Sports Thoughts

Player Power doesn’t mean the players are in charge. It means they take ownership. Traditional coaching was simple: tell them what to do, yell when they don’t. Command and control. Modern coaching is different. The coach leads by painting a vision — telling the story of the team’s future with the same clarity as they can describe the past. Someone still needs to lead. Someone still needs to see th...

By Wayne Goldsmith I’ve delivered sporting parent workshops across six continents — from South Africa to South Korea, Canada to Fiji — since the early ‘90s. In every session, I ask one question. The most important question any sporting parent will ever consider: Close your eyes. What do you see? Watch the video — then tell me what YOU see. Wayne Goldsmith. If you found this useful, hit subscribe —...

By Wayne Goldsmith So - you had to coach the local under 8 team because no one else would? As Douglas Adams would say - DON’T PANIC! There are millions and millions of people just like you all over the world - i.e. what we call “THE LAST ONE STANDING”. Let me guess. You took your kid to the local football or basketball or hockey or baseball club. They announced “Hey everyone. We’re looking for a c...

By Wayne Goldsmith Let’s talk about what I call The Coaching Moment. That moment when you’re talking with an athlete - it’s only you and them and there’s real connection. In that moment where the only person in the world who matters is that person - that athlete - standing in front of you - you have the opportunity to coach them. A lot of people think coaching is about drills and skills. Others be...

By Wayne Goldsmith Every coach loves technique. They love talking about it, studying it, recording it and coaching it. But the technical model most of us have been using is overly focused on “perfection” - and is not focused enough on coaching the athlete to be able to effectively execute THEIR TECHNIQUE - i.e. their own unique, individual technique, when and where it matters. Colleagues - forget...

By Wayne Goldsmith Sports Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Kids today are not LAZY - please write that down 100 times. Lots of coaches and parents tell me that kids today are lazy, they don’t want to work hard, they are all looking for the easy way - the short cuts, they’re all entitled….. Bulldu#t! T...

Welcome to Sports Thoughts 2026. This year I’ve decided to focus on video posts. There’s way too many Ai generated text posts out there - so I’ve made the commitment to record a lot more video for my Substack community. There’s a lot going on in 2026 and I hope you’ll join me as a subscriber - or at the very least a regular reader / viewer. Have a wonderful year! Wayne Sports Thoughts is a reader-...

BY Wayne Goldsmith Welcome to Sports Thoughts Story Time. As a species we humans are at our best when we’re connecting with each other through story-telling. Story telling allows us to share more than the facts: it’s our opportunity to share our feelings, our emotions, our wisdom and our learning with others. Stories allow us to share our successes, our failures, our joys and our fears. Stories he...

By Wayne Goldsmith Sports Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Three Important Things to Remember: * Talent is what people see on the surface - character is what creates champions; * The most "talented" kids often quit first when things get difficult; * Persistence beats talent when talent doesn't persist...

By Wayne Goldsmith Sports Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Sport has a teenage drop out problem. Every sport. Every nation. Kids get to their mid-teens and the vast majority decide it’s time to drop out of competitive sport and focus on other things. I’ve heard a lot of people try to explain this prob...

By Wayne Goldsmith Sports Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Over the past 30 years I’ve worked all over the world with some brilliant coaches. Worked with coaches in the USA, UK, Ireland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, NZ and many many other wonderful sporting nations. Work...

By Wayne Goldsmith Welcome to Sports Thoughts Story Time. As a species we humans are at our best when we’re connecting with each other through story-telling. Story telling allows us to share more than the facts: it’s our opportunity to share our feelings, our emotions, our wisdom and our learning with others. Stories allow us to share our successes, our failures, our joys and our fears. Stories he...

By Wayne Goldsmith Sports Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Getting better at coaching comes down to a simple principle: think of yourself, your own learning, your own growth, your own improvement - in the same way you think about the learning, growth and improvement of your athletes. You expect your a...

