There are five key elements in professional football these days:
1. Training
2. Playing
3. Recovery
4. Life Activities – e.g. work, study, family life, business.
5. Meetings!
Teams are spending more and more time meeting and discussing past games, future games and all the other games, training activities, travel and logistics issues involving the team. (more…)
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.
I have been lucky to be involved in high performance sport for the best part of 20 years.
I have been very very fortunate to work with Olympic Gold Medalists, World Champions, World Record Holders, Premiership Title Winners, World Cup Winners…champion athletes, teams and coaches in many different sports and in several different countries.
Quite often, when I do professional speaking or training with corporate or sporting groups, someone in the audience will ask, “What do all the winners have in common” or “From your experience, what things do all the great athletes, teams and coaches do that makes them the best”.
There are indeed some things all the great ones have in common: The Top 20 Tips on Being the Best: 20 years of experience in 500 words! (more…)
In professional sports where teams are subject to a “draft” system, it is common to talk about a “window of opportunity”, i.e. a year or two when the team has the realistic opportunity to win the title owing to the talent, maturity and experience of their players. For many teams “outside the window”, coaches and management will often talk about the “rebuilding phase” – a period where the team is re-building their playing ranks with the aim of giving them the opportunity to win again sometime in the future. This article looks at the concept of “rebuilding” and challenges it as a valid philosophy in professional sport.
Mental toughness is something everyone talks about in sport. But what is it? Mental toughness is the capacity of an athlete to do their job – i.e. to do the things they’ve trained to do – no matter what happens to them or what’s happening around them. Once you understand what mental toughness is – the good news is – you can coach it.
As the new decade starts, it is time to face the realities of the sports experience around the world.
The last decade, saw the most significant changes in society, in learning, in education, in technology and in social change that the world has experienced.
And, in general, sport has not kept pace with the extent or speed of the changes.
New Sport: Old Sport. The Decade of Client Focused Sport is Here. (more…)