From Gold Minds for Coaches & Athletes

Recently I got an email from someone saying, “Hi Wayne. You seem to have a lot to say about what people are doing wrong in high performance sport. How about you “put your money where your mouth is” and post a list of things people can do to enhance the performance of their athletes, teams and programs.”
OK. I did.

1. Train harder;
2. Train smarter;
3. Train harder and smarter;
4. Improve your leadership skills;
5. Consistently out-prepare everyone in your competition;
6. Dream bigger;
7. Believe in yourself;
8. Back yourself;
9. Get up faster when you are knocked down or face adversity;
10. Get tougher mentally;
11. Never accept the first “no” from a sports administrator or bureaucrat - just fight harder;
12. Become outstanding at finding and retaining talented athletes;
13. Develop the most creative thinking skills in your sport: the best ideas win;
14. Be more passionate about success than anyone else in your sport;
15. Never become complacent: success is a moving target;
16. Enthusiasm, passion, desire and attitude are contagious diseases: are yours worth catching?
17. Use sports science intelligently, effectively and with intent;
18. Get to know your athletes better than they know themselves;
19. Collaborate with your athletes - don’t coach at them;
20. Listen;
21. Take care of your own health – physical, mental and spiritual;
22. Be committed to intelligent change and continuous improvement;
23. Make friends far more often than you make enemies;
24. Develop a network of coaches in other sports and speak with them regularly;
25. Leave your ego at the door - ego kills progress and limits creativity;
26. Read books by great leaders, great thinkers and great philosophers: there are lessons to be learnt everywhere;
27. Go back and read Number 1 on this list again – you have to work harder than anyone else;
28. There are no short cuts: anything promising double figure improvement (e.g. 10% or more) in high performance sport is more fictitious than Lord of the Rings and you aren’t a hobbit;
29. Develop a group of close friends outside of your sport and don’t talk to them about sport;
30. Sleep and eat well everyday;
31. Find a sports science network group who respect you, want to collaborate with you and will growwith you;
32. Adopt an integrated approach to identifying and developing talent: physical, mental, technical, tactical, cultural and genetic;
33. Teach one new lesson to every athlete every day;
34. Give and seek feedback often;
35. Hate losing – but learn from it, grow from it and improve as a consequence;
36. Take smart risks with your program, your ideas and your coaching;
37. See an athlete’s parents as partners in performance not as adversaries or just paying clients;
38. Create the culture you want to coach in: start with your own attitude then “infect” everyone around you;
39. Accelerate your learning faster than your opposition: from learning comes change, from change comes improvement, from improvement comes winning;
40. Take up another passion - i.e. other than your sport – to focus your mind and intelligence on;
41. Get to know the techniques, skills, rules and regulations of your sport better than anyone in the world;
42. Learn from the legend coaches of your sport - to see further than giants, you must stand upon their shoulders;
43. Keep records, refer back to them often and learn from them: those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them;
44. Find a mentor - someone whose skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes and philosophies arecomplimentary (i.e. different) to your own;
45. Find someone to mentor: nothing teaches like teaching;
46. Become a master of the Internet, social networking and all current forms of communication: communicate the way your athletes want to be communicated with;
47. Don’t think, speak or act in absolutes.…there is no such things as “always, “never”, “must” and “only” in high performance sport: challenge everything!
48. Learn enough about sports science, sports medicine, technology and strength and conditioning to look your staff in the eye and challenge them with a level of credibility and understanding;
49. Hire intelligently: hire on attitude and passion, then train the skills you need;
50. And number 50………an oldie but a goodie….never, ever give up. Persistence and perseverance usually beat talent, money, facilities and potential.

There you go.
What are your top 50? Let me know – let’s see if we can add another 500 to my list!

 

Wayne Goldsmith