By Rachel Woodland

With fewer than nine years until Australia hosts the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Brisbane, the Australian sports system has serious concerns about the representation of women in coaching. 

Research conducted by organisations including the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS] revealed that fewer than 10 per cent of the top 36 funded high performance sports were led by women head coaches. 

To cast the figures in even sharper relief, this is despite female athlete representation at recent Summer and Winter Olympics reaching over 50 per cent. 

This underrepresentation led directly to the Women in High Performance Coaching [WiHPC] Project. It began in October 2021 with the aim of fixing ‘the leaky pipeline’ – the wide range of factors that have drained the Australian system of talented female coaches. 

Two years later, the project published its Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Action Plan and timed its release to coincide with the AIS’s World Class to World Best conference. The Action Plan, in its own words, ‘consolidates 24 months of engagement, highlighting the experiences of women coaches and the need for change. More importantly, it reveals and connects the “bright spots” of opportunity to build momentum and create solutions for the women coaches of Australia.’ 

Upon its launch, the Leaders Performance Institute sat down with one of its co-authors, Michelle De Highden, the AIS’s High Performance Coach Development Senior Lead. 

She revealed that it’s “a snapshot of where the Australian system is at in this moment in time” and is far from complete. What the action plan does, De Highden adds, “is illustrate some things that you can do as an individual or an organisation to create changes for the women in your organisation and environment. It promotes collective responsibility”. 

De Highden explains that the ‘leaky pipeline’ concept has resonated with most. It is hard for women to get into the high performance coaching system, and if they do get in, they’re faced with enormous challenges, from parental leave struggles to poor behaviour and mistreatment, to the relentless lifestyle associated with high performance coaching.  

This leads to an opportunity for organisations to look at their own landscape and ask ‘where are our hidden talent pools?’ The high performance system must create opportunities to bring back talent that may have previously left. 

Looking more closely at the pipeline 

De Highden and her colleagues needed to understand the current landscape if adaptations and interventions were to have an impact. Working pods, including one mapping the women’s coaching pipeline – even though it’s organic and ever-changing – spoke with 24 different sports in pursuit of a contextual understanding. As she says, “it was important to answer questions such as where is the inflection point that you can target? How is the shape of the pipeline different for different sports and where does it narrow? What about women-only and traditionally female sports? Or sports that still haven’t had a woman head coach? There is no model and so there is a need to deeply understand the narratives of the women in your environment; and get some data. Some sports report on who coaches at competitions; they collect across as many areas as possible. The deep understanding piece is to know why women coaches are not getting in or staying.” 

There is no magic bullet, but the Action Plan identifies ‘toolkits’, which are high-level supports to drive implementation and change. De Highden says that the archetype toolkit, as an example, has resonated deeply. It has, according to the Action Plan, “been developed to assist organisations [and] deepen their understanding of culture, attitudes, and behaviours that their coaching staff are facing. The toolkit provides instructions and support for facilitating a workshop including archetype characters.” 

De Highden adds that it can be used to highlight narratives and facilitate storytelling. “Characters, with positive and negative impacts on women, created within and developed by women,” she says. “Individuals can then unpack themes with the group”. This process creates conversation, builds understanding and awareness, and takes the individual person out. When tested, it has had a significant impact – all based on real-life stories. Match the story to character and then have a conversation. The AIS is keen to work with researchers to test the concept further. 

Additionally, the WiHPC has made ten recommendations that ‘demand every sport, organisation and individual assumes the responsibility to act’. The recommendations come with a scorecard that invites organisations to mark themselves on areas such as: ‘Develop and implement a Women’s Talent Network’, ‘Implement a 12-month campaign to elevate the visibility of women coaches’, and ‘engage with researchers to support evidence-based interventions’. De Highden explains that organisations will report on the ten recommendations in 12 months’ time. She says: “These sports all need funding and collective buy-in, but everyone is aware there’s already good things happening, so these provide an opportunity to amplify what’s working”. 