Coaches - we’re good at helping our athletes to realize their athletic potential. We’re great at inspiring kids to believe in themselves and that anything truly is possible. We’re brilliant at working hard and giving all we have to the people we coach. Want to know what we’re terrible at??? Coaching ourselves. We tell athletes to work hard - then rest, recover and regenerate - but we don’t listen...

It never ceases to amaze me that we spend most of our time as coaches writing workouts, practices and training sessions from a purely physiological perspective, i.e. we program around the physiological “big three” - volume, intensity and frequency. Yet - as far as I know - every human being on this planet has a “neck” - i.e. that every athlete you coach has a head connected to their body. That mea...

By Wayne Goldsmith Three Key Points: * Coaches the world over are tring to figure out how to balance the traditional coaching methodologies of systems, programs, structure, order and discipline with the more contemporary coaching philosophies of connection, engagement, collaboration, athlete ownership and shared responsibility. * The secret isn’t to be a “hard” coach or a “soft” coach: it’s learni...

Welcome to Sports Thoughts Story Time. As a species we humans are at our best when we’re connecting with each other through story-telling. Story telling allows us to share more than the facts: it’s our opportunity to share our feelings, our emotions, our wisdom and our learning with others. Stories allow us to share our successes, our failures, our joys and our fears. Stories help us to learn and...

This is my first paid subscribers only post - a video / pod on Periodization . We have got move on from the 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 periodization model, i.e. one week Microcycle, one month Macrocycle, one quarter Phase and one year Season. Athletes do not adapt to fit the convenience of the calendar. Instead of trying to make the adaptation of your athletes fit into the calendar, why not fit the calendar ar...

I've been inside million-dollar training centers where kids were miserable and seen grassroots clubs with rusty equipment produce Olympic champions. The facilities myth is seductive because writing checks is easier than changing behavior—but it's destroying programs. Three Key Points: * Great athletes emerge from relationships, not facilities * Money often masks fundamental problems instead of sol...

"Parents are the problem." It's sport's biggest myth—and we created it. For decades, we've treated parents like enemies, then complained when they became demanding. We excluded them, refused to educate them, then criticized their expectations. Three Key Points: * Parents are sport's greatest untapped resource, not its biggest problem * Most "difficult" parents are simply scared and uninformed, not...

Every coach has "that kid"—the 10-year-old who dominates everything. Here's the brutal truth: most quit before 16. We've confused early physical development with talent, creating systems that celebrate genetic lottery winners while overlooking future champions. Three Key Points: * Early physical dominance is often just advanced physical development * Character and work ethic predict long-term succ...

After 30 years in elite sport, I've watched coaches worship spreadsheets more than athletes. The periodization obsession has created program deliverers instead of human developers—coaches who can't adapt when their beautiful plan meets messy reality. Three Key Points: * Periodization creates inflexible coaches who can't adapt to real athletes * The best athletes succeed despite their training prog...

Welcome to Sports Thoughts Story Time. As a species we humans are at our best when we’re connecting with each other through story-telling. Story telling allows us to share more than the facts: it’s our opportunity to share our feelings, our emotions, our wisdom and our learning with others. Stories allow us to share our successes, our failures, our joys and our fears. Stories help us to learn and...

It’s time sport took in a breath of fresh air….. Why the Pathway Failed - simply the Pathway assumes that every child who starts playing sport wants to be an elite performer Contrast this with reality: most kids just want to have fun, make friends, and enjoy the experience. What the Pathway Gets Wrong: it turns sport into a selection and elimination process and it creates a narrow definition of "s...

Welcome to Sports Thoughts Story Time. As a species we humans are at our best when we’re connecting with each other through story-telling. Story telling allows us to share more than the facts: it’s our opportunity to share our feelings, our emotions, our wisdom and our learning with others. Stories allow us to share our successes, our failures, our joys and our fears. Stories help us to learn and...