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.

What is Recovery?

A good practical definition of Recovery is the deliberate use of interventions aimed at enhancing an athlete’s capacity to adapt to the physical and mental demands of preparation and performance.

In other words, doing something which is likely to help an athlete recover more effectively from their training and / or competition loads.

How can you enhance an athlete’s recovery?

A good way to remember the different recovery techniques is to remember WASHUP :

Water: the use of different forms of water, e.g cryotherapy (ice), hydrotherapies (contrast showers, “hot-cold” baths, spas, saunas, swimming pools etc).

Active Rest: doing something physically active other than the primary training and competition activity, e.g. walking, swimming or cycling instead of running.

Sleep: ensuring adequate quality and quantity of sleep.

Hydration and refueling: drinking the right fluids and eating the right foods at the right time, in the right quantity and of the right type to enhance recovery.

Unwind mentally: mental and emotional recovery is just as important as the physical aspects of recovery.

Physical Therapies: including massage, physiotherapy, stretching and Yoga.

So is Recovery important?

Absolutely. There is no doubt that Recovery is critical for athletes: to train hard then to dedicate energy, effort and enthusiasm to their recovery program.

The one thing we know for certain about succeeding in high performance sport is that you need to consistently train hard.

And using WASHUP recovery techniques means that athletes can recover faster and more effectively and therefore they can train harder more often.

So how did all this Recovery stuff start?

In the “old days” the pathway to sporting success was primarily focused on hard, physical preparation. The culture of most sports, particularly the Olympic sports where physiology is such a critical aspect of performance, e.g. running, swimming, rowing, gymnastics, diving, triathlon and cycling, was to work and work and work until you couldn’t work any more.

With the growth of the sports science industry and the deeper understanding of applied sports physiology, people began to realise that an important limiting factor in the physical aspect of sports performance was the athlete’s ability to recover.

This led to some athletes, coaches and even nations to try and find ways of enhancing an athlete’s recovery ability – by any means necessary in some cases - and the unfortunate rise of the use of substances such as anabolic steroids and other artificial and illegal recovery enhancing substances and techniques.

In more recent times however, the race has been on to find better, smarter (and importantly safe, ethical and legal) ways of accelerating an athlete’s capacity to recover.

And what’s the bottom line?

The bottom line is….the reason athletes and coaches would introduce a smart recovery program is so the athlete can work harder.

And this is where the whole Recovery thing has got out of control.

Too many athletes and coaches have misinterpreted the Recovery principle and have decreased training loads whilst at the same time increasing their emphasis on Recovery.

Again, at the risk of labouring the point, the reason an athlete or coach would introduce a smart, WASHUP based recovery program is to accelerate the athlete’s rate of recovery and therefore provide the opportunity to work harder more often.

The Recovery / Hard Training Matrix

When it comes to managing training and recovery, you have four options:

1. Don’t train hard and don’t introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – doesn’t make any sense if success is your goal.
2. Train hard but don’t introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – works for a while but eventually illness, injury and fatigue will limit your potential for success.
3. Don’t train hard but introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – unlikely to produce anything but a well-rested but under-prepared athlete.
4. Train hard and introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – work hard, recover well, do it consistently and success is practically inevitable.

Summary:

1. Recovery is one of the buzz words around sport at the moment but like all ”fads and fashions” it needs to be considered in balance with all other aspects of your training and competition program. Keep it in perspective!
2. The key to Recovery is remembering that its purpose is to accelerate an athlete’s capacity to adapt to the physical and mental demands of their training and competition schedule…faster recovery means that an athlete can work harder, more often.
3. Whilst the research around the impact of a smart Recovery program on the competition performances of athletes is still very sketchy at best, there is some evidence that systematically introducing a smart recovery program incorporating the WASHUP techniques can enhance an athlete’s capacity to rest, restore and regenerate and be more ready for their next training and competition activity.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2012, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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.

The testing process: Not a one off event!

Testing is not a one off event – it is a process that begins and ends with a test.

The testing process sequence includes:

• Coach determines the need for testing and discusses the test protocols with a sports science / sports medicine professional.
• Testing is scheduled and logistics, equipment, personnel etc. are organized.
• Pre test athlete education session organized (if appropriate).
• Testing is conducted.
• Results and data collected, collated and managed.
• Results and data evaluated.
• Results and data discussed with coach and athlete.
• Coach considers results and data and makes training program decisions based on the information.
• The next test date is scheduled.
• Athlete is retested to determine progress.
• Process repeats!

Testing is a useful coaching tool but it is one part of the overall process of athlete preparation and development.

Competition based testing

Of course, the best form of testing for high performance athletes in elite sporting programs is competition.

Competition provides the unique combination of factors that are only found on the pitch, on the track, on the court, in the pool or on the water during actual games and events.

However it is often difficult for the coach to be effective in competition based testing as he / she is focused on observing the athlete in competition conditions and perhaps even making strategic / tactical decisions based on those observations.

Therefore, it is essential that the coach identifies a reliable, experienced support team of professionals who can manage the details of competition based testing leaving the coach free to coach.

After the competition or perhaps even during rest periods, the support team can provide the coach and athlete with the detailed analysis of the performance and together work towards a strategy to improve competition results.

Success in Competitive Sport: Defined

The obvious measurement of success in competitive sport is winning!

However what is winning? It is said that the person who aims at nothing is sure to hit it! Therefore before designing a testing program, it is important to try and ascertain what coaches are trying to “hit” – what are they trying to achieve?

Successful competitive sport could be described as:

“The ability to maintain excellence in skills and consistently make the right decisions at high speed, while fatigued and in pressure situations” – Skills plus speed and decision making under fatigue and under pressure.

Winning often comes down to the players’ / athletes’ ability to perform basic skills effectively when they are tired and under pressure.

From this simple definition, it is possible to develop and effective testing program.

Why Test?

There are many reasons why a coach would want to test an athlete.

Once training and competition goals have been clearly established, a coach would test athletes:

• To provide information and feedback on the progress of the training / preparation of the athlete. Are we on track to achieve our goals?
• To provide information on specific elements of the athlete’s capacities and abilities. Is the athlete developing and improving?
• To determine areas of weakness or limitation: Are there problem areas or issues that need to be overcome?

How to Test

The perfect test is one where the athlete is accurately evaluated in the precise conditions likely to be experienced in competition and the results of the test directly relate to competition performances.

This is invariably difficult to achieve as there are numerous factors experienced in competition which are near to impossible to replicate in a training or testing environment.

For example:

How do you measure a goal kicker’s ability to kick a goal under game pressure when the only time they face game pressure is during a game?

How do you know if your players can execute attacking moves against opposition in pressure situations when the only time they get to experience these conditions is against an opposition in the pressure of a game?

Game / event simulations can provide athletes with the opportunity to learn how to execute skills in competition “like” environments but even these practices lack the real pressure experienced in actual competition.

Typically, testing protocols and methods are single discipline perspectives of one element of performance, e.g. tests based on physiology or biomechanics or psychology or nutrition or medical. The challenge for the coach is to effectively manage this narrow perspective to gain an overall understanding of the athlete’s abilities and capacities at the time of testing.

Who to Test?

Practically any athlete can be tested. Even young athletes can be tested for skill development and technical progress.

Young athletes can also be educated on how to develop the skills necessary to perform the testing protocols they are likely to experience as senior athletes.

For example, many tests require the ability to accurately maintain a precise speed, power output, pace or time. These skills can be taught to relatively young athletes as part of their development process and to prepare them to complete senior testing protocols as they mature.

Where to Test?

Field or Laboratory – the toughest question in the testing puzzle. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Field testing can be simple, easy, inexpensive and meaningful to the coach and athlete but can be difficult to control owing to environmental factors and a wide range of other complicating variables experienced in the training and competition setting.