The Action Plan highlights four strategic focus areas: 

1. Behavioural, cultural, environmental development supported by workshops, programs and audits. 
2. Systems that support diversity and what systems can do in this space. 
3. Developmental areas and strategies to support women in the system. 
4. Elevating visibility and storytelling and positive impact that is happening at a system and individual level. 

For all the talk of 12 months, there are, as De Highden illustrates some quick wins – there has to be to build momentum. For example, visibility and storytelling or the strategic use of marketing teams. “Photos of women coaching are an easy start”, she says. “We can raise the profile of the women who are coaching, celebrate the successes of the organisations who are doing it well, or showcase women wearing kit in high performance support roles. The engagement piece is the vehicle to share stories and 14 case studies have already been shared, including on parental leave. Other groups have been started. Some of these aren’t that difficult and cost no money. Everybody can do this”. 

Parental support and recruitment 

Navigating the lifestyle around high performance coaching is difficult regardless of gender, but even harder for women. There are opportunities. A parental leave toolkit is already being road-tested with the AIS. De Highden explains that all the toolkits included in the Action Plan will be iterated over time.  

There are, she says, two sports already keen to explore opportunities with the AIS, to learn about the realities of what’s useful for their staff. “Every organisation should have a policy and a plan, regardless of gender,” she observes, “but people don’t know where to look for a policy. It’s not transparent, and they don’t want to ask, as that leads to judgements. These need to be actionable, now.” 

Recruitment is another important area. Doing this well is central to everything else, including parental leave and part-time talent pool too. It has to be fair, equitable, and transparent. Organisations need to be clear on what they are looking for and, crucially, to recruit based on capability not on reputational, social, or experiential capital. Recruitment structures need to be robust and transparent. There is a ‘capability framework’ toolkit. These illustrate the characteristics of the most capable pathways coaches. It provides evidence to show that the framework is impactful. It is an important piece of work. 

De Highden details a case study at Golf Australia, who recently launched their Parental Support and Travel Program. At Squash Australia, one individual took parental leave and then job shared with their substitute once they returned. Sailing Australia wanted to recruit a retiring athlete after Tokyo who only wanted to commit to 80 per cent of the hours, so they found a complementary person for the other 20. “Recruitment, flexible arrangements, parental support, maternity return. It can work”. 

Learning and development 

The AIS runs an Experiential Learning Program. In August, it enabled 11 aspiring female coaches to gain international competition experience by attending upcoming major events. “Barriers to participation were removed,” says De Highden. There was a one-day workshop first, which was used to establish a plan for whilst on tour and what these coaches needed to learn. They were also taught reflective practices and offered mentorship and support. They were encouraged to ask themselves: what mechanisms are there to help you on and off tour? Consider your reputational capital and your ability to hold your own space in a challenging environment. What’s your role on tour, to help with the clarity of what your job is? De Highden adds: “coaches will then regroup to reflect on experiences from on tour, including an evaluation piece and discussion of what’s next. The AIS has secured funding to do it again in 2024. Not just for women, but with funding targeted to elevate opportunities”. 

For those looking to embark on a similar journey De Highden suggests that you take the time to talk to women coaches first. She says: “Listen, showcase, select top themes, focus on learning more about those while using narratives and storytelling as a framework to connect with the women. Celebrate their successes. Bring people in and keep them involved. The AIS used a complex-adaptive systems lens. There is no simple solution. Multiple things can be done to nudge the system at the organisational, interpersonal, systems, cultural level and, if you can nudge at all levels, you can make progress. If everyone takes one step, then we’ve made progress.  

“There is so much to do the question is often where do I start. The issue is bigger than just women high performance coaches. We know that there’s some things that need to be done well: understanding the DEI landscape, policies in place”. Self-assessment guides, for example, can be a useful tool. They cannot provide all the answers, but can help give an indication of where an organisation can start. “Reporting is important, and the AIS will have a 12-18 month visibility piece ready by the end of 2024, which will help the Australian sport system share more success stories of what’s working well.” 

