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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There have been many attempts to define and measure mental toughness in coaching textbooks, academic literature and even in the popular media.

Words like “persistence”, “perseverance”, “determination”, “commitment”, “resilience” and “uncompromising” seem to be used to describe mental toughness: something which clearly means different things to different people.

For some people, mental toughness is about being able to maintain composure, calm and control in difficult situations.

For others, mental toughness is related to physical “hardness” and the ability to endure pain, fatigue and stress in competition conditions and still prevail.

There has been a lot of work from the academic sector to attempt to define and measure mental toughness, with most of the recent literature discussing mental toughness in terms of “situations” and that mental toughness is a complex set of different attributes expressed differently by people in different situations.

Coaches all agree however, that for competitive athletes, mental toughness is a highly desirable athletic quality: one which is as prized as outstanding physical abilities, excellence in skills and technical knowledge.

But how can you coach an athlete to be mentally tough?

 Mental Toughness: Two Basic Coaching Approaches

There are two basic approaches to coaching mental toughness:

1. Toughen the body to toughen the mind and
2. Toughen the mind to toughen the body.

“All of us get knocked down, but it’s resiliency that really matters. All of us do well when things are going well, but the thing that distinguishes athletes is the ability to do well in times of great stress, urgency and pressure.”

Roger Staubach

Mental Toughness Coaching Approach 1: Toughen the body to toughen the mind

This has been the most commonly used approach by coaches to try and develop mental toughness in their athletes.  The essence of this approach is hard work, i.e. the harder I work, the tougher I get.

The core philosophy behind this approach is: “Make training more challenging and more demanding, physically and mentally, than the competition you are preparing for”.

This approach has several good things going for it and it is relatively simple to do. Through this approach, athletes develop confidence in their ability to meet the physical demands of the competition environment and in their ability to deal with whatever is “thrown” at them during competition because they know ( i.e. confidence comes from knowing) that their preparation has been better in every detail than that of their opposition.

Many, many football competitions, world championships and Olympic Gold medals have been won by coaches and athletes adopting the toughen the body to toughen the mind approach.

However, for some athletes this approach can be too confronting, too demanding and ultimately can actually cause athletes to become de-motivated and even intimated by the training environment. Some athletes will fall to the stress and strain of the intense physical loads required by this approach and break down through over-training.

A big mistake however that coaches make is to assume that athletes who fail to respond to this approach are “soft” and therefore unable to compete successfully. The fact is that all athletes (people) are different. Some respond incredibly well to endurance training…some don’t. Some respond positively to strength training…some don’t. Some respond strongly to the toughen the body to toughen the mind approach…some don’t.

Mental Toughness Coaching Approach 2: Toughen the mind to toughen the body

The second approach to Coaching Mental Toughness is the toughen the mind to toughen the body approach. Coaches who adopt this approach focus on developing the athlete’s mental skills and teaching them the psychological techniques to thrive in the competitive environment.

There are many excellent mental skills techniques which can enhance an athlete’s ability to perform to their full potential under the pressure of competition including Sports Mindfulness which among other things teaches athletes to live in the moment and to not overly think about the past (e.g. mistakes which may have just been made) or the future (e.g. the pressure of the situation and the need to score points).

An athlete who masters a technique like Sports Mindfulness can be, by any definition, mentally tough, as they have the ability to perform to their full potential regardless of the situation.

So which approach is the right approach?

The right approach is:

a. The one which suits your own personal coaching philosophy and

b. The one which works with the individual athlete you are a coaching.

There is no one size fits all coaching method to enhance mental toughness. Some athletes respond well to Mental Toughness Coaching Approach 1. They thrive on hard work. They love being physically challenged. They grow and mature as athletes through an uncompromising commitment to training as hard as possible. And some athletes do not respond this approach. Others respond far better by learning to master their mind and to tap into the almost unlimited potential that lives between their ears!

“Win or lose you will never regret working hard, making sacrifices, being disciplined or focusing too much. Success is measured by what we have done to prepare for competition.”

John Smith

And the biggest question of all….can you turn a “soft” athlete into a “hard” athlete through great coaching?

The short answer is Yes.

A “soft” athlete is one who lacks the mental abilities to compete to their full potential – particularly when things get difficult, challenging or unpredictable. Coaches, believing they can identify “soft” athletes then embark on a training program to help the athlete develop the skills and abilities to better manage competitive situations and therein become “hard”, i.e. tough, resilient etc.

Some athletes are naturally hard: and by naturally, I mean they have learnt to be hard through necessity, overcoming adversity and set backs in their lives both inside and outside of sport. They then carry this “hardness” into their preparation and performance, i.e. “the way you do anything, is the way you do everything”.

For others, “hardness” (mental toughness) is a skill and like any skill it can be learnt, practiced, enhanced and mastered. In the same way you would not teach an athlete complex, difficult, advanced sporting skills and techniques in their first year of training, mental toughness is not something that athletes learn from a single lecture, sporting autobiography or audio recording. Mental toughness needs to be introduced, nurtured, developed and enhanced and systematically measured in both training and in competition situations over an athlete’s career just as any other sporting skill or technique.

