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

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

Whoopee!

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

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

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

And you wait.

And you apply for a few jobs.

And you wait.

And maybe you get an interview.

And you wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sports Speak

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

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

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

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

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

The Position Description you will never see.

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

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

Qualities and attributes:

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

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

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

What does your degree say?

Wayne Goldsmith

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Coaching the Uncoachables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, how can you Coach the Un-coachables?

What are the Un-coachables?

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

The Un-coachables are:

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

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

Great question. Here’s how.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do you Coach the Un-coachables?

The short answer is, you don’t.

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t artificially create “passion”.

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

Be a human being first, then a coach

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

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

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

No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

Wayne Goldsmith

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

Wayne Goldsmith — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:07:40 +0000

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.

Some definitions to get us started.

Because I have readers from all over the world where the word “football” means different things to different people, let’s define some important terms:

Responsibility: My favourite definition of responsibility comes from the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. US Department of Defense 2005.

Responsibility is……”The obligation to carry forward an assigned task to a successful conclusion. With responsibility goes authority to direct and take the necessary action to ensure success – See also accountability“.

In other words, responsibility means you will take action and make things happen with the goal of achieving success and you will be accountable for those actions.

Season: In professional football, the season commences on the first day of pre-season training and ends with the final siren of the last game / match the team plays.

Team: The “team” has been traditionally defined as just the players. However, in professional football now, where many non playing staff are being paid a lot of money to help produce a winning outcome, the “team” is the players, the coaching staff, the sports science and sports medicine staff, the team management, the strength and conditioning staff and the special skills staff (e.g. technology professionals, IT support, psychologists, medical specialists etc). In other words, if you accept a role working with the organisation where your actions directly or indirectly contribute to the planning, preparation and / or performance of the players, you are part of the team and as such you are in part responsible for the team’s performance.

In a perfect world……..

In a perfect world, everyone in a professional football team environment, from the star player to the guys who clean the boots, drive the team bus and pick up the towels, would willingly accept responsibility for every aspect of their own preparation and performance, on and off the field, every day.

But it aint no perfect world.

When times are good, everyone wants to be seen as part of the team. It’s great for the ego. It’s great to hand someone a business card with “Operations Manager, Wolves United” on it and see the envy in the eyes of the person you handed the card to who’s own professional life involves sitting behind a desk processing bank receipts.

People want to be associated with professional football players because of the prestige and kudos involved but, who is prepared to stand with those same players when the team is losing and say, “I also accept responsibility for the team’s performance”?

Whilst it has been the practice to place the full responsibility for the performance of the team on the players and the coaches, in professional sport, it is more appropriate to consider an extended responsibility model where everyone associated with the team assumes a level of responsibility for the team’s performance.

OK – so who is responsible and when?

There are four key periods in every football season where the degree of responsibility shifts within the team, i.e. where some team members have greater responsibility for performance than other members.

This does not mean that all the responsibility for preparation and performance falls on one group: it just means that during specific times in the season some people are more responsible for the team’s performance than others.

The key to understanding why football teams win or lose is to first understand who is responsible for the preparation and performance of the team at key points in the season.

Season Key Point 1 – the first 25% of the season: Responsibility – Strength and conditioning staff / sports science team.

The results of the first 6-8 games of a football season are largely the responsibility of the strength and conditioning staff and the sports science team.

It is their responsibility to take the gamble on how much or how little pre-season training to do and the results of early season games are a reflection on how good their gamble was.

And it is a gamble. No one really knows with 100% certainty what the standards and intensity level of the competition will be in the coming season. But strength and conditioning staff and the sports science team get paid to increase the odds in favour of the team.

Many teams over-train in the off season and look brilliant during the early season games, then look tired, flat and fatigued later in the year. Other teams who take a more conservative approach to pre-season training may start slowly but build momentum progressively over the season towards the finals.

Season Key Point 2 - the next 50% of the season: Responsibility – Coaching Staff.

Once the influence of the pre-season preparation has run its course, the responsibility for the next 50% of the season belongs to the coaching staff.

Once players have gone through the first 25% of the season they are “match-fit” and “game-hardened” and at the peak of their playing potential.

It then comes down to the coaching staff’s ability to implement the technical, tactical and strategic aspects of performance to keep the team in a winning position.

Season Key Point 3 - the next 15% of the season: Responsibility – Medical team and rehab / pre-hab Staff.

