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By Joe Lemire

When the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPRO) General Secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann appeared at the Future of Sport conference in Paris in June, he described athlete data as “the third big-value contribution the players make to the sport industry,” following their on-field performance and image rights.

Such a statement reflects data’s evaluated status in modern sports. Yet while name, image and likeness rights have been commercialized extensively in professional sports, data rights are a nascent field, evolving at varying speeds based on club cooperation, league and union maturity and legal jurisdiction. There’s a wide range of data collected, too, inclusive of GPS vests, optical tracking cameras, force plates, heart rate monitors and more.

FIFPRO, the consortium representing 66 global professional soccer unions, recently announced its grand ambition to tackle the issue itself, serving as an accelerant of a universal solution across soccer. The idea, Baer-Hoffmann said, is to “translate the highest standard of data protection legislation” into a centralized platform whose development is led by FIFPRO with the athletes’ interests at the center.

The Netherlands-headquartered FIFPRO started exploring rights and protections of athlete data about five years ago. A survey it conducted during the 2020-21 season reported that 80% of pro players rated their interest in using data as at least an 8 on a 1-to-10 scale. Only about half, however, had full access to it or even understood why and how it was collected.

This led to the Charter of Player Data Rights that FIFPRO created in collaboration with FIFA and published in September 2022. Athletes’ three primary expectations for data was codified in that document — access, portability and control — and followed the framework of stringent privacy protections instituted by the European Union’s GDPR and others.

FIFPRO’s work is independent of the Project Red Card lawsuit — through which 1,400 cricket, football and rugby players are seeking compensation for what they consider unlawful use of athlete data — but it espouses the same underlying legal reasoning.

The first test case of this plan was the FIFA player app made available to all participants in the men’s World Cup 2022 in Qatar last December and again in July and August this year for the Women’s World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand.

“We obviously have much higher ambitions and ambitions that go well beyond a World Cup environment but really go throughout the entire career parameters of any of the professional players around the world,” Baer-Hoffmann said, “whether it’s club, whether it’s country, whether that’s commercial partners, whether that is high performance coaching, etc., with all the different applications, risks and opportunities that come with it.”

FIFPRO has not announced any technology partners, but the expectation is that one or more third-party vendors will help build the product, which Baer-Hoffmann estimated will take six to nine months. Educating and onboarding athletes across so many leagues and countries will take considerable time as well.

The scope of global soccer makes FIFPRO’s task daunting while some individual unions have begun seeking their own solutions, with the NWSL Players Association partnering last week with BreakAway Data for use of its athlete data passport app.

“One of the things that’s become very clear is that an athlete’s right to have access to their own data is important, but it’s not very practical unless there’s actually a tool to make that access easy,” NWSLPA Executive Director Meghann Burke said.

Baer-Hoffmann contended that most current uses of athlete data by clubs could be easily challenged legally, but he was clear that athletes don’t seek to shut down all such uses and want to preserve the many benefits of preventing injury and improving performance — just with agency over how it’s used. The data platform, he added, can help bring to life the privacy rights that are often “very technocratic, and the enforcement is very, very legalistic.”

“A natural phenomenon that is happening at the minute is that the innovation potential, in the private sector around sports data and technology, is just a whole lot faster than the regulatory response, which is the case in many parts of society, right?” he said. “Usually technology just exponentially grows faster than the regulatory capabilities of institutions that govern the country or a certain sector.”

Basic game stats such as goals scored and shots saved plainly reside in the public domain. MRI results and bloodwork are clearly private medical records. But the performance data in question — biomechanics, movement patterns, heart rate — sits “somewhere in between, and which way should it lean?” BreakAway Data CEO Dave Anderson said.

Volumetric data, such as Hawk-Eye’s ability to track 29 points on the body for 3D motion capture, is an example of the increasingly granular data that prompted Anderson to conclude “that performance data is starting to lean more and more towards health data and that it’s vital to understand, how much wear and tear is on these guys?”

Commercial opportunities for the data are possible, too. The NFLPA is among the unions investigating that market fit, partnering with Sports Data Labs last year to explore possible revenue generation potential.

“We ultimately view your personal data — if you’re an athlete, a patient, a citizen with a watch that collects data — as a digital asset,” Sports Data Labs CEO Mark Gorski said, before cautioning that such assets won’t immediately lead to new income. “Most people want to talk about the end use case. There’s a whole bunch of steps that have to be taken in the right way in order to get there. What we’re spending part of our time with is really helping groups navigate some of those complexities on a global level.”

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

By John Portch and Sarah Evans

When it comes to performance, the current generation of athletes are, on the whole, better informed and more inquisitive than their predecessors.

But what can a practitioner do when an athlete doesn’t ask ‘why’?

“There’s a few options,” says Ben Rosenblatt, a physical performance coach who has worked with the England men’s football team, GB and England women’s hockey teams and Olympic Judoka amongst others.

“Do you know them well enough to understand why they don’t want to know? If it’s because they just want to get told, they’ve got trust, and they don’t want to know ‘why’, they just want to crack on with it and say ‘go on then, give us the programme’, I’ll commit to it, we’ll give it a crack, and then afterwards we can work out how well that worked.

“Do they not want to know ‘why’ because they’ve disengaged? If so, then you might just see them floating around a session or trying to disrupt others.

“The other one is that they’re just not that interested in physical conditioning and preparation because not everyone is. Most people take up sport or play high level sport not because they love doing press-ups and sit-ups, it’s because they love their sport.

“So you’ve got to try and understand the reason why they’ve disengaged and you’re also trying to find out, as a consequence, how they’re best going to receive information. So you can just ask some really simple questions to ascertain that. If it were you and me working together I’ll ask: ‘what’s the best way that we communicate with each other? What do you need from me? what’s important to you physically? what’s worked in the past?

“You might say: ‘I just need a programme and to crack on’. That’s absolutely fine and that’s what you’re going to get. But then we can also ask the athlete ‘can we review it every six weeks?’ This will give you both the opportunity to learn more about each other.”