Laboratory testing is often expensive, requires complex equipment and trained personnel to operate it and in many cases has the considerable challenge of making the test results meaningful and specific to the actual sports environment.

Tests for oxygen exchange dynamics (e.g. VO2 max) have generally been performed in laboratories as the availability of precision equipment allows for more accurate testing. However, the limitation in laboratory testing is in the capacity to reproduce actual sports specific training and competition conditions.

For example, the measurement of VO2 max on a treadmill, cycle ergo-meter or rowing machine in the lab is based on well established testing protocols. However, the lab cannot exactly reproduce the external environmental factors (run and bike – road conditions, weather, hills, wind resistance: rowing – water conditions, current, weather, wind, boat friction / water resistance) that athletes experience in training and playing.

A useful field test alternative to lab based endurance testing is the shuttle run or “beep” test.

In football for example, laboratory based VO2 max tests are of questionable value as it is rare that any player runs at high speed (without the ball) in a single direction for sustained periods of time without the added complication of dealing with opposition players. However, the lab based VO2 test may offer a useful measure of the underlying fitness characteristics of the player and perhaps provide an indication of their injury/illness status.

In the end, a combination of regular field based testing (because of the practical, easy and immediate nature of the testing) together with occasional laboratory testing (because of accuracy, reliability and quality) is a good option for most sports.

What to test?

Selecting what to test for is a complex issue for every coach. Universities and other professional organizations can provide the coach with a “lolly shop” of tests and toys all with the promise of quick easy solutions to performance challenges.

One of the biggest problems for coaches is that many do not clearly identify what it is they want to test. As a result, when a sports science professional suggests what is possible, the coaches respond like the kid in “lolly shop” and want a little of everything.

Deciding what to test starts with a simple philosophical question for every coach:

“What do I believe are the key determinants of successful performance in my sport?”

In all sports, successful competition performance is determined by the effectiveness of the coach and athlete to optimise their preparation in four key areas:

• Physical
• Mental
• Technical
• Tactical

For example, as a coach of marathon runners you decide that the key determinants for success in your sport are oxygen exchange dynamics and biomechanical efficiency at 80-90% of maximum speed. Once you have made this philosophical decision, finding the right tests to evaluate the athletes is relatively easy.

As a coach of a football team, your philosophy may be that the best players are skillful at high speed. Again the choice of tests is a simple matter once you have decided what you want to look for.

Another advantage of establishing your own testing philosophy is that “unless you stand for something, you will fall for anything”.

Sometimes coaches fall for promises of magic pills and quick fixes from sports science professionals looking for subjects for a study or research project. The testing program should be a reflection of and consistent with the overall goals and philosophies of the coach, athlete and training program.

When to test?

Effective testing can be done at any time during the training or competition program depending on what you are looking for. Tests of maximum capacity or peak abilities are generally best performed when the athlete is rested and unfatigued. Traditionally this has meant testing during or at the end of a rest or recovery microcycle.

Ideally, testing should be scheduled during each phase of training: pre season, mid season and late season to provide feedback on the athlete’s progress throughout the training program.

However, if you as a coach have determined that you would like to assess the impact of physiological fatigue on skill and speed, then testing tired athletes is consistent with your overall program philosophy.

