By John Portch

• Public speaking is an art not a science – find what works for you.

• Practise using these tools, just as you would expect an athlete to practise.

• Use the listener’s language to forge that connection.

There are no rules – but there are tools

Chris Anderson, the Curator at TED, told an audience at the 2016 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York that public speaking matters more than ever. “The thing I want to emphasise is that there’s no formula to doing this,” said Anderson. “But there are tools that you can choose from to construct the talk that is right for you in the moment – and these tools teachable – I am convinced of this.”

Start strong

Anderson suggests that people dispense with platitudes in an attention-demanding world. “I’m not saying in the first sentence you have to sock people between the eyes. You have about a minute. In the first minute you have to give them a sense of what it is you to build in their minds and have them trust you to do it.”

Be human

The trust to which Anderson alluded is rooted in authenticity and being human. “There’s lots of ways to do this,” he said. “A bit of humour can help, tell an anecdote, maybe some vulnerability, or you can actually just look at people. Your eyes have super powers. When two humans look at each other their minds literally start to sync up. So don’t spend your talk with your eyes buried in your notes or projecting out as many speakers do to this place where no one actually lives. Find faces in the first few rows and look at people and speak to them conversationally because everyone can actually sense that connection when you do that. It’s powerful.”

Tell a story

Storytelling can be a powerful tool in sport. “Stories can make or break so many talks. Our minds are wired to love them,” said Anderson. “A story can also set up the idea that you want to share.”

Explain

Anderson said that in order to construct an idea in someone’s mind you have to be able to call upon elements that are already in their minds. “You can use your language, your jargon, you have to use concepts that the audience already has,” he said, “and the key tool to connect those is metaphor. Metaphor is literally is shaping an idea based on a shape the audience already has. So when the science writer Jennifer Kahn came to TED, she wanted to explain to us CRISPR, this bio technology. She said: ‘it’s like a word processor for the genome. You can cut and paste the gene from any part to any other part’. I know what a word processor is so I know what CRISPR is. It’s powerful.”

Persuasion

Anderson said: “If explanation is the construction of an idea in someone’s mind, persuasion first involves a little bit of demolition. You have to take out something that isn’t right first. How do you do that? By showing how implausible or even ridiculous it is.”

Rehearse

Don’t expect to just wing it. “Your teams practise, actors practise, musicians practise, speakers should practise – it really matters,” said Anderson. “The difference between owning a talk and being owned by it is rehearsal.”

Talk your way

Feel free to sit, stand, walk, use a lectern or do cartwheels. Anderson said: “Do it your way. because, when all is said and done, the only thing that really matters in public speaking is this: that you have something worth saying and that you then say it in a way that is authentic to you.”

By Edd Vahid

Fifa describe the transition from talented academy player to first team regular as a ‘delicate phase’. The term ‘delicate’ arguably underplays the challenges characterising this period.

Whilst many young players harbour dreams of playing Premier League football, the well-publicised reality is reserved for a minority. Enhancing the existing transition rate remains a priority for most academies and requires a collaborative approach engaging key internal and external stakeholders.

Before exploring existing and future interventions, an awareness of the current landscape is important.  According to the Football Observatory, during the first half of the current season (2021-22) the average age of a Premier League player has been 27.16 years old with only 4.2 per cent of these players younger than 21 years old. Significantly, 59.5 per cent of players currently plying their trade in the Premier League would be considered expatriates (i.e., their origin exists outside of England) who have been secured on lucrative and often long-term contracts (the average stay in a Premier League club is 37 months).

A gross transfer spend of £1.4 billion by Premier League clubs during the two available transfer windows this season, significantly eclipses the €380 million combined outlay by clubs in La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), Bundesliga (Germany) and Ligue 1 (France), and reflects a generally positive trend in expenditure since 2003. These insights arguably highlight a league that present limited opportunities and favour more experienced players. Young players are competing for game time with the finest players in the world. This clearly represents a challenging landscape for young players with Premier League aspirations, and clubs with a desire to facilitate the transition of academy graduates.

The challenges evident on the pitch are often further exacerbated by an incentivised short-term focus and instability that can characterise off-pitch activity. Indeed, in 2021, Statista reviewed the average tenure of Premier League managers in the past ten seasons. According to the report, the average tenure at Southampton Football Club (accurate as of 08.11.21) during this period was 513 days. Our current Manager, Ralph Hasenhüttl, has surpassed more than 1000 days in post and offered a stability that encourages a more future-oriented outlook. Coupled with the financial incentives available when winning games, managers might understandably prioritise short-term results. Arguably, young players may require time before delivering game impactful performances at a Premier League level. Clubs must negotiate this tension, and there is evidence of positive progress in the past decade.

Despite the challenging context, since the inception of the Premier League-led Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) in 2012 a positive increase in home grown talent is evident. Notably, last season young English players were securing significant game time domestically and in European competition relative to their homegrown counterparts in the big five leagues (i.e., Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1). Specifically, English under 23 players ranked second for domestic minutes (behind France) and first in Uefa club competitions. Given the challenges presented, this represents a positive return and evidence of sustained progress.

Whilst clubs must ultimately take responsibility to review their pathway and explore ways to improve the transition rate of young academy players, organisations occupying leadership roles in the wider footballing ecosystem (e.g., leagues and governing bodies) represent important collaborative partners.  For clubs, a clear and agreed vision, the existence of trust and empathy, underpinned by aligned processes responsive to an individual’s needs, appear to represent necessary elements. Firstly, an ownership and board-led long-term vision that acknowledges the club’s youth development aspirations is critical. A clear and agreed vision importantly provides a framework for decision making. If youth development is prioritised, this should have clear implications and evident impact on the decisions related to player transfers, contracts, and general investment.

Creating a viable pathway for talented young players is important. Victor Orta, the Director of Football at Leeds United Football Club, recently highlighted a policy that protects space in the squad for young players. The approach represents a deliberate attempt to create a pathway that facilitates the development of homegrown players. Separately, during a 365-day period commencing in February 2021 our first team played 40 games in the Premier League. These fixtures were fulfilled with the use of 32 players, a figure broadly reflective of the average across the league. Significantly, more than a third (n = 11) of these players would be considered academy graduates; each player accruing varying levels of game time and sustained activity with the first team.

Given the relatively short tenure of a head coach or manager, it is vital that clubs employ guardians of their philosophy. Radically Traditional studied organisations who have enjoyed sustained success.  These ‘centennial’ organisations, as they termed them, were characterised by two distinct headline features, namely a stable core and a disruptive edge. A new manager arguably provides the disruptive edge that is necessary to evolve. This might involve changes to a playing style or training methodology. Complemented by a stability that safeguards an organisation’s identity, this represents a formidable partnership for progression. An instable core where purpose and identity are frequently negotiated ultimately creates confusion and inhibits continuity.

