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Posts Tagged ‘Training’

High Performance on a Budget – can you create a high performance environment without spending any money?

When clients ask me to work with them, it is usually to help them  become the best they can be in one or both of these two areas:

1. Help them to create a sustainable winning culture and / or:

2. Help them to create a world class high performance environment, (i.e. the things you can build and buy).

Although most of the time I get to work with professional sports and elite level Olympic teams, I am regularly asked to work with schools, amateur sporting clubs and part time coaches on a range of performance related issues, athlete attitudes, motivation techniques, leadership development, coach development exercises and sports performance enhancement programs.

Recently a client from an amateur but highly successful sporting Club asked me, “Wayne, we hear what you say about the best high performance environments in the world and about tools like GPS systems, ice baths, recovery centres, the latest video analysis systems and having a sports medicine team available 24 / 7. But we are all part timers. We gladly donate our time to coach the team and we have to fit our coaching around our jobs and our family. Our budget is minimal. Can we still create an effective high performance environment without spending any money?”

Yes, you can. Read more

The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform

What are we all chasing in high performance sport?

What is high performance coaching seeking to achieve?

Why do we focus so much on player leadership?

Why do we spend so much time talking about professionalism, standards, attitudes, commitment and passion?

Because we want to achieve one thing: we want to create an environment where our athletes’ Passion to Prepare is equal to or greater than their Potential to Perform. Read more

Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

Remember how when we were kids everyone liked to eat cupcakes.

Then when we got older and a bit more health conscious we were told to give them up because of the sugar and flour and other stuff in them.

Then along comes a sports nutritionist who said “Muffins are a great food for athletes – nutritious, high carbohydrate energy foods”. So we all started eating them again even though they are basically still just big cupcakes.

What a big con.

Almost as big a con as Training Studies in Sports Science Research. Read more

Sports Psychology: Integrating Mental Skills Training in Effective Coaching.

We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential part of being a successful athlete.

The ability to perform under pressure, the capacity to remain confident and resilient when competition conditions get tough, the skill to be able to relax and stay focused when feeling pain and fatigue in competition, concentration, visualization……coaches and athletes are unanimous that spending time developing mental skills is time well spent.

However, figuring out the best way to develop mental skills – particularly mental skills which can directly enhance the competition performance of athletes is another matter.

We all think working with a Sports Psychologist is a good idea but Sports Psychologists are like life partners……we know that having one is probably a good idea but it is next to impossible to find a good one. Read more

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

All coaches have five things in common:

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

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

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

High Performance Sports Systems – The Non System System.

So Great Britain has an outstanding high performance sports system.

Australia had one a few years ago…and they hope to have it again.

The “Eastern Block” had some brilliant high performance sports systems – systems which influenced the development of high performance sport all over the world in the three decades since.

The Chinese have a huge one driven by State money and a very large population.

The French are doing some great things in theirs.

The US has a strong high performance system driven through the College system.

South Korea, Japan and India are growing theirs. Canada is re-building theirs.

The South Americans will be working hard to make their high performance systems the best in the world now that Rio has been announced as the host city of the 2016 Olympic Games.

South Africa is building one on the back of the Football World Cup.

Seems like every nation in the world has to have three things – a flag, a carbon policy and a high performance sports system.

Here’s the thing…..none of them do what they are supposed to do….none of them actually produce winners. Read more

Daily Athlete Training Environment – D.A.T.E.

OK – Someone had to do it. It was almost toooo obvious.

From this moment forward, the term “Daily Training Environment” no longer exists in sports terminology or high performance sports culture jargon.

Goodbye – you are the weakest link.

Say hello to D.A.T.E. – Daily Athlete Training Environment.

Think of all the Government sporting policies and strategic planning documents around the world that now have to be edited and changed!

Why D.A.T.E.? Read more

Coaching = Engagement.

We have all done it.

We have all been involved in debates, discussions and deliberations about what coaching is.

Some people say it is about teaching and learning skills. Others say it’s about sports science and applying a scientific method approach to planning and periodisation. Others say it’s about communication and caring. Still others believe coaching is about emotions like passion or it’s about values like commitment, honesty, integrity, humility, courage and discipline.

To add to the confusion, you get the coaching “zealots” who are promoting one type of coaching philosophy over another (in an effort to create a commercial success from their theories about coaching) who are convinced coaching is about the ABC Technique of Coaching or Homer Simpson’s Guide to Effective Coaching or some whiz bang made up word like Coaching Readiness for Accelerated Performance (I hope you spotted the acronym)!

Coaching is about one thing above all others…engagement. Read more

High Performance Sport:What are the “non – negotiables?”

What is High Performance?

I spoke at a conference once and after the formal side of the presentation I invited questions from the 100 or so gathered coaches and sports managers.

The first question from the audience was, “Wayne, you’ve spoken a lot today about HIGH performance. Will you be covering Performance at sea level (i.e. low performance sport)?”.

Many people think that the world of high performance sport is a bit mystical and magical and that it takes a lot of money, a PhD and a laboratory to do it well.

In reality, creating and sustaining a successful high performance culture is more about attitude than altitude, more about motivation than money and more about learning than a laboratory.

So, to help you understand what High Performance is really all about……. Read more

Good to Great – Ten Qualities of Excellence in Coaching (and life)

Go from Good to Great in Ten Easy Steps???

The Good to Great part is easy………it’s writing about it in Ten Easy Steps that’s the hard bit! 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

  • High Performance on a Budget – can you create a high performance environment without spending any money?
  • The Passion to Prepare = or > The Potential to Perform
  • The Evolution of Leadership in Professional Sport: from coach to captain to collaboration.
  • Creative Coaching: Teaching coaches to be Creative and Innovative.
  • Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

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