By John Portch

As 2022 comes to an end, there has already been some considered reflection upon the last 12 months – but what about the year ahead?

At this year’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium, the Leaders Performance Institute spoke to a number of our speakers to ask: what are they most optimistic about heading into 2023?

There answers were varied and spanned two articles – Part I can be found here – but learning and development kept creeping up in these conversations.

For example, Neil Saunders, the Director of Football at the English Premier League, spoke onstage about the league’s Elite Player Performance Plan. “We are 10 years since the launch of the Elite Player Performance Plan and we’ll be updating our strategy and setting new aims and objectives for the system moving forward,” he said. “And that’s really exciting because there’s a great opportunity to build on some of the amazing work that’s taking place already but also to address areas of opportunity and try to improve what we’re doing to make sure that our work in player development is not just fit for now but also for the future.”

Joel Shinofield, the Managing Director of Sport Development at USA Swimming, answered the question in a similar vein. “We just launched a brand new technology product, we’ve revamped it completely, we’ve revamped all of our coach education, so those are at their very early launch stages and seeing those become more mature, seeing coaches access the new data we’re going to provide to them,” he said.

“The idea behind our data project and our technology project was to make more resources available to our members; and so what I want to see is the utilisation of that because I know that’s going to be the value of the whole project is that our clubs, our teams, our coaches, our membership has access to data that will help them improve the sport and improve their experience.”

USA Swimming is one of the most mature programs in elite sport and stands in contrast in some respects to a newer sport, such as competitive climbing. “We’re in the process of putting a full-time coaching team in place, seeing them evolve and develop in support of those athletes, and really just continue the learning,” said Lorraine Brown, the Head of Performance at GB Climbing.

“We’ve got a huge amount to learn, not only just about high performance sport but actually more about the sport and what it takes to support these amazing athletes. We’ve got brilliant athletes who despite the system have really achieved some amazing things. So how do we really help to facilitate them to continue to do that and provide some added value to their own environments? And part of that is making sure that as well as the experiences, actually the medical support around them and making sure that they stay fit and healthy as the volume and pressure increases. The pressure can have that negative effect of making them more susceptible to injury and illness. So how do we stay on top of that?”

Beyond performance itself, Jatin Patel, the Head of Diversity & Inclusion at the Rugby Football Union, is optimistic that his work can continue to have an impact on the sport of rugby union.

“I’m really looking forward to having more conversations around and spreading the importance of inclusion from grassroots all the way up to professional,” he said.

“Guiding and advising people how we can do it better, learning more myself, being new to rugby, and ultimately the longer-term aim of bettering the game and future-proofing it and ultimately reaching our objective and wanting to be a sport that’s more reflective of society.”

These sentiments are shared by Patel’s session moderator, Shona Crooks, the Head of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at Management Futures.

She said: “I’m excited to learn more in this space. I think because I work in DE&I everyone expects you to have all the answers and it’s nice as I evolve, as organisations evolve, as society evolves, and so coming up with new ways to do things, new options, new training, new skills; how I can help to upskill people, how I can bring and move the conversation on. Because, ultimately, the end goal is that I do myself out of a job, that, actually, we’re so inclusive and everyone feels that sense of belonging, that DE&I just doesn’t exist anymore. How do I help each year to chip away at that?”

We then wrap up this two-part series with a reminder that in times of uncertainty, whether that be through growth or a more general sense of volatility, your fundamental principles will be invaluable.

“There’s always the unknown of what’s coming,” said Craig McRae, the Senior Coach of Collingwood FC, who are developing as a team under his tutelage. “That’s an attraction and an excitement in itself. For us, it’s about repeating behaviours. Putting ourselves into a position that we were last year and in our game like any game, you don’t start at the top, you’ve got to work your way up the ladder. I think that’s part of the excitement of our journey.”

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

High performers in both sport and business tend to overcomplicate things, on the other hand, they cannot just assume they can go it alone.

Dan Lawrence, the Head of Performance at Matchroom Boxing, watched his former boxer, the now-retired George Groves, learn this in real time.

“Yes, he had a team. He had myself, a conditioning coach, we had his head coach at the time,” Lawrence tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “He was steering the ship at that time, whereas I don’t think that was the right way to go.”

In fact, “you have to have a cohesive team working with one sole goal”.

Here, Lawrence discusses his work in combat sports while also touching upon:

• The reasons why people over-complicate human performance [6:00];
• The differences in working with boxers and footballers [10:00];
• Working smarter, not harder [13:00];
• How the role of the S&C is evolving [23:00].

Dan Lawrence Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By Sarah Evans

We were delighted to be back at Twickenham Stadium for our Sport Performance Summit for two days of insights, learning and connecting. Day one saw us hear from Britain’s fastest woman, Dina Asher-Smith, Head Coach at Collingwood FC, Craig McRae, and the Director of Football at the Premier League, Neil Saunders, to name just a few.

Session 1: The Lessons I Learned: Rebuilding After Setbacks, brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser  

Speaker: Dina Asher-Smith, Team GB Olympian

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

To kick off the two days of insights, we had the incredible Dina Asher-Smith talking us through her journey as an athlete and how she overcame some of the setbacks she faced along the way.

• “When you run really fast, it’s then expected you can do that all the time” – Dina had to find a way to run fast that was sustainable, and not having to then take time off after each really fast time.
• Her biggest challenge was getting a support team in place, and how efficiently that team worked. Especially managing this team as a young athlete, and how to effectively communicate with them and get the best out of everyone in the team was a huge challenge. People management is becoming a key skill for the modern athlete.
• Coming back from the disappointment of the Tokyo Olympics, Dina explained she only felt like herself after the 200m at the 2022 World Championships in Oregon. “I didn’t feel in touch with my normal aggressive self until almost a year after the Olympics.”
• Covid postponing the Olympics actually helped Dina. She explained she was able to optimise and make things better with the year delay. Having the time to rest, reset and build again was needed.
• Her Olympic semi-final post-race interview was very emotional. Dina highlighted that she had an injury going into the games and nearly pulled out. She was even in a wheelchair only four weeks before the games started. She had only been in spikes for seven days pre-Olympics and still nearly made an Olympic final.
• Dina explained that, “Tokyo shaped me so much”. She has been a big supporter of sports psychology. “I think at the elite level it is 80% mental. It comes down to mental resilience, mental toughness in that moment and who wants it more.”
• “The Oregon World Championships 2022 is my proudest achievement in terms of hard work. Psychologically I had never had to overcome so much to just be myself on that start line. Getting over the disappointment of Tokyo, plus enduring such a traumatic time as a family with my grandma being so ill, I had a disconnect between being physically fit and your emotional state. I’m an emotional runner and it takes a lot out of you. I was scared that if I ultimately let go of all my emotions, I would cry and I didn’t want to do that again. But actually, unless I broke down the emotions, understand them and go into my feelings, I would have broken down and not been successful.”
• You have to use these experiences to make you stronger, to grow and move on. “I have a new appreciation for the psychological power of sprinting.”
• Visibility is important for female sportswomen. It is important to be seen in certain spaces to help drive change.
• “I don’t think about legacy. I just think about ‘without limits’ on track and off track. I remember hearing ‘can’t’ all the time, but I think ‘why not?’ I see myself as someone who can open door for other people. I need to make sure I am not the last sports women to walk into certain rooms.”

Session 2: Accelerating Excellence: Elite Performance in the World of Trading

Speakers:

James King, Author of Accelerating Excellence: The Principles that Drive Elite Performance

Greg Newman, Chief Executive, ONYX Capital Group

For the second session of the day we heard from James King about his lessons from the world of trading and how they apply to high performance.

Ambition, talent and effort dictate success in every field. Performance is never a coincidence, and it always aligns with a specific set of principles.

There are four mechanisms, each of which contain principles to help our rate of progress. No one can predict success, but if you align yourself with more of these principles you stack the odds in your favour.

1. Perform from your sweet spot. To excel you need to pursue goals that align with your strengths, interests and values.

Three questions you have to ask yourself:

1. What are your strengths?
2. What are your interests?
3. What are your values?

We need move away from ‘you can be anything you want to be’, towards, ‘you can be more of who you really are’.

2. Acquiring Skill. Instead of the time spent training, it’s the time spent training under specific conditions:

1. Focus on the foundations
2. Learning by doing
3. It’s on you
4. You need challenge to change
5. Training must be specific
6. Create uncertainty
7. Variability

3. Emotional Control. To perform when it counts is the measure of elite performance. Luckily this is a skill, and like any skill with the right training you can optimise it.

4. Innovate to stay ahead of the rest. Danger is becoming a one-hit-wonder, how do you keep improving?

James then welcomed Greg Newman on stage to discuss how he was able to utilise these principles in practice.

• Negative feedback is crucial, and you have to be told when you need to do something better.
• This culture is described as Radical Transparency. Within this, accountability is huge. Everything is being said to make you and therefore the team better.
• It’s not ego, you have to have belief. It takes the ego to believe, but it takes deep humility to understand that everything is about learning.
• We have a formulaic approach to goal-setting, being objective about the obstacles you are going to face and how you are going to overcome them.
• North Star approach – you have to set a North Star and have it seemingly unachievable. Every time someone has a break through, it shifts the expectations of everyone else. The perception of potential then shifts.

Session 3: Coaching Conversation: Coaching Mastery & Creating Environments for Talent to Flourish

Speaker: Craig McRae, Senior Coach, Collingwood FC

Moderator: Roger Kneebone, Director of Surgical Education, Imperial College London

The third session saw Roger pick Craig’s brain around his approach to coaching, how he works with his athletes, and the importance of coach wellbeing.

• Sport is often about survival, and you move from survival mode to living mode, then back to survival mode towards the end of your career.
• We often learn winning behaviours through losing. There is a formula to losing just as there is a formula to winning.
• When you experience something, you then build a level of comfort. So the more you can experience an environment the more you are comfortable in the pressure. Life is about experiences and putting yourself in positions to learn and grow.
• “I don’t actually like the term ‘mastery’ as it alludes to being full and I feel far from full. I’m always learning and wanting to grow,” explained McRae. “I never want to put a ceiling onto what I want to achieve, I learn things from different opportunities, and life takes you in different directions.”
• Craig explained the importance of planting seeds for future careers whilst he was still competing. When it came time to retire, it was then obvious where his passions lay and because of this preparation, it was obvious to him that it was in coaching.
• How do you go from being a master in playing to transitioning to being more of a novice in coaching?

“Having a mentor is key. I would video every session, so I could watch it back and reflect, and constantly look to get better. As coaches we review the game a lot but we very rarely review ourselves and the processes behind the programme.”

• Handling pressure is about the ability to be just present and be at ease with the moment. The inexperienced vs the experienced player is all about managing the moment. Execute and repeat the behaviour so that when you are under pressure, you don’t actually have to think about it, muscle memory takes over and you are able to execute.
• Our ability to stay in the moment and execute the next moment is critical. It’s like a windscreen wiper, you will make mistakes in games and then you have to be present to execute the next moment, wash away the mistakes and fix it for the next one.
• “We have a winners’ mentality – on a Monday morning you won’t know whether we have won or lost, we repeat the same processes over and over and stick to these, not changing things because we have won or lost. If you repeat those behaviours long enough they will be there when you need them.”
• “I don’t like players lying down at the end of the game, you have to do the same processes and go again. We lost but we’re not losers, we get up shake their hands, and get ready for the next game.”
• There are two kinds of pressure to consider: the impact of a mistake, and the impact that the mistake can have on you.
• You can be a winner even if you lose. You can learn from the experience and improve. It is perilously easy to lose that sense of who you are, and having a mentor and the support you need is crucially important.
• McRae highlighted that it’s so important to play in a grateful state. It’s so important to keep that fun element of play and gratitude towards performing.

Session 4: Case Study: The Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan brought to you by VEO

Speaker: Neil Saunders, Director of Football, Premier League

After the lunch break, Neil Saunders took us through the Premier League’s Elite Performance Plan, it’s successes and how the Premier League will carry this into the plan’s second reiteration to further develop the pipeline of talented players in English football.

10 years of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP):

• The Best Football – How the Premier League drives success. Our virtuous circle:

• The Best Football
• Drives interest
• Generates value
• Revenue distributed responsibly

• The best football needs the best players, coaches and match officials.

• EPPP Elite Player Performance Plan
• ECP Elite Coaching Plan
• ERDP Elite Refereeing Development Plan

• Different managers bring about cognitive diversity within the Premier League and helping to drive the game forwards. What makes our league so successful is it’s diversity. We want to attract managers and players from across the world but also focus on our home grown talent.
• The EPPP was launched with the aim to develop more and better home grown players. Increasing the quality, improving the pathway and changing the narrative.

Elite Player Performance Plan:

Vision: To produce more and better home grown players

Mission: The development of a world-leading academy system

Focus areas:

• Players
• Staff
• Environment

Critical Success Factors (Goals)

• Increase number and quality of home grown players.
• Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance.
• Create more time for players to play and be coached.
• Positively influence strategic investment into the Academy System.
• Improve coaching provision.
• Seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development.

The perception before the EPPP was that we didn’t have any high quality youth players. There was a milestone moment of age group teams winning major competitions, and at these three tournaments our players won player of the tournament across the board. The narrative had shifted from we are lacking talent, to we have some of the best talent in the world. These players are now playing en mass in the Premier League and thriving in that environment.

What has the EPPP achieved?

• Number & quality of players – young English players ranked first in market value, number of minutes in UEFA competitions, and independent assessments of player quality.
• More time to play and be coached – a 52% increase in the number of coaching hours.
• Coaching provision – 3x increase in the number of full-time coaches.
• Gains in all aspect of development – 55k fitness tests delivered over the PL and Category 1 clubs.
• Strategic investment – 1.94bn of central and club investment into the academy system across the pyramid.
• Measurement and quality assurance – a new professional game-owned audit and assessment established.
• Acknowledging that what the world looked like 10 years ago is very different to today, so we are always looking to develop our plan.

The Strategy for the Academy System:

• Creating an unrivalled development environment.
• Supporting young people who are aspiring footballers to maximise their potential on and off the pitch.
• Developing this through elite player development and personal growth.

We care most about:

• More and better players
• A life-enriching experience
• The health of our game

Our building blocks:

• Talent ID
• Player Pathway
• Duty of Care
• Workforce Development
• Government & Quality Assurance
• Innovation & Insights

Reflections:

• It takes years to become an overnight success.
• Celebrate achievements to demonstrate progress.
• People Development – the ripple effect.
• Diversity & Inclusion as a competitive advantage.
• Beat the Sigmoid Curve – how do you go again?
• Stay resilient and focus on the end goal.

Session 5: Athlete Meets Actor: Practice, Performance & Cross Industry Learnings

Speakers:

Montell Douglas, Athlete, Team GB

Dom Simpson, Actor, The Book of Mormon

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

To round the day off, we had a fascinating discussion between Montell and Dom where they delved into the challenges of having to adapt to ever changing environments, consistency within high performance and over coming setbacks.

• Dom explained that “Yes, you are an actor, but your job is an auditioner, you are always looking for the next job”. At times it can feel like knock back after knock back. You have to have self-belief and self-determination and also a love for it.
• You have to learn from your setbacks. No matter how much you prepare, sometimes there are the uncontrollable factors. You are not defined for that one performance. You can always learn, set new goals and go again, whatever that now looks like.
• Determination and desire to always do my best and give my all put me in good stead for what was to come. Be the best you can be, don’t settle for mediocracy. All you can do is focus on you, explained Dom.
• Because of the strain of performing eight shows in six days, there is a high physical strain (1300 calories burnt per show) you have to take ownership of your prep/recovery otherwise you wouldn’t be able to sustain it. Self-awareness of what your body/mind needs is therefore crucial.
• Montell – a history-maker going from Summer to Winter Olympics. There is transferability of skills from athletics to bobsleigh, yes, but there are also so many huge differences. Going from an individual sport where you are completely in control of your performance to a team sport, where you are depending on one another. There are completely different physical demands from the different sports, mentally being on tour for five or six months of the year in freezing conditions, contrasting from the heat of the Beijing Olympics, and to be able to perform in those differing environments is a big challenge.
• Another huge challenge with bobsleigh was balancing having to have a job whilst competing to help fund yourself and still to perform at the highest level. Understanding how to best prepare yourself, for Montell this meant reducing the volume but keeping it at the highest quality.
• Adaptability is key. It is a daily challenge. Dom explained how as an understudy it was difficult to balance how to stay in physical shape whilst not needed for the show vs getting called up mid-show and being prepared to go in that moment, physically and mentally. This was a huge learning curve.
• It is about consistency. What’s important now? Montell explained her acronym, W.I.N – this is all I can do today – this is still going to have an impact to my performance, if that’s only 40% of your best available today then that is the best you can do today so that can still be banked. That 40% is your 100% that day. Managing your own expectations around your training and performance and what is best for you in the long run.
• Breaking it down to manageable chunks, the song, the scene, the act, the show, the week etc, and not focusing on the end goal is critical for this consistency, Dom highlighted. We are doing the right thing if we’re looking at the processes, and breaking them down.
• Having mental resilience around setbacks is key. Yes at the time it feels like the biggest thing in the world, but you have to step back, say we can’t change it, so how can we learn from that? How can I better myself next time, in the knowledge I have done everything I can to get the best out of that situation?

A podcast brought to you by our Partners Elite Performance Partners

“The most important thing when stepping up from being an individual contributor to being responsible in a management position is that it’s not about you any more,” Max Lankheit, the San Jose Earthquakes’ Director of High Performance, tells EPP’s Founding Partner Dave Slemen.

The duo are discussing the traits needed when stepping into a leadership position for the first time.

“The important thing that people need to understand, in my opinion, is that you can only hunt one rabbit at a time,” adds Lankheit.

“So either you can work on your skills or help others work on their skills.”

Max, a former youth athlete and acting student, talks to Dave at EPP about his non-linear journey to the top of elite sport amongst other topics.

EPP are a performance consultancy and search firm highly regarded across sport and, for this episode, Dave poses the questions that cover:

• The non-sporting elements of Max’s background [2:30];
• Why the stigma around ‘manipulation’ is undeserved [10:00];
• The importance of the environment in helping people to thrive and reach their potential [25:00];
• The difference between purpose and values, vision and objectives [35:20].

Dave Slemen Twitter | LinkedIn

Max Lankheit Twitter | LinkedIn

By John Portch

Joe Montemurro, the Head Coach of Juventus Women, explains that the team’s President, Andrea Agnelli, wishes he had done things differently with the team.

“I remember going to a dinner with the owners and sponsors and I was sitting on the same table as Mr Agnelli, and we had a chat,” Montemurro tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

“He said that one regret he has in life is that he didn’t start the women’s team earlier because he thinks Juventus is a little behind the top teams because he didn’t start five or six years earlier. That probably gives you an understanding of where the club sits in the landscape.”

The hope of both Agnelli and Montemurro is to see Juventus Women match the success and reputation of the men’s team. Since entering Serie A in 2017, the club has won the scudetto in five consecutive seasons and the aim for the future is to sustain that success and build a team that can compete regularly for the Uefa Women’s Champions League.

“There’s a saying at Juventus – ‘fino alla fine’ – which means ‘go to the end’ or ‘fight to the end’,” says Montemurro. “There’s another one: ‘vincere non è importante e l’unica cosa che conta’, which means ‘winning isn’t important, it’s the only thing’.”

The latter was uttered by former Juventus striker and second-highest scorer in the history of the men’s team, Giampiero Boniperti, at the inauguration of the Juventus Stadium in Turin in 2011.

Such thinking explains why Juventus Women turned to Montemurro in the summer of 2021. He has more than 20 years’ experience as a coach, In 2019, he led Arsenal Women to their first Women’s Super League title in seven years and, before that, claimed back-to-back W-League championships with Melbourne City Women in his native Australia.

“Part of the club’s growth and development was to bring in someone who has a bit of experience in Europe who can take the club to the next level,” says Montemurro. “We’ve instilled a methodology of play, which is mine. I have moulded it with some good things here in Italy and if you watch the game you’ll see a very identifiable style of mine. There’s been no real handbook that says ‘this is the Juventus style’ but it’s about representing the club in the right way with the values it has; the level of class with which it struts around in Italy and Europe.

“You feel Juventus, you feel the history, you feel the weight of wearing this jumper and that’s a great thing. It’s where you want to be in football and I love it.”

Montemurro is also driven by the desire to “educate” the women’s football landscape in Italy. “It’s not behind but women’s football in Italy still has a long way to go to find its place.” The 2022-23 season will be the first that Serie A Women is fully professional. “I want to create something that a lot of clubs can use as a template to say ‘this is how we will grow and get better so the game grows’.”

He has been afforded the space to innovate as there has been buy-in to his ideas across the board. “Everything I’ve brought forward or we’ve brought forward as a group to get better and better and better, we discuss it and look at it, and most of the time it’s actually ‘hey, I think that’s a good idea, we could do that’. And we’re sometimes talking about little things. Travelling two days before instead of one day before. The ability to innovate, and they’re so open to being this global brand that they’re looking at being the best and being creative. I really like that because it gets my mind ticking to be better and better and better. How can I be better? How can my staff be better? How can everyone around us be better because the club will give you that support but they’ll also say ‘look, it’s not the right time to do this because of this or that’. There’s never anything discounted.”

The Juventus Women senior team and academy are closely aligned, as one might expect, but there is also alignment between the women’s team and the Juventus men’s under-23s. “We work very closely together and follow similar processes to the senior men’s team,” says Montemurro, who likes his multidisciplinary team to be football-driven.

“The first thing, and I did it at Arsenal and I did it at Juventus, is to make sure that football is at the core of everything that we do because that’s what we’re judged on. It’s funny, because in the word ‘football’ the latter part of the word is ‘all’ so I flash that word up and say ‘it’s all of us’.

“I can then give the base to the medical staff to say, ‘OK, we’re playing X amount of games, we play this way, we know that we need players who are very good in small areas, they can recover because we play a short passing game’ – I’m using a very broad example – ‘so we need to focus on those things and get players who need to get aerobically fit as part of the game’. They can look at that. The sports science department or the S&C department then look at the football as the base of everything we do. So all of our warm-ups are based on the methodology of the football.

“This whole idea of ‘footb-all’ is as corny and clichéd as it comes, but it’s important. In the end, I’m just trying to create a football culture. All the other stuff is irrelevant. And I think you get buy-in. When the methodology is clear, when the way you want to play is clear, then the doctors understand, the nutritionists understand, and everyone understands what we’re trying to achieve in the long run.”

Montemurro also encourages his staff to prioritise their CPD with one request. “One of the things I tell each department is to stick within the football. CPD is very important, but make yours the best department in the world. Make it the best medical department in the world, make it the best analytics department. It’s your baby, make it you. I’m here to help you, obviously we’ve got certain pre-requisites week-in week-out that we need to do, but if you’ve got the opportunity to go and watch a game or watch some training and bring something back and do something, absolutely.”

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Montemurro about the biggest changes he has observed in football coaching in recent years. His answer is informed by his work at Juventus. “The top coaches are able to ascertain a level of hierarchy and respect, but also have a more human aspect. The head coach isn’t that far away from everything that’s happened. I think it’s becoming more, I don’t know if this is the right word, but more human in terms of the understanding of the player-staff-head coach connection and ascertaining the end goal. Everyone’s more in it together.

“I think coaches are still just starting to understand that ultimately they have to make decisions but the decisions are more informed through processes. Obviously our scope of work is broader now. We are involved in every aspect of the game. I don’t think it can be left to say ‘I’m just going to go on the park and Sunday’s my day or game day’s my day’; now it’s really important that everyone’s involved in that. The staff and everyone is involved in how we go forward but obviously with your eye on top of it. I think there’s just been a more human factor and I think that the top coaches are usually empathetic to the wellness and wellbeing of their staff and players. I think that’s been a big change. It’s not just a job any more – it’s a lifestyle. You’re spending so much time here and you have to make it the best place it can be, and I think we as head coaches – or I am anyway – are more concerned about the welfare and wellbeing of your staff and players. That results in performance.”

What of the coach of the next ten years? “I think the coach of the future is one that will need to understand the sports science, S&C, sports medicine. I just think it’s going that way and I think we need to have a broader understanding of every little bit because, ultimately, if you’re not involved in the market, I know you’ve got scouts and analytics, the scouting and analysis departments do a lot of that work for you, but if you don’t understand the background of the player you’re investing in or the staff that you’re investing in, then how do you deal with them when they’re going forward? They may have had a bad experience at a club and they’re coming into another situation. How do you deal with that?

“I think the coach of the future will be more educated and understanding of all the other disciplines involved and I think with that will come a new wave of innovation in how we see the game and how we approach the game tactically. It’s already happening with a lot of clubs; the Brentfords and their ‘Moneyball’ approach. [Bayern Munich men’s Head Coach] Julian Nagelsmann with the big screen next to his training pitch. The level of coaching is going to be so high because everyone’s going to have a great understanding of the discipline that innovation is just going to go to the next level.

“The coach of the future is very exciting,” Montemurro concludes.

“I won’t see it because I’m an old man, but definitely I’ll watch this space from the beach in my holiday home, wherever it is.”

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Colin Brett is a soccer analyst who spent time working for tracking company ChyronHego and betting analysis provider Football Radar. He noticed a gap in data coverage for players in the League of Ireland—it was “inaccurate at best,” he recalls—so he started building a platform to fill that void.

During the pandemic pause on sports, however, Brett recognized an even greater deficiency in the player development infrastructure, so he pivoted his startup, PlayerStatData, to address the Under-13 through Under-19 population. The target user is currently academy directors and player development coordinators, but Brett says further iterations will likely suit coaches and the athletes themselves.

The PlayerStatData app, which launched in the US and Canada earlier this month, seeks to provide objective performance data culled from video analysis, physical test results, a centralized library of coaching assessments and, crucially, a monitoring system for psychological and socio-economic insights.

“We want to see be a solution for all and to be an all-encompassing solution as well, which means that we want to be accessible, affordable and available to all clubs at all youth levels across the US and Canada,” says Brett, the CEO and co-founder of the Waterford, Ireland-based company. “And we want to give them the full picture of a player’s development.”

Context is critical. Family backgrounds and finances all play a role in player progression, especially in the North American pay-to-play model with costly club and travel teams representing an important pathway. Teenagers’ mental health and perspectives need to be considered, too.

“Coaches have become a lot more open to psychological output because, especially with the age that we’re looking, 13 to 19, there’s a lot going on physically and mentally with them at that age,” Brett says. “There’s a lot of stuff to understand with them too. So that’s where we want to get the best advice, because it’s important to get that right.”

For that, Brett has turned to Laura Finnegan, a lecturer in sport management at South East Technological University in Waterford, as an advisor. Her master’s thesis was in sports psychology, and her Ph.D. dissertation studied the organizational structure of talent development in Irish soccer. Finnegan has done research work on behalf of Uefa and US Soccer as well.

“It’s valuable everywhere to be able to see the player in the round,” she says. That 360-degree view, which PlayerStatData will incorporate piecemeal in future updates, is a novel approach to a market that does have several digital scouting video platforms, GPS wearables and new sensors already. “I really think that’s what’s going to set them apart,” Finnegan adds.

Malcolm Gladwell detailed in his book Outliers that a disproportionate number of NHL players were born in the early months—January, February and March—because the Canadian youth program cutoffs were at the start of the year, thus favoring the slightly older kids. Finnegan has noted similar patterns in academies in the United Kingdom and thus advocates for delayed selection of players because many physical skills don’t manifest until after puberty.

“It’s all stacked with boys that are our early maturers, and in the early years, all born earlier towards the cutoff as well,” she says of the academies. “That was one example of something that we could layer in so that you’re not just necessarily comparing Boy A with Boy B, but actually, you’re comparing boys with someone of the same maturity status as him. You’re trying to be fairer for those kids. For me, it’s just adding an extra lens for coaches.”

PlayerStatData has done some early work with the academy of Waterford FC, which competes in the League of Ireland’s First Division, and has attracted some early clients overseas such as Ottawa University Arizona, a nationally ranked NAIA program. PlayerStatData also sponsored a local Under-14 tournament where it did analysis for the participating teams, which included a team from the Blackburn Rovers, whose first team is one rung below the Premier League. Brett envisions a platform that’s truly customizable so that users can meet their needs no matter the staffing and resources.

“What’s useful is we did some bespoke design,” says Waterford FC academy director Mike Geoghegan. “So Colin sits down and asked me, what information am I looking for? What’s the sort of things that I want to track as a head coach? Because it may not be the same for every head of academy.”

For now, the PlayerStatData staff manually tags video and collects data, but computer vision algorithms developed in conjunction with professors at the local university are being developed. Brett wants that process automated within 18 months so that coaches only need to upload video into the app. “We want to get into a situation where it’s drag, drop, collect, and pick up the reports,” he says.

The Waterford academy, for instance, is staffed by part-time coaches who don’t always have the time to “extract and properly manage the data and draw insights from that data,” Geoghegan adds. “So I’m saying, I’ve got lots of recordings, lots of football, lots of coaches, but I’m not really getting this information in any way because it’s no one’s job.”

Brett sees the US and Canadian soccer systems as needing a tool like his to eliminate subjective coaching bias; the volume of players and vastness of geography make it hard for objective monitoring.

“It’s a bit of a wild west when it comes to pay-to-play and the sheer size of the market,” he says, adding: “There’s an openness to data, there’s an openness to finding that edge, it’s an openness to use a couple of innovations to get ahead, be that as a club or be as a player.”

This article was brought to you by SportTechie, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SportTechie content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch

“High performance doesn’t end with the players,” says Max Lankheit.

The San Jose Earthquakes’ Director of High Performance, who took the role in January this year having previously served as the team’s Head of Athletic Performance, is discussing his thoughts on where ‘high performance’ starts and ends with the Leaders Performance Institute.

“That was one of the things I wanted to change the moment I took charge of a department,” he continues. “High performance affects the entire organisation and it’s something we need to instil – not only in the high-performance department – because I think it’s a misconception that high performance only affects what’s happening on the field and the front office absorbs this just by association.”

The idea of holistic high performance is what drives our conversation around the usefulness of objectives and key results as a goal-setting framework for a sports organisation. “OKRs originated from Intel and Andy Grove (in its original form ‘output-based management’) and the concept was further developed into OKRs by John Doer with Google,” says Lankheit, who has piqued our interest through his work at San Jose.

For over an hour he describes the processes he has introduced to enable effective performance reviews across his high-performance team. His account is detailed, personal and laced with conviction but comes with a caveat.

“It’s important to understand that you cannot just do OKRs,” he says. “I’ve tried it twice in the past and both times I’ve failed miserably. It’s not to say that someone else couldn’t do it the first time but nobody I know has done an OKR implementation right the first time they do it; and I think you need to make those mistakes to understand what you could have done differently.”

Here, we delve further into Lankheit’s approach to performance reviews and the rationale behind his approach.

Results

Lankheit states that measuring staff performance and impact is difficult, but his efforts at San Jose are guided by five “imperatives”. “They are: clear vision, targets and commitments – individually as well as group-based – transparency, meaningful marketing, which translated into our environment means a player-centric approach and, finally, performance-oriented management.”

With those imperatives as the starting point, Lankheit explains that the objectives of an organisation are necessarily influenced by its vision but are not necessarily cascading down into the objectives of each department. He says: “Your department objective may change every 4-6 months, and for us right now, it’s ‘establish a seamlessly integrated player-care system’. This means that for this objective, every individual has certain key results that they need to hit. ‘Individuals’ in this case meaning the staff members of my department.”

Lankheit begins to illustrate his point with the hypothetical target of treatments administered per day by his staff (“a silly example but easy to comprehend”).

“At the beginning we sit together and say, ‘OK, we mutually agree that the result for you is to deliver ten treatments each day’. That’s the key result the staff member is committed to achieve and that’s going to be put into our management system so it can be tracked. It’s tangible and it’s quantitative – not qualitative – the qualitative aspect is the department objective, but the quantitative aspect is what each individual can provide because that is measurable. That’s important to me because either you achieve it or you don’t. You have a direct influence on that that nobody else has.”

The last point about the individual’s agency in delivering upon a key result is important. “Before I took over this department, bonuses were only connected to player availability,” adds Lankheit. “Now, you and I both know that player availability depends on so many factors that it’s out of our hands as a department.” A common enough example is a player selected to play a match against the recommendation of the high-performance department. “That’s why it’s important to me that we find performance measurements that are directly under the sole influence of that individual or department.”

Those measurements also provide the basis for review conversations that should take place in pre-determined timeframes, informally and formally. “And it’s not a perfect world because I currently underdeliver on this,” he admits. “I just had some performance reviews with my staff, and then you talk about, ‘OK. These were the deliverables and did you or did you not get there? If yes, awesome. Maybe the performance goal wasn’t hard enough, so maybe you should have delivered 15 treatments each day’. OK. Does it make sense to raise that or are you like, ‘actually, it didn’t have the impact that we expected, and I think we should focus on something else’?”

Lankheit then further breaks down key results into ‘commit’, ‘target’, and ‘stretch’. Ten treatments per day could be the commit and 12 could be the target. “I could say ‘this commit is the least I expect from you and if you don’t deliver on this then we’re going to have a very hard conversation about it because you committed because you had the resources, you thought hard enough, it can’t be on our end.’

“If you’re able to do the commit goal, the target is what you actually want to achieve but knowing that if you didn’t hit this you can say to me ‘this was the goal but I was unable to do it. I hit the commit but I didn’t do the target because I didn’t have enough resources from you. Or if we had another table, no problem, but the tables were always full’. Now they can come back to me and say there was a problem, which helps me to raise the bar as well.”

He continues: “The stretch goal is kind of a grey area where everything needs to fall into place for you to be able to do 15 treatments, for example”. Stretch goals are beyond an individual’s control. So then if you hit 15, we say ‘this is fantastic, you had a fantastic quarter, but I don’t expect it and the person also doesn’t expect it to happen.’ A coach might say ‘I wasn’t able to deliver more than those 12 treatments because we trained twice a day and there was a gym session in between, so there was no time for me in those two hours to do that’. So you need to change the whole structure to achieve that. Or ‘we had so many injured players that we had to focus on those guys. I couldn’t do treatments for injury prevention’. “Consequently, while ‘commit goals’ are under the sole influence of each individual, ‘target goals’, and ‘stretch goals’ might need contributions from co-workers, disciplines, or even departments.” Hence, by doing so Lankheit embeds cross-functional, interdisciplinary collaboration into his people and performance management.

“That offers me the opportunity to go outside of the department and go, ‘OK, this is what we need to do as an organisation. We have a structure problem here. If we really want to do better then we have to do this’. That helps me to manage upwards and outside of the department.”

Values and traits

Under Lankheit’s Leadership San Jose’s Performance Department also lives by certain values and he assesses how his staff deliver on those values. “Was it ‘sometimes’, was it ‘consistently’, was it ‘most of the time’ or was it ‘always’? I don’t have to give an example for ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’ because then a person knows if they’re doing the right thing,” he says. “But the moment it is just ‘sometimes’ or ‘consistently’ then I will have to give examples where I’ll say ‘look, this is where you didn’t deliver when you had the chance to, but you didn’t’. Or ‘we have six core values in our department and you didn’t deliver on this one’. One aspect is the pure performance side and another is how culturally the person delivered on the promise of ‘this is what we stand for’ from a personal or overall cultural perspective.

Lankheit will also assess his staff based on four traits: problem-solving, execution, thought leadership, and emerging leadership. He says: “It’s the same with the values – ‘never demonstrate it’, ‘sometimes demonstrate it’, ‘consistently demonstrate it’ and so on – that way you do that development right there as people will say ‘this is a companion area I need to improve on’.

“We can say, for example, ‘in this performance review we identified that you are a thought leader but you are not showing emerging leadership skills, meaning you’re a fantastic individual contributor but it’s now on you to lead others’. Two different things. ‘People come to you because they know you’re the best at what you do, but you have to proactively go out there because you are a subject matter expert. Then you need to reach out to others to ask how what I do can make you do your job better?’ That comes from those reviews and then we work on that.

“We essentially take one main goal out of what we identified of those four traits that is the most important to work on in the next four months. It may also be the following four months as well, but that’s how we balance it out to personal development. Now, if emerging leadership is the one thing we want to work on in the next four months, that means I need you to take part ownership of someone else’s results. Now you need to demonstrate that you can support that person.”

At that stage, the conversation may return to commit goals and target goals. “Values and traits work hand in hand with goal setting. That’s also why the constant communication of meeting once a day, even for two minutes, to say something like ‘there was a chance where you could have done that – does it make sense to you? ‘Yes’. ‘Perfect. Next time I want you to jump in on that.’ I am always encouraging my staff to take responsibility. I would like them to do everything they do without me being there. They should be thinking ‘what is Max’s job here anyways?’

“We also have 360 reviews. I get the feedback from my employees. The employees each get one from me and also get to nominate one or two people, depending on how big the department is, that they want to be evaluated by, peer to peer. I don’t like the fact that I, as manager choose a person to evaluate you – I think it’s more helpful if that person nominates somebody that they want to evaluate them. Obviously, if they nominate their brother and I say ‘I don’t want your brother to evaluate you’, they understand, but generally, at least in our department, they would choose somebody who’s not necessarily their closest peer because they want that feedback.”

Removing subjectivity

In concluding his thoughts on how he is working to make staff assessments more effective, Lankheit once again emphasises the value in setting tangible goals. “It takes the subjectivity out of it,” he says. “If there’s tangible goals, I have nothing to argue. If you’ve delivered on a certain result, behaviour, or trait, you did it, so you deserve your bonus. We in pro sport live in a result-driven world. If someone doesn’t reach it the person has to tell me why. There might be a explanation that’s reasonable, but otherwise it’s just me saying ‘I think you should have done more or I think you didn’t deliver on that.’ It leaves room for this discontentment and resentment in your staff because they could always say ‘it’s because you don’t like me’ or ‘it’s just your perception. You never spend time with me, you’re always in the gym or at training. You only see me once a week so how does that make you the judge of the other 200 times I’m in contact with the player?’ With that embedded objectivity you take it out.

“The other thing, the cultural component, is subjective, which is why I need to bring examples. If I don’t bring examples, then there’s no point in me bringing it up in the first place. It also helps to create that feedback loop mindset in your employees as well because they’re doing the exact same thing. They’re not setting me targets but they’re evaluating me as well, so they understand it.”

Lankheit also ensures that staff members are given a copy of their review a day or two ahead of their appointment. “I give them my review 24 to 48 hours beforehand so that they have time to digest and think about my feedback instead of getting it on the fly and potentially reacting out of emotion. They have time to blow off steam if they don’t agree, they have time to reflect and come up with objective objections, if they disagree.”

It is not, however, intended as an exercise in micromanagement. “Everyone’s had micromanagers in the past,” he says with disdain. “It is important to get out of people’s ways and let them do their best work. When something is on my table, there has to be a good reason it ends up there otherwise I trust the fact that you’ll do the best job you can, you’re committed to your key results, so now you execute on them. Then we can have a conversation if you didn’t meet them and then I can jump in if you feel you need help from me. Otherwise, go and do the best job. I hated the micromanagement aspect of it when I was in certain roles and I think that’s why I am trying to be hands off.”

If anyone would like to discuss Max’s approach to OKRs and performance reviews, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

By John Portch with Cameron Macdonald

Thierry Henry, an assistant coach with the Belgium men’s national team, wants to help players to develop what he calls their “camera”.

“I know it might sound strange, but people always wonder about the best camera they can buy,” he said. “You have it – it’s your brain.”

The former France international, who played for clubs including Arsenal, Barcelona and New York Red Bulls, was talking at the Leaders Sport Business Summit, which took place at London’s Twickenham Stadium last month, in his capacity as an investor in the virtual reality [VR] platform Rezzil.

The aim of the company is to augment the way players train in the modern era – from professionals in top-flight club and international games to the grassroots level. Rezzil’s suite of offerings ranges from their Player collection, which helps remove the barriers to entry from training, such as access to facilities or coaches, to their Index series, which compiles data collected from virtual drills to help identify player characteristics. With a particular focus on developing the ‘cognitive fitness’ of elite players, the platform has garnered interest and investment from other former players including Gary Neville and Vincent Kompany

“You have some players that will see stuff that some players will not see,” added Henry. “I always say your eyes are useless if your mind is blank. It’s something you can work on.”

Henry, who is widely considered to be one of the most cerebral footballers of his generation, described himself as a “thinker of the game.” He said: “You will often have a coach that will tell you how to make you faster, make you stronger and whatnot along those lines, but it’s rare that you can have someone to tell you how to make you smarter and help that muscle memory that you have.”

VR has its early adopters but there is still considerable resistance across the game. “People have to be more open to accept it. It’s tough to say to someone ‘your brain doesn’t function well’ – in brackets I want to say I’m talking about the game not talking about life.”

Henry retired from playing in 2014 after having won the World Cup, Euros, Champions League, English Premier League, Spain’s LaLiga and France’s Ligue 1 amongst numerous other honours during his 20-year playing career. He is also Arsenal men’s record scorer with 228 goals.

He began coaching Arsenal men’s under-15s in 2015 and, a year later, became an assistant coach with Belgium under Roberto Martínez. The Red Devils would go on to finish third at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Henry then took head coaching roles at another of his former clubs, AS Monaco, and at Montreal Impact, before making his return to Martínez’s coaching ticket at Belgium in 2021. The team are once again tipped to do well at next month’s World Cup in Qatar.

Inevitably, in the past seven years, there have been times when Henry has worked with players who were not blessed with the skillset he possessed as player. He told the audience that coaches must have empathy when highlighting a player’s shortcomings, let alone issues with their in-game cognition. “When you challenge someone about what they see and what they do and how smart or not they are, it can be hurtful at times,” he admits.

Stimulating the brain

Henry emphasised that it is important for coaches to make players think. “I played with players, and I won’t name names, but you ask them why they make that pass and they don’t even know,” he said. “[They say] ‘I don’t know. I saw a player and I passed the ball’. ‘Did we have an overload or did we have an underload?’. ‘I don’t know’. ‘You passed the ball on the side when there was one Arsenal player against four. If you turn the other way, we were on an overload. Why?’.”

VR can help a player repeat a scenario they played out at training. “You [can] ask players in their room, not only on the field, to recreate a scene that they played in the morning; option A, option B, option C or whatever it is. ‘Why did you pass the ball there?’ ‘We had an overload so it’s obvious’. ‘Well done’.

“Some players pass the ball because it’s blue and blue,” he said with a tone of bemusement. “So what’s the point behind it? There’s got to be a purpose when you pass the ball.”

This mentality was installed in Henry when he was an undergraduate at France’s fabled Clarefontaine academy. The teenage Henry was fast but some of his other skills were deemed underdeveloped. “All I had was my speed, so my gift, but I had a coach called Joaquim Francisco Filho, a Brazilian coach, that was giving me tasks when I was young. So he used to tell me before a game: ‘Thierry, today you can not use your speed’ and I looked at him and said ‘are you mad? That’s my thing. Why are you taking my gift away?’ And he said ‘because one day you’re going to meet someone that is as fast as you – how can you beat him?’ I started to think ‘I need to move better’. I was fast but I was never going to be gone; like if you’re fast you’re fast, if you’re tall you’re tall, but he was challenging me and stimulating me. We were also in a special school, I have to say. The way they were thinking was different.

“As a striker, you’re always [with your] back to the goal and the challenge one time was that you cannot pass the ball back. Then how am I supposed to play if I cannot pass the ball back? But suddenly you stand in free quarters and you try to find space so that you can turn; you start to understand space better, running the line better, seeing things better. Speed was always there and if you can now have what we were talking about with Rezzil, to develop and stimulate your brain, after you have people along the way that think about winning. That coach who thought about winning thought about stimulating my brain and developing my brain. It was very important that I took it on board and it never left me since.”

Contactless reps

“As a player, I didn’t want to miss training because I didn’t want to miss the tactical part of it and what we were supposed to work on,” said Henry of memories of his own injuries and periods of rehabilitation.

VR has the potential to enable athletes in rehabilitation to reduce their risk of collisions or impacts. “So suddenly you go out there but you can’t really hit the ball,” he continued. “At one point the ball comes to you and you hit it and you’re like ‘why did you hit it?’ It’s just a reaction, the ball comes and you hit it, so maybe if you stay in the room [a rehabilitation facility at the training ground], they replay the training session to you, and even if the ball comes at one point you know what you have to do the day after, the week after, how long it’s going to be. I think it’s important for you to work tactically without getting injured.”

Similarly, Henry argues that you can learn to head the ball more effectively but without the need for endless physical repetition. “We don’t have a helmet and it does hurt,” said Henry, who was never a great header of the ball. “You can learn about how to head the ball without going too far in the repetition.”

As moderator Karthi Gnanasegaram brought the session to a close, Henry suggested that VR could be used to inculcate tactics at a team level. “You’re the coach and you’re behind them, you’re amongst them and we’re in the room and you tell them on the morning of the game, ‘no, a bit more on the left, a bit more on the right, you go, you squeeze’. instead of doing that on the field you can do that in a big conference room at a hotel. That type of thing can be a great advantage for any coach.”

The pressure of a game scenario may never be adequately recreated, but VR can permit the reps to build familiarity with the situation and the muscle memory to execute the moves in competition. “When you arrive in a situation [in a game], how would you handle it without losing your mind?” asked Henry rhetorically.

“This is why it’s important to see with your mind and not with your eyes.”

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Ali Krieger has starred for the US women’s national team for most of the past 15 years. She was a member of two World Cup-winning squads, starting every match as a defender during its 2011 runner-up finish and 2015 title run and made three appearances during the 2019 tournament. In all, Krieger has 108 caps and was named to CONCACAF’s Women’s Team of the Decade for 2011–2020.

A two-time All-American at Penn State in 2005 and ‘06, Krieger then began her long professional career. In addition to playing five seasons in Germany, Krieger has been with the NWSL since its inception, spending time with the Washington Spirit, Orlando Pride and now Gotham FC. She and her wife, fellow USWNT veteran Ashlyn Harris, were acquired in the offseason by Gotham, whose general manager, Yael Averbuch West, is a former teammate.

Krieger recently partnered with social sports platform Strava, which launched a new “Strive for More” campaign. The accompanying pledge seeks to garner support and visibility around equitable sport for female athletes and teams. Strava is contributing $1 million over the next three years toward the cause.

On joining Strava’s ‘Strive for More’ campaign . . .

Strava reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to come on board and be an ambassador as a professional female athlete to help spread the word about ‘Strive for More’ and the pledge and their campaign that they’re leading—which has been really incredible for females, for allies, for supporters, fans, friends and family all over the world. As you know, Strava can connect globally and not just within our country, which is incredible, and we all need the support.

I immediately wanted to help and get on board with the pledge and the whole sporting community to pledge their support for more equity in women’s sports. This cross-promotion of me being a footballer and talking about ‘Strive for More’ in other female sports and with other athletes has been pretty incredible.

On her goals for the pledge . . .

I want to see more people wanting to watch women’s sports, supporting women’s sports, putting money where their mouth is and really giving women what they deserve because they endure just as much emotional, physical, mental energy as our male counterparts. We deserve to be seen and be heard and get what we deserve.

On the example of the USWNT’s equal pay fight . . .

It was a great foundation for other sports to get involved and other companies—for example, Strava—to support female athletes and their fight for equity and equality and respect. That was just a great foundation for us to want to help women in general. It wasn’t just about us as a soccer team and our sport specifically and within our country; it was fighting for women in general, across all industries, all sports.

I think we really started this massive wave of female athletes wanting more for themselves and being more confident in those types of discussions. To fight for more equity and money and sponsorships and all the things within their contracts with their employers, but also with their agencies and their teams or clubs or organizations. It wasn’t just a fight selfishly for us, as soccer players and a team. It was a fight for all women, across all industries, to really amp up everyone’s confidence in fighting for what they deserve for doing the same amount of work as anyone else and just getting the resources that individuals need to perform their best no matter what they’re doing.

On how standards are evolving in the NWSL . . .

Slowly. The work will never be done. Most importantly, we have to constantly fight for what we deserve and what the standard is. We actually hold a high standard, both on and off the field, and I think a lot of female athletes do or else they wouldn’t be in the position that they’re in, at the levels that they’re at. Now it’s really focusing on the club level. For the NWSL, it has been 10 years, and it still somewhat feels like we’re behind. So, we do have to continue within our own organizations at each club in the NWSL—there are 12 clubs—and then within our teams and then get our younger players to jump on board and say, you need to have a voice, you need to continue to carry this baton to fight for your generation in order to get more.

I think the club level is definitely still at a level where it could be a lot better, so the standard yet isn’t as high. We’re continuing to do that as a collective group, which you saw in 2020 and last year, as well—coming together as a group in fighting for each other and the conditions that we have and that we have to deal with day in and day out within the organizations and the cities that we play in. Once again, along with the ‘Strive for More’ campaign and being an ambassador for Strava and their strong message; even at the club levels, this will help the equity, the inclusion and the demand to give women more for what work they’re putting it.

On playing for former USWNT teammate Yael Averbuch West at Gotham FC . . .

I feel like it’s so beneficial when you have an athlete that has been through the trenches and has been through the grind and can now be in a position of power to fight for us, to have a better understanding of what we need to, one, keep us happy and, two, to perform our best every single day. And then, on game day, perform in order to get three points and win. So that’s what is needed: former players and people who have been through that experience because some people don’t really understand unless you’ve really been through it. She’s in such a great position for us.

She’s actually a good friend of Ashlyn and I. So I want her to succeed in the position that she’s in. We have a really great relationship in kind of telling her, ‘Hey, things could be this way, maybe we can put this on the list of how we can make this better.’ We’re kind of her eyes and ears as well, and I really enjoy that.

We want to see her succeed and the club succeed, not only ourselves as individuals, the team, but we want to continue to fight. So it’s not just at the national team level that we’re using our voice. It’s now within the organizations that we’re playing at the club level.

On her use of training tech . . .

We all have a GPS tracker, and then we have a heart rate monitor that we wear every day so that they can see the numbers and [see] if you’re maybe running a little too much or a little too hard a few days before the game where you have to be 100% fit. So they’re constantly watching. They have an iPad out there. They watch your numbers constantly throughout the training sessions. So if you need to do more, you stay and you do a little more after practice.

But it’s really beneficial for us, especially after games [when] you see where your heat map was on the field and then the energy that you’ve obviously played in, to be able to mark like, ‘Okay, how many days do you need rest in order to continue to keep that standard just as high for the next match?’ And then they actually have numbers to go off of when we say, ‘Hey, I’m feeling actually really good today, or I’m actually super tired.’ They can check the numbers to see how much you’ve run that past game or training session to make sure that everybody is fully set and injury-free going into every season.

On the importance of recovery . . .

Our job is a 24-hour job because recovery is huge. People say, ‘Well you only work two or three hours a day.’ I’m like, ‘No, I work 24 hours a day because you have to spend that extra time making sure you recovered so that you’re able to be 100% the next session.’ I do have a Whoop to keep track of all that information, which was good because I had sleep [data] on there, too. It was good to compare it with some of your friends or teammates.

On her use of Strava . . .

I downloaded the app right away when they reached out, and I’ve been a participant so far. Because of Whoop, we have our Fit for 90 app, and we have all these other apps that we use for soccer that definitely will be a go-to for me when I’m done playing and I don’t have to report on our NWSL soccer app. And we also have an app for the national team. So there’s a lot of apps, and they know exactly what we do all day. So [Strava] will be on my phone and very accessible for once I’m done playing and retired in the next year or so. And I can use the Strava app to stay active and to stay motivated and to stay supporting women and female athletes all over the world.

This article was brought to you by SportTechie, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SportTechie content in the field of athletic performance.