As the finals get closer and the majority of players in the team are showing signs of fatigue and injury, the medical team and re-hab / pre-hab staff must accept the greatest degree of responsibility for the team’s performance.

In every code of football, the finals series is generally won by the team who is able to have more of their best players on the field at or near full health more often.

That’s why Clubs focus so much on recruitment and chasing preferential “draft” selections: not just to get the best players but to have the best players deliver great performances when it really matters, i.e. in important games.

Having a team of super stars who are never on the field due to injury or who are on the field but never at full health is like having a Ferrari in the driveway with two flat tyres and a blown engine. Sure, if it is working it can beat anything but while it’s broken a three year old on a skateboard can go faster.

Season Key Point 4 – The finals – i.e. the last 10% of the season: Responsibility – Players.

And, then responsibility for the big games at the end of the season shifts to the player group.

The role of the Strength and Conditioning / sports science staff, the Coaching Staff and the Medical team and rehab / pre-hab Staff for the first 90% of the season leading up to the championship games has been to prepare the players to master the important moments and win the critical games.

The non-playing members of the team have spent 90% of the season helping players to realise their full potential as athletes and as people so that when it really matters the players have the physical, mental, technical and tactical abilities to win when it counts.

If the non-playing members of the team have done their job……….the players will do theirs!

Summary:

If you want to increase your success rate in professional football, you must clearly understand the concept of responsibility: what it is, who owns it, where it is and what it means;
Anyone who is associated with the performance of the player group, directly or indirectly, must accept a level of responsibility for the team’s performance;
Whilst everyone associated with the team should accept full responsibility and accountability for their own performance every day, there are times during the season where the primary responsibility for the team’s performance shifts between team members.

Note: The Sports Coaching Brain conducts workshops and seminars on the Extended Responsibility Model for football teams and professional sporting teams.

Contact us now.

Wayne Goldsmith

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

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:17:43 +0000

All coaches have five things in common:

A love of the sport they coach;
The passion and drive to be the best they can be;
An unquenchable thirst for knowledge and learning;
A desire to see every athlete they coach realise their full potential;
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.

And because coaches know that hard training works – and all the other stuff is pretty much theory, fad or trend, they are reluctant to change their approach to training and incredibly resistant to any notion of tampering with their training methodologies.

Recovery….

Take for example the world’s obsession with recovery. Do we think things like hydrotherapy, massage and recovery nutrition strategies enhance competition performance? Yes.

Does it make sense that they should enhance competition performance? Yes.

Are they proven to enhance competition performance? No.

You could say the same things about “core stability / Pilate’s”, “vibration machines”, “sports supplements” and “altitude training for sea level performance” - good ideas, great concepts, interesting to talk about but not proven to enhance competition performance.

Hard work. The only way?

The only thing that has been conclusively demonstrated beyond any doubt to enhance competition performance is training.

So logically, any attempt by a researcher or sports science service provider to change the one thing coaches know works is likely to be met with blank looks, cold stares and a loud “no thanks”. Coaches think – “I am responsible for the performance of my athletes. I know that training hard works. So why would I risk my reputation, my job and the success of my athletes on anything that is not proven to work?”. And this has led to 20 years of frustration, fear and fighting between coaches and sports scientists all over the world.

However, it is also clear, that in many sports, coaching beliefs about the volume of training required to become an elite performer are more based on myth, anecdote and legend than they are on logic and practical experience.

Take for example the following training volume “myths and legends” of various sports:

Distance running – 100 miles a week;
Swimming – 100 kms a week;
Diving – 100 dives a session;
Tennis – 1000 hits a session;
Cycling – 1000 kms a week;
Many Olympic sports – 10 sessions a week / or 24 hours a week.

Many of these “volume myths” have grown out of “coaching conference story telling” where successful coaches share the secret to their success which then gets written down and copied by every coach in the room; coaches who mistakenly believe that copying the success secrets of others is the secret to achieving their own.

Over time, these “myths” become “training truths” – e.g. “if your swimmers are not swimming ten sessions a week they will never be successful” and like all myths, these stories get passed down from coach to coach, from generation to generation until they become accepted practice by the entire coaching community of that sport.

Now to More with Less.

Let’s look at the issues.

