Hot Topics

Lots of athletes go to the Olympic Games – very, very few come back with a medal or even a personal best performance.

Why?

Lack of Talent? Maybe.

Poor Skill? Possibly.

The wrong parents, i.e. Genetics? Could be.

But the main reason most of them don’t win a medal is that they made five dumb (and avoidable) mistakes in the period between their selection for the Olympic team and their Olympic Games competition.

Olympic Mistakes: The Top Five Dumb Things Athletes and Coaches do heading into an Olympic Games. (more…)

The Daily Athlete Training Environment D.A.T.E. is a term which is used to describe the day to day opportunities provided for an athlete to help realise their full potential. This article discusses the DATE concept and why the most important part of the DATE is the A….the athlete.

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”. (more…)

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:

1. Talent identification;
2. Talent recruitment;
3. Talent development.

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. (more…)