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wayne@waynegoldsmith.com
To a Coach with a Hammer, Every Athlete is a Nail: Creativity in Sports Coaching.
To a Coach with a Hammer, Every Athlete is a Nail: Creativity in Sports Coaching.

Coaching is creativity.

To the successful coaches of the future, creativity will be a core coaching skill: right up there with communication, passion, empathy, commitment, the ability to engage athletes and sports specific technical skill.

But what does it mean to be creative and to coach creatively. And to coaches who are not naturally creative, can they learn to be?

Or to the coach with a hammer, is every athlete a nail?

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

As soon as someone mentions the words “high-performance” in sport, people start running for their cheque books and credit cards. The most commonly held view about high-performance sport is that you need significant investment and resources to run a successful high performance sports program. However, money alone does not guarantee success in high performance sport and almost any coach or Club can create a sustainable high performance environment by targeting and prioritising their resources on the right things at the right time. This article discusses how to prioritise in high performance sport and how to target the things that matter: the things that will make a difference where it really matters….the performance of your athletes

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Sports Psycho-physiology: The Way Forward in Successful Coaching and Sports Performance.
Sports Psycho-physiology: The Way Forward in Successful Coaching and Sports Performance.

There is nothing new about integrating the Mind and the Body to realise successful sports performance. However, what is new is integrating Mind and Body in all aspects of sports coaching and athletic performance every day. This article discusses Sports Psycho – Physiology and challenges athletes, coaches, sports scientists and sporting organisations to reassess how they go about applying the integrated Mind-Body concept in their daily athlete training environment.

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Top Ten Talent I.D. Tips for High Performance Sport – The T.O.P. Approach
Top Ten Talent I.D. Tips for High Performance Sport – The T.O.P. Approach

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

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

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

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

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Performance Science and Why it’s time has come.
Performance Science and Why it’s time has come.

“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.

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Coaching and Visualisation (Imagery): See the Coach You Want to Be.
Coaching and Visualisation (Imagery): See the Coach You Want to Be.

Visualisation (imagery) is a technique which many high performance athletes use in their preparation for peak performance and competition. However, visualisation is just as powerful when used by coaches to enhance their coaching performance. This article introduces coaches to the topic of Coaching and Visualisation and discusses how to incorporate visualisation techniques into your coaching program to increase the likelihood of success.

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The Crawford Report on Australian Sport – a preview from the crystal ball….
The Crawford Report on Australian Sport – a preview from the crystal ball….

So, the time is almost at hand.

The release of the report all Australian Sport has been waiting for over a year…the Crawford Report – is due any day now. (You know it is about to be released because the politicians are trying so hard to deny the final report exists).

For those of you not familiar with Crawford, take a look at http://www.sportpanel.org.au/internet/sportpanel/publishing.nsf

If we had a crystal ball, I wonder what will be contained in the report……..I wonder….I wonder….(imagine a fade out here like those movie “dream” sequences).

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The Psychology of Winning: How to Develop a Winning Attitude in High Performance Sport
The Psychology of Winning: How to Develop a Winning Attitude in High Performance Sport

Ask any athlete or coach about the contribution of the mind to performance and they will respond that it will vary between 90 and 95%! Yet, most of time, coaches and athletes leave their mental skills training to the last minute and often it is in the form of a “motivation” talk from a guru or professional speaker. This article discusses the importance of integrating mental skills into every aspect of preparation by understanding how to help athletes “think” differently about their training and how motivation is such a powerful performance enhancement tool in sport.

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What’s all this Leadership by Empowerment stuff about?

Leadership groups, leadership teams, player leadership teams, team councils………

What’s going on here? Players making decisions? Players leading? Players taking ownership of their training and playing programs?

  • What’s all this empowerment stuff about?
  • What does engagement mean? Is someone getting married?
  • And what the hell is a leadership group?

I thought coaches coached, managers managed, fans cheered, doctors doctored and players played.

All of sudden every AFL, rugby, football, cricket, netball and rugby league team has embraced a player empowerment leadership model. Five years ago, most of us couldn’t even spell it.

Let’s have closer look at what’s going on.

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