Summary: The Ten Golden Rules of Testing for Coaches

1. Test for things that make sense. Testing VO2 max in lawn bowlers is not logical.
2. Test because you believe it will make a difference. Just testing for testing’s sake or because the equipment is available is not the most effective use of training time.
3. Test with a performance focused goal. Test elements of performance that you believe will make a direct impact on performance. Try not to get trapped in testing just to try and get a progressively better test result unless it is directly related to actual competition performance or the development of more effective training protocols.
4. Don’t ask for a single test – ask for a series. If you make the commitment to be involved in a testing program, ask for more than one test. One off tests rarely tell the whole story.
5. If you are working with sports science / sports medicine professionals, request that any test results are provided within 24 hours and that the professional allocates time to explain the results and their relevance to your program. This applies particularly if you have agreed to allow your athletes to be involved in a research project.
6. Think multi disciplinary. If the athletes are being tested through lactate analysis, also measure and observe technical changes to assess the impact of fatigue on technique and skills. If they are being evaluated using heart rate, note speed, technique and if possible assess psychological skills at the same time. Performance is multi disciplinary in nature – testing is generally single discipline in focus. Coaches need to see the wider picture.
7. Be visionary. If you as the coach see the need for a test to evaluate an element of performance which you believe is crucial to the success of the athlete, develop your own test! Ask a sports science / sports medicine professional to help you with the measurement side of things, but many great coaches use simple field tests that are meaningful to them but which may lack absolute scientific validity. Many scientific tests were originally ideas inspired by visionary coaches.
8. Keep records. Try to record all test results. Have assistant coaches, parents of athletes, injured players, reserve team players – anyone – trained to record (accurately) test results.
9. Measure what is measurable, control what is controllable, what can be measured and controlled is likely to be meaningful.
10. Take time to educate athletes about testing. In time, senior athletes can learn to do some or most testing protocols themselves. Athletes can learn to monitor their own heart rates, take their own times, count their strides, record their feelings…..and the better educated your athletes are to self manage / self monitor their own testing, the more meaningful the results are to them. Having educated athletes who can self monitor means the coach has the freedom to coach, observe and learn during the testing process.

As it is with your overall program, testing is athlete-focused and coach-driven. Manage the testing process so that you can provide your athletes with the best possible opportunity to achieve their performance goals.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011 – 2012, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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So much of the world’s high performance sports dollars (or Yens or Yuans or Euros or Pounds or Pesos or Rands depending on where you come from), time, energy, focus and attention is spent on three things:

1. Talent identification;
2. Talent recruitment;
3. Talent development.

Or if you like, find them, sign them, refine them.

And most of the world has still got it wrong. There is a better way.

First item on the Talent Identification agenda…can we please change the name!!!

Let’s all agree to call it the ”Talent Management” Program or the ”Targeting Success” Program or something catchy like T.O.P. (Talent Optimization Program) but the term T.I.D. should be killed off, given a nice funeral and buried by the world’s sporting community once and for all.

Calling the overall process of finding, recruiting and optimising the performance potential of athletes “talent identification” is like calling a game of football “the kick off”. Finding talent is just the first step in a long, long process to turn potential into performance.

Number 2: Adopt an integrated approach.

There is too much focus on physical talent and physiological factors in all T.O.P.s all over the world. Success in high performance sport comes about from the integration and blending of physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural / family and genetic factors or…my “big six”:

• Physical abilities;
• Personality characteristics;
• Playing skills;
• Performance abilities;
• Pedigree (i.e. genetic makeup);
• Preparation ((i.e. environment, family, culture).

Number 3: Invest ten times more money on talent optimisation and talent development than talent I.D because Real talent is harder to hide than it is to find: Finding talent is not hard.

Open your eyes! It is not hard to find kids who are bigger, stronger, faster or more skillful than their peers. Finding them is not the challenge – it’s what to do once you have found them that is the tricky part. The protocols used to screen athletes for “talent” have been around for over 60 years – test protocols are not the problem. It’s creating an optimal, integrated talent development pathway to turn potential into performance that’s the problem.

Number 4: Make your objective measurements of talent more subjective and your subjective measurements of talent more objective:

This the real trick in all applied sports science. There are no totally objective, research proven, evidence based methods of testing which can measure the “talent” and potential of an athlete and guarantee their elite level competition performance success. And similarly, the old days of just looking at an athlete and using some mystical “eye” or instinct to accurately predict their elite level competition performance success are over. It’s the blending of the objective with the subjective that gives the best results in any T.O.P. process.

Number 5: Any investment in a T.O.P. for athletes must be matched by a T.O.P. for coaches:

Governments and sporting organisations will spend millions on mass T.I.D. screening programs and implementing T.I.D. testing protocols then allocate pittance to educating and developing the people charged with developing that talent to its full potential: i.e. coaches. That just does not make any sense.

