High performance environments are all about balance
Clubs and people are often judged heavily on whether they win or lose, and of course winning is every team’s goal, but the context for each team, and opportunities they might have are so different, explained Chris Scott, Senior Coach of the Geelong Cats in the Australian Football League, at our Sport Performance Summit in Charlotte back in 2020. “We focus in too much on standards, it’s important, but only one part of the high performance environment” stated Scott when delving deeper into what makes a successful team environment. He emphasised that if you only look to drive standards in training, then you miss out on some other crucial aspects which make up a winning team such as psychological safety, wellbeing and most importantly enjoying playing the sport. “You need to be really clear on when to push, but it needs to be balanced off with the work outside of those hard periods,” he added. If the players are dreading turning up to training every day, you’re not going to get the best out of them, and pushing them hard constantly, is an unsustainable model.
