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It’s not the workout that wins…you have to win the workout.

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:20:11 +0000

One of the greatest myths in sport is that it is the workout that wins.

That is, that the secret to sporting success lies in how you manipulate volume, intensity and frequency.

Coaches spend years and years crafting their workouts, building invincible programs and creating the perfect combination of work and rest that will deliver them and their athletes the success they dream of.

And it is largely a myth.

It is not the workout that wins…you have to win the workout.

It’s not what you do….it’s how you do it.

The “secret’ set, the “wonder-workout”, the “magic-session” – it all means the same thing…that coaches are convinced that all it takes to be successful is to come up with the magic formula based on training physiology. The on-line coaching industry is full of this: “Buy our unique workouts and you will see amazing results” etc etc.

A well crafted workout, with a lot of thought behind the physiology of the training sets, reps, drills, etc that is performed poorly is a bad workout.

Whereas, a workout which may lack the precision of a finely tuned training activity designed by someone with a strong knowledge of sports science but is a workout which engages the heart and mind of every athlete so that all activities are performed with passion, precision and perfection is a great workout.

Of course, the ideal situation is to create an effective workout based on sound physiological principles but one which also engages the athletes so that they give their best to the full extent of their potential: i.e. the science and the art of coaching working in harmony.

The big assumption behind all workouts.

There is an underlying assumption in all workouts: the one premise that all workouts are designed on: that the athletes will complete the training session as it was written.

When coaches write a workout, they write it assuming that the athletes will complete the workout with same intent behind it’s design. No coach writes a workout thinking, “This is what I want the athletes to do but I know most of them will not do it this way”.

Example:

A coach writes a workout for a track sprinter. On paper, the workout reads:

Warm up: 1000 metres easy
Drills: 8 x High knee drills with walk back recovery
Run throughs: 6 x 40 metres increasing in speed from 400 metre speed to 100 metre speed progressively over the set. Walk back recovery.
Main set: 4 x 80 metres at 200 metre pace on 3 minutes. 5 minute rest. 4 x 120 metres at 200 metre pace on 3 minutes 30.
Cool down: 1000 metres easy.

The underlying assumptions are:

Warm-up: Completed with relaxation and rhythm, focusing on breathing and ease of movement.
Drills: Each stride completed with technical excellence and rhythm and flow.
Run throughs: Each repeat done with technical excellence and at precisely the target pace.
Main set: All efforts completed with technical excellence, rhythm and flow with a focus on breathing and ease of movement as the distance increases, i.e. technique under fatigue.
Cool down: Completed with relaxation and rhythm, focusing on breathing and ease of movement.

It is not the workout that determines the success of the athlete: it is how the athlete is intrinsically driven to complete every activity in their training program to the best of their ability.

And this is why the concepts of engagement and motivationare so important: without doubt the two most important concepts in effective coaching.

Engagement and Motivation: The Coach’s Best Friends.

All the things that are written about sport science, exercise physiology, training aids, fitness equipment…all the “what” stuff are of limited value without understanding engagement and motivation.

Engagement can be defined as the ability of a coach to create a performance environment where every athlete wants to give more than can reasonably be expected.

Motivation is the desire: the fire that drives an athlete towards a goal or achievement.

So, the key to great coaching is not sports science and it’s not actually coaching per se: it’s providing athletes with the environment and opportunity to express their engagement and motivation through their training: through the way they complete their workouts.

And this lays the foundation for a critical concept in successful coaching….win the workout.

Win the Workout philosophy:

The logic of the Win the Workout philosophy is pretty simple:

If you want to be the best in the world or the best in your competition;
You must be the best in your own Club or training squad and
Therefore you must be the best in each training session and workout.

Think about this for a moment. It makes sense.

You can’t be the best in your football competition or the best in the national swimming championships or the best in the state school athletics championships without first being the best in your team or lane or squad or group.

Sorry coaches….but the truth is you are all doing pretty much the same things.

Not many coaches who read this bit will accept it but, the truth is, you are all doing pretty much the same things.