De Highden says the AIS is looking for funding to research a framework for developing women’s talent. Opportunities come up but these come and go depending on funding. “Our aim is to create an 8-12 year framework in the developmental journey of a coach with opportunities for them throughout and proper evaluation”. 

Additionally, the Action Plan highlights 12 factors across the drivers of poor participation, the need for urgent calls to action to avoid broader system risks, and opportunities to leverage the bright spots. The AIS doesn’t want to lose oversight of them. Mentorship, allyship, sponsorship, networking are all important elements. 

Visibility in action 

De Highden cites several examples of sports and systems coming together to address their concerns. She says: “If organisations know it’s happening they can have conversations around what worked and make sure support is there too. It validates the experience through minimal financial support. Those with well-structured support can share best practices with other sports, for example netball with AFLW. Nothing can be forced, but this is the visibility piece in action”. 

This piece is not just about women coaches, as De Highden explains. She says: “If we can apply these toolkits, practices, and thinking of inclusive practice and belonging, everyone is welcome; there will be intersectionality across the board. It will impact the whole organisation”. 

Researchers who come to the AIS have previously said they are not sure what’s needed, but now they are ready. They need to work out what the piece looks like and conduct robust evaluations around the impact of these toolkits. The sporting system must forge internal alignment between community coaching and DEI – you need to do this even if it is hard to report on.  

You can benchmark to other industries. Qantas and Australian Television and Radio School, for example, both have fewer than 10 per cent of women in high profile roles. Then meet to discuss and share ideas. 

It is about deepening your understanding in pursuit of a more inclusive and sustainable sporting system. 

Main image: Jim McIsaac / NHLI via Getty Images

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

A Data & Innovation podcast brought to you in collaboration with

“It was scary at the start. It was this white space of do we want this to happen? Can you make it happen?” says Jess Zendler.

The Program Manager of the NBA and NBPA’s Wearables Validation Program is discussing her first steps in the role with Joe and John on the People Behind the Tech podcast.

“Academic-type folks, we don’t like to set thresholds that exist for pass-fail,” she continues, as she explained the process of speaking to players and coaches and taking in all the relevant research.

“We want this to be rigorous, we want the players to have confidence in these devices, we know they’re generally hesitant to wear them and there is pushback.”

Zendler also spoke of balancing the need for commercial viability with real-world application, which chimes with her role as a sports science consultant with Rimkus, a worldwide leader in technical consulting and forensic engineering.

During the course of the conversation, we also discussed:

• The process for approving devices on the Wearables Validation Program [12:30];
• The challenge of bringing research to life in sport [17:10];
• The Wearables Validation Program’s relationship with the NBA and Players Association [21:00];
• Jessica’s role in creating the vision for the increasingly used Quality Assessment Framework for sports technology [28:10].

Joe Lemire LinkedIn | X

John Portch LinkedIn | X

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A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Gary Brantley literally wrote the book on organizational transformation, and anyone who cracked its spine will understand why he joined the NFL as its new CIO last year and did nothing.

Rather than detail an immediate list of objectives, he embarked on a listening tour. Brantley met with every department of the league’s sprawling operations, spending enough time with each to understand the nuances of their roles. He spoke to the technology leaders at the NFL’s 32 franchises to learn their local issues and considerations.

Now, 12 months after taking the job, Brantley’s early initiatives are taking shape. Chief among them is the creation of an NFL Innovation Hub that seeks “to create a culture of innovation, cross-functionally and across the league, that allows us to operationalize ideas fast,” he said.

Guided by what he spent the past year hearing, Brantley has also played a role in streamlining efficiency, hiring three new roles in his department, creating a council to study artificial intelligence, helping the implementation of an updated credentialing system that uses facial recognition and introducing a concept that’s been called “Football as a Service.”

In his 2019 book — The Art of Organizational Transformation: 7 Steps to Impact & Influence — he wonders aloud why leaders are in such a rush to make changes ‘without being a part of the entity long enough to understand the true internal needs.’

“The first thing I’m trying to do is really understand how the organization operates,” Brantley said in a series of conversations with Sports Business Journal. “I don’t want to hear anything about tech — I’ll get to that at some particular point — but, how do you operate as an organization? What do you care about the most? What makes you go? How do you create revenue? All those types of things are interesting to me. And then I try to surround tech around it to be a support function for what the organization is trying to accomplish.”

Over the past quarter-century, Brantley has worked for big tech companies such as IBM and MCI WorldCom, founded his own faith-based media site, led technology at multiple levels of government — the state of Ohio, the city of Atlanta and the school system of Georgia’s DeKalb County — and then worked in the C-suite of a large home construction company.

Image courtesy of the NFL.

Raised in Youngstown, Ohio, the son of a 30-year AT&T veteran, Brantley hails from a high-achieving family: His three siblings include a doctor and two attorneys.

These experiences have shaped Brantley. He is the rare technologist well-versed in bureaucracy, an innovator committed to efficiency, the entrepreneur with a long tenure in the public sector and the business leader who can roll up his sleeves and code — not to mention an accomplished drummer with an enviable collection of Jordans and a sub-two-hour half-marathoner who commutes to league headquarters on an electric scooter.

His hiring in October 2022 came at the end of a lengthy search, following Michelle McKenna’s departure as NFL CIO in March that year, but Brantley’s fit for the post quickly became apparent once he applied.

“When I interviewed him, I was like, ‘He gets it,’” recalled NFL Chief Administrative Officer Dasha Smith, noting his “understanding that you have a lot of key stakeholders, and every single one of them is very important. It’s really about consensus building.

“I knew within 10 minutes that Gary, honestly, was the one — based on his experience, based on being a real technologist, his humility, which is something that is really unique for someone who’s as talented as he is, and then he’s a sports fan, so that was good.

“He really just checked every single box.”

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

The IT department of some organizations is relegated to the same status as referees and umpires, in that they’re only noticed when there’s a problem. At the NFL, that expectation of smooth operation without drawing attention to itself is very much there — but that’s only one part of a broad remit that also includes everything from HR and payroll to player health and safety and the searchability of the NFL Media archives.

“We have no room for failure on the technology front,” Smith said. “A lot of people don’t see all the pipes behind the scenes that go into making sure that that you and I can watch the game, that the coaches can talk to the quarterbacks on the field, that their Microsoft Surfaces are all working correctly. We cannot have any points of failure, so first and foremost, making sure that the game could be played flawlessly. Every single game.”

But, she continued, technology is also a strategic priority with the NFL wanting to continue as a leader in the space. That’s what lured Brantley to the role; he describes himself as “a creator and more of a business entrepreneur than, I would say, a traditional tech guy. I see myself as a business guy who just understands tech really, really well.”

“Technology needed to be a core component of the organization that I was working for, not just a back office support organization, not just a cost center. I wanted an opportunity to really use technology to be able to affect positive outcomes,” Brantley said.

The NFL’s Deputy CIO, Aaron Amendolia, is a long-tenured member of the department who admitted that “every time you have a new leader come in, you’re always holding your breath about what’s this is going to be like, and it’s been refreshing,” he said, noting “Gary’s focus as a leader is always on communication and transparency.”

Together, they’ve endeavored to reconsider the role of the department. Messaging is important. The final chapter of Brantley’s book, after all, is titled Shaping and Controlling the Narrative. Along with adding a vice president of IT business services and posting for a vice president of football technology, Brantley hired the department’s first communications professional, to help craft storytelling.

“When you’ve been here for a while just doing IT for operational sake, you just do the operations, and you’re more attached to the systems than the outcome of what the systems do,” Amendolia said. “We’re actually tying to [ourselves] some of these business objectives and goals. That’s what we think will really change the perspective of IT from being this cost center and as being an operational back-of-house type of service to a strategic partner with the league.”

