A fundamental aspect of becoming a great coach is understanding the difference between content and intent: understanding the difference between the science of coaching and the art of coaching. So much of great coaching comes from working with athletes as human beings and inspiring them to be more than they can be without our coaching.
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?
Positive Drug Tests in sport.
What sort of idiot trains hard for months or even years then:
That’s just it: they are idiots. Well most of them are anyway. Some are misguided. Some are lazy. Some just made a genuine mistake.
Positive Drug Tests in Sport: 6 Types of Drug Cheats and How to Recognise them.
I was recently asked to talk to a group of students about high performance sport. We discussed all the “usual” topics: talent identification, sports science, elite coach development and sports medicine.
One of the students asked me, “Is there a difference between Medicine (as in general practice medicine) and Sports Medicine as it exists in high performance sport”?
Remember how when we were kids everyone liked to eat cupcakes.
Then when we got older and a bit more health conscious we were told to give them up because of the sugar and flour and other stuff in them.
Then along comes a sports nutritionist who said “Muffins are a great food for athletes – nutritious, high carbohydrate energy foods”. So we all started eating them again even though they are basically still just big cupcakes.
What a big con.
Almost as big a con as Training Studies in Sports Science Research.
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.
There is a tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea who have never seen modern technology, who could not even imagine using the latest electronic tools, who can not comprehend western society concepts of computing, social media, high speed Internet links, laser technology or satellite navigation.
This tribe, believes that the best way – the only way – the way everyone must adopt to cut down a tree is to make an axe by lashing a sharp rock to a piece of wood. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries….this tribe knows for certain that the only way to cut down a tree is to use a hand made stone ax.
And then, one day, through the forest, comes a man from the USA carrying a chain saw…….
Where is Sports Coaching heading? Where will it be in 2030? What will the average coach be doing everyday on pool deck or on the court or at the track or on the field? This article looks at the Future of Sports Coaching and suggests that if you take a moment or two to consider where the world is heading, then you will also see where coaching will be in 20 years.
In part one of this post we discussed the possibility of Coaching Without Periodisation.
In part two we will look at an alternate way of working with athletes and helping each individual you coach to realise their full potential and achieve their training and performance goals.
Coach education is at the crossroads.
One thing is for certain, the way we have trained, educated and developed sports coaches in the past is not working. It has failed.
Let’s talk about a new approach in Coach Training, Education and Development: A Client Focused Approach.
Let’s talk about CoachT.E.D. (pronounced Coached): Coach Training, Education and Development.
And most importantly, let’s talk about training, educating and developing more coaches and better coaches: coaches who can provide every person involved in sport with the environment and the opportunity to develop a passion for sport, a life long love of physical fitness and activity and the chance to choose a path to realise their potential as athletes and human beings.
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.
There was a time when a new head was the solution to all problems in a high performance sports team.
Team not winning – get a new head coach.
Team’s culture not right – get a new head coach.
Team’s attitude and commitment flagging – get a new head coach.
Times have changed.
A new head coach is no longer the solution in high performance sport.