This is the second part of our interview with Rosenblatt, who discussed behavioural mapping in the first instalment.

The conversation takes a turn into nudge theory, which is defined by Imperial College London as: ‘based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the choice architecture, one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals.’

“This is where you bleed into the gamification of training and environmental nudges to encourage people to engage in stuff they might not necessarily want to,” says Rosenblatt, who in 2021 visited the Behavioural Insights Team (commonly known as the ‘Nudge Unit’), which previously operated under the auspices of the UK Government but is now run independently. It has informed his approach, as have visits to University College London, the University of Bedfordshire, and the Design Museum in London.

Returning to nudge theory, Rosenblatt says: “The basic principle is called EAST, which is making things: easy, accessible, social and timely.

“If you can make anything align with any of those four things, if you can make something really easy to engage in, really accessible, so it’s at the right time and the right place, it’s part of the social environment and it’s timely, it’s at the time when they should be doing it, then you’ll absolutely get the behaviour change.”

He cites an example from his time with the England men’s football team. “One problem was how we get the players to go in the pool immediately after training on a particular day with the physical performance team. Using nudge principles we decided to nick the players trainers and put them in the pool area! This meant, to walk back to the hotel, they had to go to the pool first! We also put recovery shakes in there and scattered some balls and some inflatables in the pool. So when they went to get their trainers, it was easier to take a shake and then jump in the pool with their mates rather than leave! They ended up staying in for half an hour or so.

Gamification can be a useful tool in training environments. “If it’s a group that does want to engage a little bit more, like the hockey girls, then you do things like have a synchronised swimming competition. Again, if you’re saying we’re going to do a pool recovery session, then the players will come in knackered, they’ll go up and down the pool for 10 minutes and get out. If we say we’re having a synchronised swimming competition and you’ve got 15 minutes to come up with a routine, they’re in there for 40 minutes working out what the routine is, hanging around the pool to play afterwards etc. Those are ways you can get players that just aren’t interested or who don’t want to know. Rather than giving them full autonomy, you create an environmental nudge that means that they have to dive in there literally.

“There’s other ways of doing it. One other idea is to play with the schedule. OK, so let’s say you’re trying to introduce a new form of training to the group (like strength work). Rather than make the session an additional training session, make it part of the original training session. So if they’re coming into the gym before going onto the grass, start with a familiar warm up, something they’re comfortable with and then you introduce the new activity as a competition. If it’s aligned to something you want them to get better at and want them to improve at; because it’s a competition everyone’s automatically engaged in it.

“Again, this is more relevant to athletes who aren’t as engaged with their physical preparation. But if you do a familiar warm up and there’s some little competition then they’re automatically going to engage in it.  If it’s aligned to the physical outcome that you want, then they’re going to improve! The best way I’ve found of organising competition for maximum engagement is 1 1v1 competition in a team v team scenario… essentially you stack up points for your team by winning individual competitions against your opponents.

“You can then start to make it fun. We had an ongoing jump squat competition throughout the Euros where the players would compete for boxing belts based on how fast they were moving the bar. Training intensity and enjoyment went through the roof! All the athletes have noticed is that they’ve had a bit of fun and they’ve enjoyed themselves whilst being really physical. But if you start stacking that up over a course of two, three, four or five weeks, you’ve got a really strong physical conditioning response there.”

Ben Rosenblatt is the Founder of 292 Performance.

Want to discuss environmental nudges with Ben?

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @ben_rosenblatt

By Luke Whitworth

Our latest Performance Support Series explores the past, present, and future of talent development. This series of learning is being delivered by Dr Edd Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the English Premier League.

For the second session of the series, Vahid outlined a few aims for those in attendance, as we continue to explore the ‘5 I’s’ model first shared in session one. If you missed out on the first part of this series, you can read about the model and other key points here. The aims were as followed:

• Introduce individualised and interdisciplinary support as critical features of successful talent development models.
• Discuss the challenges, tensions and opportunities in individualising support.
• Explore the conditions that allow interdisciplinary support to thrive.

Being individualised

As part of the first session of this series, attendees were asked to rank themselves around their effectiveness of the ‘5 I’s’ model. On a ranking of 1-5, below were the responses for the two parts of the model we explored in session two:

• Individualised Support: 4.1
• Interdisciplinary Support: 3.8

These responses provided some interesting insights into where we think we are in relation to our talent development frameworks and environment. Providing individualised and interdisciplinary support, scored highest out of the five elements of the model, but with clear room for improvement.

To help us think about the importance of being truly individualised, whilst also appreciating the tensions and challenges that come along with this, Vahid brought in some of the work from author Todd Rose and renowned sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to elevate these points.

The End of Average

In Rose’s The End of Average, there was an anecdote highlighting bodies of research by the US Air Force into why there were so many incidents, despite having some of the best pilots in the world and the best technology. One of the key summaries was that the cockpit was built upon the average needs of a pilot rather than the specific needs.

Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman could fit in the cockpit, within the average range on all 10 dimensions. One pilot might have a longer-than-average arm length, but a shorter-than-average leg length. Another pilot might have a big chest but small hips. Even more astonishing, (Lt. Gilbert S.) Daniels discovered that if you picked out just three of the ten dimensions of size — say, neck circumference, thigh circumference and wrist circumference — less than 3.5 per cent of pilots would be average sized on all three dimensions. Daniels’s findings were clear and incontrovertible. There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you’ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you’ve actually designed it to fit no one.

This passage in The End of Average highlights that being truly individualised is crucial in allowing us to optimise the support and impact we can have on individuals. It is also worth noting that individualisation continues to be a challenge with the scales we are operating at, and the resources we have at our disposal.

Habitus, field and capital

To align to the work of Rose, we complemented this with the research of Bourdieu, whose work encourages us think more deeply about ‘the individual’ and, in our context, who we are trying to provide individualised support for.

Bourdieu talked about the concepts of habitus, field and capital.

‘Habitus’ is the ‘product of history, (that) produces individual and collective practices. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action… Bourdieu and Wacquant suggest that when an individual encounters an environment that is compatible with their established habitus, they are like ‘fish in water’. It’s important to recognise that we all have individual habituses; we’re different.