Whether it be consciously or sub-consciously, the reality is that with so much free information available through the Internet, books, conferences, workshops, seminars, coaching courses etc – everyone in your sport more or less knows what everyone else in your sport knows. Your workouts are no longer your “magic-secret” to success because everyone in your sport has either seen them, has heard about them, knows about them, has tried them and in some cases has even improved on them.

And this means…..it is not your workouts that will determine the success of your athletes, your team, your program or you!

Your success, now, more than ever, is totally reliant on your ability to create an environment where win the workout, i.e. an environment built on athlete engagement and motivation is the core philosophy of your athletes.

This is what a Winning Culture is all about.

Many people talk about wanting to create a Winning Culture. They spend a lot of time and resources trying to create it, build it, grow it and sustain it.

Having a Winning Culture means that every athlete – and for that matter every person involved in your program – is totally, uncompromisingly and completely engaged with the program and is motivated to complete everything they do consistently to a higher standard than anyone of their competitors.

Your coaches want to out-coach every coach in the competition.

Your team manager wants to out-manage every manager in the competition.

Everyone strives to be the best in their role….the cumulative effect resulting in excellence across every aspect of your organisation.

Winning cultures grow when one person or a small group of people make the commitment to consistently out prepare, in every way, their opposition.

You can’t force a winning culture. You can’t run a motivation session and make it happen. You can’t buy t-shirts with slogans on them and turn your culture into a winning culture.

All it takes is one person.

It starts with one person: one person with a complete sense of engagement and the absolute motivation to do whatever it takes to be the best.

In other words, it starts with you, coach. It starts with your own engagement and motivation and with your ability to provide the environment for others to be similarly engaged and motivated: it starts when you make the commitment to “win the workout”.

Summary:

Workouts do not win: athletes win by winning the workouts.
Winning the workouts is a culture: a core philosophy which, if embraced by everyone in your program, is an unstoppable force.
Creating and sustaining a winning culture: one which is built on the win the workout philosophy begins and ends with the coach and the coach’s ability to create an environment where engagement and motivation are the central, driving forces behind success.

Wayne Goldsmith

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

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:41:59 +0000

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.

The Three Golden Rules of Getting a Job in High Performance Sport.

There are three rules when it comes to getting a dream job in high performance sport – and for that matter a dream job in any industry:

It’s about who you know;
It’s about who you know;
It’s about who you know.

And, my friends, here’s another piece of advice – it is no good wining, whinging and complaining about it: you need to be as committed to making contacts and industry connections as you are about study, research, coaching and high performance programs. Fact of life: accept it – move on.

The next piece of truth for you budding high performance sports professionals to accept is that very few advertised jobs in the sports industry are actually really open to all applicants.

Take a list of 100 advertised jobs in high performance sport.

A large percentage of these 100 jobs, (particuarly the government sports jobs) are often opened to internal applicants only (in spite of what it says on the official job advertisement). It’s what large sporting organisations do when they have had a review, have re-schuffled a few roles, re-named a couple of departments and now have to get the incumbents to re-apply for their own jobs – usually at higher salaries. Goes on all the time.

Now take off another large percentage of these 100 jobs who are informally taken by head nods, hand shakes and agreements signed with cappuccinos, (with most jobs in high performance sport its more about dinner than your degree).

Now take off another percentage of the 100 jobs which will go to former athletes and coaches and people who have political and personal connections within the sport.

What are you left with? Three jobs out of 100 that you can actually apply for:

Development Officer for Junior Underwater Trampolining;
Sports Administrator for Regional Tug-a-war;
Assistant to the assistant deputy, vice, assistant Treasurer of Kurdistan Cricket.

Good luck with your application - feel free to list me as a referee!

Sports Speak

In addition to having great networking skills, there is an art to applying for jobs in the high performance sports industry: you have to master Sports Speak.

Sports Speak is a special secret magic language that people in sport use to communicate secret messages to other people in sport through the medium of position descriptions and advertisements and unless you are fluent in this language, your chances of securing that high level high performance gig are about as good as Paris Hilton winning the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

Sports Speak must become your second language and to master it means that dream job with professional sport, an Olympic team or a government run sports institute is within your grasp.

