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Posts Tagged ‘Sports coaching’

Recovering from Recovery: Recovery in Perspective.

 

The sporting world has gone Recovery Crazy.

Over the past ten years, Recovery has gone from being something you did when you got tired, to an integral aspect of every training session, every day, all year round.

First it was massage.

Then came all the countless variations of hydrotherapies: spas, saunas, ice baths, contrast showers, high-flow shower massage, wading pools, hydro pools…….

Then the recovery nutrition stuff: creatine, sports drinks, gels, bars, Slushies….

Now the focus is on sleep: sleep research, quality of sleep, quantity of sleep, timing of sleep, power naps, managing sleep, monitoring sleep and even the genetics of sleep.

It is now at the point where many coaches and athletes are making Recovery a higher priority than actual hard training! (The only time this should happen is in the dictionary).

So it’s time to Recover from Recovery: let’s consider Recovery in Perspective. Read more

Can You Guarantee Winning in High Performance Sport?

Yes you can!

Read more

Making Sense of Testing Athletes

A renowned swimming coach was walking up and down the side of the pool working with a world record holder. A younger, relatively inexperienced coach who was eager to learn, asked, “How do you know how your swimmer is going?” “How do you know when she is ready to do her best?”

The senior coach replied, “I just know”.

Testing does not replace the skilled eye or instinctual feel of an experienced and talented coach. It aims to provide measurement and objectivity to some of the elements of performance that coaches “see” and “feel” and “know”.

This article discusses some of the current issues in the testing of high performance athletes and looks at the crucial aspects of the measurement and evaluation of elite sports performance. Read more

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

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

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

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

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

And it is largely a myth.

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

Coaching and Mental Toughness

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? Read more

Hello Tennis Parents – balancing love and 40-love

 

Hello Tennis Parents.

Put your hand up if you answer “YES” to two or more questions in the Tennis Parents Ten Question Quiz:

• Do you believe your child will be a successful, well paid professional tennis player?
• Do you tell other parents that your child is “a high achiever”?
• Do you talk about tennis at least once a day with your child over meals or away from the court?
• Are you prepared to sacrifice your child’s education so they have a great chance of becoming a professional player?
• Do you regularly ask the coach to work your child harder or to change something about their game?
• Do you get emotionally involved in your child’s successes and failures on the training court?
• Do you allow your child to show a bad attitude, poor sportsmanship and / or a poor temperament (e.g. racket abuse)?
• Have you ever argued or fought with parents of other kids about the results of a game?
• Do you refer to your child as “my son or my daughter the tennis player”?
• Have you spent more than $500.00 on a single tennis racket for your child?

Well, here’s the bad news. If you answered “YES” to two or more of the above, the chances of your child becoming a successful professional tennis player are…………………NIL or very close to it. Read more

Sustaining success! The Coach’s Holy Grail.

 

Many coaches will say they want to be successful.

No they don’t. Not really.

They want to be successful again and again and again and again and again. They want to Sustain success and Always have a competitive program, winning athletes and quality players.

So how do you it?

How do you Sustain Competitiveness And Sustain Success? Read more

The Culture Combination: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation

There is no one thing that you can do which will guarantee success: no single change which, in isolation will create and sustain a winning culture in high performance sport.

There are however a combination of things that you can do to increase the likelihood of success: “The Culture Combination”: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation.

Read more

The Facility Fallacy

 

Here’s how it goes.

Your club has had another poor season.

People looking for answers come up with a lot of ideas on how to improve next year.

The management team determine that what the Club needs is a new high performance facility: new stadium, new meeting rooms, new computer lab, new medical facilities, a new gym and of course the obligatory new recovery facility.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

This is the Facility Fallacy. Read more

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• About this Blog

  Expert advice, ideas, innovation and inspiration for all sports coaches and team managers - from 'grass roots' through to elite and high performance levels. All posts are written by Wayne Goldsmith, AKA the "Sports Coaching Brain". If you have a question or comment about any post, please add it to the comments section.

• Recent Posts

  • Exploding the Home and Away Myth
  • Sports Coaching in 2030 – Future (coach) Shock – Where will Sports Coaching be in 2030?
  • Recovering from Recovery: Recovery in Perspective.
  • Can You Guarantee Winning in High Performance Sport?
  • Making Sense of Testing Athletes

• Links

  • Business Coaching Brain
  • Changing NSW State of Origin Culture – Article Sydney Morning Herald June 2010.
  • Coaches Info Service
  • Evolution of the Athlete Conference
  • Excelsior Group
  • Inner Tactics
  • Mental Games – AFL Grand Final Reply 2010
  • Moregold Performance Consulting
  • Performance Science: Integrated Sports Science.
  • Rugby League State of Origin- Article Sydney Morning Herald
  • Skill for Kids – A great innovation in educating sporting kids, coaches and parents
  • Sporting Parents Twitter
  • Sports Coach Tips Twitter
  • Sports Performance Science
  • Sun-Herald article on Mental Myths
  • Swim Coaching Brain
  • The Genius of Inigo Mujika
  • The Science of Sport
  • The Sporting Brain Twitter