Number 6: Educate parents and the talented athlete’s immediate cultural influences:

You play like your place! Athletes – no matter how talented – need people and places around them which nurture them, support them, nourish them and love them. It is critical to influence, support, educate and help the parents, partners and peers of talented athletes so that they can better create an environment which enriches the athlete’s real performance potential.

Number 7: Stop beating around the bush with genetic testing- just get on with it:

We all know its coming – let’s face it – it is already here and the whole industry of Sport Genetics is an unstoppable force. Once we get around the ethical, religious and philosophical zealotry surrounding the genetic testing of athletes, everyone will be doing it. My advice – do it now. Just get on with it or risk being left behind by your competition.

Number 8: You need to learn to recognise genius, uniqueness and difference:

Sport is about health, fitness and lifestyle. It’s about providing opportunities for people to play sport through the implementation of standardised systems, structures and programs. High performance is completely different! High performance is about providing unique opportunities for unique individuals to realise their full potential. Too many T.O.P.s fail because they fail to recognise genius. They spend millions finding and recruiting talented athletes, then force them into standard programs to fit a funding model or some mythical all encompassing athlete development system. High performance means being different, being unique, being an individual and thinking, talking and acting outside the box.

Number 9: It has to be a“non-system” system:

As per number 8 – there is no system you can create which will guarantee the success of your team, your sport, your club or your nation in high performance sport. That’s because greatness and uniqueness are intimately entwined and uniqueness does not flourish in a system. That’s why the best win – they do it their way, they do it uniquely, they do it differently to the rest….and any high performance sport system which discourages difference will fail.

Number 10: There has to be multiple entry (and exit) points:

Too many teams,  sports and even nations miss talent because of stringent rules about T.T.T. – Talent Testing Timing. Some of the biggest mistakes here include:

• Setting an age range – i.e. “we test kids aged 12-15″ years;
• Creating elite junior development pathways which are rigid and inflexible (i.e. “you are either in or out”);
• Testing for now and not for the future – i.e. looking for talent and potential to sustain the team’s current style or system of play without thought of evolving it over time;
• Relying on historical data to provide a framework for the future, i.e. using test data from talented athletes from the past to evaluate the performance potential of athletes to be successful in the future.

Conclusion:

• There is no doubt that an effective T.O.P. is important for the success of every sporting team, organisation and nation.
• However, the way it has been done to date lacks real sophistication, practicality and effectiveness and it is time the whole concept of T.I.D. was revisited, revamped and re-developed.

There’s my Top Ten Talent I.D. Tips for High Performance Sp0rt – the T.O.P. Approach….what’s yours?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011 – 2012, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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.

Facilities are not the answer

Facilities are rarely, if ever, the real limiting factor in developing a winning performance environment.

Imagine someone buys you a new Ferrari Formula One car for Christmas.

Unless you spend ten years learning how to drive like a world class F1 driver, you will never drive the car to its potential. Try to drive it with your existing driving skills and you get sub standard performance.

And unless you also surround the F1 with the best mechanics, analysts, technicians, engineers and management team and use the world’s best fuel, tyres and components, the car never reaches top speed.

The best car in the world needs the best driver, support team and equipment to perform at its best. And it all has to be put together in an integrated, focused, aligned team approach to performance success.

It’s the same with sporting facilities, (including stadiums, sports academies, gyms, recovery facilities, training facilities, testing and medical centres).

Under performing teams or sports will often blame the lack of facilities as the reason for their poor performances. They lobby government and their supporter base to get the funding to build the latest and greatest, world class sporting facility but usually end up building a monument to mediocrity.

Think about it.

If you have a team with a poor coaching leadership, a player group of below average talent, a sports science / sports medicine support team which is out of touch with the best practices and a divided, uninspired management team but put them in a nice new high performance sports facility and believe things will get better you are:

A. Delusional

B. Insane

C. Have lost the capacity to see what’s actually going on

D. All of the above.

Swimming – as an example

Imagine you have a coach working in an old pool.

