Recent Articles and Videos for Sport
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Marquette Makes Leaders
Leadership is not a role it’s an attitude; a state of mind, a way of behaving that inspires people around you to follow, hold similar beliefs, live similar values and work towards common goals.
Coaching Insights to Develop a Competitive Advantage
Got a spare couple of minutes on the way to training or the weekend match? Catch the conversation between Bo Hanson and Adam Haniver on The Boxing Coaches’ Podcast. What really makes this podcast worth listening to is the way that Adam, host of The Boxing Coaches’ Podcast, asks Bo questions that surface the connections between the mechanisms and the outcomes that drive performance.
Ensuring Your Game Preparation is Complete
Why would you leave a gap in your game preparation, asks Kyle McDonald, Mental Performance Consultant. He questions why some athletes and coaches have a plan for physical and technical development, but not for mental growth and mastery. Kyle prepares some of Canada’s best and most competitive ice hockey athletes and teams for their professional, Olympic and Paralympic campaigns. In this article he reveals the impact of stress and pressure resilience on performance and underscores it as the #1 differentiator between elite athletes. He details the essential precursor to mental skills acquisition, the link between hardiness and high-performance and the ideal age to start mental skills training.
Shining the Spotlight on the Performance and Wellness Institute
On a daily basis, the Performance and Wellness Institute is buzzing with athletes practicing their verticals, leaping between stations, pushing their strength towards numbers that were previously unimaginable, while rehabbers are moving with increasing degrees and fluidity. But this isn’t what distinguishes the Institute, enter Crisa Renard and Ryan Wasilawski, these two Exercise Physiologists and their investment in every individual is what’s behind the success stories that clients are quick to share.
Exceptional Outcomes, Unexpected Approach
Extraordinary vertical jump heights, split-second qualifying times, personal bests; these are the statistics flying around the floor at Acceleration – the high-performance development centres, owned and founded by Stewart Briggs, located in Queensland, Australia.
Debunking The Myth of Leadership
Leadership is not anchored to a nominal position or the domain of the select few within a team, according to Sarah Leberman, Professor of Leadership at Massey University, New Zealand. Also a Fulbright Scholar and the author of highly significant research on leadership, Leberman specialises in applying the knowledge surrounding leadership to the sport space and in particular women and girls.
6 Reasons to Rethink 360 Observer Feedback Opportunities
The best teams take time to reward what’s going well, review what needs to be improved upon, and set plans to achieve future success. The same is true for individuals. How do they do this? One very effective way is to get feedback from others. Getting feedback from others in a formal way is called 360 Observer Feedback. The process is often perceived negatively, avoided by many, approached with trepidation or as a critical experience people must endure. BUT, we think it’s misunderstood and with some re-examining you too will know the value of 360 Observer Feedback.
Combatting Athlete Isolation
Powerful new research published recently reports that super-connected Gen Y and Z are lacking critical real-world interaction, making them the loneliest generations ever. The report emphasizes the importance of social interaction so we ask Senior Consultant, Bo Hanson, about the value of face-to-face communication, why it’s critical in sport and how coaches can make it a central part of their program.
How Skills from Sport Transfer to the Workplace
Every year thousands of students graduate college, but we’d argue, they don’t all graduate with as many employable skills as student-athletes. The National Center for Education statistics records that in 2018, some 2.9 million students graduated college but, according to the NCAA, only 2% of college students are student-athletes. This makes student-athletes a rare commodity.
Hungarian Sport Reaches For New Heights
Szombathely might be 15,588 kms from the Sunshine Coast, but it’s home to our newest consultant client, Szabolcs Hollósi. Experienced in brokering change, Szabolcs now has the tools and resources to partner with Hungarian sport on a national level, creating opportunities for athletes and coaches to take their performance to exciting new heights based on DISC Behavioral profiling.
From Boat to Business
What people find most interesting about Bo and me, is that our family live on a boat and that we’ve built an international business based in the competitive sports industry from a beach town in Queensland (Australia). What isn’t immediately obvious is that these two very different aspects to our lives are deeply connected.
Get WISE on a TOUGH Challenge
Coaches are unanimous in saying their athletes are lacking resilience, they’re not as ‘tough’ as their teams in previous times. And, not just physically tough, mentally tough. But, do todays Gen Y & Z athletes understand toughness? Do they know that the mental framework that lets you complete every training session, perform in a competition, and get you through a 20 second sprint are all unique mental skills? Have they got strategies to rely on when things don’t go to plan in the middle of competition? Are they resilient enough to bounce back from injury? Our goal is to get wise on this tough challenge.
The How, What and Why of Athlete Leadership – Tips for Coaches
So, you’ve just decided on the leadership role or roles within your team. Now the journey begins! What do you want your leaders to do? How do you expect them to carry out the role? You might have your own ideas and that’s fantastic. Maybe you’ve coached a team with effective leadership, and you know what works. Or perhaps you’d like your athletes to role model someone around them. But, if you’re wondering what effective leadership looks like in sport, I’ll give you a short method that I know works well. It’s crucial to know what’s important, what impacts performance.
Embracing Values from Inside the Sports Team
There are some non-negotiable principles teams need to have in place if they are to achieve success. Firstly, every unique team must have a set of values they agree to live by. Secondly, they have rules to co-operate within a framework. What’s interesting is how many of these teams fail to live their values, or only live them to some degree. The special few, live them to the degree required to achieve success.
Directing Team Culture
Fundamentally, coaches need to be involved in directing team culture to ensure that the culture surrounding their athletes or program supports the level of performance and behavior that athletes need to succeed.
The Coaching Connection
Sport Psychologist and Mental Performance Coach, Dr. Ed Garrett or Dr. G. as he’s known, explains the link between the coaching connection and behavioral types. His simple explanations and situation-specific examples make the process easy to understand and his suggested solutions will have an immediate impact on your coaching.
Equipping Athletes to Evolve
When we think CrossFit, gyms and performance coaching, most people immediately think physical, but Mental and Fitness Performance Coach, Jared Cohen, is achieving exceptional results using mental strategies in combination with physical improvement.
Cumberlands’ Commitment to Coach Development
The University of the Cumberlands is deeply committed to the all-round development of its student-athletes. That commitment compelled a multidisciplinary team from within the University to design and deliver a professional development workshop for 36 of its coaches.
Accountability Key to Championship Form
After a stellar playing career that included 4 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, Kristi Stefanoni, Head Coach of the UMass Softball Program, has solidified her position as a stellar coach with another successful year and being rewarded with the title of 2018 Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year.
Excellence in Sport Industry Collaborations
Writing ranked #1 in the world next to your name is a rare honor. Writing it 2 years in a row means that you understand how to get it right, you’re an innovator and you stay at the forefront of your field. Loughborough University, the #1 University in the World for Sports Related Subjects, gets teaching the business of sport right.
How Happiness Affects Athletes
A 75 year-long Harvard study reveals that authentic, honest and reliable relationships are the source of happiness, physical and mental health. In a TED Talk on the study, one of the longest continuous studies of adult development in the world, Director, Robert Waldinger’s discusses the findings and the popular talk has recorded some 13 million views. In this article we speak to Athlete Assessments’ Senior Consultant, Bo Hanson, about what these important findings mean for athletes, teams and coaches.
What to Look for in Losses
I was listening to a podcast with a successful Australian cyclist who had won an incredible 11 world titles, but, it wasn’t these titles that shaped her as a competitor, it was the 29 world titles that she contested and lost.
Google’s Management Tips Translated to Coaching
Google, the #1 search engine in the world, ranked the top 10 attributes common to its best managers. We found that those behaviors run parallel to characteristics displayed by the most successful leaders in sport. Google’s findings support our knowledge that the best in the world reach that rank because of their expertise in people management, not just technology, equipment or physical capabilities.
Athlete Assessments’ Team Day
Every team needs to set aside time to re-connect, review goals and revisit values. Athlete Assessments is no different. We have four Team Days a year and the first one for 2019 saw us rock climbing, getting to know each other a little better from a DISC perspective and making some tough “Decisions” over a lunch menu!
Engagement & Excellence in Sport and Recreation Management
The team at Texas A&M University-Commerce encourage engagement, energy and work ethic in all of their Health and Human Performance students. Faculty work together to deliver exceptional outcomes, making an immediate impact on students’ lives and their professional careers. In this article we talk to Dr Clay Bolton and Dr Anthony Rosselli about their curriculum, students, internships and building those all-important networks.
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