They don’t call it the Hot Seat for nothing – the coaches’ box!
The coaches’ box is the place where the coaches sit during the game and make important decisions about tactical, strategic and technical issues that have the potential to impact on the momentum of the game and even change the end result.
Some coaches’ boxes work well.
Some coaches’ boxes don’t.
So what’s the difference?
The support young athletes get from their parents is often just as influential as that which they receive from their coaches. Wayne explores how athletes can best work with coaches and parents to create an environment that helps them to realise their potential.
Coach education has shifted from being Content Driven to Context Relevant. Gone are the days of delivering boring, non-specific, content heavy coaching courses. Coaches are looking for smarter, more efficient and more effective ways of learning and most importantly, they are looking for information to help them coach more effectively in the coaching environment (context) they coach in. This article discusses the need for coach educators to seriously and radically change the way they deliver coach education, training and development programs.
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.
Quick.
Write down your own list of the top ten skills of quality coaching. What does it look like? Something like this?
You could add hundreds of skills to this list: experience, drive, initiative, the will to win, attention to detail, commitment, vision, determination, a strong work ethic…………there are as many desirable coaching skills as there are coaches.
But, in this century, there is one coaching skill to rule them all – creativity: creative coaching.
The question is…...can you teach coaches to be creative?
Message to the Sports Science community – are you kidding?
Altitude training?
I thought the old approach to altitude training was done and dusted but to my amazement, nations continue to invest in one of the most questionable sports performance “enhancement” methodologies in the business.
You can’t be serious!
Is it just me or does it seem like every coach involved in rugby league and rugby union has the same game plan?
With all the money spent on coaching, analysis, technology, video, training programs, performance enhancement, player development, facilities, equipment, ball technology, strength training, conditioning, wrestling, leadership development, boots, nutrition, psychology, protein supplements etc etc you would think that rugby league and rugby union would be havens for innovation, creativity and genius.
So why does it seem like every team, every coach and every player is reading from the same play book when it comes to game plans?
I am getting so sick of people talking about high performance environments, about following a process, about systems, about structures, about programs, about initiatives, about workshops and about strategies.
The name of the game is Winning – oops – there I said it.
Winning. Winning. Winning. There, I said it again.
That felt great. I’ll say it some more. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning.
That felt so good I’ll do it again. Winning!! Winning!!!! Winning!!!!!
The W Word: Winning.
Many coaches will say they want to be successful.
No they don’t. Not really.
They want to be successful again and again and again and again and again. They want to Sustain success and Always have a competitive program, winning athletes and quality players.
So how do you it?
How do you Sustain Competitiveness And Sustain Success?
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.
Having visited more than 30 countries in four continents in the past few years and spent time with sports leaders, coaches, athletes, sponsors, sports scientists, sports academics, sports medicine practitioners, sports administrators, government funding agencies and other sports professionals in many of the world’s leading sports systems,five world wide trends in society
(and by extension in sport) have become very clear and are screaming so loud that they can no longer be ignored.
Ignore them at your peril.
Leadership?
Lots of people talk about where leadership in sport is now.
But where did our current thinking on leadership come from? How did leadership in professional sport evolve?
And more importantly, where is leadership in professional sport going?