There is no one size fits all, magic formula, guaranteed to succeed, every athlete must do, mythical training volume which works for all athletes: Fact: all athletes are unique individuals;
Kids and parents (and coaches for that matter) have limited time to fit in all the opportunities and options that life offers: Fact: everyone has less time available;
There is an unprecedented explosion of ideas and information on the Internet that is free for athletes and coaches to access – anytime – anywhere: Fact: everyone knows what you know;
Our understanding of peak performance in sport has become increasingly sophisticated and we know more than ever about learning, training adaptation, genetic potential, mental abilities, recovery, nutrition and performance technology: Fact: we have the knowledge and information to train, prepare and compete more efficiently;
The ability and capacity of Generation Y and I athletes to learn has accelerated due to the integrated, collaborative learning environment social media now offers them: Fact: your athletes can and do learn faster than any previous generation.

Now put all these facts together……and what do you come up with?

We need to create an efficient, effective training, learning and development environment which provides the optimal opportunity for individual athletes to train, to learn and to improve at an accelerated rate.

Is this just about cutting back on training volume? Of course not!

I am with the coaches on this: let’s not reduce training volumes unless…..we create an environment at training which consistently embraces accelerated learning.

Just kutting kilometres and minimising miles is not the answer unless………we first ensure that every athlete is totally engaged in every aspect of the program and trains efficiently and effectively every moment they train.

Having training sessions off is not the solution unless…….we know that every athlete trained to the full extent of their ability and potential at every session they attended.

So, more with less is possible but it requires some fundamental changes in your performance environment, beginning and ending with athletes accepting greater responsibility for their own performance and coaches prepared to coach in collaboration with their athletes: a perfect performance partnership.
Times are changing: are you?

Wayne Goldsmith

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

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

Coach education is at the crossroads.

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

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

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

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

Coach Training Education and Development: hereafter known as COACHT.E.D. (Pronounced Coached)

The sporting world is desperately seeking two things:

More coaches;
Better coaches.

And, the world is also desperately seeking new and better ways of training, educating and developing those coaches.

As coach training, educating and developing takes too long to say, let’s adopt a new acronym – COACH-T.E.D. (pronounced Coached) – (note to coach educators everywhere – remember where you heard it first!).

What are the biggest five problems with CoachT.E.D. around the world right now?

Most people who coach or who are involved in some form of coaching do not even commence the COACH-TED pathway for that sport;
Coaches who do complete the first level of the COACH-TED pathway rarely complete all assessment tasks and the accreditation or licensing requirements;
Coaches who do complete all accreditation or licensing requirements rarely maintain their qualifications with updating requirements;
Coaches who do maintain their qualifications with updating requirements rarely move to the next level of accreditation, i.e. from “Level 1 to Level 2″;
Coaches rarely commit to ongoing learning and continuous improvement programs.

And what do we learn from these five problems?

It is pretty clear that what we are doing now is not working! The “levels” system has failed.

It’s a bit like saying, “We have a great restaurant, but not many people ever come and eat here. Those who do, don’t order dessert or stay for very long. Very few order some of the best things on the menu and almost no-one every comes back. But we have a great restaurant!!!!”

Well, it’s time to close the restaurant down for a while, change the decor, improve the menu, focus on customer service and make our “restaurant” the hottest ticket in town.

So what’s the solution?

There is solution…a client focused solution.

Here’s a five step plan to help you develop a Client Focused Approach to Coach-TED:

Clearly define and understand who your clients are: In most sports your clients are your athletes and their families.
Clearly understand what their needs are: Importantly noting that not all athletes want or need to be placed on the performance pathway! Not every athlete wants or needs to be a world class athlete, a professional player or the next Grand Slam champion.
Ensure that your athlete development pathway reflects the needs of your clients: Importantly accepting that fact that there may be in fact two, three or more distinct and very different athlete development pathways depending on the needs of your clients, e.g. a Participation Pathway, a Performance Pathway and Peak Performance Pathway.
Create a Coach-TED pathway which supports and reflects the needs of your athlete development pathway: This is critical! It is essential that the sport’s athlete and coach pathways are heading in the same direction and at the same speed.
Align the athlete development pathway and the Coach-TED pathway: Noting that as the athlete development pathway is dynamic, is constantly changing and evolving based on the changes occurring in broader society, so too will the Coach-TED pathway be dynamic and in need of constant review and continuous improvement.

So why is this Client Focused Approach so important?

It’s simple when you stop and think about it.

Follow this logic trail….

