I know, I know, I know.
This sounds like an advertisement for a new sporting product or new piece of sporting training equipment…the sporting equivalent of the “knife that cuts through a shoe” or the “miracle mop” that does everything around the house including walking the dog, cooking dinner and putting the kids to bed.
But no….this is serious. You can achieve More with Less…this is how to do Less but get a Better result.
By Wayne Goldsmith |
The Jersey. The Strip. The Colors. The Jacket. The Jumper.
Doesn’t matter what you call it – the “jersey” is dead.
Gone are the days when a bunch of blokes could train two or three days a week, have a poor diet, skip training sessions, enjoy a few beers and then, come Saturday, suddenly get Amazing Super Powers because of the magic of putting on the “jersey”.
In those days, poorly prepared players relied on the emotion of the jersey for their performance. Putting on the old “black and green” colors – usually incorporating a “rev-up” by a former player about the “pride of the jersey” etc was enough to fire the spirit and inspire the soul.
That’s not to say that tradition is wrong or respecting and celebrating the past is a bad thing. The point is that the jersey is just that – a jersey – a piece of clothing (usually made in China) – and, as a performance enhancement tool in 2008 – it is dead.
Why do I say the jersey is dead?
Start talking about mental toughness in sport and you’ll soon find out that everyone’s got an opinion about it. People will start using words like “hard” and “tough” and “mean” and phrases like “never quits” etc to describe their views about mental toughness. But what is mental toughness? Can it be measured? Can it coached? And if mental toughness can be coached, how can it be coached? This post and podcast discuss mental toughness in sport and suggests a new way of looking at measuring and coaching mental toughness.
There’s a great phrase that goes”real talent is harder to hide than it is to find”. Athletes with real physical talent stand out – their physical talent is obvious and it will be demonstrated at training and in competition in many ways. But to realise your full potential as an athlete, it’s about so much more than muscle. It’s about all the mental, emotional and character qualities like passion, commitment, dedication, determination, drive, desire and toughness. This podcast and post discusses the concept of talent identification in sport and challenges coaches to look for more than obvious signs of talent – to look past the physical aspects of talent and to adopt a more holistic approach to developing talented athletes: one that focuses on the less tangible areas and harder to measure aspects of performance.
There seems to be a high performance program or high performance system in every country in the world….but what is high performance sport?
By Wayne Goldsmith |
Read the title of this article.
Now read it again.
Read it one more time.
Now, just to be sure you get it – You can’t buy a football premiership!
Here’s why.
Many, Many Football Clubs all over the world in all codes have tried to “buy” a premiership over the years. In fact one the main reasons some football codes have put a salary cap in place is to ensure one club can not “buy” a premiership by recruiting the majority of the best players available.
However, if the Football Administrators did their homework and studied their history, they would realise putting a salary cap in place to stop one team dominating a competition is unnecessary – you just simply can’t buy a football premiership.
Lots of athletes go to the Olympic Games – very, very few come back with a medal or even a personal best performance.
Why?
Lack of Talent? Maybe.
Poor Skill? Possibly.
The wrong parents, i.e. Genetics? Could be.
But the main reason most of them don’t win a medal is that they made five dumb (and avoidable) mistakes in the period between their selection for the Olympic team and their Olympic Games competition.
Olympic Mistakes: The Top Five Dumb Things Athletes and Coaches do heading into an Olympic Games.
One of the most critical initiatives any sporting organisation can undergo is the Building of the Board.
As the Board provides strategic direction, leadership and vision to the organisation, it is essential to consider the P-P-P of the Board, i.e.:
Seems simple enough, but why do so many get it so wrong?
Have you ever sat around and wondered why you didn’t win that race? Or even pondered how come you didn’t win the big game? Guess what……in a lot of cases the reason why you didn’t win was that you didn’t prepare to win. The fundamental reason you train is to prepare to meet the challenges and demands of every competitive situation you find yourself in. To do less, is to prepare to fail. This article discusses the concept of winning and explains why it is essential that your training must be tougher than the competition you are preparing for.
Spring is the season of re-newal, re-birth and re-generation.
And for many Australian sports – AFL, Rugby League, Netball and Rugby – spring is also the season of the Performance Re-view.
That time when players, coaches, management and staff sit down together and try to work out what went wrong, what went right and how to do it better next time around.
How do you make certain your end of season Performance Review makes real difference to next season and is not a waste of time, energy and money?
By Wayne Goldsmith
Coaches are always talking about motivation and some make lots of money doing motivation talks, motivation lectures, giving motivational speeches, writing motivational books, selling motivational videos, running motivational courses and generally being motivational!
Here’s the funny thing: motivation – there’s no such thing.