Here’s some examples of Sports Speak to help you on your pathway to success:

“Demonstrated experience in leading people“: Sports Speak Translation = Have been in charge of staff but never introduced any changes which upset them or created any problems;
“Proven record of stakeholder engagement”: Sports Speak Translation =Listen to everyone, pander to factions and splinter groups, compromise all decisions to avoid conflict and get nothing of real significance actually done;
“Change management skills”: Sports Speak Translation = Must make a few minor, largely ineffective, cosmetic changes but not too many and not too fast – you might wake up some of the staff;
“Demonstrated decision making skills”: Sports Speak Translation = Being able to do what you are told to do;
“Innovative”: Sports Speak Translation = Copy the best ideas of other organisations after doing benchmarking junkets all over the world and claim them as your own;
“Ability to develop financial and strategic plans”: Sports Speak Translation = Desk Job - mostly administrative;
“Ability to monitor progress towards objectives and use evaluation and research information to improve effectiveness”: Sports Speak Translation = Desk Job – totally administrative.
“Understanding of the structure and dynamics of sport and government processes”: Sports Speak Translation = Have lots of connections and contacts in the sport world who you can use as consultants to help sort out problems.

The Position Description you will never see.

Here’s a list of things that you will never see on a position description or job application for a role in high performance sport – and this is a fundamental reason why sport continues to be a remarkably conservative institution around the world where change, innovation and creativity - and by extension the industry as a whole – does not progress to a level that is anywhere near it’s potential:

Wanted: Sports Leader – to lead us to be the best in the world.

Qualities and attributes:

Someone who thinks about, talks about and openly embraces winning;
Visionary leadership: able to lead consistently with passion, drive and enthusiasm;
Team inspirer: able to create and sustain a high quality collaborative team environment where every one’s talent is optimised and every individual consistently contributes to their full potential;
Creative and innovative: prepared to take risks, to think laterally, to think things and do things that no one else in the industry is prepared to;
Uncompromising in their commitment to create a winning environmentfor all athletes, coaches and people involved in the sport (sorry – can’t say stakeholders. The only people who should be called stakeholders are those planting tomatoes or installing picket fences);
Integrated thinker: thinks and acts across disciplines, across sports, across industries to search for the best possible solutions to performance problems;
Experience valued but only if you are capable of thinking, learning and growing faster than at any time in your professional career;
Change management not needed: you must live change and thirst for continuous improvement.

If the Universities and other sports industry training organisations were serious about preparing people for a career in high performance sport, instead of pumping students through a Bachelor of Applied Science (Human Movement), they would create a new, more practical, more realistic list of course offerings:

Bachelor of Language (Sports Speak);
Bachelor of Applied Sports Networking (Sports Management Systems);
Masters of Sports Contacts and Connections.

What does your degree say?

Wayne Goldsmith

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Coaching the Uncoachables

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:19:13 +0000

When it comes down to it, the day to day coaching of sport is not that difficult.

Get the physiology right. Teach the basics well. Come up with sensible, logical game plans and competition strategies. It’s not rocket science.

However, these things are not coaching. They are merely teaching the mechanics of the sport: they are more about learning than leadership, more about information than innovation and more about instruction than inspiration.

And, these are not the things that determine success: these are not the things that mean the difference between winning and losing.

The things that do determine success and the things that do mean the difference between winning and losing are much harder to find and even harder to measure.

They are the un-coachables: those intangible, elusive factors which make champions champions and winning teams unbeatable.

So, how can you Coach the Un-coachables?

What are the Un-coachables?

The Un-coachables are eight factors which you will not find in any coaching text book. You will not learn about them in any coaching course. You can not research them on Google and your can’t do a PhD on them. They are not tested for in talent id programs and no one has found a piece of equipment to measure them. But, their impact on performance is immeasurable. Their role in success unparalleled. Their place in excellence unmatched. Their effect on winning unsurpassed.