He has a poor coaching record, his methods are 20 years behind the times, he does not understand how to help swimmers achieve their goals or realise their potential.

He works with a strength and conditioning coach who believes the way to improve the performance of elite swimmers is to turn them into body builders.

The club is poorly managed and their use of sports science non existent.

It is a turbulent political environment with factions between parent groups and continual in-fighting.

Now put them in a new world class 50 metre, 10 lane, indoor pool with underwater camera facilities, state of the art starting blocks and throw in a world class recovery facility and gymnasium in the change room area.

What have you got?

A poor coach, a sub standard program with bad management and parents who still kick each other but now they do it……..in a nice new pool.

Nothing meaningful, i.e. nothing that will make a real difference to performance – has changed.

When you really think about it, this is the complete opposite of the way we should do it.

• Spend some time at the end of each season, objectively, intelligently and logically reviewing what worked and what didn’t work this year.
• Clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of the program – working systematically through the “big five” of all sporting environments: Coaching, Players, Management, Sports Science / Sports medicine support team (including strength and conditioning) and Facilities.
• Look at the cohesion and synergies between the “big five”. Is everyone working together, striving towards a common goal? Is everyone working together to accelerate the performance of the team?
• Follow the P-P-P-P rule of investment in high performance programs: Invest in People first, then Processes / Practices, resolve any Political / Personality conflicts then build Places (facilities).

Buying a new car…………

When you buy a new car – the most important question to ask is, “why do I need this car – i.e. what do I need it to do for me – what are my needs from the vehicle?”.

• If you have a family of six – you need a people mover.
• If you are single, wealthy and live the fast live – you buy a Porsche.
• If you are a farmer – you buy a four wheel drive.

Sporting facilities exist only to provide the opportunity for coaches, players, management and staff to deliver the best possible program - to meet their needs.

If your medical team does not understand recovery techniques, if your coaches refuse to buy into the importance of recovery in a training program, if your recovery management practices are not world class – then don’t waste money building a recovery facility.

Get the people right first, then the program and practices…….then build the place!

If you are not going to change your coaching, player group, management, sports science / sports medicine program – then don’t waste money on new facilities.

Invest in people first.

Help them to work to their full potential.

Improve their leadership ability.

Enhance their capacity to be innovative, creative and unique.

Ensure your sports science / sports medicine is world class.

Bring everyone together – aligned towards creating a sustainable winning environment and then………….build them a world class facility.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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“In short science has its limitations. Western science is characterised by
reductionist principles; but we reach a point at which the reduction becomes
disassociated from the phenomena it is trying to explain” P.Jones 1998

It’s time.

It’s time for the Sports science industry to seriously change the way we do business.

It’s time we let go of  the outdated, simplistic single cause / single effect model of research and embraced a genuine integrated, multi disciplinary approach to solving performance problems.

It’s time for Performance Science to come of age.

The Single Cause – Single Effect Model.

Look at the thousands of research papers published in the world this year.

Most of them still pursue the outdated, single discipline, single “cause – effect” approach to research that is totally out of place and inappropriate in high performance sport in this century.

They still promise coaches and athletes that changing one element of a program - be that physical, mental, technical or tactical - will result in a competition performance improvement.

Take a typical single discipline sports science research paper and the research model almost universally embraced by the sports science community:

• The researchers complete a detailed literature review – great;
• They painstakingly design the appropriate methods and get ethical approval – fantastic;
• They complete the research with all due academic rigour observing all reliability and validity conventions – excellent;
• They write up the paper, submit it to a respected Journal for peer review and hopefully publication – superb.

And the paper concludes with something like, “The results of this study indicate that if you do X, you will get Y”.

And now the fun begins.

Delivering the Information to Coaches and Athletes

The researchers then hit the sports science and coaching journal “road” and the sporting conference “circuit” presenting their findings as a breakthrough in sports science and that coaches and athletes should make changes in their training programs as a result.

Now I know many sports scientists reading that last paragraph will say, “We don’t do that. All we do is present information and it is up to the coaches  and athletes to decide if and how they will use the information in their preparation and competition programs”.

Rubbish.

If you present information at a conference to a group of coaches and athletes you are saying, “This information will give you a performance advantage and you should adopt it”. To believe anything else is delusional.

It’s a bit like playing music to someone and saying to them “whatever you do, don’t listen to this”.

The inference from the research published in the plethora of sports science journals and presented at the innumerable sports science conferences is that this information, if applied, will enhance the competition performance of athletes.

What is happening?

Why else are researchers given research grants from the high performance sports funding agencies if not to find ways to enhance the performance of elite athletes?

But – and this is a big but: nothing in human sports performance works in isolation.

Imagine you are a researcher who has just published a paper on something you believe will give an athlete a performance advantage in competition.

You present the paper at a coaching conference.

A coach incorporates your findings into their training program.

An athlete prepared by that coach adopts your new research finding into their program.

All it takes is a text message from the athlete’s girlfriend saying “We should see other people while you are training in Europe” and the athlete’s performance potential goes out the window.

And that’s the big problem with most of the sports science research published around the world – it assumes that everything else in the subject’s (athlete’s) life will remain constant while the single cause creates the single effect.

Look at the papers done on nutrition supplements like creatine. Most conclude with a statement like “although more research is necessary the findings of this study suggest that creatine may enhance the performance of elite athletes involved in power sports” – i.e. single cause will give a single effect.

Again – the big hole in this type of research is the assumption that all other aspects of the athlete’s preparation will remain constant and in real life that just does not happen.

Conclusion

So, it is time that we all accepted that the way we have done sports science research – specifically sports science research done with the intention of enhancing the competition performance of elite athletes – for the past 50 years needs to change.

Who is going to step up and lead the change?

Who is going to be bold enough to look at the way we do research, challenge it and adopt a real multi disciplinary approach to finding new and better ways of enhancing the competition performance of athletes?

Is there a University or High Performance Sports Academy in the world willing to work with me and drive this change?

One thing we know for sure…someone will: and that someone will change the sports science industry forever.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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:

1. Desire
2. Desperation
3. Hunger for success
4. Determination
5. Resilience
6. Passion
7. Motivation
8. 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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Invest time and resources into learning and accepting who you are as a human being, then greatness in coaching is possible.

Wayne Goldsmith

A reminder that all the posts, ideas and information on the Sports Coaching Brain are subject to copyright. No article may be reproduced in part or in full without the expressed written consent of the author.

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

No related posts.

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:

1. 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;
2. 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;
3. 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

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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:

1. More coaches;
2. 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?

1. Most people who coach or who are involved in some form of coaching do not even commence the COACH-TED pathway for that sport;
2. Coaches who do complete the first level of the COACH-TED pathway rarely complete all assessment tasks and the accreditation or licensing requirements;
3. Coaches who do complete all accreditation or licensing requirements rarely maintain their qualifications with updating requirements;
4. 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″;
5. 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:

1. Clearly define and understand who your clients are: In most sports your clients are your athletes and their families.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Performance Clock: The Three Principles.

There are three fundamental principles behind the Performance Clock:

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

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it.

So why don’t people get it?

The Performance Clock explained:

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

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

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

Typically, the Performance Clock works like this:

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

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

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

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

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

Then a funny thing happens……

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

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

The team starts losing.

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

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

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

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

But then…..

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

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

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

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

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

So why don’t people get it?

Three words: Leadership, Creativity and Arrogance.

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t be a Sad Sporting Statistic:

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

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

So don’t be.

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

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

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

Summary:

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

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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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:

1. 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?
2. Will I do all I can to support the head coach’s efforts to create and grow unity of purpose, direction and energy?
3. 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?
4. 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?
5. 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

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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