Wayne Goldsmith

Wayne Goldsmith is a performance focused coaching professional with more than 25 years experience working with some of the world's leading athletes, coaches and teams. Wayne offers a wide range of coaching services for professional coaches, corporate executives and organizational leaders which are based on his experience delivering winning performances in high pressure sporting environments across the globe.

Becoming a Great Coach – What’s holding you back?

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.

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

Responsibility for Performance in Professional Football: Where the Buck Stops!

The key to understanding why professional football teams win or lose is understanding who is most responsible for the team’s performance at any point in time. In this article, we suggest there are four key points in every football season where the primary responsibility for the performance of team can be clearly identified. Ultimately, the players must accept the responsibility for winning or losing the big games at the end of the season but it is the responsibility of the non-playing members of the team to make sure the players are ready: physically, mentally, technically and tactically to win when it matters.

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

Training Based Research Studies: the Biggest Con in sport since the Muffin.

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. (more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

Improve your Coaching by NOT Coaching

By Wayne Goldsmith |

You read right – improve your coaching by NOT coaching.

Coaching improves performance.

But too much coaching – over coaching – can have a negative influence on performance.

Who OVER coaches?

Typically five types of coaches OVER coach:

  1. Young, inexperienced coaches who are trying too hard;
  2. Coaches who lack real belief in themselves and who try to make up for it by giving too much information. These coaches will often want to be liked – and feel the more coaching they do, the more the athletes will like them;
  3. Coaches who lack belief in their athletes and feel the need to control every element of preparation and performance;
  4. Coaches who are being evaluated or assessed and aim to impress by being SEEN to control every element of the training session, i.e. they believe that great coaching is talking more;
  5. EGO driven coaches who see athletes / players as a vehicle to promote themselves and their reputations.

(more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

The Player Potential Profile – an integrated, practical approach to Talent Identification and Recruitment in High Performance Sport – Part One

Every now and again, a client will ask me to come up with a new way of doing something to help them achieve their performance goals.

In recent years, a real focus for me has been developing innovative talent identification, recruitment and retention strategies for professional sporting teams.

These next three posts will outline a concept called the Player Potential Profile – an integrated, practical approach to Talent Identification and Recruitment in High Performance Sport. (more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago