The Teesra

Category: coaching

  • on culture – core values and clear purpose

    I have just listened to a webinar by Dr Wade Gilbert, hosted by Human Kinetics, in which Dr Gilbert presented a toolkit to help make adherence to the core values central to the culture of the team or organisation – to “normalise the abnormal”, as he put it.

    • define & repeatedly articulate the core values
    • actively teach the core values
      • often this will mean the coach modelling the desired values
    • recruit players who already share the core values (not always possible at every level, admittedly)
    • reward appropriate behaviours (and punish backsliding)

  • Team building – numbers and culture

    Your pre-season planning will be well in hand, now, I’m sure. Winter nets in full swing, working parties planned to spruce up the pavilion and repair the sight screens, grant applications in place.

    It will soon be time to think about selecting the team for the first fixtures. How many players do you need? The obvious answer is 11, of course. But how many of them do you need to be in form and making a contribution each week?

    In a typically insightful article last year, Ed Smith quoted Sir Alex Ferguson as saying that he needed only eight players performing well to win a game.

    Just eight. And Smith gives examples of teams that have been successful with contributions from an even smaller proportion of their players.

    Which is not to say that Sir Alex would ever have sent a team onto the pitch with only eight players, nor that the other three simply stood around for 90 minutes and did nothing.

    We do definitely need 11 players. But what should we expect from the three or four who won’t be scoring runs or taking wickets, and how do we prepare them to play that role? (more…)

  • 2014 – nearly over (3): Sports psychology – making it work in 2015

    One of the challenges on the CPD courses was to design sessions and interventions to support and development mental strengths.  We covered the “4 Cs” (Concentration, Control, Commitment and Confidence) on the level 2 course, but at a very superficial level, without really thinking about how to coach them.

    And this might prove to be the key to this difficult topic – rather than trying to “teach” Concentration, or Commitment, the development of mental skills needs to be consciously included into a holistic training programme.

    Easy to write, less easy to put into action.  So my challenge for 2015 is to integrate mental skills alongside technical, tactical and physical, for players of all ages and abilities.

    (more…)