Here is a rough unedited review of my notes made at the recent 4 day UKsem conference at the ExCel centre. Great line up of speakers and vast amount of learning opportunities on offer…
Frank Ponissi: Building and maintaining team culture to maximise performance
“I’m not an expert, but I am experienced.”
Learn from others, challenge yourself
Maximising performance and potential – sustained success
Identify your philosophy and values, search for better ways
Get your off field right
No dickhead policy!
Hard work – strong character – decisive – communication
Keeping things in house – the bubble
Playing on emotions = short term success
Get back to routine as soon as possible – have strong foundation
Regular and honest quality communication
High work ethic
Recruit good people
Know your job – do your job
Strong team values – on and off field
Attention to detail
Be proactive not reactive
Be consistent in what we do
Effective development pathway programme
Strong leadership
Matthew Syed: The science of success
Brain is adaptable
The way you practice is important
Feedback
Craig Duncan: Player monitoring in football
Obsessed with injury? Injury prevention at cost of performance? Ruled by fear?
Danger vs opportunity
Maximising the performance and potential of every player
Service philosophy
Structure – lines of communication
Monitoring = reduce risk of overtraining and undertraining; reduce risk of injury => save money; improve performance
Team is a group of individuals, ensure no player gets left behind
What to monitor? What is effective? What will players adhere to?
If not going to use data, don’t collect it
Implementation – start slow
- Educate – players and coaches
- Players and staff need to see value
- Communicate
- Must have effective data management system
Issues – cost
- Only as good as player adherence
- Listen and observe
Darren Burgess: Performance monitoring in premiership football
Monitor total load and recovery + perceived load/recovery
Ice baths: if players don’t think they work, they don’t
Before you start – do the players understand?
Injuries can also be result of undertraining
Quantify work that you do – trends for winning games
Quality of information – consistent data on each individual player
Motivation? – make it competitive
Craig Duncan workshop: Monitoring training loads
Implement on any budget
Plan > implement > review
Balance work and recovery
Players vs athlete mentality. Individual sport athlete better at knowing body and filling out self-reports questionnaires
Numbers are there to help but don’t ignore your intuition
Be strong. Believe in the information you are collecting
Can sometimes work backwards from injury and look at data to see if anything shows up in retrospect
Movement dysfunction – biggest cause of injury not training load
Speak in coach language not sports science jargon
Our job to bridge gap to the manager
Educate, be humble, use communication skills
Give data back to players so they can see it
Satisfaction scores/ratings? Happy players play better
Session modelling – outcomes, targets
Daniel Coyle: The talent code
How do we get a little bit better today than we were yesterday?
Behavioural + environmental factors
1,000s of hours of intensive practice – values
Certain moments learning velocity increases
Reach – operate on edge of our ability
Mistakes used for learning. Sweet spot. Swift feedback
Myelin growth proportional to hours practiced
Speeds up signalling, speed of brain, changes brain circuits
Maximise reachfulness – embrace struggle
- encourage stealing
- educate
Fill the windshield – mix age groups
- choose Spartan over luxurious
- praise effort not ability
Shad Forsythe: Creating an athlete goal driven integrative performance team
Seamless integration
Athlete focused, here to serve
Control your attitude
Mindset – left + right brain
Struggle – motivation through education
80/20 mindset approach
Sleep/recovery – impact on injuries?