The Innovation Hub is the most concrete example. It’s a common platform within Fortune 500 companies but new to sports. The Hub is a way to standardize the process of ideating, monitoring and measuring progress. Major partners, such as Amazon, Microsoft and Verizon, are invited to collaborate, but it also can be used for crowdsourcing solutions, much as the NFL has found success with the Big Data Bowl and its health and safety competitions.

The idea germinated last spring, recalled Jason Dvorkin, AWS principal industry specialist for media, entertainment and sports, after Brantley gave a presentation on innovation at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. Conversations grew from there about how to shape this idea what Dvorkin described as Football as a Service — to take media and data such as the NFL Next Gen Stats and “make that all available in a centralized way, so that whoever needs it at whatever point in time in the process has a way to access it,” Dvorkin said. N-Ovate Solutions is spearheading implementation of the Hub.

Brantley then went out to build support, counting 39 meetings over six months. This is where politics, salesmanship and charisma become important.

“You can build and spend all types of money on technology, and no one really adopts the change. And that’s what you don’t want. And so everything about aspects of innovation, change, the ability to move the needle — it’s all people-focused,” he said, adding, “If you can go and you can approach it in a way that they don’t feel like it’s being forced on them, but they also feel like they had a piece and a part in it, it really helps us to speed things up.”

The conceit is to flip around the old truism that one has to hurry up and wait for other necessary pieces to fall into place for a project to move forward. Instead, it’s about waiting for the right idea and then hurrying up its completion.

“His vision is around trying to find the technology of the future and not make a snap decision. He’s looking five years out, 10 years out,” Dvorkin said.

“And he’s using us and our experience to help shape that operation. I mean, you look at what’s been done in player health and safety right now, using computer vision to create that Digital Athlete. He’s realizing that there’s more to that than just injury prevention. It’s: How do we start to coach the game of football better? How does that provide insights into the lower levels of the game to help cultivate and foster that next fan, to actually become passionate and deeply invested in the league?”

But innovation isn’t strictly relegated to the transformational ideas, either. Amendolia emphasized the importance of back-end efficiency to free up resources and time.

Brantley noted that it’s common for large organizations to be unaware of their redundancies or the full capabilities of their tools. He undertook a process called application rationalization, a mechanism of modern IT management to assess their software portfolio. He said they’ve identified 419 applications across the league, of which 40% show some redundancy. Different departments, for example, might use Microsoft Teams or Slack or Zoom for communications.

Aligning the league on shared platforms can be a major boon, though he acknowledged the importance of a multicloud environment and noted that compartmentalization is good — a point driven home during his time in Atlanta.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

When Brantley arrived in Atlanta, the city was in turmoil. In March 2018, the capital of Georgia was stricken by a brazen ransomware attack, and it was still reeling from the consequences of that when Brantley took over as CIO in October of that year.

He discovered that the city had only one firewall in place, which thankfully protected the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartfield-Jackson, but most of the city’s other services were shut down. That included four or five systems each for email, customer relationship management and permits. By the time he was done, many of the solutions were consolidated, and he bequeathed the city 37 firewalls to contain any future network breaches.

“The goal was to make lasting change and to create an environment that will protect the city for years to come,” Brantley said. “There was going to be no innovating here. I had to rebuild an entire city infrastructure that was depleted. I didn’t have time for a three-year technology plan. There was a 12-month road map that was tied to making sure my team got back to general basics and general hygiene of how you operate a successful environment.

“They all knew things needed to be improved. So I knew I would get the resources and the funding that I needed to turn this around — for a short period of time. And then it would go back to what government is.”

By contrast, Brantley said, the NFL is “more nimble and flexible,” owing largely to the team owners, who have a more business and revenue-generating mindset than, say, a community-focused city council. The missions are very different, but his fundamental approach to enacting change within organizations is similar. What he said about rebuilding Atlanta’s technological infrastructure seems applicable to how he began his tenure at the NFL.

“I saw the end,” he said, “so I knew where to start.”

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

Athletes and coaches take note: pelvic floor dysfunction is not restricted to the perinatal or older population.

Symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction in girls and women of all ages can include issues with urinary leakage, urgency and frequency, feelings of incontinence, and vaginal heaviness.

These examples were cited by pelvic health physiotherapist Emma Brockwell onstage at Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium in September.

“These symptoms often don’t cause a woman pain but they may have a huge impact on their physical and mental health,” said Brockwell, who has worked with athletes at teams including Chelsea Women and Harlequins Women. She also co-hosts the women’s health-focused At Your Cervix podcast with fellow pelvic floor physiotherapist Gráinne Donnelly.

She spoke onstage alongside Harlequins’ Women’s Club Doctor, Amal Hassan, and Dr Nicola Brown, Associate Professor in Women’s Health at St Mary’s University in London, in front of an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members.

“We think pelvic floor issues are likely to be affecting a female athlete’s performance as well,” added Brockwell. “The reality is that female athletes carrying out strenuous activity are probably three times more likely to experience these dysfunctions than someone who is less active of her age.

“So it’s just recognising that these symptoms occur, breaking down the stigma and taboo that exists around this because we’re talking about the pelvis, we’re talking about the vulva, the vagina. These words are still unbelievably taboo, controversial – women don’t like to talk about them, men don’t like to talk about them – but it’s about educating every one of us that we should be using these words and discussing these symptoms and, I guess, normalising the conversation and allowing it to happen.”

In this article, we explore Brockwell’s work with female athletes and the steps all teams can take to support their women and girl athletes.

Note: Brockwell’s responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

On her physiotherapy practice…

A pelvic health physiotherapist is just a sub-specialist of a musculoskeletal physiotherapist. So we still screen a woman as you would through a musculoskeletal screening, we look at the whole body but we would typically offer any female athlete or woman a vaginal examination as well. And through that level of internal and external assessment we determine if there are any pelvic health issues. Pelvic health is kind of a hidden health amongst musculoskeletal physiotherapy. In our training we don’t even have much pelvic health training. It’s a post-grad form of training, but it’s really important to recognise the pelvis, the pelvic floor, integrates into the hip, into the back, into the abdominal wall and therefore perhaps with other musculoskeletal issues that might be lumbar, pelvic pain, hip pain, groin pain. Is it something that’s potentially contributing to some of these musculoskeletal conditions and therefore should we be screening pelvic health just to help eliminate some of the potential differential diagnoses of these musculoskeletal issues? It is about opening our eyes but also using this sort of specialism, a musculoskeletal physio, to hopefully make a difference to female health.

The current ‘gold standard’ in pelvic health physiotherapy…

Pelvic health is still quite misunderstood. People aren’t aware that we exist, that pelvic floor conditions can be treated. Ultimately gold standard has to be education at the moment because a gold standard doesn’t exist at the moment. Education is key, collaboration, talking to other healthcare professionals and coaches within the team [at Harlequins] to let them know what I do; and then screening at the moment is ideal because you don’t know what you don’t know. A lot of the players don’t know what they don’t know; the players are asking these questions. So screening is ultimately key. And then getting a consultant in, like me, to then offer one-to-one treatment, if players want to be treated.

What teams with fewer resources can do to support their athletes’ pelvic floor health…

There are apps and you can absolutely still screen and refer into a GP; and the GP can certainly refer into the pelvic health physio system within the NHS or privately. The resources are there and, if I give you an example, the stats show that 84 percent of women who suffer from stress urinary incontinence, if they see a pelvic health physiotherapist, they will improve. So we are effective, it’s just knowing that we exist. And if you can’t access us for one reason or another then use an app like the Squeezy app, the NHS resources. I quite often signpost people to the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport] resources because they’ve got some great educational tools that you can share with players and you can look at yourself and they offer various videos on how to do pelvic floor exercises, blood screening, bladder diaries. All of these things are really helpful if resources are scarce. But I think the key is collaboration, having discussions; and touching base with me and I can signpost you to pelvic health physios in your areas.

