Category: player development

technical, tactical, physical

  • Retirement, LTAD, and the early-stage coach

    In a fascinating article in Sport Magazine last week (“Life After Sport: A study“), Steven Sylvester, former Middlesex cricketer and now chartered psychologist working with world champion athletes, explained the problems faced by full-time athletes as they make the transition into retirement.

    As a recreational/community coach and sports fan, I am not sure that I have ever even thought about the challenges facing a professional athlete at the end of their full-time playing career.

    But perhaps we can help by trying to instil the “growth mindset” into our charges at an early age – the idea that any challenge can be overcome if it is approached in the right way.

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  • Concepts to challenge your approach to coaching – from Dan Abrahams

    I attended the SportInMind Football Psychology Workshop, with Dan Abrahams, partly because I have just started onto the football coaching pathway, but mostly because I am becoming more and more interested in what Dan describes as “human and performance psychology – the internal that drives the external.”

    And I have to say that Dan did exactly what he set out to do – challenged (in a good way) my own approach to how I coach. (more…)

  • The Future of Cricket Coaching – what next for coaches working in schools and clubs?

    The Ashes series just completed has been a sobering experience for anyone who cares about the England cricket team.  So much so, that I don’t really want to say anything more about it, now, other than to wish the coaches and senior players every success as they sit down to work out a plan for 2014 and beyond.

    But as a coach working mostly with Under 11s, I am looking a lot further ahead. There’s not a lot I can do this winter that will help England regain the Ashes in 2015.  But as coaches, we can look ahead to Ashes tours, and Test championships, and T20 World Cups, in 2025.

    Where do you see the game in 10 years’ time? And how can we, as coaches, prepare young players for that future?

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