Sports Coaching Brain » Olympics

Top Ten Talent I.D. Tips for High Performance Sport – The T.O.P. Approach

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:20:12 +0000

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:

Talent identification;
Talent recruitment;
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

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Coaching and Mental Toughness

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:21:40 +0000

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:

Toughen the body to toughen the mind and
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

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.
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.
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

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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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A New Head Coach is No Longer the Solution in High Performance Sport.

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:22:32 +0000

There was a time when a new head was the solution to all problems in a high performance sports team.

Team not winning - get a new head coach.

Team’s culture not right – get a new head coach.

Team’s attitude and commitment flagging – get a new head coach.

Times have changed.

A new head coach is no longer the solution in high performance sport.

The Old Days: The Coach was the Club.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Head Coach was the Club.

The head coach selected all the players, the head coach selected all the staff, the head coach set the strategic and tactical direction for the team, the head coach created and developed the team’s culture: hiring a head was once the panacea to all sporting ills. But no more.

Time and time again we see sporting organisations, professional clubs and even national teams in all sports (but particularly the football codes), fail to perform, undertake a review, come up with a genius solution like “sack the head coach and hire a new one“ and then wait back and watch the Trophy Cabinet fill with medals, cups and awards - they wish.

And then, two, three or four years later, after another series of failures, they do another review, sack another coach and hire one more.

Some teams will go through this performance clock cycle again and again and again and always look to changing the head coach as the one size fits all solution to all their performance and organisational problems.

And they continue to fail.

So what’s the reason?

Pretty simple when you think about it.

As high performance sport has become more complex so too has the ownership of the culture of sporting organisations.

In the past, the culture of a team was very much that which was created by and grown by the head coach – the head coach was the team.

Now players own the culture of the team. The board owns it. The management owns it. The staff and the administration own it. The fans own it. The media owns it. Everyone has a piece of the ownership of the culture of the sporting organisation.

And in that environment, hiring one man or one woman and expecting them to completely and permanently change the culture of the organisation is ridiculous. It’s like expecting everyone in the USA to change language, clothing and culture because someone opened a Chinese restaurant in Iowa: cultures only change when there is widespread support for change.

This is particularly true when sports hire an overseas coach and expect them to completely and permanently change the total culture of the sport and in doing so achieve international competition success. No head coach can do – or should try to do this.

The job of a new head coach is to provide high level technical skills, tactical abilities and strategic knowledge which enhances the culture of the sport: their job is not to try completely change the culture of the sport mainly because they don’t own it and never will. Culture change comes only when everyone in the sport or club or team wants it, is committed to it and has made a personal decision to embrace it.
A team plays like, acts like, thinks like, performs like the culture that creates it.

A team surrounded by a great culture, positive people, innovative thinkers, people committed to excellence and high performance success, is consistently competitive in all competitions.

A team created and managed by negative, political, egotistical, narrow minded, untalented, selfish people, fails and fails and fails again. And 10000 new head coaches will not make any difference!

Sustainable change grows from inside to out. It can not be forced. You can’t legislate it. You can’t bully people into embracing it. You can’t create change by sending out emails and newsletters or holding “workshops” - real change is only possible when it is embraced by every individual in the organisation.

An example:

Consider one National Sporting organisation I have come across in recent years.

Their Board is heavily political and is constantly divided along representation lines (i.e. divided by the fact Board members are voted on to the national board by regional associations so they can’t act independently and in the national interest);
There is no one in their office administration who has ever played or coached the sport at the highest level;
Their coach education and development structure has not changed or improved since the 1980s;
Their senior coaches are an “old boys” club and strongly resist any efforts to change, to learn and to become the most innovative group of coaches in the world;
Their executive leadership are more interested in business class travel and sipping champagne in the corporate box than they are about being the world’s leading sporting organisation;
Whilst the number of their office administration staff has grown by 200% in recent years, funding to critical high performance areas has plumetted;
Their national team sports science, sports medicine and performance science support is tired, outdated and split along sports science discipline grounds rather than functioning as a integrated high level team;
Their overall high performance culture is one of ego, selfishness, close mindedness, arrogance and ignorance - “our way is the best way” and “that’s the way we do it here” are their mantras.

So if they did a review, what’s the first thing they would come up with??? “Let’s hire a new head coach“.

Not “we all need to work together, to be 100% committed to change and individually and collectively be the best in the world at what we do” – but “let’s hire a new head coach”.

What is a great coach?

Great coaches are leaders but only when the organisation is totally committed to support their leadership.

Great coaches are innovative and creative but only when everyone in the organisation is similarly committed to innovation and creativity.

Great coaches are change drivers but only when the athletes, assistant coaches, support team and the organisation as a whole also embrace change.

Great coaches are capable of amazing things but only when the people around them, the people who created and sustain the culture of the organisation are similarly capable of striving to achieve amazing things.

In other words, hiring a new head coach to enhance performance is only going to work when every person in the organisation is as committed to change, to learning, to innovation, to taking risks and to excellence as the incoming head coach is.
No secrets in sport.

Everyone in high performance sport is improving. Thank the Internet for that.

Anyone can find out anything, anytime, anywhere and without spending any money.

So now, everyone knows what you know.

In this high performance sports environment, it is not what you know that is critical – it is your rate of learning: your ability to learn fast, change quickly, innovate sooner and accelerate performance improvement faster than your opposition. At a time when everyone is improving, you must improve faster!

So in this climate, hiring a head coach means one thing above all - you are hiring someone capable of accelerating the rate of change of the organisation and in doing so accelerate the rate of performance enhancement of the athletes, coaches, staff and team.

But one thing is for certain, unless everyone in the organisation is willing and capable of similarly accelerating their own rate of change - a rate of change which is aligned with the rate of change being initiated by the head coach, things will not improve.

The Head Coach Position description.

It is easy to write a position description for a head coach and a list of interview questions to go along with it.

However, more importantly, long before you write out a list of questions for the potential new head coach to answer, ask yourself these five questions:

Am I personally ready, willing and able to uncompromisingly embrace changeand support the new head coach as he / she works to enhance the performance of the athletes and team?
Will I do all I can to support the head coach’s efforts to create and grow unity of purpose, direction and energy?
Will I work to the best of my ability to enhance my own personal and professional performance and to be committed to learning, growing and developing at a faster rate than at any time in my career?
Will I accept the changes and innovations driven by the head coach and put aside any negativity, political actions and personality conflicts, i.e. can I put the success of the team selflessly ahead of my own ego and ambitions?
Will my own personal contribution be consistently better than anyone in my role in any organisation in our competition?

If the answer to any of these questions is “NO” – then hiring a new head coach will not provide you with the success you think it will.

If everyone in the organisation, from the Board to the Basement embraces change, innovation, creativity and a commitment to being the best, then hiring a new head coach can be the catalyst of great things.

If you can’t support the head coach and the rate of change he / she has been hired to initiate, the only person who should be applying for another job is the person who see in the mirror each morning.

Wayne Goldsmith

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A Fish Rots from the Head: Solving Problems in High Performance Sport.

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:22:30 +0000

In High Performance Sport, experience is important.

Knowledge of the sports industry is critical.

An understanding of the culture of high performance is vital.

But ultimately, success is high performance sport comes down to possessing exceptional talent and ability in five core areas:

Problem solving;
Crisis management;
Creating and sustaining a high performance environment, i.e. change management and continuous improvement;
Finding, training and retaining the right people;
Quality, consistent leadership.

And of these five skills, problem solving is perhaps the least understood – primarily because it hard to measure, hard to define and next to impossible to teach.

Here is Problem Solving in High Performance Sport 101.

Problem Solving in High Performance Sport 101 Lesson 1: A fish rots from the head.

The majority of problems experienced in high performance sports programs, professional teams and sporting clubs are as a result of poor leadership. The sport (the fish) will succeed or fail (rot) based on the consistent quality of the leadership (the head).

Whilst problems can be created and solved by players, coaches, management and staff, Clubs with a long term history of failure, public embarrassment, off field discipline issues and scandal invariably get that way due to poor leadership at Board and Executive level.