The Un-coachables are:

Desire
Desperation
Hunger for success
Determination
Resilience
Passion
Motivation
Unbreakable self-confidence

So, now you have to ask…..if these un-coachables are critical for success, and I am a coach, and I want my athletes to succeed, how can I coach things that can’t be coached?

Great question. Here’s how.

Coaching the Un-coachables is what Coaching is really all About

The difference between a good coach and a great coach lies in their ability to coach the un-coachables.

Sure planning and programming are important. Teaching skills is important. Getting the physiology right is important. Great communication skills, vision, leadership, knowledge of the sport etc etc – it’s all important, but your capacity as a coach to coach the un-coachables is what it is all about.

You can train someone to coach the coachables: i.e. the physical, mental, technical and tactical aspects of your sport relatively easily. A well designed coaching course, some intelligent assessment processes and some ongoing professional development and continuous improvement and bang! We have ourselves a coach who can coach all the things in our sport which are coachable.

And, with the amazing resources of the Internet, anyone, can find out anything, anytime, anywhere and for free so increasingly anybody from parents to presidents can learn the coachable things just by turning on a computer or smart-phone.

But does that mean the coach, and more importantly the coach’s athletes will be successful? No.

Because the things that really matter are the un-coachables.

So how do you Coach the Un-coachables?

The short answer is, you don’t.

By that I mean, you don’t include coaching the un-coachables in your coaching process and your learned coaching methodologies.

You coach the un-coachables by understanding the individual athletes you are working with and providing them with the environment and opportunity to discover the un-coachables for themselves.

You can’t force someone to have “desire”.

You can’t run a training program about “desperation” or “hunger for success”.

You can’t get a motivation expert in to create “motivation” in your athletes – it does not work.

You can’t artificially create “passion”.

You don’t coach the un-coachables: you work with your athletes and help them to discover the un-coachables for themselves.

Be a human being first, then a coach

All the un-coachables are core human characteristics. They may be hidden behind a stack of text books about physiology or under a bookshelf loaded with motivation manuals, self-help books and sporting autobiographies but they are there all the same.

The art of coaching is being able to tap into these core human characteristics, both in yourself and in your athletes. It’s about understanding yourself and your athletes and creating the environment that is needed to encourage and induce those characteristics to be expressed in all aspects of preparation and performance.

And the million dollar question. Can all athletes discover the un-coachables for themselves and in doing so become champions?

No.

For many athletes and many coaches, sport is never more than the coachables. They believe that all they need to do is hit the gym, buy the supplements, work on their techniques, do the training, add some water and pow! They will win. But they are wrong. Very, very wrong.

Because we have reduced coaching to a set of rules about periodization and planning, training systems and structures, programs and processes, tests and techniques, the un-coachables are rarely even seriously discussed, let alone taught.

The un-coachables: the critical ingredient in the success of every athlete, every team and every coach are usually put in the too hard basket and ignored: replaced by our focus on the “real” and the more measurable and tangible aspects of coaching: the things that can be taught and learnt.

You can measure VO2 max: you can’t measure the athlete’s determination to push themselves to almost unconsciousness striving to do their best in the test.

You can measure peak Lactate levels: you can’t measure the athlete’s desperation to succeed: so desperate that they will endure the burning pain in their legs and agony in their lungs as they fight to find their limits.

The things that really matter in sport can not be measured: but that does not mean they are not absolutely vital to succeed.

Coaching success is much more than just training, education and development. It’s about being yourself, about understanding yourself, about believing in yourself, about being honest with yourself and who you are and expressing that through your coaching.

Summary

Coaching the un-coachables is what coaching is all about. Anyone can learn the “coachables” – those aspects of sport which can be measured, seen and heard.
But winning, success and performance is all about the un-coachables: the hard to define, difficult to measure and impossible to create aspects of sport.
Ultimately success in coaching is determined by your capacity to coach the un-coachables, and, as these factors are core human factors, to be a successful coach you need to focus less on coaching the coachables and more on being yourself: your real self.
Invest time and resources into learning and accepting who you are as a human being, then greatness in coaching is possible.

