sporting-parents

Hello Tennis Parents – balancing love and 40-love

 

 

Hello Tennis Parents.

Put your hand up if you answer “YES” to two or more questions in the Tennis Parents Ten Question Quiz:

  • Do you believe your child will be a successful, well paid professional tennis player?
  • Do you tell other parents that your child is “a high achiever”?
  • Do you talk about tennis at least once a day with your child over meals or away from the court?
  • Are you prepared to sacrifice your child’s education so they have a great chance of becoming a professional player?
  • Do you regularly ask the coach to work your child harder or to change something about their game?
  • Do you get emotionally involved in your child’s successes and failures on the training court?
  • Do you allow your child to show a bad attitude, poor sportsmanship and / or a poor temperament (e.g. racket abuse)?
  • Have you ever argued or fought with parents of other kids about the results of a game?
  • Do you refer to your child as “my son or my daughter the tennis player”?
  • Have you spent more than $500.00 on a single tennis racket for your child?

Well, here’s the bad news. If you answered “YES” to two or more of the above, the chances of your child becoming a successful professional tennis player are…………………NIL or very close to it. (more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

It’s not the workout that wins…you have to win the workout.

One of the greatest myths in sport is that it is the workout that wins.

That is, that the secret to sporting success lies in how you manipulate volume, intensity and frequency.

Coaches spend years and years crafting their workouts, building invincible programs and creating the perfect combination of work and rest that will deliver them and their athletes the success they dream of.

And it is largely a myth.

It is not the workout that wins…you have to win the workout. (more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

Engagement and Coaching: The Key to Success

 

Engagement is the current coaching buzzword.

Engagement is like Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time: many people are aware of it, some have studied it but very, very few understand it.

Yet, understanding engagement, what it is, how it works and how to increase your athlete’s level of engagement in your coaching program is critical to achieving the level of success you are striving for.

Engagement and Coaching is, the Key to Sporting Success. (more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago

Coaching = Engagement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have all done it.

We have all been involved in debates, discussions and deliberations about what coaching is.

Some people say it is about teaching and learning skills. Others say it’s about sports science and applying a scientific method approach to planning and periodisation. Others say it’s about communication and caring. Still others believe coaching is about emotions like passion or it’s about values like commitment, honesty, integrity, humility, courage and discipline.

To add to the confusion, you get the coaching “zealots” who are promoting one type of coaching philosophy over another (in an effort to create a commercial success from their theories about coaching) who are convinced coaching is about the ABC Technique of Coaching or Homer Simpson’s Guide to Effective Coaching or some whiz bang made up word like Coaching Readiness for Accelerated Performance (I hope you spotted the acronym)!

Coaching is about one thing above all others…engagement. (more…)

By Wayne Goldsmith, ago