Governments, sporting organisations and coaches all over the world are trying to find new and better ways of attracting, developing and retaining “clients”, i.e. to get more people involved in sport and physical activity and keep them active for life. For governments this is about community health and well being. For sporting organisations it is about economic survival;
Coaches are the front line - the ”face” of sport and the first (and sometime the only) point of contact with ”clients”;
Therefore, for government programs to work and for sporting organisations to survive, it is imperative that coaches are trained, educated and developed to understand the sport’s clients, what their needs are and how to service them effectively.

In short, the future of sport as we know it may depend on our ability to adopt new and better ways of Coach-TED to ensure that sport’s “front-line soldiers” are equipped with the “weapons” they need to win the “war” against obesity, the societal trends towards inactivity and the shift away from organised sport.

Summary:

Time to face the facts…the “levels” system of coach accreditation is pretty much dead. We are just waiting for the formal burial. There has to be a better way, and there is.
The key to training, educating and developing (TED) great coaches is to ensure their training, education and development is relevant to then needs of the sport’s clients.
As coaches are often the “face” of the sport, (i.e. the front line of the sport which engages directly with the sport’s clients), it is vital that every coach is equipped with the skills, knowledge and abilities to play an effective role in servicing the needs of the sport’s clients and in doing so play a critical role in gaining, training and retaining more clients in physical activity and sporting programs.

For more information:

Any government sporting leaders or sporting organisations interested in discussing how they can develop a Client Focused Approach to Coach Training, Education and Development – COACH-TED should contact me directly on wayneATsportscoachingbrain.com
Wayne Goldsmith

Reminder that all posts on this blog are covered by Copyright laws. No posts may be republished or reproduced in part or in full without the expressed written consent of the author.

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

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

: fifty from Crestock Stock Images

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

OK. I did.

Train harder;
Train smarter;
Train harder and smarter;
Improve your leadership skills;
Consistently out-prepare everyone in your competition;
Dream bigger;
Believe in yourself;
Back yourself;
Get up faster when you are knocked down or face adversity;
Get tougher mentally;
Never accept the first “no” from a sports administrator or bureaucrat - just fight harder;
Become outstanding at finding and retaining talented athletes;
Develop the most creative thinking skills in your sport: the best ideas win;
Be more passionate about success than anyone else in your sport;
Never become complacent: success is a moving target;
Enthusiasm, passion, desire and attitude are contagious diseases: are yours worth catching?
Use sports science intelligently, effectively and with intent;
Get to know your athletes better than they know themselves;
Collaborate with your athletes - don’t coach at them;
Listen;
Take care of your own health – physical, mental and spiritual;
Be committed to intelligent change and continuous improvement;
Make friends far more often than you make enemies;
Develop a network of coaches in other sports and speak with them regularly;
Leave your ego at the door - ego kills progress and limits creativity;
Read books by great leaders, great thinkers and great philosophers: there are lessons to be learnt everywhere;
Go back and read Number 1 on this list again – you have to work harder than anyone else;
There are no short cuts: anything promising double figure improvement (e.g. 10% or more) in high performance sport is more fictitious than Lord of the Rings and you aren’t a hobbit;
Develop a group of close friends outside of your sport and don’t talk to them about sport;
Sleep and eat well everyday;
Find a sports science network group who respect you, want to collaborate with you and will grow with you;
Adopt an integrated approach to identifying and developing talent: physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural and genetic;
Teach one new lesson to every athlete every day;
Give and seek feedback often;
Hate losing – but learn from it, grow from it and improve as a consequence;
Take smart risks with your program, your ideas and your coaching;
See an athlete’s parents as partners in performance not as adversaries or just paying clients;
Create the culture you want to coach in: start with your own attitude then “infect” everyone around you;
Accelerate your learning faster than your opposition: from learning comes change, from change comes improvement, from improvement comes winning;
Take up another passion - i.e. other than your sport – to focus your mind and intelligence on;
Get to know the techniques, skills, rules and regulations of your sport better than anyone in the world;
Learn from the legend coaches of your sport - to see further than giants, you must stand upon their shoulders;
Keep records, refer back to them often and learn from them: those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them;
Find a mentor - someone whose skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes and philosophies are complimentary (i.e. different) to your own;
Find someone to mentor: nothing teaches like teaching;
Become a master of the Internet, social networking and all current forms of communication: communicate the way your athletes want to be communicated with;
Don’t think, speak or act in absolutes.…there is no such things as “always, “never”, “must” and “only” in high performance sport: challenge everything!
Learn enough about sports science, sports medicine, technology and strength and conditioning to look your staff in the eye and challenge them with a level of credibility and understanding;
Hire intelligently: hire on attitude and passion, then train the skills you need;
And number 50………an oldie but a goodie….never, ever give up. Persistence and perseverance usually beat talent, money, facilities and potential.

There you go.

What are your top 50? Let me know – let’s see if we can add another 500 to my list!

Note: The Sports Coaching Brain mentors many high performance coaches in professional and Olympic sports all over the world. YT

Wayne Goldsmith

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English Premier League (EPL): Doomed to Fail.

Wayne Goldsmith — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:42:44 +0000

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….

Why will the EPL fail?

There is one reason above all that the English Premier League will fail: money.

Money, (and the standard of competition that the money has been able to buy) has been the EPL’s greatest strength. It has allowed a few teams to purchase the greatest pool of football talent from the four corners of the globe. But ultimately, money will be the cause of the EPL’s demise.

The situation which has existed in the EPL for the past few seasons where the top four teams are known before the first kick off is the surest way of all to kill a sporting competition.

And the reason the top four teams are known is that finishing order in the EPL is dependent on bank balance and that’s never a good situation for any sport, any industry, any walk of endeavour.

Without competition, real competition, professional sport dies.

The Glorious Uncertainty of Sport.

There is one thing that keeps people passionate about sport: the uncertainty of the outcome.

Why does sports betting flourish all over the world? Uncertainty of outcome.

Why do people tune in to sporting events where the athletes and teams are closely matched? Uncertainty of outcome.

Why do so many professional sporting competitions build their foundations on the “draft” and “salary-cap” concepts? To retain the uncertainty of outcome.

In the English Premier League, money matters. Without huge sums of cash, teams are just not competitive and it is this widening of the gap between the football ”haves” and the “have-nots” which will prove to be the ultimate demise of the EPL.

How will the EPL die?

The first signs of death will be political battles from the teams who are struggling at the bottom of the EPL and in the other English leagues.

First of all they will move to limit spending by the top four or five EPL teams, e.g. to introduce a salary cap of some kind. Or they will try to introduce a rule to limit the numbers of professional players from outside of the UK who can play in the EPL.

Fans from teams other than those who support the top four or five EPL teams will become increasingly vocal and demand a change to the rules to ensure all teams have a fair chance to be competitive.

This move will be ferociously resisted by the top teams.

Maybe the end will be triggered by one or two of the top four or five teams being declared bankrupt necessitating a sell off of their players and other assets.

Or maybe the end will be triggered by falling TV ratings as fans look to other sporting contests – particularly to other football leagues - which may offer genuine competition and uncertainty of result.

Or maybe there will be a “perfect storm”…….political squabbling, bankruptcies, collapsing TV audience numbers, decreasing gate takings and dwindling fan interest.

Can the EPL be saved?

Yes. But it will demand vision, determination, leadership, drive and the capacity to embrace meaningful, effective change.

The history of professional sport has taught us one thing above all: long term, sustainable success is next to impossible to achieve.

And the reason it is next to impossible to achieve is that no one is prepared to make serious, visionary, effective change when things are doing well: no one wants to change the “winning-formula”.

People in sport do not change until it is too late – or almost too late.

Just look at the hundreds and thousands of examples around the world where athletes and teams and even National sporting systems were deemed to be invincible and beyond compare and the greatest of all time but then have subsequently fallen, failed and disappeared to become nothing more than a question in a sporting trivia quiz.

The EPL has the opportunity to break this cycle: to not be another casualty of the Performance Clock and in doing so be the shining light for all sport that long term, sustainable success is possible.

The E.P.L.’s Obituary.

Pretty soon E.P.L will stand for Expired Professional League and whilst we will all lament its passing, no one can say they didn’t know it was coming.

On a stone somewhere in London, football historians will one day read the following:

“Here lies the EPL. A once great football competition that did not learn from the mistakes of the past and therefore, through arrogance and the belief that success now means success forever, collapsed and died”.

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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The Performance Clock and Coaching

Wayne Goldsmith — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 03:08:20 +0000

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:

Everyone involved in sport is striving to improve;
To improve demands a commitment to ongoing, continuous improvement;
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.

Leadership (the lack of it):
Creativity (the lack of it):
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:

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;
However, knowing something and not acting on it, has the same effect of not knowing about it…nothing changes;
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;
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

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