Wayne Goldsmith

A reminder that all the posts, ideas and information on the Sports Coaching Brain are subject to copyright. No article may be reproduced in part or in full without the expressed written consent of the author.

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CoachTED: A Client Focused Approach to Coach Training, Education and Development.

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:17:42 +0000

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:

More coaches;
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?

Most people who coach or who are involved in some form of coaching do not even commence the COACH-TED pathway for that sport;
Coaches who do complete the first level of the COACH-TED pathway rarely complete all assessment tasks and the accreditation or licensing requirements;
Coaches who do complete all accreditation or licensing requirements rarely maintain their qualifications with updating requirements;
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″;
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:

Clearly define and understand who your clients are: In most sports your clients are your athletes and their families.
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.
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.
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.
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:

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.
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.
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.

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50 Ways to Enhance your Coaching Performance in High Performance Sport.

Wayne Goldsmith — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:42:45 +0000

: fifty from Crestock Stock Images

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.

Train harder;
Train smarter;
Train harder and smarter;
Improve your leadership skills;
Consistently out-prepare everyone in your competition;
Dream bigger;
Believe in yourself;
Back yourself;
Get up faster when you are knocked down or face adversity;
Get tougher mentally;
Never accept the first “no” from a sports administrator or bureaucrat - just fight harder;
Become outstanding at finding and retaining talented athletes;
Develop the most creative thinking skills in your sport: the best ideas win;
Be more passionate about success than anyone else in your sport;
Never become complacent: success is a moving target;
Enthusiasm, passion, desire and attitude are contagious diseases: are yours worth catching?
Use sports science intelligently, effectively and with intent;
Get to know your athletes better than they know themselves;
Collaborate with your athletes - don’t coach at them;
Listen;
Take care of your own health – physical, mental and spiritual;
Be committed to intelligent change and continuous improvement;
Make friends far more often than you make enemies;
Develop a network of coaches in other sports and speak with them regularly;
Leave your ego at the door - ego kills progress and limits creativity;
Read books by great leaders, great thinkers and great philosophers: there are lessons to be learnt everywhere;
Go back and read Number 1 on this list again – you have to work harder than anyone else;
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;
Develop a group of close friends outside of your sport and don’t talk to them about sport;
Sleep and eat well everyday;
Find a sports science network group who respect you, want to collaborate with you and will grow with you;
Adopt an integrated approach to identifying and developing talent: physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural and genetic;
Teach one new lesson to every athlete every day;
Give and seek feedback often;
Hate losing – but learn from it, grow from it and improve as a consequence;
Take smart risks with your program, your ideas and your coaching;
See an athlete’s parents as partners in performance not as adversaries or just paying clients;
Create the culture you want to coach in: start with your own attitude then “infect” everyone around you;
Accelerate your learning faster than your opposition: from learning comes change, from change comes improvement, from improvement comes winning;
Take up another passion - i.e. other than your sport – to focus your mind and intelligence on;
Get to know the techniques, skills, rules and regulations of your sport better than anyone in the world;
Learn from the legend coaches of your sport - to see further than giants, you must stand upon their shoulders;
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;
Find a mentor - someone whose skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes and philosophies are complimentary (i.e. different) to your own;
Find someone to mentor: nothing teaches like teaching;
Become a master of the Internet, social networking and all current forms of communication: communicate the way your athletes want to be communicated with;
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!
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;
Hire intelligently: hire on attitude and passion, then train the skills you need;
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

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Five World Wide Trends in Sport which you ignore at your peril.

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 03:08:21 +0000

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:

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!;
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;
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”;
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;
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

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Coaching and Visualisation (Imagery): See the Coach You Want to Be.

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:22:29 +0000

Many athletes incorporate visualisation (imagery) into their training programs and their preparation for competition.

Usually visualisation involves athletes using their minds to “imagine” (visualise) situations and how they would or should manage those situations when faced with them in real life.

For example, an athlete training for the Olympic Games might visualise the sights and sounds of the Olympic final so that they become familiar with that performance setting.