Deploying strategies that help support the development of trust between an academy and first team is vital. In his 2006 book Speed of Trust: the one thing that changes everything, Stephen R Covey considered trust a function of character and competence. In a transitional space this has implications for both staff and players. Senior academy staff and first team personnel must develop relationships embodying trust. An absence of trust will be debilitating and potentially impact the opportunities presented to young players. Whilst character arguably exists on an individual level, competence can emerge from a shared understanding of player development and potential. A shared understanding is often the product of a regular dialogue, which effectively serves to calibrate people’s views of individual players. This might involve discussing match performances and sharing training observations. Importantly, frequent feedback amongst staff operating in the transitional phase (i.e., academy and first team) should help enhance a player’s experience by clearly identifying agreed areas for development.

Empathy is closely intertwined with trust. It is important that both parties (i.e., academy and first team) appreciate and seek to understand their respective challenges. It is also important to acknowledge the inevitable tensions that exist. For example, an academy affords a time and space that is rarely available to a first team, which is under constant scrutiny from media and fans. Results in a first team setting represent the essential currency and this can conflict with the developmental needs of transitioning players. Arsène Wenger described management as ‘living on a volcano’, presumably in acknowledgement of the intensity and uncertainty inherent in the profession. Michael Calvin later adopted this phrase as the title for his 2015 book Living on the volcano: the secrets of surviving as a football manager, which provides an insight into the challenges experienced by managers. The competing tensions further emphasise the necessity for a vision that transcends a pathway and the importance of a clearly defined and stable club purpose.

The partnership between academy and first team staff is helpfully supported by aligned processes. This might include similar playing styles and approaches to set plays, which are designed to minimise turbulence during this critical transition. Indeed, our B team model at Southampton was introduced under this premise. The B team are philosophically aligned with the first team, operating a playbook that encourages a consistency in approaches to training and games. Ideally, individual development plans for the highest potential players are co-created amongst selected first team and academy staff. This should ensure a common language is deployed and a shared understanding of the demands and expectations evolves. Additionally, a schedule that permits regular opportunities for academy players (and staff) to observe and participate in first team training provides an important benchmark for performance. In recent seasons this has more formally involved a season-long sabbatical for selected members of the senior academy coaching team. Importantly, these interventions should help determine the training and competition needs of each individual player.

Facilitating a successful transition from senior academy player to first team player is difficult. However, this difficulty can be mitigated if an ownership-led and collectively agreed vision promoting young players is supported with an infrastructure characterised by the interdependent features of trust and empathy. As previously mentioned, each club is ultimately responsible for supporting the development of their players and creating conditions that enhance an individual’s progress. However, clubs operate within a broader ecosystem, and it is important to acknowledge the important role of leagues and associations. For example, the Premier League and Football League have effectively collaborated to provide young players an opportunity to feature in competitive fixtures against senior teams. The initiative, introduced during the 2016-17 season, invites senior academy teams to participate in the Football League Trophy. This opportunity complements the under-23 fixture programme and adds to the breadth of experiences that are necessary to prepare young players for the challenges evident in the senior game. Whilst it has not been universally accepted, the intent is clear and should be recognised.

The Premier League have previously reported the valuable role that a loan experience can have in a young player’s development. Specifically, there is evidence to indicate that a loan (or multiple loans) can provide a helpful platform preceding future Premier League appearance milestones. Whilst causality could be speculated and is likely to be individually determined, it is important that a loan system permits an appropriate degree of flexibility. A scenario where a young player has restricted playing opportunities and is locked into a loan experience for several months is counterproductive for all parties.

It will also be interesting to observe how the re-introduction of a rule permitting clubs to make five substitutions during Premier League fixtures will impact young player’s next season. Clubs will continue to be able to name a total of nine substitutes in their match day Premier League squad. Whilst intuitively this appears to present more opportunities, clubs must be mindful of an unintended consequence that could see young players deprived of meaningful game time and restricted to the role of an observer. This further emphasises the importance of detailed individual development plans with clubs ensuring their highest potential players are exposed to the appropriate training and match stimulus during a critical stage of their development.

Gareth Southgate recently called up 26 players to the England international squad in preparation for fixtures against Switzerland and Ivory Coast. The initial squad comprised players from 15 different teams, with individual development histories reflecting the diversity in transitioning experiences. A minority of the group have enjoyed Premier League opportunities as a teenager with their parent club, transitioning seamlessly following their academy experience. Several have negotiated the lower leagues (as both permanent and loan players) with carefully crafted and deliberately implemented development plans. Others have enjoyed less refined journeys that have seen them respond to setbacks during the infancy of their career. Each player has a unique story, which further emphasises the importance of a footballing ecosystem that is agile, responsive, and capable of facilitating multiple pathways to a first team transition. This outlook is broadly consistent with the conclusion Fifa reached following their extensive research into the transition of talent.

Edd is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.

By John Portch

Throughout 2021, there were conversations in high performance debating the balance between wellbeing and performance and, increasingly, the two are seen as indivisible.

“Rather than thinking it’s some support thing on the periphery, wellbeing is energy. It should be the centrepiece of our performance,” performance coach Owen Eastwood told an audience at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium last November.

“Wellbeing is an essential ingredient of performance. If you think of it from an individual level, am I really going to perform anywhere near my capacity if I’m not well? If I’m not physically well, if I’m not emotionally well, if I’m not spiritually well?

“I think this is happening, where our wellbeing is becoming more central to the question of if we’re able to perform at our best rather than just being a support peripheral piece over here where people think ‘if people are having physical or mental problems then someone is looking after them’. I think we’re moving to a place where everyone understands that.”

Eastwood’s words echo Kate Hays’ at last June’s Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership. “I think coaches are embracing it and I think the high performance system is embracing it, and I think athletes are embracing it,” said the former Head of Psychology at the English Institute of Sport. “The world has not been as we’ve known it, and we’ve seen real empathy and compassion towards people.”

That empathy and compassion was on show at Harlequins prior to last season’s Gallagher Premiership final where the men’s team would claim their first national championship in 11 years. A player approached Billy Millard, Quins’ Director of Rugby, with news that his mum had taken ill. “We said ‘just go. Just be back for the game’,” said Millard, also speaking at last year’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Twickenham. “He was like ‘what?’ ‘Just go’. So he came back and had an absolute stormer and it was very emotional and he was very thankful.

“It’s very easy to say that relationships are the most important, then you get a big call like that, ahead of the biggest game the club has had in a long time, and the coaches and the staff just went ‘that comes first. Just go, brother’. The players hear about that and there was a lot of things like that we did, it builds trust both ways.”

Millard’s point is underlined by Quins scrum-half Danny Care, who is sat beside him. He said: “To have the coaches go ‘that comes first, your family comes first’ even though we’ve got the biggest game the club’s ever had at the weekend. Then, as a player, you go ‘amazing’; we’re not robots, we’re people.”

Eastwood, who sits on the board at Harlequins, elaborated on this point backstage at Twickenham. He said: “We’ve had discussions with the players where we’ve said ‘success for us looks like us being competitive now, this team, and striving to win, but success for the club also means after you leave this club and retire from professional rugby that you have a happy life, that you’ve learnt traits about yourself and how to cope with adversity that happens in life. That you’ve got a strong group and network of people and players who become friends forever. That’s what we want.