It is common that a sporting organisation when faced with failure will sack the coach, hire new support staff and recruit new players to try and solve their performance problems.

In sporting organisations where failure is experienced over and over and over again, replacing coaches, staff and players rarely fixes the real problems or if it does fix them, it does not fix them for very long.

It is however, to use our “fish” analogy again, much easier to remove a few scales or cut off a fin than it is to slice off the head altogether, so in many sporting organisations the real problems (i.e. the leadership) survive while the more “expendable” parts get removed and turned into “sporting soup”!

Problem Solving in High Performance Sport 101 Lesson 2: He (or she) who is responsible for the problem must solve the problem.

In all sporting organisations, problems are created, managed and solved every day. The key to effective problem solving in high performance sport is understanding what the problem really is and most importantly, who should take responsibility for solving it.

There are three classes of problems in high performance sporting organisations:

Short term Problems: Players / athletes to solve – i.e. immediate problems impacting on the current season which involve matters such as attitude, attendance, time management, self management, dress standards, personal leadership, on and off field training standards, playing standards, alcohol management, personal values and discipline. Problems involving these issues should be solved by the athletes themselves as these problems are those owned by and within the control of the athletes themselves.

Medium term Problems: Coaches to solve – i.e. those problems which impact across this season and the next including such areas as tactics, techniques, strategies, playing style, player recruitment, program planning, player development, skills and preparation. Problems in these technical, tactical and strategic areas of the organisation are the coaches domain and need to be solved by the coaching group.

Long term Problems: Board and Executive to solve – i.e. those problems which continue year after year regardless of changes in the playing and coaching areas: those broader, strategic and sustainable type (cultural) issues which the Board and Senior Management are responsible for solving.

Many of the biggest disputes in high performance sporting organisations, professional teams and Clubs are experienced when people try to solve problems which do not concern them.

For example, matters of attitude and commitment in the playing group are not for the Board to try and solve, in the same way that players should not be trying to solve economic sustainability or long term strategic planning issues for the Board.

Clarity in responsibility and accountability for decision making, behaviour and standards are the foundations of all great commercial organisations – and sporting organisations are no different.

Problem Solving in High Performance Sport 101 Lesson 3: All problems in high performance sport are inter-disciplinary in nature: there is no “one size fits all” solution to all performance problems.

Most people will try to solve problems in high performance sport using one word, one phrase or one sentence, for example:

Problem: The team is not winning.
Solution: The players need to get stronger.

Problem: The team’s attitude is poor.
Solution: The players need to try harder.

High performance sport is a complex environment where nothing exists in isolation and everything is dependent on something and someone else to be effective.

Problems in high performance are never simple and can not be solved from a single perspective – they are all interdisciplinary in nature and require an interdisciplinary, selfless, ego-less, creative, team focused, “we not me” approach to solve them.

Into this environment comes the “sales-reps” – the people representing sporting equipment manufacturers, nutrition supplement companies, gym equipment suppliers etc etc promising to enhance the performance of the team with a new machine, a few pills, some new equipment or some revolutionary new clothing technology.

There are no instant solutions, quick fixes or miracles cures in high performance sport. It takes real effort, real discipline and real commitment to make effective, meaningful and measurable change in the organisation’s culture and environment and people offering one size fits all solutions to every performance problem should not be believed or taken seriously.

In high performance sport where success is measured in fractions of seconds and millimetres of error, anyone promising solutions of 5-10% improvement in performance (as is routinely promised by sales staff representing various manufacturers) is either:

A. Lying;
B. Delusional;
C. Compromised due to their salary being based on sales commissions;
D. All of the above.

High performance sport is a tough environment and real improvement demands an uncompromising commitment to solving performance problems with honesty, integrity, responsibility, creativity, accountability and sincerity: and there are no pills or machines on earth that can deliver any of those. Performance comes from passionate people consistently preparing and performing to their peak potential.

Summary:

Problem solving is a critically important skill to develop and enhance if you are to succeed in high performance sport;
Short term problems in high performance sport can be solved by players and people involved in the current competitive cycle / season but longer term problems require solutions which are created and driven by the Board and Executive;
A Fish Rots from the Head – sporting organisations who experience failure over multiple seasons and over many years are suffering from the effects of poor leadership at Board and Executive level and changes in coaching, playing and support staff will make only minimal, temporary and unsustainable impact;
Be aware of people promising quick fix solutions to performance problems: it is sounds too good to be true….it is.

Moregold works with Sporting Organisations to create and sustain world class high performance sporting environments.

Wayne Goldsmith

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Coaching without Periodisation

Wayne Goldsmith — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:34:38 +0000

Coaching 101.

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:

Coaching without periodisation.…it can be done…and it just might be the biggest leap forward in coaching for 30 years;
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?
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;
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;
There is another way.

Wayne Goldsmith

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The Sports Science Scorecard: Has sports science delivered on its promises to sport?

Wayne Goldsmith — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:43:39 +0000

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

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After the Games:Let the Games begin….50 Things You Must Do After a Major Competition…if you want to win the Next One!

Wayne Goldsmith — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 04:29:53 +0000

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).

Met one on one with each of your athletes and provided them with a detailed, comprehensive review of every aspect of their competition performance;
Done the same with your coaching staff, sports science support team and team management;
Analysed every aspect of your athlete’s performance from a physical, mental, technical, tactical, strategic, support-system and emotional perspective;
Have a clear “success in our next major competition” philosophy and have articulated it to the people who matter;
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;
Had someone review your coaching under competition competitions conditions and provided you with clear, honest, constructive feedback;
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?;
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;
Identified at least two conferences or professional development opportunities for yourself to attend over the next year;
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;
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;
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;
Completed a detailed self-analysis of your own coaching, your training program, peaking, tapering and periodization;
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;
Clearly mapped out your overall training camp and competition needs for the next 2-3 years both domestically and internationally;
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;
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;
Addressed any personality or political conflicts in your performance environment which emerged (were exposed) during your last major competition quickly and decisively;
Accepted responsibility for what you were responsible for in your last major competition, learnt from any mistakes and moved on;
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;
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;
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;
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;
Budgeted all your training, preparation, equipment, sports science, sports medicine, travel and competition expenses for the next two years and identified any shortfalls;
Identified some training partners who can you can invite into your program to help take your athlete to the next level;
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;
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;
Identified at least three areas of your own coaching which you can improve and master over the next two years;
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;
Conducted your review process with a feed-forward approach – i.e. Did not waste time on blaming or recriminations for past failures;
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;
Found someone outside your sport (and even outside of sport) who can bring new ideas and new thinking into your program;
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;
Met with your sporting organisation and engaged in an honest two-way debrief and 360 degree review process;
Strengthened your own personal financial position so that you can commit more time to your potential winning athletes;
Committed to a personal health and fitness program to ensure you are at your physical and mental best at all times;
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;
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;
Planned for some holidays and down time regularly to help you be mentally ready;
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

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Sports Psycho-physiology: The Way Forward in Successful Coaching and Sports Performance.

Wayne Goldsmith — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:46:10 +0000

Want to know about the latest breakthrough in thinking in sport?

Want to learn about how to coach more effectively and get more out of every training session?

Want to hear how to enhance the performance of your athletes?

Here it is: the latest thing – Psycho-physiology (more specifically sports psycho-physiology): The way forward in successful coaching and sports performance.

And guess what?

This revolutionary breakthrough in sports performance is so new that it has only been around for 5000 years…..

What is Sports Psycho-Physiology?

Sports Psycho-physiology (and let me be the first to introduce the inevitable acronym SPP) is a fancy name for the integration of mind and body in the effective training, preparation and performance strategies of athletes. It is about helping athletes to perform better through using their mind and body in harmony in training and competition.

Everything old is new again: Psycho-physiology through the ages.

Before someone steps up and writes a book claiming to be the guru of sports psycho-physiology and that they invented it, this stuff has been around for a long, long time. The Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and many other great civilizations all have written about, spoken about and lived the integrated mind-body philosophy.

So it has been around for a long time, but only now are coaches and athletes starting to think about how to apply psycho-physiology to enhancing the effectiveness of training and preparation for sports competition.

The only three really new things about (sports) psycho-physiology are:

Sports scientists and coaches are finally waking up to the understanding that you can’t train the body without simultaneously training the mind IF you want to achieve optimal results;
We now have the techniques and the technologies where we can measure the changes in the brain that occur through the introduction of mind-body integration techniques, e.g. CBT, mindfulness, meditation;
We have finally got to the point where we can integrate (sports) psycho-physiology in the Daily Athlete Training Environment (D.A.T.E.) through smart coaching.

What is being done in (Sports) Psycho-Physiology?

There is a lot of exciting work being done around the world in this “new” breakthrough area: here are just three examples:

In the field of cardio-vascular disease, researchers are looking more and more at the physiological impact of mental and emotional stresses and mental illness, e.g. anxiety, bi-polar disorder and depression. As a result, we now better understand how mental and emotional states can effect the body (e.g. changes in heart rate, blood pressure, adrenalin levels and platelet formation) all of which has enormous implications for competitive sport;
Researchers are looking closely at the impact of introducing mental skills training techniques like “mindfulness”into training programs including measuring pre (mindfulness) / post (mindfulness) performance of athletes with fMRI technology;
Many professional teams are using psycho-physiology by measuring brain wave activity as one indicator of over-training, over-reaching and fatigue.

It all adds to up to one thing…………Sports Psycho-Physiology is here and it promises to be bigger (and better) than Pilates, Swiss Balls and Creatine Supplements - the difference being….psycho-physiology actually works!!!

So What does this mean to Athletes.

For athletes, SPP offers unlimited potential for enhanced performance. Traditionally we have prepared athletes for the most part from a physiological standpoint: speed, strength, endurance, power, agility, flexibility…..and then sent them out to “battle” in great physical shape. The “mental” side of preparation we have left to a few war crys, the pre-match psyche up and the ubiquitous (but generally useless) motivation speech. We have laboured under the misguided view that getting the body ready is enough.

However, this is the equivalent of strapping a Ferrari engine to a bicycle frame! An athlete who is well prepared physically but who does not possess an understanding of how to integrate their mind and their “Ferrari engine” together in training and competition can not realise their full potential.

So for athletes…..you have the best ever opportunity to see your dreams become reality.

What does it mean for Coaches.

The key for coaches is to integrate SPP into their training and preparation environments by the addition of a mental component in their planning, periodisation and exercise prescription.

So, in practical terms, it means adding a mental element to every training set, every skill practice routine, every fitness activity: to change your programming tools from just volume, intensity and frequency to volume, intensity, frequency AND a mental factor.

Once you make this fundamental philosophical step of incorporating a mental aspect into your physical training routines and practices your coaching will achieve new heights.

(Watch for a future post: Programming with Sports Psycho-physiology).

What does it mean for Sporting Institutions, Universities, Academies, Coach Educators etc.

For sporting institutions, the Sports Psycho-physiology revolution means four things:

Integration- of physiology and psychology resources, staff, research and departments;
Innovation - solving performance problems which incorporate mind / body solutions;
Inspiration – seeing this new direction as a limitless opportunity to find performance breakthroughs through integrated research, different thinking and as an incredible opportunity to help athletes and coaches achieve new levels of excellence;
Illumination - changing the way we educate coaches about sports science right from their first day in the coach education system.

The Silo System is Dead.

Now that the “silo” (i.e. single discipline, reductionist) approach to applying sports science to athlete and coach performance is finally being seriously challenged around the world, more and more of these “inter-disciplinary” breakthroughs will emerge….

So what’s the next inter-disciplinary breakthrough likely to be?

Bio-physiology:(i.e. bio-mechanics and physiology): Imagine what we could achieve by integrating the fields of bio-mechanics and physiology so that when we make a change to an athlete’s technique or skills, we simultaneously consider the impact on physiological efficiency, energy cost, oxygen dynamics etc.

Psycho-mechanics: (i.e. psychology and bio-mechanics): Imagine what we could achieve if we incorporated a mental component into bio-mechanics so that when we work on improving, changing and enhancing an athlete’s technique, we also include things like relaxation, flow, feeling, focus, concentration and mindfulness.

