Sport is not complicated... but too often we, as coaches, complicate it. In my experience, this happens in different ways. In individual sports, some coaches get mired in technical intricacies, and demand techniques are executed in a particular way. In team sports, it can be an over-focus on team tactics or strategy during training to [...]
Coaches – We Need To Listen Better
When it comes to coaching, we are too often judged by our ability to talk. We believe that we need to take the knowledge out of our head, give it to our athletes, and watch them improve. We talk about about team selection, athletes, tactics and strategies, what we would do in a certain situation, [...]
Book Club – June 2020
Most of these books have been discussed in our email Book Club, which recommends about 3 books per month. These are usually based around sports, coaching, leadership and personal development.If you are fortunate enough to find yourself with a little bit of time on your hands at the moment - perhaps you are not having [...]
Coaches – Are You Growing With Your Athletes?
In sport, we can get too bogged down with the roles and responsibilities of the coach. Sometimes we can get too academic or philosophical about what their job is. However, I think we can agree that they are responsible for helping an athlete get better (and we will all have diverging opinions of what "helping", [...]
Coaches – Empathy Is Vital When Working With Young People
Working in sport, I often see really good coaches who are really bad at working with young people. Some believe that content is King; that we can deliver the same training, in the same way, to adults and children and expect to see the same improvements in performance. To truly be a great coach of [...]
Sports Clubs – Why Do You Exist?
Over the past 9 years I have been so fortunate to work with a large number of sports clubs in a variety of different sports. Regardless of the sport, many of these clubs share something in common. That is, they don't know the answer to a simple question: Why do you exist? Now, I am [...]
Coaches – Stop Using Your Qualification As A Shield
"What are you doing to get better?" is one of my favourite questions to ask coaches. Most often the answer is based around the number of hours they are putting in every week, or the number of different athletes they are working with. Although time on task is important, it can often be a false [...]
Are We Recognising Talent Too Young?
I was once lucky enough to visit Everton FC's training ground, which was exactly as you would imagine a Premier League team's multi-million pound training facility to be - top of the range, innovative, with incredible attention of detail. It seems no stone is left upturned when it comes to developing talent. As part of [...]
Sports Clubs – Retention Is More Important Than Growth.
When it comes to involvement in sport, we are still using growth as the measure of success. Government and sports governing bodies will use the increase in participants as a badge of honour, to prove how healthy they are. We have increased participation by 10% this year, therefore our sport must be doing well. I [...]
Coaches – How You Make Someone Feel Is More Important Than What You Know.
A lot has been written about the impact of technology in society today, particularly smart phones and social media. One of the biggest changes has been that we now have the answer to any question we might want to answer in our pocket. All we need to do is Google it. For sports - and [...]
