bachelor of Applied Science in Sports Studies. Or Bachelor of Science in Human Movement. Or Masters in Exercise Science. Congratulations!!! Mum, Dad and Aunt Lucy are all proud of you. You did it!

You have a nice shiny new degree, a huge brain full of ideas and intelligence and a heart full of optimism, passion and drive just itching to enter a career in high performance sport.

So you start digging through the Sports employment adverts, you visit the sports jobs web sites and you sign up for a few sports career update newsletters.

And you wait.

And you apply for a few jobs.

And you wait.

And maybe you get an interview.

And you wait.

And then, six months after graduation you find out that maybe getting a job in high performance sport wasn’t as easy as you thought and you might want to start learning lines like, “Would you like to Super Size that today, Sir”, “Can I tell you about our blackboard specials today Ma’am” and “Did you have discount coupon to get 4 cents off your fuel purchase?”.

So to help you get in and stay in the world of high performance sport, here is a guide on how to read those all too appealing job advertisements in the high performance sports industry. Read more

Hello Tennis Parents – balancing love and 40-love

 

Hello Tennis Parents.

Put your hand up if you answer “YES” to two or more questions in the Tennis Parents Ten Question Quiz:

  • Do you believe your child will be a successful, well paid professional tennis player?
  • Do you tell other parents that your child is “a high achiever”?
  • Do you talk about tennis at least once a day with your child over meals or away from the court?
  • Are you prepared to sacrifice your child’s education so they have a great chance of becoming a professional player?
  • Do you regularly ask the coach to work your child harder or to change something about their game?
  • Do you get emotionally involved in your child’s successes and failures on the training court?
  • Do you allow your child to show a bad attitude, poor sportsmanship and / or a poor temperament (e.g. racket abuse)?
  • Have you ever argued or fought with parents of other kids about the results of a game?
  • Do you refer to your child as “my son or my daughter the tennis player”?
  • Have you spent more than $500.00 on a single tennis racket for your child?

Well, here’s the bad news. If you answered “YES” to two or more of the above, the chances of your child becoming a successful professional tennis player are…………………NIL or very close to it. Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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

How to Develop World Class Coaches

OK. Let’s talk about how to develop world class coaches.

Grab a piece of paper. On one side of the paper, write down the characteristics of a great coach.

Does your list include any or all of the following:

  • Outstanding communicator
  • Visionary
  • Leader
  • Innovator
  • Negotiator
  • Conflict resolver
  • Media manager
  • Public relations genius
  • Team developer
  • People manager
  • Technical / tactical / strategic skills of the highest order
  • Philosopher
  • Politician
  • Futurist

OK - now turn the page over and write down a list of all the coach education programs which cover the above?

Is this side of the paper blank? Yes? Then we can begin. Read more

Sustaining success! The Coach’s Holy Grail.

 

Many coaches will say they want to be successful.

No they don’t. Not really.

They want to be successful again and again and again and again and again. They want to Sustain success and Always have a competitive program, winning athletes and quality players.

So how do you it?

How do you Sustain Competitiveness And Sustain Success? Read more

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

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

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

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:

  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

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