Movement connects everything
Speak the same language, create integration
Health first – injury prevention then performance enhancement
1 prevented injury ~£80-450K saved
Nick Grantham workshop: Prepare to perform
Flexibility and mobility
Body control and activation
=> performance enhancement
Activate – integrate – reinforce
Coaching is education – players and coaches
Vern Gambetta workshop: Periodisation
Sequence and timing, interaction and interdependence
Optimal performance at the appointed time
Periodisation – big picture
Planning – goals and objectives
Programming – training sessions
Reality is competition drives system
Must know and predict number of competitions to achieve peak performance
Window of adaptation: developing athlete = big; elite = small
Progression – like a jigsaw not a staircase, fitting pieces together
Very focused and directed small units of work can have profound effects
Stimulus threshold; optimal vs maximal
Recoverability – highly individual and event specific
Recognise gender different, females need more strength training
“24 hour athlete” – train the whole person
Maintenance is like a slow leak
Dulling the knife – speed is always important even in endurance
Tapering – shouldn’t be like walking a tightrope
Iceberg effect – it’s what you can’t see
Peaking – “starts with 1st training session” – Gary Winckler
“Play like you train” – Dean Benton, Brumbies
Charles van Commenee: What I expect from support staff
Support staff – army of experts, service providers
Why are you the best person? Expertise
Team player – respect, embrace differences, trust
Contribute of a winning climate – cutting edge
No opinions in public – success is down to the athlete
Do your job but be invisible
Accept uncomfortable environment – little job security
Performance focused – competition, rest, recovery, winning
Athlete centred – help athlete perform, coach leads
Coach driven – “knows the way, shows the way, goes the way”
Serviced supported – ask critical questions, challenge
Coaching is 24/7 activity. Filter information
Prepare athletes not to be dependent. Wants vs needs
Win what’s most important – under pressure
Give 100% to get 100%
Accoutantability, professionalism, no excuses, optimism
Clarity – rules of engagement. Avoid overlap
Team work – interdependency, common goal
Hire good people. Good people make it work.
Who is doing what and when? Programme
Barry Fudge: Performance science in elite track and field athletics and its support of world class coaching practice
Marginal gains – don’t forget process before that
Altitude training – multiple exposures are necessary
- coach education
- mixed altitude strategy; multiple training venues
Paul Brice: Track and field: the critical determinant of performance: biomechanical perspective
Write on 1 page what exactly it is you do
What’s the most important factor? Critical things
Balance speed/strength/technique/power => performance
Utilisation of strength
Must obey key biomechanical principles
Critical determinants of performance
John Neal: More important that winning
Winning? Gold medal: 22 million to 1
Skill vs character
Obsession with skill acquisition
Brain physiology changes when under pressure
Improve people’s character – coaching
Develop a character matrix – what characteristics do you want in someone you coach? Core values not cognitive
Perceptions > emotions > beliefs > thoughts > values
Play for the front of the shirt not the back of the shirt
“What you demand of others, so should you do of yourself”.
Scott Drawer: Solutions without problems – the impact of technology in high performance sport
Understand the performance
Understand the individual athlete
Develop the technical plan
Data, information, knowledge, wisdom, performance
Captology – using technology to change behaviour. Impact
Kelvin Giles: The quest for physical literacy
Repeatable excellence – high performance
Physiological, psychological and structural limits
Building blocks – movement efficiency. CV health, nutrition
Consistent, permanent
Produce, reduce, stabilise forces. Right place, right time
Foundation movements eg squat (1 and 2 leg) lunge, brace.
Coach education
Basic actions, land, hop, jump; sport specific eg agility
Journey; change is difficult – keep trying
Vern Gambetta: The necessity for the art and science in coaching
More about what we don’t know than what we know
Hu – the human element, sometimes unexplainable
Coaching makes a difference
Coaching: art and science – balance
Spot light on athlete
Emotional intelligence – communication
Coaching eye – be careful of confirmation bias – see what you are looking for
What you see is shaped by your perception and experience
Ask questions
“50% of what we know is wrong, we don’t know which 50%” – Tim Noakes
Communication – coaches need to facilitate within performance team
Objective analysis of what coach ‘feels’ and ‘sees’
Testing – measure what is measurable but beware, needs to be done on a systematic basis as part of programme
Just because it’s measurable doesn’t mean it’s meaningful
Information – simple, format and style, accurate and reliable, urgency, value
Have to ask why? When? How? Who?
Fergus Connolly: Performance optimisation in team sport – the art of science
What can you use? Optimise what you have first
Every athlete has to be treated as an individual
Compare individuals to themselves
Decision making – informed by sport science
A lot of great coaches started as teachers
Learning – earning their 10,000 hours to become an expert
How do great coaches use the information? When and where and with who
How often do you watch the game afterwards?
Improve performance. Reduce injury. Improve decision making
Information (5i’s): instant; integrated; important; individual; intuitive
Coaching – driving – looking through the windscreen
Sport science – info on the dashboard
Balance between science and art
Trying to produce a legacy and a masterpiece
Look at performance and work backwards
Interrogate the data, don’t take it at face value
Experience and expertise
Solve problems
Model the process, start small, simple, low tech
Strength and Conditioning Coach delivering world class strategies proven to decrease injury potential and improve performance.
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