“I’ve never known anybody to achieve anything without overcoming adversity.”

Lou Holtz

Summary

1. Mental toughness is a much talked about, much investigated aspect of sports performance yet surprisingly, while many people believe they know what it is, where it is and how to find it, very little is understood about coaching it.
2. Whether you adopt the “body to mind” approach or the “mind to body” approach, coaching mental toughness is about understanding your athlete and what they need to enhance their mental abilities to thrive in competitive situations.
3. There are times when both approaches can be used effectively in the preparation of athletes. Coaching is an art form: and an important part of the art is knowing what to do, when and how.

“It may sound strange, but many champions are made champions by setbacks.”

Bob Richards

The Sports Coaching Brain has recently developed a partnership with the US company Athlete IQ. One of the features of Athlete IQ’s excellent and highly innovative approach to performance measurement and enhancement is the introduction of a test for mental toughness involving both athletes and their coaches.

For more information contact Athlete IQ today.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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:

1. It’s about who you know;
2. It’s about who you know;
3. 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:

1. Development Officer for Junior Underwater Trampolining;
2. Sports Administrator for Regional Tug-a-war;
3. 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

© 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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For many years now I have been talking about, writing about, presenting workshops and teaching on the Performance Clock concept.

It has been and still is in my view the single most important concept in high performance sport or any field of endeavour for that matter.

Yet, for some reason, the majority of people still don’t get it.

Everyday, the newspapers, the television and the online news and sports services are loaded with stories about coaches, athletes and sporting teams who are failing due to their lack of understanding and acceptance of the Performance Clock, or more accurately, their failure to do anything about it.

Yet, by understanding this one simple concept, anyone who wants to be successful in sport has the single most valuable tool they will ever need in the palm of their hand (or at least on the screen of their laptop).

Let’s have another look at this most important of sporting principles, The Performance Clock and how it relates to effective coaching.

The Performance Clock: The Three Principles.

There are three fundamental principles behind the Performance Clock:

1. Everyone involved in sport is striving to improve;
2. To improve demands a commitment to ongoing, continuous improvement;
3. Continuous improvement demands the capacity to honestly evaluate all aspects of your planning, preparation and performance.

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it.

So why don’t people get it?

The Performance Clock explained:

Everyone in sport is striving to get better: to improve.

Athletes, coaches, support staff and teams spend their time planning, preparing and performing with the intent of getting better at what they do.

Success in sport is a moving target: the name of the game is improvement.

Typically, the Performance Clock works like this:

• Stage one: non competitive: the organisation is failing to perform and struggling to survive; 
• Stage two: striving for success:  a passionate person and / or motivated team ignites the desire to succeed and inspires the organisation to strive for success. The acceleration of progress comes from embracing change and learning and through the commitment to turn learning into action;
• Stage three: the right culture. The right people and the right environment are in place and the opportunity has been created for the club to be successful;
• Stage four: success:  the organisation gets to the top but then loses momentum by ceasing to change and learn at the same rate. They adopt a “secret formula” mentality, i.e. “we know what it takes to win, therefore all we have to do is repeat what we did last year and we will keep winning”. In the meantime the competition is accelerating their learning and enhancing their performance, determined to become the next no 1;
• Stage five: the fall:  things start to fail. Management and staff get sacked, reviews, reviews and more reviews are commissioned, finally the Board is overthrown, there is public brawling and the organisation is at the brink of collapsing altogether…… And we are back at stage one again. 

The performance cycle of an athlete, coach or sporting team can be compared to a clock: The Performance Clock.

At 10 o’clock, the organisation is hungry for success and changing rapidly. They are accelerating their rate of change by learning fast and by being innovative, creative and committed to success;

At 11 o’clock, the team is close to their best. They are consistently playing well, making the final series and they are continuing to strive for success. Most importantly, they have created a culture which has a high likelihood of succeeding;

At 12 o’clock – the team wins the Premiership Final or World Championship or Olympic Gold Medal etc. – they are at the peak of their performance cycle;

Then a funny thing happens……

Often when a team is at the top of its Performance Cycle it stops doing many of the things it was doing to make it successful.

1 o’clock and the team stops being creative and open minded. They start believing that their way is the only way and that they have the infallible secret formula for success. This is the beginning of disaster!

The team starts losing.

2 o’clock……3 o’clock……..the coach gets sacked. The club starts spending money on new players, new equipment and new coaches in a frantic attempt to stop the decline in performance;

The team keeps losing. If they are in a relegation / promotion competition, they get relegated to the next league.

4 o’clock…..5 o’clock….the CEO and Management get sacked. The organization is in disarray;

6’clock. The team cannot win a game. The fans and the sponsors have deserted it. It appears that the team may never again experience success;

But then…..

