[powerpress] I’m seeing some really exciting changes in sport happening around the world and a shift towards what I call “new sport.” What we are seeing in a lot of the Olympic sports and what we call the high commitment sports – swimming, athletics, rowing, cycling, gymnastics, diving – sports which are asking and demanding a
We’ve all had “The” Talk. You know the one. The one where mum or dad or a coach or a teacher or a religious leader or a good friend looked you in the eye and told you the secret to success. Do you remember “the” talk?
It went something like this didn’t it? “You know (insert your name here). You could really be something special. If you find that one thing that you love to do and that you are passionate about, and if you believe in yourself and work hard and never give up and if you give all you have to relentlessly pursuing your dreams, nothing is impossible for you”. Remember “that” talk? Some people get “the” talk when they are just kids. Others hear it when they are teenagers. Some get to hear “the” talk as young adults while others don’t hear it until they are in their middle age. And most people get “the” talk over and over and over and over again throughout their lives as they move through school, sport, university and employment.
Memoirs of a great coach…..Biography of a great coach….Lessons on coaching from one of the greats….seems like greatness and coaching are often talked about in the same breath. But what is great coaching? Can any coach become great? And if so, how can a coach go from just coaching to great coaching? This article discuss the key aspects of greatness in coaching and challenges readers to look at and overcome the barriers and limitations they are facing in their own personal quests for coaching greatness.
It’s all the same. All over the world, in every sport, when coaches write training workouts they think in terms of the big three physiological variables only: volume, intensity and frequency (how much, how hard, how often). But what if there was another way? What if instead of writing training sessions based on the physical aspects of performance, coaches and athletes built their training sessions and programming around the mental side of performance. This article challenges coaches and athletes to look at putting physiology last when they design and deliver training sessions and to think about what might happen if they looked at things differently.
Everyday I get emails and calls from coaches, athletes and parents looking for the secret to success. They get really disappointed when I tell them the truth. That is that there is no secret training set, no miracle powders, no super-supplements, no NASA developed training equipment – nothing – that guarantees sporting success except commitment. Giving 100% of your time, energy, resources, drive, enthusiasm and passion to the achievement of your sporting goal is the only real non negotiable in sport if winning is your aim. This article discusses commitment and challenges coaches and athletes to challenge themselves about where they fit on the Commitment Continuum.
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.
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?
I will be in South Africa from November 15th – November 29th 2010. Hope to catch up with all my friends, colleagues and Sports Coaching Brain fans while I am there. Wayne Goldsmith
