Sports Thoughts

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * High performance isn’t something you get out of people. It’s something you give to them. * Culture is what you do - and what people do screams louder than anything on the walls. * The only athlete who can’t get better is the one who isn’t there. I was honoured to be the first guest on the new Coaching Life Podcast with Liz Pickworth, Editor-in-Chief o...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * The hard-versus-welfare debate is built on a false choice and it’s costing good coaches their confidence. * Both approaches get the athlete to try again. Only one makes them want to. * You can be relentless about standards while staying relaxed, smiling and at ease. That’s not softness. That’s a coaching skill. I was talking to a coaching colleague th...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * Facilities, money and equipment get named as sports’ biggest obstacles. Your real constraint is invisible. * The biggest problems I see in sport are personality conflicts and petty political squabbles. * The things that unite us are greater than the things that divide us. It’s one line, and it works in every country I’ve used it. Ask anyone in sport w...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * Nobody consumes anything in long form any more, including your players. * Connect, Engage, Inspire - ten seconds each and all three fit in half a minute. * Twenty athletes. Twenty minutes across a week. That’s the whole job. In the distant past, coaches would get a group of young athletes together and run a “motivation” session for forty-five minutes...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * Value words are free. Any organisation can produce ten of them before morning tea. * A value only becomes real when it’s backed by observable, measurable, learnable behaviours. * Responsibility is about me. Accountability is about you. You need both or neither works. Part of how I make a living is being invited in by professional football teams, sport...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * AI is a tool. We have done tools before and we survived every one of them. * The brief you give AI determines the quality of the information you get back. * It will never replace coaches - but it can hand coaches their time back and that’s the real prize. It’s the question I get more than any other now. Every week, in every country, in every sport. Ne...

Three important messages: * The crisis is no longer local - every sport in every country is reporting the same four problems. * The solution is no longer contested - fun, friends, families, experience. The research is in and it’s growing. * The hard part was never knowing what to do . It’s making it work where you are. I’ve travelled around the world working in sport for a long, long time. Profess...

Three important messages: * The idea that every child is destined to be an elite athlete never made sense - and never will. * Success in junior sport isn’t talent . It’s retention. The only kid who can’t improve is the one who isn’t there. * After conversations with national bodies around the world, the pathway model is finally being abandoned. Better late than never. I’ve been writing about sport...

It's been too long since I made something just for you. This is one of the most powerful lessons I teach - and I wanted my paid subscribers to have it. Thank you for being here. By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * The one power we never lose is how we choose to respond to what happens to us. * A setback is neutral - it’s the response that shapes everything. * Your job is to spot the tea...

Three important messages: * We train coaches in physiology and periodisation and almost nothing in the part of the job that actually matters. * The experience of sport is delivered by coaches - so developing them is the whole game. * It’s live, it’s built for beginners and there’s a founding-coaches offer this week. For thirty years I’ve said the same thing to anyone who’d listen, and plenty who w...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * The most effective coach development I’ve ever done isn’t at a course or conference - it’s coaching coaches in context. * Coaches learn three ways: by coaching, by working alongside other coaches and by solving problems in context. * The challenge isn’t knowing this - it’s scaling it. This is the third in a series on coach education I’ve done over the...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * Coaches can get information anywhere - your job is to create an experience they can’t get online. * The way most coaching courses are run actively works against learning. * Anything that can be made practical should be made practical. This one is for the coach developers and coach educators - those of you running coaching courses, workshops, seminars...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * Most coach education is built around delivering content , not around what coaches - and sport actually needs. * Participation and retention are sports’ biggest problems right now - and both come down to how the experience of sport is being delivered. * The experience of sport is delivered by one group above all others: coaches. I’ll be honest with you...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * You already know exactly how to look after an athlete - you do it every day. * The advice you give your team applies, word for word, to you. * Stop being their coach for a moment and become a member of your own squad. One of the great things about the last few years is that more and more people are talking openly about coaches’ health, coaches’ wellbe...

By Wayne Goldsmth Three important messages: * You can’t change everybody - no matter how good you are. * You certainly can’t change everybody at once. * And no matter how you go about it, it takes time. I want to talk to all the coaches out there. And the message is simple. Stop beating yourself up. Stop being so hard on yourself. Stop being so demanding of yourself . Be a little bit kind to yours...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three important messages: * At 11, 12, 13, 14 our ability to predict senior talent is nowhere near as good as we think it is. * Worshipping early physical talent is one of the great mistakes in junior sport. * Our job is to elevate kids - not shatter them. This is my first video post in a little while. I’ve been travelling and doing some other things, but we’re back to regular s...

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: * Why most coaches stop improving after their first few years; * The four habits of coaches who keep getting better; * How to build a professional development system that actually works. The Plateau Problem: Most coaches improve rapidly in their first few years. Then they plateau. Same sessions. Same methods. Same results. It’s the old saying: It’s not ten years of experience....

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: * Why technical knowledge is no longer your competitive advantage; * The three skills that separate good coaches from great ones; * How to keep developing when no one is developing you. Technical Knowledge Is Now Free: Everything you learned in your coaching course is now available online. For free. You can pick up your phone and learn anytime, anywhere and mostly without payi...

Your child isn’t the next Tiger Woods. They’re not the next Serena Williams. They’re not the next Michael Phelps. Your child is a wonderful, unique, potentially incredible human being — different from anyone who’s ever lived. You don’t want them to be the NEXT anyone. You want them to be happy, healthy and caring. Following their heart. Pursuing their dreams. Living a long, fulfilled life. If they...

Some of the best coaches I’ve ever worked with were elite athletes. And some of the worst coaches I’ve ever worked with were elite athletes. Being great at playing a sport doesn’t automatically make you great at coaching it. The Pros: What Former Athletes Bring Credibility: They’ve been there. Done that. Won that. Athletes listen differently to someone who’s walked the path. Empathy: They know wha...

By Wayne Goldsmith Introduction: Your athletes look great in warm-up and drills but fall apart when it matters because you’ve trained them to only perform skills when they’re comfortable. Let’s try something different! Three Critical Learning Points: * The typical session structure — warm-up, drills, skills, THEN conditioning means skills are only ever practised fresh. * If athletes only own skill...

By Wayne Goldsmith Introduction: We spend thousands of hours building stronger bodies and almost zero time building stronger minds. Three Critical Learning Points: * The brain is a “muscle”- “a mental muscle” — and like any muscle, it needs systematic training, not just occasional attention. * Mental conditioning belongs IN your training sessions, not in a separate “sports psych” add-on lecture. *...

By Wayne Goldsmith With everyone trying to sell you everything — I thought I’d give you three things that will make you an even better coach. Three practical strategies you can do right now to enhance your coaching. And they’re free. I call them the 3 Ls of Coaching: 1. LOOK When an athlete walks towards you, make a conscious decision to look directly into their eyes. With some athletes that can b...

Let’s talk about Talent Identification. Most countries, all professional clubs, and even a lot of schools do some form of talent identification. And most of them are doing it wrong. Let me explain. If you ask the world’s 100 greatest coaches this question: “What does it take to be great — to be a champion — in your sport?” The answers will include: * Resilience. * Commitment. * Dedication. * Persi...

By Wayne Goldsmith “What can I do, Wayne?” — Signed, Desperate Parent I get this message all the time: “My daughter was a great gymnast at 8. Winning regionals at 10. Competing nationally at 11. Now she’s 15 and wants to quit. What can I do?” What they want me to say: “I can tell you how to motivate her to stay and make the Olympic team.” What I actually say: “Let her go. Tell her you love her. Su...