Tag: Performance Science

The Coaching Team.

Gone are the days of the “GURU” coaches.

Sure, the great names of coaching have all been “one man bands” – strong, decisive, authoritarian, leadership focused head coaches who controlled every aspect of the team’s performance.

However, elite sport has developed at an incredible rate over the past twenty years and the knowledge and skills required to win an elite sporting competition are greater than any one person can bring to the table.

Think of the advances in sports science, sports medicine, analysis, IT, nutrition, psychology and technology since the 1980s.

How can we expect that any one person can be THE expert in all performance areas plus coach the team, deal with the media, work with Club Board and Executive, recruit new players, talk to sponsors, meet the fans etc etc etc?

So – the Coaching Team and Performance Team concepts are born.

The sporting world has gone Recovery mad: ice baths, Sports drinks, Gels, high-pressure showers, massage……..it has gotten to the point where some athletes and coaches are putting Recovery before Hard Training. So what is Recovery? Why is it important? And most importantly what is the role of Recovery in enhancing the competition performance of athletes?

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.

Greatness is something that all high performance coaches crave. They pursue it with passion and strive to be considered one of the coaches who achieved success at the highest level of their sport. But what is greatness? Where can you find it? What does it look like? And can you measure it? This article discusses greatness in coaching and presents ten fundamental characteristics of greatness to help every coach realise their potential and fulfil their destiny.

We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential part of being a successful athlete.

The ability to perform under pressure, the capacity to remain confident and resilient when competition conditions get tough, the skill to be able to relax and stay focused when feeling pain and fatigue in competition, concentration, visualization……coaches and athletes are unanimous that spending time developing mental skills is time well spent.

However, figuring out the best way to develop mental skills – particularly mental skills which can directly enhance the competition performance of athletes is another matter.

We all think working with a Sports Psychologist is a good idea but Sports Psychologists are like life partners……we know that having one is probably a good idea but it is next to impossible to find a good one.

Testing athletes has become a multi-million dollar industry. Coaches and athletes can buy testing programs, testing equipment, testing manuals, testing systems and testing tools to test any athlete, anywhere, anytime and for any reason. But, it’s not the testing that’s important: it’s how the testing applies to enhancing the competition performance of the athlete that really matters. This article discusses testing from a holistic perspective and challenges coaches, athletes and sports science professionals to think before they test.