7 o’clock – Someone decides things have to change. They put together a plan and find some people and money to make it happen;

8 o’clock…..9 o’clock – People start believing that things can change. New players, new coaches, new staff, new ideas……..there is enthusiasm and energy and passion in the Club;

10 o’clock and 11 o’clock – The cycle is complete and the team can look forward to a short period of success as their Performance Cycle is at its peak once more.

The reality for most sporting teams is that they spend one or two seasons at most between 10 o’clock and 12 and then often spend many many years between 1 o’clock and 6 o’clock!

Again, you are probably thinking, “This all makes perfect sense. It happened to an athlete or coach or team in my sport. This is a simple concept”.

So why don’t people get it?

Three words: Leadership, Creativity and Arrogance.

There are three reasons why people don’t get the Performance Clock and hence why they fail.

1. Leadership (the lack of it):
2. Creativity (the lack of it):
3. Arrogance (an abundance of it:

Without leadership and vision, people become focused on the here and the now and the current situation. They believe that if they are winning now, they will always win and the Performance Clock does not apply to them.

Without creativity and the ability to create new ideas, new directions and new and better ways of doing things, people believe that their current methods, beliefs and ways of doing things will always be best practice and the benchmarks in their sport.

With arrogance, i.e. without humility, people believe that their way is the only way and it will always be that way.

Don’t be a Sad Sporting Statistic:

So if all this makes perfect sense – and it does – then why are so many people determined to be Sad Sporting Statistics?

No one wants to be down at the bottom of the Performance Clock, i.e. between 4 am and 6 am. No one chooses to lose. No one actually prefers to be uncompetitive.

So don’t be.

Don’t allow a lack of leadership, a lack of creativity and the abundance of arrogance determine your sporting future.

The key to this is simple: don’t look for a destination, (e.g. a single event, a single campaign, a single Olympiad, one season or one game).

Think of sport as a never ending journey: one that strives to improve every day and in everything.  This one change in your thinking can make all the difference in your sporting career. Thinking of sport as a journey rather than as a single destination, means you always need to keep looking forward towards the future and to new paths to progress.

Summary:

1. The Performance Clock is your key to understanding success in sport. There are countless examples of how it works in every sport, in every nation and at every level;
2. However, knowing something and not acting on it, has the same effect of not knowing about it…nothing changes;
3. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them: learn and make the changes necessary now or be condemned to failure;
4. Think differently. Success in sport demands a commitment to lifelong learning, continuous improvement and creative thinking. There is no end point to excellence and no final destination for those who crave sustainable success in sport.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

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Coaching 101.

Plan.

Plan.

Plan.

Buy a copy of Bompa’s classic text on Periodisation, get out there and plan, plan, plan.

You just can’t coach without first developing a written down, detailed, systematic periodised annual training plan.

There is another way.

First…you must unlearn what you have learnt (Yoda).

Stop for a moment.

Imagine you didn’t know what periodisation was, that you hadn’t gone through some sort of coach education and training program and that you were starting coaching without any background knowledge about coaching athletes.

What is the one thing above all that you would base your coaching and training philosophy on?

To ensure that every training session was designed so that each individual athlete received the perfect stimulus at that moment in time.

And as neither we – nor the athlete knows exactly how they will feel physically and mentally until they arrive at training, why would you spend a lot of time and effort writing detailed periodised plans months in advance????????????

Makes you wonder why we do it………..

What if……

What if you didn’t write a detailed annual periodised plan?

What if you based your training on the athlete’s readiness for training after they arrived at the track or pool or gym or field or court?

What if you didn’t write down anything before the workout? What if you only recorded what the athletes actually did?.

What if you started to coach without periodisation?

How can you coach without periodisation?

Again, unlearn what you have learnt.

The critical tool you will need if you are going to coach without periodisation is something which can tell you if the athlete is ready, willing and able to train to their full potential at the session.

This has been the “Holy-Grail” of sports science for the past 30 years: developing a simple, easy to use, reliable, valid, easy to understand test which can be used immediately pre-training and will give the athlete and coach a clear understanding of just how ready the athlete is to train.

A lot of people have come up with a lot of tools, tricks and traps to try and achieve this.

For example, taking morning heart rate (i.e. heart rate when the athlete first wakes up in the morning) has been used since the 1950s in an attempt to determine if an athlete is trained or over-trained.

But it has little relevance to their ability, desire, capacity or intent to actually train to their full potential when they arrive at training at 4 pm that day.

What is needed is something athletes can actually do during warm up which provides clear information to the athlete and coach about what, when, why and how much work to do right now.

And such a thing exists. And it’s free. And it’s simple.

See Part Two of this Post coming early June 2011.

Summary:

1. Coaching without periodisation.…it can be done…and it just might be the biggest leap forward in coaching for 30 years;
2. If everyone in the world in your sport is basically following the same planning and periodisation process you do, where’s your edge? Where’s your point of difference? Where’s your advantage?
3. The key principle is this: every time we work with an athlete, it is our responsibility to ensure that the training we provide is the optimal stimulus for them – at that moment, at that time and specific to their unique physical and mental status as they exist right now;
4. If this is our goal, to provide each individual athlete with the optimal training session at the specific time they are completing it, then planning training sessions days, weeks and months ahead is not only crazy but is bordering on irresponsible;
5. There is another way.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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Sports science: many consider it the driving force of high performance sport.

Some would consider it responsible for most of the breakthroughs in high performance sport.

But has sports science actually delivered on its promises to high performance sport?

Sports Science..Over-promised and Under-delivered?

Sports science – for the purposes of this post – is the scientific servicing and support provided for high performance coaches and athletes to enhance their competition performance.

Sure, there is sports science research undertaken in most major universities: I am not talking about that sports science which in the most part is about the “performance of publications” and has limited relevance to high performance athletes and coaches at the cutting edge of competitive sport.

I am specifically asking the question – has sports science – defined as the scientific servicing and support provided for high performance coaches and athletes to enhance their competition performance - delivered on it’s promises?

Yes……..and No.

Sports Physiology: Score 7/10.

There is no doubt that sports physiology has produced some impressive research and introduced some outstanding innovations into high performance sport over the past forty years. However its downfall is that too many practitioners, researchers and institutions are still hung up on issues that should have been resolved in the 1980s.

• Are there still people out there seriously studying VO2 max?
• Are people still seriously doing heart rate / lactate curves in training and drawing huge conclusions about their relevance to competition performances – particularly in team sports?
• Are people still throwing millions of dollars looking at altitude training effects on sea level performances? I sure hope not – what a waste of time, money and talent.

Greatest strength: Capacity of sports physiology to be easily, simply and practically integrated into coaching programs.

Biggest weaknesses: Narrow focus by some researchers and institutions on physiological variables in isolation, i.e. separate to technical, tactical, mental, cultural issues and the ongoing obsession with 1980s testing tools, i.e. VO2 Max, Heart rate / lactate shifts.

Sports Biomechanics: Score 6/10.

Another great sports science discipline which made a monumental impact on high performance sport in the 1980s and 1990s but has failed to keep pace with the changing demands of coaches and athletes.

In the 80s and 90s, biomechanics opened up a new world of applied physics in sport and helped us to understand the importance of efficient technique and movement in high performance competition.

Now any coach with a laptop and a video camera can download some free software and provide pretty do much what biomechanics departments were providing just ten years ago.

The failure of biomechanics to move forward is demonstrated by the forced evolution of many biomechanics departments (and biomechanists) into Performance Analysis departments (and Performance Analysts) as coaches and athletes demand simpler solutions in a shorter time.

Athletes and coaches working in high performance environments are happy to swap accuracy of 0.001 percent which takes three weeks to deliver, for 0.1 percent accuracy which can be delivered in three minutes.

Greatest strength: The capacity for accurate, precise measurement and detailed analysis of technique, skills and other factors which impact on competition performance.

Biggest weaknesses:Cost. And inherent in the cost is the lack of being able to provide athletes and coaches with quality, simple, easy to use and practical biomechanics support outside of universities or high performance sports institutions.

Sports Nutrition: 7/10

If you think back, thirty years ago, athletes were eating huge pre-game meals of protein and fat in the interest of achieving peak performance. Some endurance athletes thought that NOT drinking before or during exercise was a great idea as it taught your body how to deal with the challenges of losing fluid during training and competition.

Clearly sports nutrition has taught us a lot which has enhanced the competition performance of athletes.

However, sports nutrition falls down in that many of the studies which claim to demonstrate that this supplement will produce that effect or that by changing the percentage of carbohydrates, proteins and fats in your diet you will enhance your competition performance have more holes in them than an old sock.

Greatest strength: The only sports science which gives complete control, responsibility and accountability for its effectiveness to the athlete.

Biggest weaknesses: The “short cut” mentality brought out by the use of supplements, powders, shakes and boosters. Some athletes look to sports nutrition to provide a short cut to performance enhancement, i.e. to make up for physical, mental, technical and tactical deficiencies in a bottle or can. Too many inconsistencies in the research.

Sports Psychology: 5/10

If any sports science discipline has lost its way it is sports psychology. And it is a tragedy. The capacity for a great applied sports psychologist to impact on the competition performance of athletes and teams is practically unlimited. Yet, as a group, sports psychologists still fail to understand the difference between “welfare” psychology and performance psychology.

There is a huge difference.

“Welfare” psychology assumes all athletes are “broken” (or will be broken) and aims to give them the tools to fix things.

Performance psychology is about enhancing the athlete’s performance potential and to help athletes to learn how to win.

Think about it for a moment….when was the last time you spoke to a sports psychologist who clearly understood winning and was prepared to openly talk about achieving it?

Conversely, how many sports psychologists talk about anything else but winning, e.g. “sticking to the process”, “having fun”, “not thinking about the outcome”, “enjoying the experience” etc etc.

In high performance sport, which is about winning and not much else, people who can not and will not talk about winning are as useful as skates on a cow.

Some sports psychology units have changed their names to “Performance Psychology” to try and convince athletes and coaches that things will be different but the people and practices remain the same.

Greatest strength: Its potential. The integration of practical, applied, relevant sports psychology into everyday coaching practice has next to unlimited potential.

Biggest weakness: The failure of the industry to break free from the “pseudo-medical” approach and counseling based servicing model that is excellent for the general public but of limited use to high performance coaches and athletes.

Strength and Conditioning: 7/10

Another breakthrough area of sports science, strength and conditioning has provided high performance sport with some outstanding ideas and initiatives since the 1970s.

It must be said however that there is still too much controversy about many of the central aspects of strength and conditioning and in spite of a lot of progress over the past 40 years, as a sports science discipline, it still has a long, long, long way to go.

Greatest strength: Understanding of how to improve strength, speed, power, agility, endurance has improved significantly over the past 20 years. Strength and conditioning has evolved from a training activity to a true performance science.

Biggest weaknesses: Too much focus (and very little consensus) on questions that should have been resolved twenty years ago – i.e. how deep to squat, the role of Olympic lifts in team sport performance, what are the most appropriate sets / reps / recovery variables for athletes to do, does core stability have any measurable impact on competition performance and the biggest question of all,  what is the relevance of gym performance to on field competition performance in high performance sport?

Performance Science: Score 0/10 – i.e. integrated, multi disciplinary approach to sports science.

It fails at the moment because in spite of its potential, no institution, no academic body, no high performance system has been prepared to commit to a truly integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to enhancing athlete performance.

The first group to genuinely embrace this approach will, I suspect, gain a considerable performance advantage over their competition……….

The future for Sports science????

Sports science has unlimited potential to impact on the performance of athletes and coaches.

However, as an industry it has become too insular, too conservative, too limited and it is time for a change.

• How many Universities are offering the same old same old under grad programs in sports science, exercise science and physical education?
• How many institutions are stuck in the old “departmental” model of sports science servicing?
• How many practitioners and researchers keep working in an isolated, single discipline way and have not grasped the importance of practical, applied, relevant, coach and athlete focused methods?
• How many Universities and sporting institutions are wrapped up in “empire building” - i.e. the physiology “department” must have more money and more people than the biomechanics “department” etc – factions vs factions instead of people partnering for performance?

The answer to the above questions is….most of them.

Dare to be different.

At a time when the world is moving towards the open sharing of ideas, towards a collaborative – interdisciplinary approach to research and servicing (particularly in medicine, business and education), towards an economy built on creativity and innovation, most of the drivers of the sports science industry are still stuck in the single discipline, departmental based approach that is completely out of pace with the modern world.

The sports science industry risks falling from a position of leadership and driving the rate of change and innovation in sport to being the major impediment to progress in the sporting industry.

As an impassioned plea to all sports science researchers, academics, service providers, practitioners and thinkers…..it’s time to change. You could be – should be – the critical element in enhancing the competition performance of athletes and coaches but you will not be doing it the way you are at the moment.

• Be more creative;
• Be more innovative;
• Take some risks;
• Learn to present your ideas and research to coaches and athletes simply, concisely and practically;
• Think left field;
• And most importantly think inter-disciplinary - adopt an integrated approach to performance enhancement.

Are you up to the challenge of change?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

(Cesare Pavese)

Do you remember the moment when you were a teenager and Dad or Mom told you to “save money and think about your future”?

You didn’t listen did you.

And remember the moment when you were 18 and some relative told you to “work hard and make something of yourself”?

Ignored them didn’t you.

Life is full of these moments when people, with all good intentions, give you some advice which they think will inspire you to change your life and become all you can be.

And how many times have you told an athlete “make the most of every training session and make the most of your opportunities”?

And they didn’t listen.

So, what makes people listen to the right advice? How do you engage and inspire the hearts and minds of athletes and have them grasp every session, every minute, every moment as if it was their last?

The Magic Moment: When a Coach makes a Difference.

Frustration!

Without doubt the most frustrating times for a coach are when talented athletes, or any athletes for that matter, do not perform to their full potential.

Even worse, is when the coach knows, or at least believes, that the reason why the athlete has not performed to their full potential is due to an error or mistake or flaw in their own coaching. That somehow there was some way to have touched the heart of the athlete, inspired their mind and challenged their soul and magically, miraculously the athlete turned it all around to become all they could be.

The Magic Moment – it was never yours to begin with!

As a coach you are looking to deliver the right information to the right athlete at the right moment: the Magic Moment. The moment when the athlete is as ready to hear the message as you are to give it. That moment when you and your coaching made all the difference.

Knowing coaches the world over, you are always ready for the moment. You live for those moments.

And that’s the problem.

Its not your moment – it never was: it’s the athlete’s.

You can’t hurry magic.

Ever heard the song, “You can’t hurry love?”.

It goes:

You can’t hurry love.

You just have to wait.

You know love don’t come easy.

It’s a game of give and take.

The Magic Moment is like this. You can’t hurry athletes to be ready to listen to the message any more than your parents or relatives could have forced you to save money or study hard or believe in yourself: you have to be ready to deliver the message when the athlete is ready to hear it.

The Motivation Myth

Motivational speaking is a thriving business. And most of it is a waste of time and money.

Motivation is a myth: or at least the belief that someone with big teeth, a nice suit and some snappy sayings like “If you believe you can or believe you can’t, you are right” can walk into a room and motivate people to do something is a myth….that is unless the people in the room were ready to be motivated.

You can yell, you can scream, you can threaten, you can bribe, you can jump up and down wearing a clown suit, you can come up with all the slogans and sayings known to mankind, you can do whatever you want to but a motivation talk without the Magic Moment is just hot air.

So how do you know when the Magic Moment has arrived?

Sometimes the Magic Moment comes like a bolt of lightning. An athlete will walk up to you and say, “Coach, I want to be the best. Can you help me get to the top?”.

Sometimes it is a subtle thing and the Magic Moment evolves out of series of little changes in behaviour. The athlete arrives early for training and starts warming up without any instructions. Or they stay back to do a little extra training without being asked to. Or they do 11 repetitions in the gym when they were supposed to be doing 10.

And sometimes the Magic Moment just emerges in an unexpected situation like sitting next to an athlete on the bus and in the course of conversation they say, “I would like to break the world record coach. I dream about it sometimes. But I have never felt able to talk to you about it”.

No matter when, where, why or how the Magic Moment presents itself….be ready for it.

Coaches don’t get older…..they just get better at knowing when to use the Magic Wand!

I recently had breakfast with two of the greatest coaches I have ever known with over 80 years collective experience at international level coaching. We were discussing – you guessed it – coaching and I asked one of them why they had been so successful for so long.

He replied, “I believe you take out of coaching what you took into it. You have a box of tricks, skills and abilities that are part of who you are and what you believe. When you begin coaching, you throw everything you have at every athlete every day the same way. It’s tiring. It’s frustrating and it just does not work. 

After a while you learn that by saying or doing the right thing at the right moment, you can make a real difference to the life of an athlete. As you get more experienced you just get better at identifying that moment”.

So here’s a challenge.

Look at your own athletes.

Write down their names.

And write next to their names two things:

1. How will you recognise when their “Magic Moment” has arrived and:
2. What will you say and do when it does?

Share your Magic Moments with us here at the ‘Brain.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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So the Games are over. Let the Games begin.

Win, lose or draw, there are 50 Things You Must Do After a Major Competition…if you want to win the Next One (if you seriously consider yourself a high performance coach).

1. Met one on one with each of your athletes and provided them with a detailed, comprehensive review of every aspect of their competition performance;
2. Done the same with your coaching staff, sports science support team and team management;
3. Analysed every aspect of your athlete’s performance from a physical, mental, technical, tactical, strategic, support-system and emotional perspective;
4. Have a clear “success in our next major competition” philosophy and have articulated it to the people who matter;
5. Reviewed the performance of the athletes or teams who won medals in your event and sport at your last competition from a physical, mental, technical, tactical, strategic perspective;
6. Had someone review your coaching under competition competitions conditions and provided you with clear, honest, constructive feedback;
7. Conducted a KISS – review: what is it we should keep doing? What is it that we can introduce to make a difference? What is it we should stop doing? What is it that we can spend to make a measureable difference?;
8. Met with your athletes, their family / their partner / their support structure and fully de-briefed them as a group on the outcome of the competition;
9. Identified at least two conferences or professional development opportunities for yourself to attend over the next year;
10. Provided your athlete, their family / their partner / their support structure with a detailed plan and program for next major competition including training cycles, targeted major competitions, training camps, testing and evaluation and other critical aspects of timing, planning and preparation;
11. Locked in your athlete’s participation in any test event or trial for their next major competition and planned a comprehensive, detailed, methodical testing and evaluation process around the test event or trial so that you learn as much as possible from the experience;
12. Compared the athlete’s results in their most recent competition with the best athletes in the sport who didn’t attend that competition, e.g. The Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games did not include athletes from USA, China, Europe, South America etc;
13. Completed a detailed self-analysis of your own coaching, your training program, peaking, tapering and periodization;
14. Identified who your most difficult opposition are likely to be in next major competition and mapped out a plan to chase them and face them in several competitions prior to that competition;
15. Challenged each member of your coaching and support team to introduce three new ideas that will enhance their own performance and the performance of your athletes leading into your next major competition;
16. Identified the support team you would like to be working with at your next major competition and ensured they are locked in to working with you before and during your next major competition campaign so that your athlete has continuity and confidence in their support environment;
17. Identified a potential pre-competition training camp location (and a back-up location in case your first preference is unavailable) and developed detailed planning and budgeting to ensure you can utilise the training camp environment to its full potential;
18. Sought detailed feedback from team sports science / sports medicine staff about your athlete and asked them for specific recommendations on how the athlete can improve over the next two years;
19. Compared the results in your event / your sport with the past three world benchmark events, e.g. past three World Championships, past three Olympic Games, so you understand where you are in world terms;
20. Reviewed every aspect of your athlete’s warm up, cool down, recovery, nutrition, hydration and self-management routine in and around the competition and how each area impacted positively or negatively on the athlete’s performance;
21. Clearly mapped out your overall training camp and competition needs for the next 2-3 years both domestically and internationally;
22. Provided your assistant coaches and support team with clear position descriptions, responsibilities and accountabilities in a written contract so they know clearly what they are responsible for, when and why and how they will be measured in all aspects of planning, preparation and performance;
23. Clearly mapped out your periodization, tapering and peaking plans for major events in 2011 and will use them to fine tune your planning and preparation for 2012;
24. Addressed any personality or political conflicts in your performance environment which emerged (were exposed) during your last major competition quickly and decisively;
25. Accepted responsibility for what you were responsible for in your last major competition, learnt from any mistakes and moved on;
26. Identified aspects of your athlete’s mental approach and personality management which can be improved and enhanced, including a mental skills development program which can be initiated immediately and tested under competition conditions;
27. Had your athlete comprehensively screened mentally, physically and medically so that you have clear, accurate, reliable baseline data before you commence your next major competition campaign;
28. Identified a talented young coach who you can mentor over the next two years and who can take over from you when you travel away for competition commitments without any compromise to your home program;
29. Scheduled a best practice athlete education program so that your athlete is outstanding in the areas of nutrition (including the use of supplements, cooking, eating when travelling and hydration management), recovery, injury management and travel management;
30. Budgeted all your training, preparation, equipment, sports science, sports medicine, travel and competition expenses for the next two years and identified any shortfalls;
31. Identified some training partners who can you can invite into your program to help take your athlete to the next level;
32. Completed a detailed weather and conditions research program covering the period of the next major competition.  For example, if you are targeting the Olympic games you should know the average rainfall, temperature, humidity, etc. in that city for the past 100 years;
33. Adopted a “no-surprises” approach to your next major competition, i.e. have systematically planned for every possible eventuality and developed plans and processes to overcome any obstacles;
34. Identified at least three areas of your own coaching which you can improve and master over the next two years;
35. Spent some quiet time alone, just thinking and reflecting on what happened in your last major competition and how you can build on it to be successful next time;
36. Conducted your review process with a feed-forward approach – i.e. Did not waste time on blaming or recriminations for past failures;
37. Sought the advice of at least one coach in another sport who coaches athletes at the same level as you and asked them about what they have learnt from their coaching experience;
38. Sought out the national head coach or a senior coach in your sport, presented your training and competition plans to them and openly invited criticism and comment;
39. Sought the best possible advice on strength and conditioning for your athlete and allocated specific blocks of time over the next two years to enhance your athlete’s strength, speed, power etc. in the gym;
40. Looked for opportunities to test and challenge you and your athlete in the toughest possible training conditions to learn lessons and become tougher and harder for your next competition;
41. Met with someone with expertise in the equipment and technology side of your sport and provided them with feedback on how your competition equipment / technology performed in your last competition. And challenged them to improve on it for next major competition;
42. Found someone outside your sport (and even outside of sport) who can bring new ideas and new thinking into your program;
43. Identified the coaches who produced the athletes / teams who defeated you at your last competition and learnt as much as you can about them, their philosophies, their education and development pathway, their attitudes, their techniques, their coaching strengths and weaknesses;
44. Met with your sporting organisation and engaged in an honest two-way debrief and 360 degree review process;
45. Strengthened your own personal financial position so that you can commit more time to your potential winning athletes;
46. Committed to a personal health and fitness program to ensure you are at your physical and mental best at all times;
47. Identified two or three young talented athletes who realistically will not be at their peak for two-three years but who can learn from the journey you are taking with your current best athletes and can become the foundation of your future success;
48. Recorded everything! Made detailed notes at the end of each day during taper, travel, competition and recovery period looking in depth at every aspect of competition;
49. Planned for some holidays and down time regularly to help you be mentally ready;
50. Established clear goals, targets and objectives for every training cycle leading up to your next major competition.

Have a look at your last major competition experience.

Now have a look at the above list.

How did you score?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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There are some people who believe in Bigfoot.

There are others who still think the world is flat.

There are even people who know for a fact the Elvis is alive and is the head chef at a take away restaurant somewhere in the southern United States.

And there are millions of people who believe in the Ten Great Sporting Myths.

But the great news is, that if you refuse to believe in these myths, you can gain a winning advantage over your competition.

The  Ten Great Sporting Myths.

1. Home Ground Advantage (and similarly Away Game Disadvantage): The king of all sporting myths! Even though most of the world’s professional sporting competitions are based on the “home and away model”, it is a myth. In days past when we didn’t understand how to manage travel, time zone changes and how to prepare effectively to win anywhere anytime, sure the home ground advantage was real. Now the only athletes and teams who not perform well ”on the road” are those who are poorly prepared, unprofessional and mentally soft;
2. Drafting / recruiting the best players means you win the title: Again one of the big myths of professional sport, i.e. recruit the physically biggest and best players then sit back and wait for the titles to come. If sport was only about size, strength, speed and power then sure, winning = recruiting. But winning is about physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural, behavioural, attitudinal and personal values….and a thousand other factors. Sometimes recuiting players who have super-star physical talent but lack the super star attitude, values and personal standards are the ones who actually cost you the title rather than winning it for you;
3. Doing more training makes you better: Myth number three is also a world wide problem. You have to train hard to win: there is no doubt about it. But time and time again athletes and coaches fall for the sucker punch “If ten is good, then twenty will be twice as good”. More training is only the solution if fitness is the problem. In most cases, the key is to get more from your current training through better engagement, stronger belief and more focused commitment of your athletes in everything thing they do;
4. More money = better performances: Every national sporting system around the world is based on this myth – i.e. money = medals. And it is a myth. What wins medals is innovation, hard work, commitment, passion, consistently out-preparing your opposition in every aspect of performance, creativity, drive, perseverance and determination. If you throw money into that list, then you are really cooking with gas. Throwing money into a system which is tired, unimaginative, lacking in passion, low on energy and devoid of new ideas is like putting a Ferrari engine on a push-bike: it might look good, make a lot of noise but in the end it will not go anywhere;
5. There is a magic formula for success: Another common sporting myth: that somewhere, out there is the magic formula for success that, once you find it, will ensure winning, glory and victory.  The key to success in high performance sport is possessing (and living) a commitment to continuous improvement. The real secret to success is continually striving to find one.;
6. You are born with all that you need to be a champion: Possessing great natural physical talent is only the starting point. It’s like having a Jet Fighter in your back-yard. The Jet has the potential to do amazing things but without years of pilot training, the right backup and support crew, regular maintenance, the best fuel and the right attitude (i.e. no fear of pushing the Jet to its limits) , the Jet will never break the sound barrier. Don’t worship physically talented athletes - the more natural talent an athlete possesses in most cases the harder it is to get them to the top;
7. Sport and politics shouldn’t mix: This myth pops up just before every Olympic Games when some politician is talking about boycotts or some religious zealot is threatening to use the Games to make a point. Unfortunately politics effects sport, athletes and coaches at every level. It can destroy careers and deny talented people the opportunity to achieve their best. Be aware and be conscious of your own political situation but don’t let it become the focus of your time and energy: keep performance before politics;
8. Professional and Olympic Sport is clean, pure and honest:If you believe this myth, you don’t need this blog - you need serious professional psychiatric help. Professional sport is about two things - money and power. And if you look back at the history of the human race, wherever money and power are involved, so too are all the worst of human weaknesses and frailties. The thing is, don’t let it get you down. Do your best, everyday, in all that you do and let those without ethics or morals do what they like;
9. Past success = Future Success: This is one of the biggest myths of all and it destroys professional sporting clubs and Olympic sports all over the world. Past success is the worst - read it again – the worst indicator of future success. In fact, over 100 years of professional sport has taught us very clearly, that the time you have to make the biggest and most radical changes to what you are doing is immediately after you have experienced success. This message however continually falls on deaf ears and so that’s why most teams experience success for one year or one season then languish in mediocrity for the next 20 years. You can’t go forwards by looking backwards!;
10. There are short cuts to sporting success:  There are no supplements, no pieces of gym equipment, no amazing super mental power programs, no special training techniques, no miracle creams, no super-sports drinks, no revolutionary new super diets, no “NASA designed” secret training tools - there-are-no-short-cuts-to-sporting-success.  Read it again……..there-are-no-short-cuts-to-sporting-success. If you accept this, you will be a lot happier and waste a lot less time and money looking for something that does not exist.

The Genius of George Costanza (Seinfeld):

In the sitcom Seinfeld, the character George Costanza sums up the way to think about the Ten Great Sporting Myths beautifully when he says:

George : It’s not working, Jerry. It’s just not working.

Jerry : What is it that isn’t working?

George : Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable, I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but … I was perceptive. I always know when some-one’s uncomfortable at a party. It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every of life, be it something to wear, something to eat … It’s all been wrong.

Jerry : If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

George : Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the opposite, and I will do something!

There great news for you is that if you know what the Ten Great Sporting Myths are and you do the opposite you are well on your way to being a sporting success.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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