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?
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?
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.
It takes 20 years to become an overnight success. Successful coaches have by a combination of experience, skill, education and practice, developed ways and means of getting the best out themselves and their athletes.
Here are 101 Coaching Tips to help you achieve your coaching goals.
After the CLOSING ceremony of every Olympic Games, someone should yell out, “let the (real) Games begin”.
The real “GAMES”…………the junkets and fact finding missions the Sporting leaders from most countries embark on to find out what the USA, Germany, Great Britain, South Korea, China and Australia are doing to be successful in the Olympics.
The logic seems simple enough.
“Our country didn’t win any medals at the Olympics” says the Minister for Sport.
“Country XYZ won lots of medals at the Olympics”, says the CEO of the Sports Commission.
“Therefore if we want medals and we copy them we will win medals”, thinks everyone in the room.
“Hooray!!!! Problem solved – let’s buy some air tickets”.
OK. Let’s talk about how to develop world class coaches.
Grab a piece of paper. On one side of the paper, write down the characteristics of a great coach.
Does your list include any or all of the following:
OK – now turn the page over and write down a list of all the coach education programs which cover the above?
Is this side of the paper blank? Yes? Then we can begin.
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?
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
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.
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:
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.
