Great Coaching – Great Coaches: How to Be the Best of the Best.

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.

The Top 20 Tips on Being the Best: 20 years of experience in 500 words!

 

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…)

The Rebuilding Phase..the biggest cop out in sport.

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.

New Sport:Old Sport. The Decade of Client Focused Sport is Here.

 

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…)

Thinking Outside the Box in Coaching in High Performance Sport – Creativity is King!

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…….  (more…)