Visualisation can be a powerful tool in athlete preparation but what about using Visualisation to improve your coaching?

Coaching and Visualisation….See the Coach You Want to Be.

So what is Visualisation (or Imagery)?

Every body dreams.

Everyone has an imagination.

Everyone has laid back in their bed and dreamed about becoming a “Jedi-Knight” or a Formula One racing driver or a world famous actor or of scoring the winning goal in the World Cup Final or winning the lottery. Dreaming and imagining what could be is something all us humans do.

Visualisation is using the power of your own imagination to see, feel and experience something in your mind without actually experiencing it.

So why is this important?

Success or failure in sport is often determined by experience.

Experience is prized above all other things by recruitment agencies, HR departments and other sporting leaders who hire and fire coaches.

Experience, i.e. having proven that you can do the job is what job interviews, job descriptions and sports recruitment is all about.

The problem is that often you don’t get the actual experience you need until after you need it!

How many times have you coached athletes who have failed at their first attempt to win an important race due to their lack of experience at that level of competition?

How many times have you seen teams fall at the final hurdle due to a lack of experience of performing at their best in important games.

Experience is a determining factor of success in every sport and every field of endeavour.

Yet, for many athletes, coaches and teams, you only get one chance: only one opportunity to realise your dreams.

What is needed is a way to live the experience, to feel the experience, to “see” the experience without actually doing it so that you are prepared to manage the emotion of moment when it comes for real.

And that’s where visualisation comes in. You can see it before you have to be it.

Visualisation – how to do it: Making it real.

First of all, learning to visualise is not a big deal. You don’t need to spend a lot of time and money learning how to do it: after all, it is just tapping into the power of imagination that we all have but have lost touch with.

But, the key to doing it effectively is making it real, i.e. making it seem and feel real.

Mastering visualisation means arriving at the big game or the big race or the major event with the calm, composed, confidence that only experience can provide.

Before you commence your visualisation session, do your homework. Talk to people who have experienced the event or game you are targeting and which will be the focus of your visualisation practice.

If possible, get a video of other games, other races and other events held in the competition venue where you and your athletes will be performing. If you can, go to the competition venue, look around, sit in the change-rooms, walk around the warm-up area etc. Take some deep breaths and immerse yourself in the environment where you and your athletes will be facing the mental skill to learn and master.

Find a nice quiet place and relax. A simple way to relax is to concentrate on deep, slow breathing. A great guide for relaxing breathing is to aim for 5 breaths in one minute by breathing in for a four count, breathing out for a four count and just remaining still and relaxed for a four count before breathing in again (i.e. 12 seconds per breath cycle).

After one minute (i.e. 5 in and an out breaths), begin imagining the situation, the settings, the sights, the sounds and the smells of the target of your visualisation.

Imagine every aspect of the event. The noise. The competition arena. The crowd. Experience the entire experience in your mind.

Here are some practical Coaching Visualisation Exercises for you to try:

If you are in a competition with a “finals” series and your team is knocked out and doesn’t make the finals, use Coaching Visualisation to imagine what you would do if your team had actually made the finals. How would you plan your week ? How would you select your players? How would prepare for each training session? How would you address the players before they run out for the big game? Spend time visualising how you would coach at your best during the finals series and then next season, when you have to do it for real, you will have no surprises and perform magnificently;
If you have a big event coming up and you need to be calm, composed, clear and confident for your athletes, try some visualisation. Imagine yourself on the sideline or in the coaching box. See yourself as being calm and composed. Feel your body language as being positive and powerful. See your athletes performing and imagine how you will respond, i.e. with clarity and confidence.

Summary:

Experience is such a precious commodity in sport, that it make sense to try and find ways of fast tracking it and gaining the experience you need before you actually need it;
Visualisation (imagery) has long been a tool that athletes have used to help them see and feel the competition environment prior to the actual competition to help them deal with the stress and anxiety which often undermines successful performance;
However, visualisation (imagery) is just as effective with coaches who, with a little patience and a little practice can use visualisation techniques and their imaginations to learn, grow and win when they need to win.