‘Field’ is the social arena, where people compete for resources and demonstrate their power.

‘Capital’ is the notion of competing in a field and enhance social position – individuals require capital. Different forms of capital might exist and potentially include physical and economic. The new environment (field) establishes the cultural, social and symbolic. An individual must adapt if they have aspirations for distinction and subsequent progression. Relevant to us, how are we creating experiences to better prepare our talent for what’s next?

The tensions in being individualised

We know that being individualised is an important element of an effective talent development model. However, we must acknowledge the tensions and challenges that can exist around this. Some of these tensions and challenges can be ironed out, some just exist and are hard to eradicate. Based on some of Vahid’s experiences, he shared a few that he often sees:

The individual and / or the team. Cohesion is an important part of a high-performing team. There could be a tension in an individual who isn’t in the higher grading from an individual performance point of view, but is a strong contributor to team cohesion or getting the best out of others. What do you do?

Performance vs potential: many environments experience the challenge of defining potential – what is it and how are we assessing it? How predictable can we be in that assessment? There are many examples of individuals who were judged to not be at a particular level, but have moved to another environment and thrived.

Club and organisational philosophy. It depends on the organisation and what the philosophy is. Is it about prioritising and getting one or two athletes in the first team environment? Therefore, you would be in your own right to focus on A-grade talent and not so much those that might support the cohesion of the group.

Interdisciplinary support

‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail’ – Abraham Maslow

At the heart of these conversations, the value of having multiple eyes and different perspectives that add value. An effective multidisciplinary team, working in an interdisciplinary fashion is reliant on an inclusive environment where everyone can turn up and truly express themselves and feel comfortable in contribution. How do we get an interdisciplinary function to work effectively?

The conditions

Psychological safety is an underpinning concept that supports interdisciplinarity. The work of Professor Timothy Clark at Durham University, a specialist in environmental humanities and deconstruction, suggests that the first step is about inclusion safety and how we as leaders or individuals are contributing to a team to ensure there is suitable inclusion into conversations, allowing everyone to contribute.

Author Patrick Lencioni’s work around the ‘The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team’ suggests that the heart of dysfunction is the absence of trust. Invest time to ensure that the individuals can show up to enable the multidisciplinary team to work in an interdisciplinary fashion.

Judgment criteria. When giving consideration to how disciplines or individuals are judged, these have to be aligned with the organisational vision. Each discipline can have their own detailed judgment criteria and if that is not aligned it can cause separation which undermines the ability to work in an interdisciplinary fashion. To underline this point, it’s also important to have interdisciplinary markers of success.

Role clarity. A consideration for how the various disciplines are inducted for how they contribute to the bigger picture.

How do we physically create the conditions for conversations? How are you working to create flow and connection in an organisation? In Edd’s experience in talent development environments, there’s been a strong push to get multidisciplinary teams sitting closer together to enhance interdisciplinarity but do we need to be doing more than just where people sit and creating more conditions within the environments to support this way of operating?

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

The rise of Toulouse FC has been both fast and meticulously planned.

Le Téfécé were Ligue 2 champions in 2022 and, last season, won the Coupe de France – their first major trophy in 66 years.

Toulouse also finished 13^th in their first season back in Ligue 1 – well clear of the relegation zone. Not that Damien Comolli, the club’s President since 2020, is resting on this laurels.

“Everyone said ‘well done on staying up’ but we’re not interested in staying up – we never mentioned staying up – we said we want to finish as high as possible,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“There are games that we feel we should have won and could have won. We lacked this cutting edge, this winning mentality at times, we should have got more points, we should have finished higher than 13^th in the table.”

Damien Comolli has overseen the Toulouse’s resurgence under new owners RedBird Capital Partners, but he couldn’t have done it without his ‘truth teller’, the club’s Head of Strategy & Culture, Selinay Gürgenç Comolli, and Julien Demeaux, Toulouse’s Head of Data.

Both Selinay and Julien joined Damien for this episode, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

The theme is Toulouse’s upwards trajectory and what it is going to take to help establish the club at the vanguard of European football.

On today’s agenda:

• How Damien is working to prevent Toulouse being a ‘one-season-wonder’ [9:00];
• His view on the importance of having a ‘truth teller’ in Selinay [12:30];
• Selinay on the importance of the club’s strategic committee [22:00];
• Julien on the comparative immaturity of data usage in football [32:00].

Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

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

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By John Portch

What makes the difference in recovery, both in practices and modalities, with your athletes?

Those two are inseparable as far as Skylar Richards is concerned. He says: “As technology has improved, to allow us to have interventions to help the best they can off the field, that has really given us the ability to look into what’s effective, what’s efficient, and how we can individualise those sorts of treatments to make sure we’re as optimal as possible.”

In Early August, Richards who is an Athletic Trainer with the US Soccer Federation, spoke at a KYMIRA Webinar titled ‘The Evolution of Athlete Recovery’ where he was joined by Mark Pavlik, the Head Coach of the Penn State men’s volleyball team, and session moderator Johnny Parkes, the Lead National Coach at the United States Tennis Association.

“So much in sports science and medicine, we worry not so much about the medicine side of things as much as the optimisation,” Richards continues. “And so really keeping people as healthy as possible is the focus with recovery but also then the art of how to do that consistently within their regime.”

Here, we discuss 10 factors raised during the webinar to consider when seeking to establish optimal, consistent recovery practices with your athletes.

1. How do you combine passive and active modalities?

Do you need to prioritise passive or active modalities? Your athletes’ culture of recovery – practices and habits – should tell you. In his time at FC Dallas between 2012 and 2019, Richards noted differences between his younger players, who were happy to visit the recovery lab while they watched tape, and those players in their mid-30s who had families and, frankly, far less time and cognitive capacity. “Those become the tricky puzzles to figure out,” he says. “How can I help them recover in their lives and support them in that? That can be the difference between applying an active modality versus a passive one, a wearable or something like that. It helps them to do it all the time no matter what life throws at them.”

2. What gives the athlete the biggest dosage?

Whatever an athlete’s preferred combination of recovery modalities, there is an important question to ask. “What gives you the biggest dosage of all those things put together in one package, which is easy to manage and to be consistent?” says Richards. “You don’t want them to burn out having to think about stuff all the time.”

3. How are you helping busy athletes to prioritise recovery?

A veteran may have a busy life but, as a cohort of largely self-driven individuals, Richards can work with soccer players to “scratch that itch” around self-improvement. “Something that I’ve found I can do well with my older athletes: I’ll say ‘why don’t we try to instal a recovery room at your house? It gives you an hour away from the kids and the craziness to go in, watch some videos, and now read a book. Whatever you need to do justify it as your job’.” Now, the athlete has a consistent pattern of recovery and doesn’t feel the need to, say, go on an evening run that may well clear their minds but has a detrimental effect on their physiology. “We scratch the same itch by helping you rather than sacrificing something.”

4. Does the athlete know what works for them?

The success of Richards’ approach with his veterans has enabled them to take that message to the rest of the team. “Getting them to talk about that approach to the younger players really helps them to buy-in,” he says. With men’s volleyball at Penn State, it sits with Pavlik and his colleagues to educate the archetypal 18-year-old who “doesn’t know what they don’t know yet from a recovery standpoint”. He says: “They’re coming off of club or high school practices at most three times a week, they’re living at home with mum and dad when they wander into our gym, it’s my job to ensure that the educational points that we’re trying to drive home so they can have a longstanding, successful collegiate career, and those that continue to move on through the professional ranks and international ranks with men’s volleyball have something in their background.”

5. Expert or friend?

That aforementioned education is best delivered by a friend. In that regard, Pavlik ensures that his student-athletes are surrounded by smart and passionate people who make an effort to build relationships. “We do a pretty good job of getting these people around my team early in their career and, let’s face it, the adage of ‘the team doesn’t care what you know until they know that you care’ [is true],” he says. “When you have these types of experts having relationships with our players; coming to practice, just being around the water cooler during water breaks, being able to just say ‘how’s it going?’ Then when the guys are in a position to listen to what the expert is saying they’re no longer experts – they’re friends, they’re buddies.”

6. Game day minus one

Are there opportunities for you around game day? “It’s always been crazy to me that we control every other variable with athletes all the time, but the one day we completely flip the schedule is game day,” says Richards. “Those older guys love those moments of recovery on the road. For them, it’s less chaotic, it’s easier to focus. So much so that we’ve had a lot of success with having players to stay at a hotel the night before a home game or have that option, so that they can get into that rhythm and we change those practice times to the same as game times so they can get that day before the game rhythm into their bodies and their minds.” The benefits are palpable. “Allowing them to get into that rhythm early on, sleep, get out of that chaos, get their recovery mode early and have time to do any modalities that they want is crucial.”

7. What’s the problem we can solve the best?

Customisation is important and, at Penn State, it goes beyond age (i.e. an athlete at 18 versus an athlete at 23). “We look at the age and the experience of the athlete, then we take a look at what their on-court responsibilities are,” says Pavlik. “Some max jump much more often than others on the court during the match or practices. There are going to be some that have to get up the floor a lot more than other guys. What we try to do here is make sure with our training staff and med staff that we understand what we’re asking them to go through.” For Richards, it involves asking better questions. “What is the question for that athlete that we can solve the best? All physiology is too much of a blanket statement,” he says. “Is it overall energy? Is it mental fatigue? Is it truly physical fatigue? Is it something masking as another [marker]? And how can we hit those?”

8. Sleep as a by-product of good recovery practice

As moderator Johnny Parkes says, “With all these physical modalities we can use, I think we sometimes forget about the things we can control the most, which is our level of sleep recovery, hygiene and the effect of resetting the body for the next day.” For Richards, good sleep can be an outcome of a holistic approach to recovery. “That’s when you get the most synergistic effect out of all of them,” he says while asking, “Can we create that cycle of measurements to enhance individualisation and effectiveness?” He once again cites the idea of players staying in hotels the night before a game. “It really ties this together in a practical way in terms of ‘let’s get you good sleep in an environment I can go in early and control, make sure the sleep hygiene is there, giving you the time to implement those things well and then tie-in any other recovery modalities you want at the same time’.”

9. Gamification as a motivator

According to Richards, both younger and older athletes are interested in the gamification of recovery, but in different ways. “Younger players thrive for the most part on comparing what they’re doing and being effective versus their peers,” he says. “For an older athlete, I’ve found they’ve passed that point in their life, they’ve been saturated by that already and what you come to is the gamification comes from comparing them to themselves. Can they get a high score? Can they see what’s most effective for them? What patterns help them to be the most consistent over time? Scoring that on a streak becomes the better motivator for them.”

10. The blind spots in athlete recovery

What don’t teams consider as much as they should in recovery and how do we overcome them? “Anything is better than nothing,” says Richards. “We have a huge market for recovery tools and methodologies but I haven’t seen a huge move towards a blend of that. That’s where I’ve been pushing a lot of companies on their research. Can we let the monitoring devices drive the intervention; the duration, the velocity, the frequency and occurrence? Can we use measuring sticks to drive it for individuals; its appropriateness, effectiveness and sufficiency on an individual level? Until we do that I don’t think we’re doing the best we can do to figure out the puzzle, which is an athletic body.”

By John Portch and Sarah Evans

What causes athletes to develop self-defeating behaviours in a high performance environment?

“My starting point is that no one is trying to do it,” says physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt.

“As a high performance athlete, everyone’s got the intent to go and win. No one turns up to training every day thinking ‘I’m going to be difficult today’. You can turn up and say ‘I don’t really fancy it’ because that’s what humans do, but no one has the intention to be bad.”

Rosenblatt was the Lead Men’s Physical Performance Coach at the Football Association between 2016 and 2023 and was part of Gareth Southgate’s staff at two Fifa World Cups and one Uefa European Championships. He has worked across a series of sports and has worked at both the English Institute of Sport (now UK Sports Institute) and the British Olympic Association.

In the first part of our interview, Rosenblatt makes the case for a framework that enables a practitioner to bridge performance gaps.

‘Things didn’t match up’

Rosenblatt explains that his approach when entering a programme has evolved, although his principles remain unchanged. He says: “It is a case of identifying what the team’s ambitions are, seeing how resonant they are with what they’re trying to achieve, and then identifying the behaviours that should be in place to deliver that.”

He recalls an example from an Olympic sport where those two were misaligned. “One team wanted to be the best in the world and the most physically dominant,” Rosenblatt continues. “For me, those things didn’t match up, particularly when I spoke to the athletes and coaches and heard a different narrative.

“When I dug into it with the athletes and coaches and asked ‘what are the hallmarks and successful traits of teams you think are going to enable you to win and how are we going to do it?’ Then I quickly realised that their ambitions around being physically fittest and the most dominant were probably not the thing that was going to help us win in the Olympics.”

A gold medal-winning performance did not require a well-executed 30-15 intermittent fitness test or bleep test. “There were problems with basic things like stability and robustness and just being able to train frequently enough. We can go and chase all the sexy stuff, which physical conditioning coaches really want to do like speed and agility, strength and power, but what we really need to do is keep the players playing consistently and increasing volume and intensity for their sport-specific training because that’s what will make them a better team.”

‘How does that individual learn?’

Why might a team fall into a poor behavioural pattern in the first place?

“It typically comes from a gap in capabilities, knowledge, skills and experience,” says Rosenblatt. “It can also be their opportunity, so the social environment they’re in; and then their motivation.”

He explains that a coach’s understanding of athlete motivation may be flawed. “A coach might say ‘they just don’t want it enough’ or ‘they just don’t know enough’ then you can end up in a fight with an athlete who says ‘what are you talking about? I’m doing everything I can’ or you can try to bamboozle them with knowledge that they don’t really know how to receive,” he continues.

“An example might be: ‘I’m going to give you some detailed information about why strength training is important’ and they’re like ‘I don’t really care’ or ‘I don’t have the framework to understand what you’re telling me’. You’ve got to identify where those gaps in behaviours and opportunities are. So if it is around knowledge, skills and experience, then you’ve got to ask the question ‘how do they learn? How does that individual learn? How do they best receive and retain information?’

“That might be different as a head coach compared to a young athlete or even a seasoned athlete. They’re going to learn and experience physical training differently. They’re also different generations; they’re going to have different social values placed on them as well. Understanding the individual and how they learn and receive knowledge is really important.”

‘Not everyone had seen Rocky’

Rosenblatt’s understanding came from a growing appreciation of motivation science, which he had previously overlooked.

The penny dropped prior to the 2016 Rio Olympics, when he worked concurrently with GB judokas and women’s field hockey players. Whilst the Judokas wanted to receive a training programme and be told what to do, this approach didn’t work with the women’s hockey team.

“I tried to understand the motivational science behind it,” he says. “I assumed my generation, my background, I was brought up in a boxing gym and I assumed everyone had watched Rocky and that’s what kind of motivation meant to everyone else. But actually, it’s about the athlete needing to have autonomy and feel like they’re making a decision; is there a connection between the work they’re currently doing and what they’re aspiring to achieve and do they feel like they’re getting better?

“So if you really want to make sure an athlete is motivated to commit to the programme and commit to certain behaviours that are different to the ones they’re currently engaging in, is there a connection between what they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to achieve? The tangible – can they see it? Have they had a choice in the path that they’re taking?

“They might not have the skills and experience to write the programme or to take all the direction, but there still has to be a choice somewhere along the line. ‘Do you want to train at 3 or 3:30?’ If there’s some level of choice it makes people feel more connected to it.

“The other one is progression. Do they actually feel they’re getting better and it’s achieving the things they’re really interested in? I think that was the biggest mistake I made with the hockey group when I came in.

“That comes back to helping the players connect and recognise what’s important to the things they’re trying to achieve. I think that’s always a tricky one when people start introducing strength training, in particular, into team sports or any kind of training for athletes.

“I’ve certainly had that experience in football. There’s a big disconnect between lifting weights and performance. Particularly when the first thing you experience when you lift weights for the first time is that you get sore and you can’t move for two or three days. There’s a real disconnect with that. So I think you’ve got to recognise the experience that the athlete is actually living. That’s really important. Also, work out the different solutions and strategies that are available for that player at that particular time.”

Ben Rosenblatt is the Founder of 292 Performance.

Want to discuss performance behaviours with Ben?

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @ben_rosenblatt

By Luke Whitworth

Our latest Performance Support Series explores the past, present, and future of talent development. This series of learning is being delivered by Dr Edd Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the English Premier League.

For the first session within the series, Edd outlined a few aims for those in attendance, as we begin the journey of exploring the theme that will also see sessions in August and September. The aims were as followed:

• Consider what has stood the test of time in talent development. What has worked in the past that is still present?
• Discuss what characterises talent development environments that sustain success.
• Present a hypothesis detailing what successful talent development organisations did in the past to deliver in the present and might deploy in the future.

What has stood the test of time?

As a way of setting the scene for this particular Performance Support Series, Edd shared some of his reflections from working within elite football academy environments, in which there were a number of consistent themes based on those experiences and interactions with others operating within the field of talent development.

1. The best junior athletes are not always the best senior athletes. This reflects the non-linear development pathway many athletes can experience.
2. There is more than one way to achieve the same thing, which alludes to the debates around early vs late specialisation.
3. Each player athlete will experience a unique journey.
4. There is a disproportionate number of early born individuals (Relative Age Effect) in talent development pathways.
5. Success is not achieved alone. If we removed the support structure around an athlete, will they still succeed?
6. The ‘end game’ is always evolving. From the world of elite football, Edd shared examples of how Video Assistant Refereeing technology has influenced the defensive side of the game in the Premier League specifically and athletes in the league on average played in four different positions on the field so there is an added need for versatility and game intelligence in the modern game.

Taking the above insights into consideration and if we believe these elements are universal truths, how effectively does your current practice acknowledge these realities? Edd said that it is often important to pause as we work in such a dynamic industry where it can be challenging to reflect on current practice.

The 5 I’s

‘Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reading with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong – not for reasons why we must be right – and revising our views based on what we learn’ – Think Again, Adam Grant

Why this quote? The model that follows is an informed model from Edd’s experiences and expertise, but we were keen to reinforce that there are different contexts, so throughout this series of learning, we want to challenge and provoke discussion around the model.

The model has five elements which reflect what has been successful in the past in talent development, what is showing up in the most successful organisations presently and what we might want to consider in the future.

Individualised: the best talent development environments are individualised in nature.

Interdisciplinary: the most effective talent development demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach. Whilst the multiple disciplines will operate with an athlete, where it works most effectively is when there is an interdisciplinary approach to ensure the athlete is receiving the most critical and important piece of information and not an overload of information from the multiple disciplines.

Intervening upstream: the best talent development environments invest significant time in future proofing their activities and protect time for those conversations to understand what the future might look like. This is incredibly challenging with the dynamic and relentless nature of our environments, leaving a lack of time to think about these conversations.

Inclusive environments: the best environments for developing talent are inclusive, which also nods to the point on them being individualised.

Investment return: in the sense that it is not restricted to an economic conversation so it’s not a case of an investment of a certain amount of money and that gets return on players progressing through to the first team or elite level or being sold for profit (in a football context). The best talent development environments are considering the range of stakeholders that they are servicing. What’s the investment return of a young person who is dedicating so much time in that environment? What is the investment return for a parent who is probably offering a critical amount of support both emotionally and practically? What is the investment for the CEO, President or Head Coach?

Benchmarking against the model

The 5 I’s model serves as a fantastic benchmark for all environments, but how do we think we are doing? Within the session, we ranked our organisation’s delivery against these features on a scale of 1-5 to get a sense of our environments’ current effectiveness. What do we think we do best? The below is ranked in order of what we think are doing most effectively with the least effective being at the bottom:

1. Individualised support
2. Interdisciplinary approach
3. Inclusive environments
4. Investment return
5. Intervening upstream (future proofing)

Reflecting upon the responses, it wasn’t a huge surprise to see that most environments on the call felt they were delivering the Individualised Support element of talent development relatively effectively. Similarly, seeing Investment Return and Intervening Upstream as lower on the scale of effectiveness presents an expected but interesting insight – in Edd’s experiences, the feeling is that these elements are becoming more critical. There are more questions being asked in organisations around the Investment Return element from different stakeholders and with the fast-paced nature of high performance sport, taking time to predict how the ‘game’ will evolve and develop is becoming a core consideration in the quest to sustain success in this process.

Exploring individualisation

For the purpose of session one in the series, we explored the first element of the 5 I’s model in some further detail. It was the feature of the model that the group on the call felt we currently deliver the best, whilst appreciating that there are some significant organisational and individual challenges that accompany this.

Edd shared some insights and reflections from ten years of the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), in particular highlighting the tension that can exist around being truly individualised. There around roughly 14,000 players in the football academy system in UK, ranging from ages of 8 to 20. The vast majority of these players enter the system at an Under 9 age group and range from a multitude of regions.

The purpose for sharing these insights is to reiterate how challenging it is to be genuinely individualised.

Part of effective talent development is the ability to instigate changes in behaviour of an individual, and it is worth pointing out that each athlete will require different experiences to reach that end goal. Edd shared a framework that was introduced to him a number of years ago called the ‘Behavioural Change Stairway Model’ created by Vecchia et al (2005). There are a number of stages you need to get to before witnessing true changes in behaviour.

Step 1: Active listening

Step 2: Empathy

Step 3: Rapport

Step 4: Influence

Step 5: Behavioural change

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

You can’t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space – they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they’re putting their influence behind.

* * * * *

Rebecca (Bex) Smith is among the most connected people in women’s soccer. She captained teams for Duke University, Vfl Wolfsburg and the New Zealand national team, competing with the Football Ferns at two World Cups (2007 and 2011) and two Olympic Games (2008 and 2012). Smith also played professionally in Sweden and Germany before her career ended in 2013 due to a knee injury.

Smith, now 41, went on to work at FIFA for nearly five years as Competitions and Event Manager for all FIFA Women’s World Cups — the flagship event as well as the Under-17 and Under-20 versions. She went on to become the Global Executive Director of the Women’s Game at Copa90, a podcast host co-produced by the BBC, UEFA venue director and now Founder/CEO of Crux Sports, a women’s sports consultancy. In May, Crux Sports published research, in partnership with YouTube, on the value and impact of DAZN making the Women’s Champions League available for free on the social streaming platform.

She earned three degrees, speaks four languages and is either a board member or advisor for numerous companies and programs, including AI-powered injury risk platform Zone7 and the Isokinetic Conference, the largest football medicine conference in the world. Smith will also co-host the daily morning show for Australian broadcaster Optus at the upcoming Women’s World Cup being held in Australia and New Zealand.

On what she’s building with Crux Sports . . .

My company was born out of the fact that I had a very diverse background coming from playing to then governance and managing one of the biggest women’s sporting event on the planet to then going into media content production to then working with big brands to doing branded content and working with athletes. So I really just wanted to have a place where we could help all stakeholders so whether it is brands or governing bodies or content production or athletes themselves to either get into the women’s game or to help fuel it.

So it’s really about driving sustainable positive growth into the women’s game, but then helping stakeholders to increase their bottom line or to work on their marketing or figure out their strategies for integrating women’s sports and female athletes into their propositions as well. So it’s very diverse. I work with YouTube and Google and helped them do a research project, all the way to Champions League to working with big brands like Xero on their partnerships with the FA or FIFA to working with on content production or working with athletes directly, helping them work on their post-career transition and maximizing their commercial opportunities during their career.

On her interest in player health and wellness . . .

It comes from my own experiences in football and sort of more negative experiences, I would say, throughout my career where I found that there was a lack of support. Despite the fact that I had three degrees on the side and was trying to work at the same time — because I was trying to just set myself up for post-[playing career] — I still felt really unsure, insecure, going into that post-career, post-football life and having to do so with a really bad injury. I hurt my knee, and then it was not very properly looked after at my club. And I was continually playing on a very swollen knee. And in the end, I can’t run anymore. So for me, it was really important.

When I was at FIFA, we did a whole medical study on the athletes and players, and what their medical setups were. And in the end, we couldn’t publish it. So I gave it to my buddy at FIFPro. So they did the very first employment study. So it was based off of a lot of the data and research that we had done. And yeah, it’s just really about trying to better the situation for the next generations. And it sounds so hokey, and so cliché, but it’s so important that we continually improve the game for the athletes because they are at the heart of the game.

On her work with athletes . . .

So many people work in and around sports, and they run this or they run marketing, or they run broadcast, and they’re very important, they make loads of money, but at the end of the day, if the athletes are continually getting burnt out and injured and aren’t taken care of properly, then it won’t be sustainable. So for many reasons, one, the health and mental health and safety of athletes because they’re human, but secondly, because it’s a business, and it needs to be sustained as well. And you have to take care of your people in the business. So they’re at the core.

Do I think it’s gotten better? No. I wish I could say that it has. I think in some areas, in some clubs, there’s better medical care and a little bit more investment in that, but I still think that it’s a huge gap, which is one of the reasons why I work with a lot of athletes. I don’t really market it, they just come and I work with them to help them get prepared mentally and also just physically — what are they actually doing to prepare for it. So, ya know, there’s still a really long way that we need to go for that.

On Zone7 . . .

Not just because I’m a strategic adviser to them, but I think something like a Zone7 [can help]. I really wish it was around when I was playing. And I’ve said that before. But to have the technology that we have now — AI — that did not exist when I was playing, or was not, let’s say, mainstream when I was around, and to be able to have those types of algorithms where so much data is going in that is being perfected constantly and tinkered with and filtered down, that you can really get to the point where you can say, ‘This is the percentage of risk that you are at for this type of injury, and therefore you should change your training to do this, this and this.’ It’s mind-blowing.

I come across lots of tech companies or people trying to help out with athletes, and it’s all — even what I do — very time-consuming and very one-on-one, whereas this is a mass market product that that can really help. Now they’re in leagues as well, so it’s not just with individual clubs or teams.

So far, that’s the most incredible thing that I’ve seen that I think would just really help reduce injury in a huge way, really quickly and very significantly. But other than that, there needs to be a lot more investment by clubs and leagues and those that are making money off of athletes. They need to have a certain percentage invested back into the athletes, that would be my standard approach to things. But good luck trying to get them to invest back into their players.

On her recent project for YouTube and Google . . .

I did a research project with them around the Women’s Champions League. So because they put the Women’s Champions League, through the rights with DAZN, on YouTube free-to-air and global, it meant that there were a lot of knock-on effects. What they were measuring was traditionally just the live match number — what’s the audience watching this live match? Which is obviously lower than if it’s on normal TV in in France, but that’s because a lot of people didn’t know it was on YouTube.

So we were really looking at the value and impact more broadly on the different stakeholders. So from media, players, the teams — so I interviewed 15 out of 16 teams that participated in the group stage — got their opinions on things, talked to the players that were involved, talked to media and then we did a big fan survey.

On her work with the Global Esports Federation . . .

That’s quite fun. I sit on the players’ commission, and that’s really interesting because I’m learning more than anywhere else, I’d say. It’s really understanding how athletes in the gaming space are being treated, what their challenges are, how the Global Esports Federation can help support athletes better. From my former career as an athlete, but really looking at gaming as one of the biggest, fastest growing industries on the planet. And my goodness, every kid is involved in it.

On the importance of New Zealand co-hosting the Women’s World Cup . . .

It’s pretty massive and not likely to ever happen again. It really is a one-off opportunity, I think, for a country the size of New Zealand that always punches above its weight anyway in its sports teams, but in terms of the size of the country and being able to host such a massive event, it’s huge. And obviously, co-hosting with Australia has been a large part of that as well and will be truly beneficial for both parties. You still have some of the beauty of New Zealand and a totally different vibe and a little bit closer to be able to travel within the country, as opposed to Australia. I’m hoping that all the fans are going to come and turn out and really support the teams down there.

On the broader growth of the women’s game . . .

What the women’s game has suffered from prior is that we have big, big moments, and then it really drops off. So you have the World Cups and obviously the women’s Euros this last summer in England — and then with England winning, that really pushes everything forward quite quickly. You have 1 billion viewers from the last FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, but then we really have struggled to translate that into the [domestic] leagues and Champions League.

I think this year has been one of the first years where we’ve really seen massive pickups of numbers of people in stadia of sellout crowds. Literally every single week, I’ll open something on my phone, and it’s a record being broken of some club or some stadium being sold out. We had the Arnold Clark cup here. They had it in Coventry, and it was the biggest game they’ve ever had in sports — and that happened to be women’s football.

So it’s just it’s growing massively. So I really think that this Women’s World Cup is no longer going to be just another pinnacle event that will see the drop off after. I just think it will help to increase that level so that the trajectory just keeps going up. Obviously the time zone is going to be a challenge. So I think the on-demand elements of it, the highlights and things will be really, really important.

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

By John Portch

Justin Bokmeyer was announced as the first General Manager of MLS NEXT in February.

The New York-based MLS NEXT was founded in 2020 as a youth soccer league in the United States and Canada with a view to establishing itself as the premier talent identification and development program in North American soccer.

It is well on the way to achieving that aim. In a little over three years, MLS NEXT has grown to consist of 137 clubs, 628 teams and more than 13,500 players.

Bokmeyer was seen as the ideal candidate for the GM position following his sterling work at the NBA where as the Head of Strategic Initiatives he helped to found the Basketball Africa League. Earlier in his career, he also served as the Director of Lacrosse Operations at the United States Military Academy at West Point for two years and spent 11 years on active duty in the US Army.

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Bokmeyer if he was attracted to MLS NEXT because, much like the Basketball Africa League, it is a new venture.

“Absolutely,” he replies. “In my military career and in working in the NBA, I was working in new things and got to build them from scratch.” He cites examples from the athletic department at West Point, where he helped to establish programs, as well as the numerous NBA academies set up on his watch. “That was one of the exciting things about me taking this MLS NEXT role. I don’t know if I can jump into something that’s set for 20 or 30 years. That’s a very different mindset and a very different leadership skill.”

MLS NEXT’s aim is to provide the requisite coaching contact and a unified approach akin to the English Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan that taps into the region’s large talent pool.

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute outlines Bokmeyer’s first steps.

Year one, hands-on

Bokmeyer explains that he feels he needs to be heavily involved in his first year as GM. “I’m very hands-on this year but then, leading into next season, people should feel very empowered,” he says. “They’ll know our culture, the standards, our norms. They’ll know which decisions they can make.” There are, at present, ten people on his staff who share responsibilities for operating and executing the program, player engagement and experience, and commercial opportunities.

Bokmeyer has ensured that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined across the team. “It’s the focus on how we work,” he continues. “It’s being very deliberate in the platforms we use, how we communicate, when we meet, what decisions need to come to me, being very deliberate in how we work.”

MLS NEXT has made inroads but brought onboard its first GM because the league understands there is still a ways to go. “One of the things that I pride myself on is being able to piece things together; really diving into how we make those decisions and what the long-term effects are. Are we solving the problem we need to solve? The ability to think through second and third order effects is one that I pride myself on, making sure that we stay focused on what we’re trying to solve for.”

Development tools

Bokmeyer has introduced a series of tools to support his staff’s development. “We held a staff meeting on the theme of decision making and so we introduced the idea to them around a decision journal and why that’s important for different decisions,” he says.

He also introduced the Questions & Empathy card deck to his team. It is a 56-card companion to Michael Ventura’s book Applied Empathy. “Seeking clearer understanding or deeper connections?” asks the Questions & Empathy website, “Let these cards guide your conversation and exploration.” The deck is: “designed to help inspire empathic exchanges among individuals, teams, and communities alike.”

Says Bokmeyer: “How do you have deeper conversations and get to know people so you develop that trust quicker? You really speed up that learning; and so I use those questions and empathy decks often within our group to open up conversation.”

The work of Daniel Coyle, author of the Talent Code and Culture Code, has proven useful too, with some tools freely available on his website.

‘What keeps you up at night?’

Bokmeyer and his staff will endeavour to visit each of MLS NEXT’s 137 clubs at suitable moments. “I’ve told my team several times that we cannot lead and be actual leaders from the New York office,” he says. “We have to be out to see the environments and talking to people. We’re in this initiative now over the next couple of months visiting all parts of the country, seeing the clubs, MLS clubs, non-MLS academies, anybody and everybody, getting out there, talking to them, and meeting them in their environment and not over Zoom. That lowers the defences, it creates more trust, and so we’re absolutely committed to getting out there.”

He runs through his itinerary at the time of our interview. “We’re going to hit the four clubs in San Diego next week; a couple of weeks ago I was at a site visit in south Florida for an event and visited the local clubs, five clubs in Miami, to make sure that I attend matches, training and see their facilities. Really trying to understand it is critical. You lose so much if we say we’re going to make these policies from the New York office.”

What is the first thing he asks those stakeholders? “What keeps them up at night?” he says. “That’s the biggest thing. Absolutely understanding that. Everybody we’re visiting, they’ve got to play the long game and we’re requiring them to play the long game and focus on that while they have to produce short-term results. And I know that they have families – their jobs and livelihood depend on that. So trying to balance that. Understanding what keeps them up at night is critical, whether that’s they don’t have enough players, their talent ID process is wrong, who they’re hiring, anything like that, we want to know. Then really focusing on what we can do to improve.

“Tell us your recommendations, competition schedule, talent ID, roster numbers, any of that. We’ve got this blank slate. ‘Tell us, if you were in our role, what would you do? What would you be looking at?’ That really brings out some good insights across the board from all these clubs.”

The role of college soccer

Bokmeyer believes that young players growing up in North America may have a unique opportunity to sample different sports to a competitive level. “I think the benefits of being exposed to a lot of different sports in the United States and Canada can provide a unique athletic skillset that other countries may not have,” he says.

Tapping into the large talent pool remains the primary goal. “How can we access that talent pool better? We’ve got some things in the works with technology and AI, but we want to be able to canvass the entirety of North America and find the players that could be hidden in different parts of the country.”

He also feels that the unique North American college system can complement MLS NEXT’s goals. “We know that 90% of our players won’t go pro pathway right away,” he adds. “Everyone is looking to go to college unless you’re going pro, so we have to ensure that the right conversations are happening, that the players are deciding what’s best for them and their development and not pushing them either way.

“We still see the college pathway as being a unique ecosystem for late developers or bloomers. If you look at Matt Turner, who played university college soccer in the US and now look at him playing in the Premier League with Arsenal. He’s one of those guys. We had 19 players who played at NEXT, went to college, and then were drafted in the MLS SuperDraft this past year. So there is still a viable pathway for NEXT players to go to college and then get drafted at some point during their college career and still get that chance.”

What’s next?

The research on athlete maturation by Sean Cumming at the University of Bath is of considerable interest to Bokmeyer, as is biomechanics, but, beyond specific physical markers, his immediate interest is to stimulate MLS NEXT’s development.

“We’re very clear on what we want to accomplish, we know how we’re going to do that, and we’ve got the things in place to do it and we’ve got the right clubs in place as well,” he says. “That’s through our standards and governance, that’s through clear communication and trust between the league and member clubs. And what it looks like is absolutely athlete-centred, and that’s putting player’s rights, whether it’s their data, first and foremost. We want to be aligned in our behaviours and in what we do – and we won’t have to be talking about that because it’ll just be known that we are athlete-centred. They’ll see that it’ll just be part of the behaviour and culture that we’ve set.”