Posts Tagged ‘sport’

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

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. Read more

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

 

Whoopee!

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

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

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

And you wait.

And you apply for a few jobs.

And you wait.

And maybe you get an interview.

And you wait.

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

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

Coaching the Uncoachables

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, how can you Coach the Un-coachables?

Read more

Responsibility for Performance in Professional Football: Where the Buck Stops!

Whether teams win or lose, people want to know who is responsible.

Just take a look at the after match interviews.

The media want to talk to the players who were responsible for scoring the winning goal, the winning try, the incredible touchdown that won the game or the unbelievable conversion kicked from the sideline, while the final siren was blowing, in the pouring rain with a hostile crowd chanting “miss-miss”.

The media want to talk to the coach and ask why the team lost and to find out who was responsible for the lack of effort, lack of energy, poor execution of team strategies, poor skill execution under pressure, the missed tackle and the blown opportunity.

And it continues over the year to the end of season review process where people aim to pin responsibility for the team’s poor record on one person, one system, one coach, one player, one aspect of preparation…….

Professional football is very much about responsibility, so let’s try and clarify who exactly is responsible for performance in professional football: where the buck stops. Read more

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

All coaches have five things in common:

  1. A love of the sport they coach;
  2. The passion and drive to be the best they can be;
  3. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge and learning;
  4. A desire to see every athlete they coach realise their full potential;
  5. An unbreakable devotion to their philosophy on training volume.

Why this obsession with volume of training? Why do coaches resist any attempt from sports scientists and others to reduce their training volume? Why do coaches resent any implication that they are training their athletes too hard?

Because, in spite of all the research and all the literature and all the advances in sports science, sports medicine and performance technologies, the only thing that is proven – beyond doubt – to improve performance is consistent hard training. Read more

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

Coach education is at the crossroads.

One thing is for certain, the way we have trained, educated and developed sports coaches in the past is not working. It has failed.

Let’s talk about a new approach in Coach Training, Education and Development: A Client Focused Approach.

Let’s talk about CoachT.E.D. (pronounced Coached): Coach Training, Education and Development.

And most importantly, let’s talk about training, educating and developing more coaches and better coaches: coaches who can provide every person involved in sport with the environment and the opportunity to develop a passion for sport, a life long love of physical fitness and activity and the chance to choose a path to realise their potential as athletes and human beings.

Read more

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

Recently I got an email from someone saying, “Hi Wayne. You seem to have a lot to say about what people are doing wrong in high performance sport. How about you “put your money where your mouth is” and post a list of things people can do to enhance the performance of their athletes, teams and programs.”

OK. I did. Read more

English Premier League (EPL): Doomed to Fail.

Who doesn’t love to watch the English Premier League – the EPL?

The talent of the players, the drama of the contests, the excitement of the competition, the passion, the skills, the crowds, the coaches…it’s got it all.

Enjoy it while you can, because the English Premier League is doomed to fail…it is only a matter of time….

Read more

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

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. Read more

The Performance Clock and Coaching

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. Read more

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