So give Coaching by Visualisation a Try: See the Coach You Want to Be.

Wayne Goldsmith

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Motivation and Coaching.

Wayne Goldsmith — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:12:07 +0000

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

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The Top Ten Reasons Why Coaches Fail

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:37:21 +0000

The last post was about the things great coaches do that makes them so successful.

Now let’s look at the things that coaches do that stop them from realising their potential.

Here are The Top Ten Reasons Why Coaches Fail.

Compromising; A coaching colleague of mine with multiple world and Olympic successes behind him has asked me to ensure that his grave-stone has two words engraved on it “No compromise”. It is his view that fundamental to greatness in coaching is the reluctance to compromise for anyone, anything and at any time. Coaches who do not succeed have inevitably compromised during their preparation. It may have been compromise to an administrator to pacify a political situation. It may have been compromise to a player who felt training was too hard. Regardless of why, to again quote my colleague, “Compromise is the Cancer of Achievement. It erodes success and achievement like nothing else can”;
Lacking belief in themselves: Coaches who fail lack belief in themselves. If you do not believe in your own ability to succeed and in your own capacity to be victorious, how can you inspire it in others? Confidence (not arrogance) is the catalyst for all great sporting success stories. People who say “I can” and “I will” and give everything they have to the achievement of the impossible, inevitably succeed;
Copying others: Copying kills. Winners do things, think things and say things no else is prepared to. They are originals. They are unique. They are individuals. Coaches who copy other coaches only aim for mediocrity at best;
Relying too much on learning from only within their own sport: These days, there are no secrets. Everyone in your sport knows what you know. Beginner coaches have access to the same information and ideas that high performance coaches do. So to find a winning edge, you have to look outside of your sport and indeed outside of sport into the corporate world, the military, into the academic world, the fields of science and medicine, the arts…anywhere where excellence thrives and people are achieving;
Relying too much on emotion: Emotion in coaching is a killer. Emotion in sport is for the friends, family and fans of players, but for coaches and athletes, emotion is as unwanted as a serious injury. Poor coaches will rely on emotion to try and inspire performance. “Do it for our nation” with the flag flying in the background…or “You have to hate your opponent”: this emotion based coaching-babble rarely works and if it does it is only effective for a short time. Coaching is about being calm, confident, composed, clear and credible;
Using the same programs over and over and over: There is no one way to win. There is no magic formula. No coach in any sport has created the infallible program which works every-time and in every situation. Every program – like every coach – is a work in progress and when you start believing that you have all the answers that you will have none;
Failing to engage their athletes: Poor coaches coach at athletes; the great ones coach with athletes. They engage the hearts and minds of their athletes and inspire them to be even more than the athlete ever dreamed they could be. Athletes are your partners in performance: the more they are engaged with you and your program, the better your results will be;
Lack of persistence: Coaches who stop trying must fail. I have a coaching colleague who has coached over 500 games of senior, professional football but despite coming close several times, he has yet to win a Premiership. He remains one of the hardest working, most innovative, most passionate and most committed coaches I have ever met. Never, ever, give up. You owe it to yourself and your athletes;
Lack of vision: There is a reason why “vision” is called “vision”: because you can see it. Great coaches can “see” the future of their sport, their athletes, their program and their own coaching and can communicate their vision effectively to everyone around them. Their ability to share their vision and to have others embrace it as their own, is paramount. Coaches who fail to succeed lack this vision-sharing ability: they think about now, they dwell on yesterday and the future is only as far as the next game;
Not spending enough time maximising their strengths: People in all fields of endeavour succeed on their strengths. It is the things you are good at that will provide you with the opportunity to win. Coaches who spend too much time trying to overcome weaknesses and in doing so allow their strengths to be un-mastered, only end up being mediocre at everything. Discover what your strengths are and become the indisputable best in your sport in those areas. Success will come.

So what’s holding you back?

Wayne Goldsmith

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The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Coaches

Wayne Goldsmith — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:10:59 +0000

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

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