“Our parameters of success include wellbeing and that’s very authentic – we’re not just saying that, we genuinely feel that. We don’t want them to be having a crisis in their 40s and 50s, being lost, not knowing who they are, not having good life skills, not having a good network. Again, it’s good in the short term, I suppose, to have a culture like that, but we genuinely want it to be something that extends well beyond their time playing.”

The staff around the athlete are a vital part of the wellbeing question, as Angus Mugford, the Vice President of High Performance at Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays told the Leaders Performance Institute. “That aspect of all our lives is really important for staff,” he says. “High performance is not often a balanced world, there’s a lot of time on the road and away from family, and the high stress; and I think acknowledging that human beings, in their physical and mental health are really important aspects that we need to focus on, provide resources for, and work on too.”

A similar point was made by Lauren Whitt, Google’s Head of Global Resilience, at Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership, in the context of building resilience. She said: “Resilience prioritises rest and recovery. You do it for your athletes. Oftentimes we forget as leaders, as managers, as other folks who are working with the high performers, we also need you at your best; we also need you able to make decisions on the fly and to be sharp and to be crisp.”

Attitudes are shifting across high performance sport but, as Mugford says, “actions speak louder than words.”

This article originally appeared in our Special Report Enhancing Your Environment: Nurturing positive high performance set-ups.

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A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

• Wellbeing needs to be woven into the fabric of your organisation. 

• Resilience should be perceived as a skill much like any other. 

• People are more likely to commit to initiatives they helped to create.

Wellbeing – not just a nice to have 

It is increasingly discussed in high performance circles and there is a growing understanding that a focus on wellbeing at an individual and team level should be the norm. As the Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] pointed out in their Member Case Study Virtual Roundtable in 2021, when wellbeing was tied to high performance and organisations worked backwards from that point, personnel increasingly see the relevance and organisations witness greater engagement. Wellbeing is the foundation of performance and sustained high performance. 

Resilience is a leadership capability 

“The world is changing around us,” Lauren Whitt, the Head of Global Resilience, told an audience at last June’s Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership. “How do we navigate ambiguity? How do we remember and recall there is a great amount of certainty in uncertainty and there are these base things that we know to be true that we can continue to focus on?” 

She explained that there is a long-term plan at Google to build-in resilience as a leadership capability. “It isn’t a side bar campaign – it is being woven into the fabric of our senior leaders, our top leaders, our managers; it is being woven into the core of their training, their leadership capabilities. Our leaders need and must be intentional about how to be present, how to talk about the hard things in a productive way, but more than anything, how can they be resilient leaders helping their teams respond to stress.” 

Greater resilience = greater energy and better decision making 

Whitt’s wisdom is not limited to the world of Googlers, with England men’s Head Coach Gareth Southgate speaking openly on the Leaders’ Rules of the Game podcast last summer about the link between his resilience and his wellbeing. “What I recognise about myself is that if I feel in a good place, that my own wellbeing is in a good place in terms of sleep, exercise, then in actual fact I feel stronger to take those things on and less affected by it. If I’m not sleeping well and I’ve been travelling a lot, if I’m rundown, I’m not physically in as good a place, I find that can affect my mood a little bit more and then I’ve got to be careful with my decision making. I’m very aware of my own personal state and [I am] able to control that and react to that a little bit more and put things into perspective better as I get older.” 

Give everyone a say in developing your organisation’s wellbeing initiatives 

Zach Brandon, the Mental Skills Coordinator at Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks told the Leaders Performance Institute in July last year that he and his team have been intentional in seeking feedback around their work. “It can be hard to improve what you don’t or what you can’t measure,” he said. “If we’ve offered a session, a formal group session with players, very often we are trying to gauge their feedback afterwards. We’ll ask: ‘What stood out for you? What did you take from that? What remaining questions do you have? What did you feel might have been missing?’ We’re really purposeful with how we ask those questions and we try to include coaches as much as we can in not only being part of those sessions but in the design.  

“We track participation in sessions; who’s attending and how often. If we send digital content to players we keep track of its reach or the engagement. We solicit feedback and we try to be really purposeful in making sure that in doing so we know what’s working and what’s not with the players and coaches. We want to make sure that whatever we’re communicating with players, it aligns with their messaging. I think a big piece of our team culture is having a shared common language and alignment of mindsets.” Players and staff across the clubhouse feel they are being heard. Brandon added: “People are more likely to commit to things that they help to create.” 

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By Sarah Evans & Luke Whitworth

Our first Leaders Meet of the year took place at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium this week [Thursday] and proved to be a resounding success.

Members of the Leaders Performance Institute came from far and wide to discuss the dynamics of coach and player development.

Across the numerous conversations on the day ran a consistent thread that often boiled down to a single question: how is this dynamic evolving and what could it look like in 10 years’ time?

With this dynamic in mind, here are the choice insights from the day’s proceedings.

Session 1: Coaching & Development – What Does the Research Tell Us?

Speaker: Dr. Dan Clements, Performance Coach Manager, Wales Rugby Union

For the first session of the day, Dan opened up the conversations by sharing some stimulus around the challenges and considerations when reviewing our coach and player development frameworks. Dan leant on some evidence-based research to explain some of the embedded principles that Wales Rugby are currently focused on.

Questions to ask ourselves:

• Why do we look at coach development and player development in silos? How do we make more connection between the two, as we know there is a tendency to focus on the specialisms in isolation?
• Are we adding value to the coaches that are operating within our programmes? Are we adding value to the players within the system?
• How can we make an impact on coaches that sustains change – benefitting them and the players?
• Are we stuck in a paradox of fixing problems? Generally in performance sport we are in this mode of thinking.
• How can we make an applied development approach the norm?
• When it is going well, how can we keep a coach working in a specific domain (a perceived natural transition for a successful under-18s coach is to go to the senior game, but are they better skilled or better suited to working with younger talent?)
• How do we ensure alignment across the pathway in what to coach through a curriculum that encourages innovation?

Wales Rugby coaching principles:

• Wales Rugby principles: contextual understanding… how do we help coaches deliver better on the work included in talent development frameworks?
• Adding value: the Wales Rugby framework considers coaching support, the learning environment and then the player.
• Principles to add value: a flexible and accessible offer. Continuous learning is vital. Collaboration across the game is key. Focused on the needs of the player and coach.

Coaching matters:

• Coaching is the key to sustained success. From community, to talent to the professional stage, the most significant influence on a players.
• We are not here to develop players to do what has already been done – it is our job to do it one better. The game is constantly changing, innovating, and has evolving demands.
• Every journey is unique. We need to do more around understanding what those environments are like? How do they differ to others?
• Coaching is multifaceted, non-linear and context specific. A question we have to reflect on is are we seeing an impact in terms of player development? How can we as coach developers help to better deliver on this?
• As coaches we want to prepare you to be the best person to handle the problems you will face.
• Wales Rugby philosophy: self-concept, leadership, people and coaching craft – all wrapped around the notion of contextual understanding. It’s all well and good having a philosophy, but what does that look like in practice so it isn’t just words on paper?
• What works in coaching? Actual coaching. Observation of other sport. Discussion with peers. Self-reflection. Mentoring. With these in mind, are we providing enough opportunity around these for meaningful learning experiences?

Action research – interactive inquiry:

• Action research is transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking an action and doing research, which are linked together by critical reflection. It involves learning through action and reflection, with a practical-based approach.
• Action research has four core stages: plan, act, reflect, observe. It’s important to identify that this is constant and ongoing.
• Leveraging action research in practice and how it applies to the enhancement of learning environments (motivational climate); coaches positively engaged with their peers in learning. It gave them more confidence. Increased ability to manipulate the environment. It impacted sustained engagement – too often we do one thing, move on and under appreciate the need for something sustained.

Leveraging appreciative inquiry:

• Appreciative inquiry is similar to action research. It is strength-based, more collaborative and has an applied focus. It allows you to start with strengths and encourages engagement with new ideas
• Performance sport generally is obsessed with problem solving. We actually want players that can problem-solve. Can we move to a more asset-based approach and spend more time unpicking success?
• Considering the 4 Ds: Discover / Destiny / Design / Dream
• Positives of using appreciative inquiry: safe, agile, instructive, new knowledge, solution focused, iterative and democratic. It doesn’t ignore hard issues or problems and really attempts to achieve a healthier balance where it can often be more deficit-led.
• Some of the findings from leading an appreciate inquiry study with talent coaches: there was more positivity, collaboration and generative capacity for developing new ideas and increased innovation.

Tiered approaches to learning:

We can’t be everything to everyone. How can we do more to influence people?

• Tier 1: Bitesize Self-Directed
• Tier 2: Network Driven
• Tier 3: Collaborative Learning
• Tier 4: Individual & Bespoke

Session 2: Coaching & Development – Problem-Solving: How Does Our Approach to Player & Coaching Development Need to Evolve?

For the second session of the day, we leaned towards the expertise in the room to explore the question of how the space of coach and player development needs to evolve. Through the method of ‘diamond thinking’, the groups came up with a number of ideas and filtered them into recommendations for the wider room.

Group recommendations:

Group 1:

• Courage to challenge: in a lot of programmes there can be an underpinning fear and a lack of psychological safety in offering sufficient challenge.
• Specialism with caution: exploring the power of specialism but appreciating the blind spots that can come with this? e.g. an under-14 foundation phase coach with a specialism in coaching teenage footballers.

Group 2:

• Changing demographics in coaching pathway: the demographic of those transitioning into coaching is changing.
• Development of domain expertise: a continuing area of opportunity is to enhance the expertise in specific domains (pedagogy, sciences etc).

Group 3:

• Development space is disaggregated: bringing everything back together with performance at the heart in a more holistic way.

Group 4:

• Bespoke learning pathway: opportunities for coaches to have more options and take on a more self-directed learning approach.

Group 5:

• Balancing elements of technical, tactical & social: factoring this all in collectively. The humanistic element is often left out; so how can we make it more integrated?
• Technological Opportunities: sense-checking what’s good and what’s not across the core elements of technical, tactical and social.

Group 6:

• Enhancing learning environments by using technology: imagine a coach you’d benefit spending time with? What is the context you’d like to be in with that coach? What would you like to interact with them on? Using technology and potential impacts of VR to create realities and enhance learning environments.

Group 7:

• More accessibility: providing a highly personalised offer. Shifting the narrative around us going to the coaches to them coming to us.

Session 3: Coaching & Development – Developing Your Non-Directive Coaching Skills

Speaker: John Bull, Director & Lead for High Performance Research, Management Futures

For the third session of the day, we shifted our attentions to exploring a skill that can be hugely impactful in working with others, whether coaches or players. Non-directive coaching skills: believe in people’s potential, give them autonomy and have the skills to draw out, develop and focus their talents. To explore the skill, we leaned on the situational leadership model.

• Situational Leadership Model: pull & push. ‘Pull’ refers to the degree of coaching and motivation. ‘Push’ refers to the degree of directive input of ‘how to’.
• Situational Leadership Model: there are four types of activity – directive (instructive), delegation (hands-off with clear intent), mentoring (combination of directive and coaching) and non-directive coaching (we are not the expert, the other person is).
• How much of the conversations you have should be pushed or pulled? When you consider your conversations, consider the three levels of listening below and what gets in the way of these different levels?
• What gets in the way of your ability to listen and be open?
• If you think of times when you’ve been really good at listening, what helped?

Three levels of listening:

1. Level one – focused on your own agenda

• Relating what they’re saying to your own experience.
• Listening with our own agenda in mind, and to influence.

2. Level two – seeking to understand

• Respect their insight and expertise.
• Listening to understand without judgement.
• Fully engaged, creating good thinking space and being more curious.
• Summarising back to check understanding.

3. Level three – listening for what is not being said

• Observing body language and listening to tone of voice.

Session 4: Coaching & Development – Real Life Examples from Football & Netball

For the final session of the day, we had the opportunity to explore coaching and player development from two different organisations, supported by the research and questions that had emerged throughout the day, with England Netball Head Coach Jess Thirlby and Southampton FC’s Head of Technical Development Iain Brunnschweiler. Jess and Iain shared some of their thoughts around the siloing of coach and player development, impactful learning experiences, and developing oneself.

Speakers:

Jess Thirlby, Head Coach, England Netball

Iain Brunnschweiler, Head of Technical Development, Southampton FC

• Frameworks & curriculums: at Southampton, there is a written coaching philosophy and 11 statements about coaching. The club has evolved from having just curriculum topics to having documents around how to bring these coaching skills to life. Contained in the documents are coaching skill pillars and a number of principles that sit around the coaching sessions – the coaches are held to account so anyone visiting the environment should be able to come along to a coaching session and there is an expectation that you can see some of those in practice.
• From a England Netball perspective, there is a focus on trying to capture what ‘the Roses’ way’ looks and feels like – it includes skills, behaviours and character. Character was something that wasn’t included in previous frameworks. There is also as much a focus on social skills as technical and tactical.
• What is your point of difference? In the Roses environment, they are diverse both in terms of personnel but also tactically.
• Curriculums can be highly rigid, so it is important that there is space and scope for flexibility, or we are undoing the message of creativity and innovation that we as coaches we want to convey? The players need a sense of autonomy and freedom.
• During the Coronavirus pandemic, Southampton First Team Manager Ralph Hasenhüttl created a ‘playbook’ for the club’s playing philosophy. An ongoing challenge is balancing that tension between preparing talent to go into a really clear and specific environment, whilst also understanding they need a variety of developmental experiences within the pathway. The challenge however, is that we have to be cognisant of not filtering people into one way of doing something.
• What does the future game look like, then, what does future coaching look like and what do future environments look like? Have clear intent of how to get ahead of the curve. We know players are very knowledgeable, so it’s important to embrace this as opposed to avoiding it.
• Meaning and learning experiences: Jess shared the story of one of her richest experiences in netball. It came during a tour to South Africa where the senior players were given the opportunity to lead the team, whilst getting high challenge and high support from the actual coaches. It’s all about the timing of experiences and rubbing shoulders with others in the environment – one thing Jess is trying to create in the Roses environment is providing more opportunities for the younger players coming through who perhaps aren’t ‘Roses ready’ to rub shoulders with more senior players.
• A meaningful learning experience that Iain shared around Southampton’s coaches was in observing the coaches – filming them, coding and feeding back. This allowed the coaches to see themselves as a coach and hold a mirror up in a non-judgemental way.
• What are the relevant experiences we need? Iain talked about Southampton starting to use an ‘experiences tracker’ with the aim of identifying trends and mapping into the development plans of talent.
• When thinking about people development, find people who are disruptive to your thinking. There is also a lot of positives in wearing lots of hats.
• Coach burnout: it’s a very personal thing. If we are really clear on what we are going after as outcomes, and we empower people to do that in their own way, that’s a very powerful thing. There isn’t one way of doing it, so we shouldn’t judge others on how they go about it. If you want to be in a lead coaching role over a sustainable time, you need a stable base. What nourishes you as a coach and allows you to be the best version of yourself?
• Embrace difference: seek out people who are and do things differently you.
• Future development: Iain is studying the power of language and interacting with others – understanding their map of the world and helping them to understand it. He is also learning to play the piano to stimulate his creativity and support his mental health. Jess shared that she has a better understanding herself and how that impacts how she coaches – to tie in with an earlier point, rubbing shoulders with others away from the sport and surrounding yourself with different thinking is hugely important.

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By Edd Vahid

The I news recently published data that highlighted 97 per cent of former category one academy players, now aged 21-26 years old, did not make a single English Premier League appearance.

The data accounted for 4,109 players. Whilst the data can (and should) be further interrogated and contextualised, it helpfully serves as a stimulus for further discussion on what constitutes success for an academy or talent development environment.

Although player progression is a necessary and essential consideration, a broader view of success that acknowledges the reality of Premier League attainment – a CIES Football Observatory report into the world’s top 100 valued players highlighted a majority plying their trade in the Premier League – and promotes the multitude of ways that an academy can demonstrate added value is important.

Our records at Southampton indicate that a player who joins the Academy at 8 years old (the earliest point of registration) and remains in the programme until they are 17-18 years old accrue in the region of 2,500 hours of training and game activity. This figure is probably (at least) trebled when you consider time on site, travel, and other purposeful conversations.

Given the scale of commitment from a young person, their family, and a club, the notion of reducing success to a singular output is unhelpful. It is vital that judgments on success align with an established vision and respond to the expectations of the various stakeholders invested in a young person’s development. These stakeholders are incredibly diverse and demand insight from a performance (or player progression), financial, parental, educational and holistic perspective. Additionally, it is important that system wide markers of success complement individual stories. A system committed to supporting individuals must ensure each unique story is celebrated and prominent in discussions regarding success.

Supplementing holistic development

Whilst multiple variables contribute to the footballing progression of each individual, several tangible performance milestones are often used to define success. These milestones are broadly reflective of the pathway that players are required to negotiate. In ascending order this might involve securing an academy registration, successfully transitioning between phases, the attainment of a scholarship, and securing a professional contract. These milestones generally precede a professional debut and the subsequent accumulation of appearances (and future contracts) at various levels of the game. On paper, this progression is presented in a linear fashion. The reality is certainly less straightforward, with a challenging pathway creating a series of experiences that can supplement a young person’s holistic development.

As a club we have established targets for the previously mentioned milestones. These targets reflect a projection of future success, are generally updated on a three-year cycle, and agreed in consultation with our Board. Explicitly aligning expectations between relevant stakeholders (e.g., Academy staff and Club Board) is critical and should encourage a collaborative strategy that supports success. For example, if a club promote a commitment to supporting young players transitioning into the first team, this must be reflected in the infrastructure and resources allocated. The targets serve as a useful reference that provide a basis for review and reflection. Additionally, these targets should help inform future strategy and investment. Whilst these targets are shared with and available to staff, the focus remains on the processes that are designed to ensure, in Bill Walsh terms, the scores take care of itself!

Academies: a positive financial investment

At the present time, our Academy accounts for approximately seven per cent of the club’s total cost base. Talking strictly in performance terms, if players consistently progress in our pathway this reflects a positive financial investment. Specifically, the cost per year to develop a professional player is significantly less than the financial outlay necessary to recruit a player of an equivalent standard. This could be further heightened with the impact of Brexit and the restricted access to European talent.  Furthermore, if the first team squad features a healthy representation of Academy graduates, the economic value in saved wages and transfer fees is significant. Interestingly, a report by the Twenty First Group highlighted that realised revenue and cost savings from our Academy accounted for more than £30 million in season 2019-20. Additionally, Deloitte’s annual review of football finance 2021 highlighted that Uefa recommend clubs operate a 70 per cent threshold for wages to revenue ratio. Our 2020 club financial statements commented that in the absence of revenue impacted by the pandemic and no onerous contracts, our player wages to revenue ratio would have been 56 per cent. This further strengthens the valuable economic role homegrown talent can play.

In addition to the performance and financial indicators, which will satisfy certain stakeholders, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the broader achievements of an academy programme. The reality of securing a career as a Premier League footballer is well publicised. Contrastingly, the narrative drawing attention to the skills cultivated on a development journey are arguably less prominent. Importantly, these skills can be highly transferable. Whilst everyone has a different and unique story, an academy environment can encourage the emergence of many highly desirable skills. Indeed, in 2020 the World Economic Forum published research that highlighted 10 skills that would support the future of work. Many of the listed skills (e.g., active listening and learning strategies; complex problem-solving; critical thinking and analysis; creativity, originality, and initiative; leadership and social influence; technology use; resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility; reasoning, problem solving and ideation) are arguably refined during an academy experience. These skills or characteristics are often less tangible than the previously mentioned milestones. However, they should not be considered less important.

Balancing challenge and support

Research has highlighted how resilience develops based on the interaction between challenge and support (see Fletcher and Sarkar, 2016).  Whilst individually perceived, it is evident that an academy environment will consistently present a series of challenges. Inevitably, on a weekly basis there will be opportunities to develop new skills, play in a different position or age group, speak in front of peers, reflect on performance, manage time to maintain academic progress and interact with coaching and multidisciplinary team staff members. Whilst these elements are generally common and often deliberate in their presence, they represent a small sample of activity that excludes less frequent or emerging challenges. This might include injuries, deselection, or a loss of form that characterise the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) nature of sport. With an appropriate level of support, the emergence of resilient young people is a desirable by-product. Additionally, the highlighted scenarios (e.g., developing new skills or reflecting on a performance) can help further refine an individual’s capacity to be adaptable, self-aware, resourceful, and collaborative. These skills have an impact beyond the football pitch.

Positively, the environment can also create opportunities to occupy leadership roles. As an individual progresses through the pathway an expectation for them to take ownership of their development is vital.  This might include speaking with the coach, requesting video clips or data from the analysis team, liaising with the sports science team on their physical programme or nutritional requirements, and discussing their pre-match routine with a psychologist. These interactions help refine a broad set of communication skills whilst consolidating a knowledge of physical development, preferred learning methods and preparation strategies. Whilst primarily designed to support an individual’s progression within a performance pathway, the impact should extend beyond the confines of a football club.

Several years ago, when asked what would constitute success, a former coach within our Academy proudly shared an aspiration that “players would want to repeat the experience, irrespective of the outcome”. This phrase has remained core to my beliefs and reflects the importance of viewing Academy success in broader terms. Success for an academy cannot be considered in binary terms (i.e. Premier League player or not). Success is multi-faceted, with different stakeholders naturally prioritising different markers, and individuals seeking to explore the fullness of their potential. We have an obligation to prepare individuals (staff and players) for the future. We cannot guarantee a young player a Premier League career or a board member a favourable return on investment. Importantly, and within our control, is an ability to demonstrate a daily commitment to a philosophy and the execution of a strategy that maximises the probability of success.

Edd is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.

References

Chaudhuri, O.  (2020). The pitfalls when evaluating a successful Academy – there is a holistic financial model that tells a significant story

CIES Football Observatory.  (2022).  Weekly post – most expensive players.  Issue 362

Cunningham, S.  (2022).  Premier League reveal 97% of players who come through top academies never play a minute of top-flight football

Deloitte Sport Business Group (2021).  Annual review of football finance – 2021

Fletcher, D. and Sarkar, M.  (2016).  Mental fortitude training: An evidence-based approach to developing psychological resilience for sustained success.  Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 7(3), 135-157

Vahid, E.  (2021).  How teams can support the non-linear development of young athletes

Walsh, B., Jamison, S., and Walsh, C.  (2009).  The score takes care of itself.  Penguin Group, New York

Whiting, K.  (2020).  These are the top 10 job skills of tomorrow – and how long it takes to learn them

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By Lorena Torres Ronda

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There seems to be a discrepancy between the trends of injury incidence in team sports.

A recent study, led by Jan Ekstrand (2021), analysed trends in injury rates among male professional football players across 18 seasons. They identified a decrease in injury trends as well as an increase in player availability in both training and matches.

In the Australian Football League (AFL), recent results seemed to show stable injury rates and missed matches, as the player-salary costs remained stable too (Eliakam et al, 2020). In the National Basketball Association (NBA) recent results showed an increased in injuries (unique injuries) and games missed due to injuries (Torres-Ronda et al, 2022).

Nonetheless, what seems to be pretty consistent across the industry is that injuries cost money, and a few studies are starting to prove (objectively with data) they cost performance (success) too. And from the team and the individual perspective, every time we hear about a main injury in a player it makes me think, ‘here we go again; how these type of injury still occurs so often?’ or ‘why so many occurrences of this injury?’

The first question I want to pose is: what are we doing wrong when it comes to injuries, and are there steps we can take at an organisational level to buck the trend?

If we study the injury data that has emerged from the NBA in the last four years we can see that the occurrences of injury are increasing despite ever greater resource being poured into injury prevention.

It is in everyone’s interest to fix the situation, given that injuries cost both money and success. Beyond the bottom line, there is also the disruption to your team. When important players are absent it can increase the pressure on the rest of the roster and your coaching staff, as well as increase the working hours of your performance staff behind the scenes.

Risk-reward

Firstly, should we use ‘injury prevention’ or (managing) ‘injury risk’? Sometimes semantics can make us rethink what we’re doing. With ‘injury prevention’, we often see more of a focus on strength training exercises, whereas ‘injury risk’ allows an assessment of the likelihood of an injury occurring and enables decisions to be made to reduce that likelihood.

Of course, an opponent could step on a player’s foot at any time. There are things that we can control and others that we cannot. The schedule is not going to change, so could it come down to minute-management? Is it worth a player playing the second night of back-to-back games, with a high cumulative minutes (for his age, experience, strength levels, team’s season performance)? What other factors are coming into play? I believe decisions should be made in a risk-reward context.

With this in mind, what injury trends are you noticing with your teams? How have your internal review processes evolved to manage those trends? The greater investment in injury prevention has created a lot of moving pieces and still the injury numbers are ticking upwards. In the NBA, it is load-related, with tendon and ligament injuries on the rise (specifically, knee injuries).

There will inevitably be differences between teams, which could come down to playing style, the choices of the coach, or simple bad luck during any given campaign, but this tells me that we should be reviewing internally what we’re doing with our athletes.

With frameworks for decision making and tools such as strength assessments, biomechanics, and ultrasounds, among many other assessment tools for internal and external loads, and players’ subjective perceptions of fatigue ratings, we can have information about many aspects of the athletes’ day to day. But how can we use this information and communicate it to coaches and the various stakeholders to make a better decision around whether or not a player plays tonight or for how many minutes?

When staff are making assessments, are they allowed to do their jobs, and by this I mean, how is your player buy-in context and organisation support? Are we doing the right testing, at the right timings, and analysing the right metrics? Are the players using their time in the right way to promote injury prevention? Is it important to track and classify their drills for injury risk as well as for conditioning and performance? Which types of statistics are we using? Are they correct? Should we review deeply our resources, what we can realistically do and expectations about the risk of injury?

The missing piece

It is also important to consider the culture of a franchise. If a coach has been in tenure for three, five or more years they likely have more trust and stability for long-term processes. Such scenarios stand in contrast to some franchises where ‘you lose three games in a row and the coach is fired’, making the environment more unstable, and depending on how it affects the staff, more volatile. For those coaches, it is hard to say ‘we’re going to develop this player and every 20 games he’s going to rest for one game, depending on the opponent or difficulty of the game.’ They need to be successful today and they’re going to squeeze the sponge or play the cards that they have.

Sticking with the NBA, when a franchise is bringing in college players or players from overseas they will inevitably be impacted by the schedule, which is between two to three times the length (or congested fixtures) than the European average season. How should we manage those players and introduce them to their new context?

When the European competition increased the number of games there was also a spike in injuries and severity. The schedules are unlikely to be reduced in any corner of the globe, so the issue becomes: how do we handle that? Do we need bigger squads? Do we need to have greater rotation? Do these need to be enshrined in the rules?

And what is happening in those moments that we can’t control? What are the athletes eating? What are their habits? Their professionalism? Their education in their own bodies and recovery? I think we’re making steps in general in the sports community because we have more professionals, more education, more investment in food, but then why are injuries increasing, or not significantly decreasing?

In addition, I don’t think we have enough good data to know why injuries are happening. The impact of data collection and analysis is another consideration, particularly when considering risk-reward and decision-making. When using that data, are we being too conservative? Are we using the data against our interests? Or are we pushing too much because of pressures (including players’ desire to play)?

It can also depend on the sport or the league. There are some risk management systems that have access to datasets on multiple teams and sports; they might be able to call upon injury or tracking information.

What are we missing in the analysis? We might be getting better at some things with injuries but there’s still the trend of injuries increasing. Should the leagues be more involved? because nobody wants the star players missing, not teams, fans, media or the broadcasters. As a league, how could we have a database where people submit anonymised information that can lead to analysis? I venture to say that injury analysis is way more complex than the way that we’re attacking it, and that we are probably ‘missing something somewhere’.

Lorena is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.

Leaders Performance Institute member Joelie Chisholm has achieved some of her best performances following heavy training sessions and puts it down to her emotional load being low.

“My biggest impact on performance, and therefore recovery, is definitely mental,” she tells the Leaders Performance Podcast of her extracurricular ultrarunning exploits.

The Chair of GB Climbing’s Competition and Performance Group is an avid sportsperson whose experience spans several disciplines and informs her thinking on this ever-important question.

Also on the agenda were:

• The need to be present when competing [5:15];
• Why she feels being in the zone is a precursor to a flow state [27:00];
• Protective factors and stressors in building her resilience [31:45];
• The battle between her ‘inner critic’ and her ‘inner coach’ [30:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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By John Portch

When yours is a winning environment, what steps can you take to ensure that your performance levels bear the extra pressure of expectation that comes with success?

The question is on the mind of Jeremy Bettle, the Performance Director at New York City FC, who won the MLS Cup in December last year, when the Leaders Performance Institute and Dave Slemen and Anna Edwards of Elite Performance Partners [EPP] sat down with him to discuss the steps performance directors can take to become better leaders.

Joining Bettle in conversation are Darren Burgess, the High Performance Manager of the Adelaide Crows who also leads EPP’s search offering in Australia, and James Thomas, the Performance Director at British Gymnastics. The trio work in three different sports and geographies, with systems and structures that vary in their approach, but each brings a sense of vulnerability, self-awareness, and an understanding of the importance of the culture and context they are working within. Their leadership capabilities bind together a great strategy and strong culture, which is essential if teams and organisations are to retain their shape when pressure is applied. Of the expectations and pressure now thrust upon NYCFC, Bettle says: “It’s certainly going to be something new for our club this year.”

Bettle, Burgess and Thomas all have a deep desire to keep learning, which has driven them to the top of their fields and each played a part in a series of ‘firsts’ in 2021. NYCFC’s MLS Cup triumph was the club’s first, while Burgess was serving as Performance Manager of the Melbourne Demons when they won their first AFL Grand Final in 57 years. Also, under Thomas’ stewardship, Great Britain won their first Olympic medal in the women’s gymnastics team event for 93 years.

Thomas tackles the question of pressure from the athletes’ perspective. “It’s been the biggest risk or success factor of the last four years,” he says. “When we look at our gymnasts, they’re phenomenal athletes. They have the ability to execute phenomenal technical skills and they can do it day-in and day-out in the training environment. Where I see the athletes either struggle or excel is that ability to step into a competition environment and deliver it there. With every sport, you’ve got great examples of people who can do it either in a one-off or can do it repeatedly, or they can do it in training and they can’t do it in competition.

“We’ve actually put a lot of time and resource into different pressure environments whether it’s changing training set-ups, whether it’s manipulating timings just to put athletes under more pressure, less warm-up, less time between apparatus, we’ve brought in surprise friends and family to come on the balcony and watch and cheer. We try to exhaust almost all of our coaches and psychologists’ views of manipulating the training environment.” Nevertheless, as Thomas admits, “you can never quite replicate the actual competition environment.”

Burgess, who last year won the AFL Grand Final with Melbourne and previously worked in the English Premier League with Liverpool and Arsenal, finds the same applies to professional team sports. “It’s very hard to simulate pressure, especially with games happening every three or four days in the Premier League, particularly when you’re also competing in European competitions.”

His mind goes back to the two-week period in September before Melbourne took on the Western Bulldogs in the AFL Grand Final. The consensus amongst the fans and media was that Melbourne had the better team but were undermined by the fact that their route through the playoffs meant that they had played one game in 28 days.

“We decided to take the high risk of playing a match simulation,” says Burgess. “It probably cost us a couple of players who were on the fringe of being selected, but in the end, that was how we decided to simulate that pressure as much as we could. We had umpires in, full mouth guards, so it was part of our thought process to try and simulate that as much as we could. We even built up a bit of a rivalry between the ‘possibles’ and ‘probables’ and tried to manufacture that so that the ‘possibles’ put up a good fight.”

Bettle approves of such approaches. “I’m a big believer in exposing people to pressure versus shielding them from it,” he says. “I think there can be a balance there but you’ve got to get used to pressure and have strategies to deal with it. I’m a big believer in process and having done it before; and trying to make these environments a lot more automatic.”

He recalls his time working at the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets between 2011 and 2015 when there were few opportunities to generate pressure because the games came thick and fast. He was struck by the veteran players. “They show very little emotion win, lose or draw. I think because it’s so automatic to them, it really helps them to perform on a nightly basis.” By contrast, however, New York City practised penalties as they progressed through the MLS Playoffs. “Having the guys line up on halfway and having them walk out on their own; and because they’ve gone through it over and over and over again, when we actually get into the scenario, which we did twice in the playoffs, it just felt more normal to us. The guys executed it excellently when it came to it and maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t, but it made me feel better about it anyway!”

The approach is far from universal in soccer, as Slemen points out. Penalties are one of the few closed skills in football that can be practised but the prevailing culture has often been reluctant.

Bettle and New York City Head Coach Ronny Deila also tried to factor an element of fun into the team’s progression through the season and post-season. Though he has often been sceptical of organised fun in a team context, he explains that Deila’s decision to organise team dinners reaped dividends.

“I think the coach did a great job this year of recognising that our team didn’t do well when they didn’t have an opportunity to relax,” says Bettle. “So we started doing team dinners when we go on the road, on match day minus two. They’d have a glass of wine, and we’d have just a really fun night out that felt authentic and not forced. Giving the players an opportunity to enjoy it and not be so disciplined was a bit of a departure from my mindset, but I’ve come to recognise it’s been one of the most valuable things that we did last year, to put a focus on joy and fun and enjoying the experience. I think building that environment, recognising who your players are and how they’re going to respond versus having some really rigid thoughts around ‘this isn’t high performance, we can’t drink wine two days before a game’ it actually helped us.”

Much like in soccer or basketball, Thomas explains that in gymnastics the success of any rituals largely depends on the skill of the coach. He says: “Where I probably see the magic happen it’s been where coaches have managed to really understand the team and the group of athletes they’ve got, where they’re positioned.

“For the men’s gymnastics team, it was very clear in the build-up to Tokyo, they were probably fourth or fifth in the world, and it was very cleverly done by our coach to position them as the underdogs that were going to create the big upset rather than ‘we can’t achieve that’ or ‘we’re world No 1’. It was ‘let’s go on the hunt’. They really put this mindset into the gymnasts that this final 12-week prep was really just about closing the gap. You could see every day that the gymnasts came in with the bit between their teeth about closing the gap. It wasn’t necessarily about winning the medal, it was about ‘how do we get as close as we possibly can?’

“There was a sense of realism, a sense of togetherness towards something and it really pulled them together. It did feel like a team and the feedback that we had from some of the gymnasts who had been to multiple games, said it was the best team environment because they had a really clear purpose and it was really cleverly orchestrated by the coach. That’s where I’ve seen it work its best, through the coach, with a little bit of a framework of what they’re working towards and that purpose.”

Thomas has witnessed scenarios where the use of rituals does not work and puts it down to authenticity, which chimes with Burgess’ views on the matter. “It’s a really risky practice if there’s not authenticity about the ritual, the practice or the theme,” he says. “If there’s not complete buy-in, then you really are in trouble. Let’s say, for example, that your ritual, your belief is ‘selflessness’ and you want everybody to act selflessly throughout everything, the minute that your star No 10 player decides to miss a training session or turn up late or act selfishly in some way, are you going to drop that player? You have to stick to it and then it becomes part of your team’s identity and everybody respects that. Yes, it can work, but it has to work in the right environment and I’ve seen both.”

A data & innovation article brought to you by our Partners

Data fatigue is a longstanding issue in professional sports. As teams collect more comprehensive and diverse datasets, however, the problem is only becoming more acute.

“I experienced it first-hand as a practitioner,” Rich Buchanan tells the Leaders Performance Institute, having previously worked behind the scenes at Swansea City FC, the Wales FA, and other organizations. “The people tasked with making sense out of assorted data are under immense pressure to interpret information every single day for every single player throughout an entire season. The weight of delivering ROI lies in their hands.”

Buchanan, who has also worked for organizations in the US and continental Europe, is now the Performance Director at Zone7. The company’s artificial intelligence [AI] system is being used by a growing number of top-tier sports outfits as they look to convert data collection into actionable insights for higher levels of athlete performance and availability.

“If you have one person undertaking manual analysis and interpretation, it is difficult, if not impossible, to do that consistently well over the course of a campaign,” he continues. “Just as we’ve seen in other industries, I believe AI will play an increasingly important role in helping professionals identify complex risk patterns from an athlete’s data that would otherwise be invisible to the human eye.”

How does data fatigue manifest? “Typically, sports scientists or fitness coaches are the ones tasked with monitoring players using data-generating tools, like GPS or biometric wearables,” says Buchanan. “Many of these professionals, however, are not data specialists by trade. They are generally sports practitioners whose expertise is better served in  athlete-facing environments – on a pitch, in a gym, etc. – where they work directly with athletes in a practical manner.”

“Right now, the conventional norm for making sense of athlete performance data in sport requires significant time commitment to examine large datasets. It is a laborious manual analysis and interpretation process, one which often runs counter to why these professionals embarked on a career in sport in the first place. As a result, disenchantment becomes quickly apparent and you see signs of data fatigue setting in as they’re pressured to deliver meaningful insights that can then be practically applied.

“Even now, as many organizations employ data science personnel, it’s not humanly possible to do this kind of manual analysis and interpretation effectively and consistently for multiple athletes over the course of a season. Combined with the frequency and complexity of new datasets becoming available, the manual approach often results in flawed insights that reduce the value that organizations receive from investments in data collection tools.”

Buchanan works closely with Tal Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of Zone7, whose extensive background in creating and deploying AI technology with the likes of Salesforce and Oracle has allowed him to witness data fatigue first-hand.

“The need to find accurate solutions for harmonizing, analyzing, and interpreting such large volumes of data has never been clearer,” says Brown. “I’ve spent much of my career creating intelligent tools that minimize data fatigue while creating more efficient data analysis processes. This is now becoming a significant challenge for decision makers in sport, especially as they’re tasked with validating and correctly interpreting data from a growing array of different sources. It’s not just game and competition data, we’re also seeing increased amounts of medical, strength & conditioning, sleep and general wellbeing data generated by wearable technologies.”

The scenario of data fatigue described by Buchanan is not uncommon and Zone7 is aware of the vital need to adopt a ‘practitioner’s lens,’ continues Brown. “Tech innovation and evolution is driven by the need to answer harder questions in more efficient and reliable ways. You need to collaborate with practitioners and ultimately provide the insights that add value in their specific environments.”

One such practitioner is Javier Vidal, a Performance Coach with Spanish La Liga club Valencia CF. Vidal has used Zone7 in a number of different team environments. “Zone7 is a tool I’ve used for several years,” said Vidal. “Its AI has allowed me to adapt my day-to-day routine and get more value of out new data generating technologies that are arising all the time.

Zone7 has been deployed and operated real time by Vidal at Valencia CF since the start of the 21/22 season and the number of confirmed injuries has dropped by 52% compared to the previous season. This closely resembles results during his tenure in Getafe another La Liga team, where Vidal saw a drop of 70%, with a 65% reduction in days that first-team players were lost due to injury. “It would be the work of many people analyzing data all day to gain such useful information, but with Zone7 I get accurate, usable information within minutes that I can immediately put into practice.”

Photo: Zone7

Buchanan adds that, in the case of forecasting injury risk, AI can also take a complex, multifaceted problem and present it in an easy-to-understand way. “At the top line, Zone7 presents ‘athletes at high, medium, or low risk. On top of that, it presents potential actionable solutions, such as, ‘do more or less in this specific area than you originally intended.”

Multifaceted problems also create greater risk of blind spots emerging in athlete monitoring. In this case, the relationship between classic sports performance data streams such as external workload, strength and internal workload, and ‘next gen’ of data points such as heartrate variability [HRV] and biomarkers monitoring stress, sleep or diet presents a margin for error. “We can create visibility into how those nodes interact in the day-to-day environment,” says Brown. “More data allows us to calibrate tools that can understand those relationships. Traditional spreadsheet-like tools just don’t offer that functionality.”

One of the missions driving Zone7 is to give practitioners a sense of security at moments when they are under significant pressure to deliver. “One of the hardest parts of a coach, analyst, or performance specialist’s job is giving definitive advice on decisions made around athletes,” says Buchanan. “The number of times these professionals are tasked with doing this under pressure from all directions, with only their own subjective opinion to draw upon, is concerning. Equipping medical, fitness or coaching professionals with the objectivity that AI provides, driven by complex computations, creates more certainty and a stronger case for the advice they provide in that scenario.”

“Humans, by nature, already have in-built biases,” Buchanan continues. “We already have opinions about certain athletes; who’s robust and who’s not robust, who’s likely to report muscle tightness, etc. Now, if Zone7 corroborates those opinions, it assures the user. If what Zone7 suggests turns out to be true, then the trust builds. When we suggest something that’s counterintuitive, people may find that uncomfortable because it’s challenging preconceived beliefs. But I would say, in a way, that’s the true value-add that Zone7 brings, highlighting those blind spots. We’re there to make sure those players, and the opportunities to pre-emptively intervene, don’t slip through the net.”

Brown and Buchanan are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for data science in professional sports, whether that be 360-degree support for any interaction a player has related to performance, the possibility for longitudinal injury risk profiling, or the ability to support practitioner across a variety of different sports, each with their own cadences. The latter is already underway, with Zone7 being actively applied across American football, basketball, baseball, and rugby, in addition to extensive work in soccer.

Zone7 will also continue to challenge accepted wisdoms. “Regardless of the value individual practitioners and sports organizations place on data to manage athletes/players, the industry has been heavily reliant on simplistic data analysis and interpretation for a number of years and, quite simply, there’s now a more refined way of doing it,” says Buchanan. “Using AI to simulate different training load scenarios with the aim of physically peaking on certain days on the training cycle is just around the corner. “This is where people can get very precise on how they prepare their players or athletes for future events, rather than best guess periodization models.”

“Ultimately, future sporting success belongs to those who leverage their data in the most efficient, effective and accurate manner. We’re here, primed and ready to help practitioners in sport do just that.”

To connect with Zone7 directly, please email [email protected]