On helping perinatal athletes…

That’s certainly my passion area and that’s where you would recognise a pelvic health physiotherapist coming into their own. But what we should be thinking of is how we prevent pelvic floor issues occurring and we can very much prevent the majority of pelvic floor issues occurring before a woman is pregnant. But even when they do fall pregnant, being able to prepare their system for the inevitable changes that the body is going through in childbirth, and then the post-partum recovery. I don’t want to mythologise [this phase] as an injury because it’s not, but it is important to recognise that it needs as much time, thought, care and preparation as any injury that these female athletes are going to experience. And we’ve seen first-hand, if you prepare a woman during her pregnancy and really educate her about what to expect, it makes their post-partum journey so much more manageable and so much easier. I firmly believe that if we offer women this element of rehabilitation, if you like, I think they can return to their sport really stronger than ever before. I think it’s just about – I keep saying it – collaboration and working with other people and ensuring that you’re bringing in these specialisms to help support their journeys.

Main image courtesy of World Rugby

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

By John Portch

“I remember when I was a rider,” says Emma Trott. “I had a female coach, I hated it, I never wanted another female coach ever again – but here I am now sat here coaching.”

Trott, who has since stepped down as Women’s Junior Endurance Coach at British Cycling, was speaking at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium.

She had essentially just crossed the road, as British Cycling’s HQ happens to be a stone’s throw from the Etihad.

With a short journey behind her, she took to the stage where she spoke alongside Danny Kerry, the Head Coach of the Canada women’s field hockey team, about coaching provisions for female athletes.

“We’ve spoken about the importance of having female coaches within the organisation,” adds Trott.

The challenge of coaching teenagers continues to evolve. “I think social media is not helping. It [offers] instant gratification of their view; put a picture up and you get a like. Talking to my group, there’s been a massive boom across women’s sport. We’ve got riders turning pro younger and younger.

“That actually creates problems within the rest of the group because they think it’s normal that you should be turning pro at 17 years old but, actually, you still need to develop; and everyone’s developing at different stages. How do you get that across? Then, for me, it’s the parent piece as well. What are they saying? What are they hearing you saying?

“Teams are now set up specifically for the women. They may be connected to the men’s team just as women’s football teams are, but they’re not there to necessarily do the same thing as the men’s team. It’s about how we can get the best out of these people.”

Here, we explore Trott’s approach to coaching young female athletes as she set it out for Leaders Performance Institute members in Manchester.

Ensure their heads are in the right place

Firstly, as Trott explains, British Cycling must reconcile individual and team goals for its riders. She says: “When we’re working as a team obviously we’ve got one common goal and we need to be at the coaching session for that common goal, although everyone is working on different things behind the scenes. That’s where things will deviate. but we also need to make sure their heads are in the right place.

“That’s one of the key things for me, the emotions of the group. I work with 16, 17, 18-year-olds, which can be quite challenging at times; making sure their heads are in the right place at the right times. For riders it’s really hard because who are they? Where are they going?”

It is important for Trott and her riders to understand their mutually agreed commitments. “It means you’re effectively two people at major competitions,” she continues. “Because you are the coach that’s there for those guys, but you’re thinking three competitions ahead for the others.”

‘The others’ to whom she refers are those not selected for certain competitions. “The people at home still have their training and you’re messaging them to show them that they are just as important – because they are – and it might be that their goal isn’t the Worlds. It might be the Euros; and the Euros just happen to be after the Worlds. I always talk about ‘this is the plan, this is what we’re doing, this is why you haven’t been selected for X but you will be selected for Y. I think females work really well with that process.”