Now that the shackles of the single discipline silo approach to sports science have been removed, so too have the limits to human performance.

Question….Where will it end?

Answer….It wont!

Wayne Goldsmith

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Winning and Losing: Outplayed or Out-talented?

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:35:58 +0000

High Performance sport is founded on a relatively simple equation: you either win or you lose.

And when you lose, it is natural to look for the reasons “why” through performance reviews etc.

A critical aspect in understanding the “losing process” is to find the answer to this question….were you outplayed or out-talented?

What does it mean to be out-played?

Being out-played means that your opposition planned and prepared better than you did.

What does it mean to be out-talented?

Being out-talented means you were beaten by someone who possessed a superior athletic talent. For example, in the Golden Era of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s if you were unlucky enough to come up against Jordan, Pippen and Rodman and company then you were always going to be “out-talented”.

However, sporting loses due to being out-talented are very, very, very rare.

What’s the difference?

The difference between being out-talented and out-played is that being out-played is totally your own fault as you had complete control and responsibility over your own preparation.

The most important principle in competitive sport:

The most important principle in competitive sport is that you as an individual must out-prepare, in every aspect, on and off the ”field”, in training and self management areas, your opponent. Doesn’t matter if you are in an individual sport or in a team sport: you, as an individual must out-prepare in every aspect the person you will be competing against.

Competitive Sport is not a handicap event:

You either win or you lose. Excuses do not count. Blame does not improve performance. It is pointless blaming losing on having “less talent” than your opposition unless, you know with absolute certainty, that you have prepared better in every aspect than they did.

Control the Controllables:

Having been involved in many many review processes over the past ten years with both professional and Olympic sports, it is common for athletes and coaches to look to blame factors outside their control for their failures.

“They had more money than we did”.

“They had more support staff and better access to facilities and sports science”.

They had the best of lucky breaks from officials and referees when it mattered”.

“They had a better group of players than we did”.

All these factors can influence the result of games, matches and even seasons but, they do not overcome the basic requirement of responsibility for optimal personal preparation for every athlete, coach, support staff member and manager in the organisation.

Let’s look at a list of just 20 (and there are hundreds) of the key factors in preparation that you as an athlete or as a coach have complete control over and therefore have complete responsibility for:

You are responsible for every mouthful of food you eat;
You are responsible for every drop of fluid you drink;
You are responsible for every drop of alcohol you drink (or don’t drink);
You are responsible for both the quantity and quality of your sleep;
You are responsible for your level of commitment to and engagement with your training program;
You are responsible for studying your sport and understanding who / where the benchmarks are in all aspects of planning, preparation and performance;
You are responsible for the way you interact with and communicate with team members, support staff, members of the public and other people involved in your Club / organisation;
You are responsible for the way you look (i.e. dress codes, personal standards – “professionalism”);
You are responsible for your attitude to training, preparation and playing;
You are responsible for saying “no” at times which can impact negatively on your preparation and performance (e.g. mid to late evening in social situations – saying “no” to alcohol, reduced sleep etc);
You are responsible for managing your own travel stress, i.e. eating, drinking, sleeping, etc during travel periods;
You are responsible for your recovery program;
You are responsible for the attention to detail to skills practices and learning;
You are responsible for maintaining a balanced lifestyle and keeping mentally healthy;
You are responsible for the attention to detail and a methodical systematic approach to planning your preparation and competition program;
You are responsible for your level of passion, drive and enthusiasm;
You are responsible for being consistent in preparation;
You are responsible for managing your own time;
You are responsible for understanding who you are and living according to your own set of personal values;
And…you are responsible for out-preparing in every aspect, your opponent.

Conclusion:

Loses in sport which can be 100% attributed to being out-talented are very very rare: most of the time you have been out-played;
Being out-played means you were out-prepared;
And being out-prepared means the loss was largely your own responsibility;
Take personal responsibility for the “controllables”, out-plan and out-prepare your opponent in every aspect and you have the opportunity to win more often.

Wayne Goldsmith

The Psychology of Winning: How to Develop a Winning Attitude in High Performance Sport World Cup Final Day. The team gathers in the locker...