Nevertheless, she allows them to grieve when necessary. “I allow them to be upset for two or three days because that’s important. It’s important to express our emotions and allow that to happen. Once we’re over that then we can start the conversation about performance again.”

Tune into the environment, try truly listening

Trott feels that the skill of listening is often misunderstood and undervalued. “People don’t listen all the time,” she says. “We hear what we want to hear and [the reason] we hear what we want to hear is because we’ve already made a decision of how we’re going to impact something rather than listening to what is actually being said.

“And actually taking it deeper as well. It’s that question, isn’t it. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ ‘OK, what does that really mean?’ You really find out more [that way] and that’s the key thing for me. Females and males say a lot but I think you’ve got to dig a bit deeper to understand what the message really is.”

Trott and her colleagues use British Cycling training camps to connect with their riders, but as they are all based in different parts of the UK, they will also hosts regular online check-ins. Each presents its challenges and opportunities. Sometimes in camp the solution is to take a step back.

“The other thing is that I use my group. If you create the environment where they trust you, you build the strength of the group. If there is an issue happening I won’t rush straight to the cause or the person immediately. I would actually use one of my more senior riders, an 18-year-old, to get a snippet of what the problem is. I can them go to that person and use this myself and hopefully help them. The key thing is to listen. I don’t think we listen particularly well.”

It’s OK to fail – so enable clear, honest feedback

Failure presents a learning opportunity and that is never truer than at underage level. Trott will place a lot of trust in her riders as they develop as people and athletes and she promotes the idea that “it’s OK to get things wrong”. She says: “Them knowing that, it comes back to that environment where, if we’ve created the right environment, then they’re not failing – it’s a learning opportunity that then takes them to the next level.”

This learning goes hand in hand with leadership because, as Trott says, “Once I’ve sent them off on the bus it’s over to them.” Inevitably, leadership comes more naturally to some than others but each rider must be given the tools to develop their ability to lead. “If they don’t get the opportunity to [learn] then they won’t perform. They’ll never lead because they’ll be scared to lead, but once they realise they can do that they learn, they grow, not just in sport but in management, business, wherever they end up.”

Know when to cut athletes some slack

The conversation turned towards female-specific issues, such as the menstrual cycle and their impact on training schedules and competition. “It’s something I’m aware of,” says Trott, who recognises the challenge and admits she would not want to have five riders on the same menstrual cycle. “I remember having a conversation with a gym coach around this. If we move certain sessions and decrease certain parts at certain points it just makes the rider feel better.” It has changed the philosophy around a training session. “In essence, in that session, what we’re trying to achieve isn’t 100 percent what we’re trying to achieve but, from a mental stance, it’s actually better for the rider at that point.”

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By Joe Lemire

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Dr Daniel Laby is talking to John Portch and Joe Lemire about his vision training with Liverpool and England star Trent Alexander-Arnold in 2021.

He says: “If the question is: ‘are you worse than you should be for your sport?’ And knowing what each sport needs, if you have that information you can say how someone needs to train.”

Red Bull commissioned the project having been impressed by Dr Laby’s consultancy work in the NFL and his burgeoning collection of World Series rings having worked for three decades in MLB.

“So if Trent did well, which he did in certain areas [I would say], ‘Trent, you did great. We don’t have to give you glasses’ but if [instead I said] ‘Trent, your ability to monitor multiple targets at the same time isn’t what it needs to be compared to what it should be for someone on average of your level, we have to train that’; and that’s what we did with Trent.”

Dr Laby tells The People Behind the Tech podcast that the first goal is to help athletes to correct to the required level for their sport, which will differ depending on the discipline.

This was just one aspect touched upon during the conversation. Others include:

• The potential drawbacks of refractive surgery for athletes in some sports [8:00];
• His work with Manny Ramírez and the 2004 Boston Red Sox [16:00];
• Balancing research and practice in his work [22:00];
• The potential for using virtual and augmented reality in vision testing [36:00].

Joe Lemire LinkedIn | X

John Portch LinkedIn | X

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A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire