By John Portch

“The one thing I believe about high performance is that it’s pretty simple but it’s also really hard to do consistently over time.”

The Leaders Performance Institute has just asked Greg Shaw, the High Performance Director at Swimming Australia, for his thoughts on the growing complexity of performance environments.

This complexity is both reflected in and a reaction to what Shaw calls the “growing sophistication” of performance roles. In many respects, as he noted in our Teamworks Special Report earlier this year, Shaw perceives himself as a “project manager”.

Which is not in itself a bad thing. Fields such as sports science have blossomed in elite sport, but consistency of application and outcome, whether locally or at scale, has often proved elusive.

“We all make bad decisions,” adds Shaw, “and a lot of smart people make dumb decisions.”

Here, we highlight four areas where Shaw and Swimming Australia, are trying to give their athletes, coaches and staff every chance to make better choices.

1. Identify the barriers to better decision making

“We heavily invested and remain interested in behavioural science and how we can help our athletes and coaches make smart decisions and follow hard behaviours,” says Shaw. Swimming Australia’s aim is to “help make those decisions easier and those hard performance behaviours more frequent.” They enlisted the help of behavioural design experts to help identify and understand the existing barriers.

Shaw himself has a background in sports nutrition and illustrates his point through the lens of dietetics. “It’s the behavioural component of nutrition,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter what you know in terms of, say, biology, it’s if you can make the right choices and how social and cultural drivers impact those choices.”

2. Manipulate the environment to remove those barriers

The ideal, as Shaw says, is for the athletes to “turn up, do what they need to do, and live a high performance lifestyle”. This, he admits, is easier said than done. Even a disciplined athlete can inadvertently harm their health and performance. “It often leads to concerns around wellbeing, being overloaded, overworked and over-stressed.”

The key is to “manipulate the environment and the process to help the athlete make it simpler and easier.” Shaw continues: “I think the future of high performance is designing things purposefully, not just the training we do but everything that fits outside of that; the life, the social environment, the club culture, the programme culture, the experts around you so you know to make the right choices and adaptations.”

He is clear that it is “more about environment and behaviour than it is about science and the expertise of performance.”

This is in keeping with Swimming Australia’s ‘people-first’ approach. “It’s understanding what’s a good stress and what’s a bad stress,” says Shaw, who explains that there is an increasing empathy for what athletes go through to sustain high performance over extended periods of time.

“An athlete may enter our ecosystem at 15 or 16 and leave our ecosystem at 35, so if we don’t have that ability to understand how we must adapt in how we interact with and support our athletes, then they’ll leave.”

3. Let people refine their processes before looking for scalability

Shaw admits that Swimming Australia, when it comes to system-wide initiatives, has traditionally been an organisation that “scales first and tries to find efficiencies later”. However, the organisation has typically excelled when it comes to individual and group piloting. Shaw has noted the distinction and continues to learn as he goes. “Over the last 18 months I’ve realised it’s not about adding more, it’s subtracting and refining ideas to their simplest and easiest, then letting people add their flavour to it,” he says, warming to the theme.

“Oftentimes, we try to scale and have things fit within boxes, but scalability comes from understanding the fundamentals of an idea or process, making sure that happens, and then giving enough space for others to iterate and develop their own process.”

4. Use AI as a co-pilot

Shaw sees the potential in automation, with caveats. “As we automate, we free up time to interrogate the data more and more, but that puts people behind the screens and offices we’re trying to free them from in the first place,” he says, adding, “automation should free coaches to spend more time on the pool deck and in performance environments”. Doing this will enable coaches to “be compassionate with the athlete, to better understand what they’re going through, or to understand if a piece of information is going to be necessary for them at this point in time.”

As for AI, he sees the benefit as being rooted in “augmented decision-making”. “We want to use AI to help people make good decisions, to help strip away the noise, to make the signal a bit clearer,” he continues.

Such clarity helps to reduce “data hallucinations and noise, which you may not realise for a couple of months”. By that point, “you’ve wasted your time.”

That does not mean outsourcing data interpretation entirely to AI. “We believe in the co-pilot model of AI rather than having the artificial intelligence doing it for people.”

What to read next

Coach and Staff Wellbeing: Five Approaches to Five Common Challenges

By John Portch

USA Swimming is currently the only American national governing body to have an in-house mental health provider.

Emily Klueh is the Manager of Psychological Services at USA Swimming.

“She’s a former National Team athlete, which is fantastic,” Lindsay Mintenko told the Leaders Performance Podcast of Klueh’s work in mid-July. “She understands the stressors that athletes are going through.”

Mintenko, the Director of the National Team at USA Swimming and a two-time Olympic gold medallist herself, explained that the NGB was listening when their athletes indicated in the wake of the 2016 Rio Games that they wanted and needed more mental health support.

Perhaps this collective demand emboldened Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, to go public with his story at a mental health conference. “Really, after every Olympics, I think I fell into a major state of depression,” Phelps said at the 2018 Kennedy Forum in Chicago. He felt his “hardest fall” was after the 2012 London Games when he could spend anywhere between three and five days in his room, not eating and barely sleeping while “just not wanting to be alive”.

It was a shocking admission but, in the subsequent six years, more and more athletes are speaking up. Some will be competing in Paris, such as seven-time Olympic gold medallist Caeleb Dressel and five-time Olympic medallist Simone Manuel, both of whom have withdrawn from competitions in the past citing mental health concerns.

Below, we take a closer look at how USA Swimming is supporting its Olympians.

Mental health = physical health

USA Swimming sees mental health as analogous to physical health. “It is essential to recognize our brain is a muscle, and just like any muscle in our body, we can work to make it stronger,” Klueh told USA Swimming’s website in May. “We all fluctuate along the continuum based on life events, genetics, and other environmental factors. Having support, resources, and tools to enhance our brains is crucial to our overall health and well-being.” The team’s swimmers are supported at every camp and competition. They can also call upon support wherever they live, as Mintenko revealed. “We provide a stipend for our National Team athletes to go to a mental health provider of their choice,” she said.

Fighting the stigma

For all the progress that has been made, there is still a stigma attached to mental ill health, as the Paris-bound Regan Smith highlighted at this year’s US Olympic swimming trials.

“I used to be afraid to talk about it, because I was afraid of being perceived as weak or washed up because women are really attacked I think in sports, like people are quick to judge us,” said Smith, who won three medals in Tokyo. “The second that you vocalise what you’re going through, I think it makes it a lot easier, because you realise that you’re not alone, you realise that it’s so normal to experience these feelings and then it makes it a lot easier to overcome them, at least in my instance, I’m really thankful for that.”

Smith admitted her mental health remains a work in progress, which adds credence to Klueh’s view that sport must normalise conversations about the topic. “I am very passionate about increasing the frequency and opportunities for conversations, reducing stigmas, and enhancing support for people who want to improve their minds,” she said.

The impact on performance

As Klueh explained, a clinical diagnosis may or may not have a tangible impact on athlete performance. It is important to understand that mental health exists on a spectrum. At one end, depression can make it difficult for a person to participate in group activities; it may also present mental and emotional challenges in training. Research also suggests a significant link between anxiety and disorders of the digestive system, which has implications for nutrition, fatigue and recovery.

Klueh made the case for prevention before cure. “On the other end of the spectrum, when looking at sport optimization, the way we talk to ourselves has an impact on how we engage,” she said.

“If we possess the tools to effectively self-talk, we can more easily focus and concentrate on specific tasks rather than give into fatigue, second guess ourselves, or worry about outcomes.”

USA Swimming’s senior leadership team also has a role to play. “I want to be able to provide them an opportunity to do their jobs and make sure they’re given a chance to promote themselves,” said Mintenko.

Striking a balance

Klueh believes that athletes should accept their daily struggles in the pursuit of striking a comfort level that works for them. “When we work with our minds, we can find intention and purpose in what we do, which in turn increases satisfaction and potentially decreases mental health struggles,” said Klueh, who believes this approach enables individuals to better process their emotions and, ultimately, make smarter decisions.

She wants to help set athletes on a successful trajectory, which is why it is incumbent on Mintenko to provide a safe and fun environment where medals are not the sole focus.

“We find other ways to measure success that aren’t just winning.”

Listen to our full interview with Lindsay Mintenko below:

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

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“I’ve been told I give really good hugs.”

So says Lindsay Mintenko, the Managing Director of USA Swimming’s National Team, in the second episode of this new series of the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

“Just being able to sit with an athlete; sometimes you don’t even have to talk,” she continues, “it’s just so they know you are there.”

It is difficult to imagine many of her predecessors demonstrating such empathy with athletes whether they’re a multi-medal winner like Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky or a swimmer who came agonisingly close in some of sport’s most competitive trials. The top-two finishers are guaranteed a spot on the roster; those in third – who would likely medal with other nations – are almost certain to miss out.

“After the trials, our main job is to make sure our athletes are focused on Paris, but we don’t always take a step back and look at those who came third by a hundredth of a second. That’s a tough place to be; so we really need to make sure that we do a better job of looking out for those athletes afterwards.”

It is perhaps no surprise that USA Swimming is currently the only national governing body in the US to have an in-house licensed clinician on staff.

This has happened on the watch of Lindsay, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in the 4x200m freestyle.

She is the first former athlete and first woman to serve as Team USA’s Managing Director, but as she tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch, it is not about her but serving her athletes and their coaches.

Lindsay also spoke about her role being analogous to that of a general manager in the major leagues [8:00] and the importance of providing a challenging but safe environment [17:40].

Elsewhere, she elaborates on the importance of providing mental health support for her athletes [29:50] and explains how her swimming career began when as a six-year-old Lindsay fell out of a tree [5:30].

Henry Breckenridge X | LinkedIn

John Portch X | LinkedIn

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

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.

* * * * *

Shikha Tandon learned to swim at age eight and won a national swimming medal a year later. She competed in the Asian Games at 13, the world championships at 16 and the 2004 Athens Olympics when she was 19 — the only Indian swimmer at those Games and the only Indian women to ever qualify for two events, as she competed in the 50- and 100-meter freestyle.

While competing as an elite swimmer, Tandon also was enrolled at Bangalore University, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science and a Master’s in Biotechnology. Upon moving to the US, she completed a second master’s, this time in biology, from Case Western Reserve University.

Following a five-year stint working as a science program lead at the US Anti-Doping Agency, Tandon worked at a couple fitness startups (Moov Inc, Repmonk AI) and at TechCrunch as a product manager before joining Silicon Valley Exercise Analytics. At SVEXA, she is the Director of Global Partnerships working on a team intentionally assembled of members with dual competencies: both technical and athletic. SVEXA’s employees include numerous current and retired athletes who have competed professionally as well as at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

On her early life in sports…

I grew up in India. I spent most of my childhood there. I swam and competed for India for about 15 years, eventually, but at the start of it all, swimming was not my sport of choice. I was a pretty athletic kid, loved being outdoors, and actually running was my sport of choice. I was eight at the time, and I wanted to join a local running club in India, but they were taking kids only when they were nine. I was told to come back when I was nine.

I have a younger brother who had severe asthma at the time, and so the doctor recommended that he start swimming just to help his lung capacity. Being the age that my mom was not going to leave me behind at home, I was taken to the pool with him, and one thing led to the other.

Initially, I was really scared of the water — I didn’t want anything to do with it. But over time, I quickly learned to enjoy it, love it. I won my first national medal when I was nine, so pretty much a year after learning to swim. I was just enjoying it so much. I went to nationals, went to international events right from when I was 12. And there was really no turning back beyond that. It was just one of those things, which happened by chance that swimming was brought to me and I loved it.

On beginning to train more seriously…

The coach I had the first year was one coach, and then I moved over to train with another coach. And so he was my coach for 14 of the 15 years so right throughout. And so when I say train more seriously, it was more just setting higher goals, competing at more international events and really keeping an eye out on those qualifying times and training outside India as well, because after the age of 13, actually, I was the fastest swimmer in, in my event at the time.

I needed to train outside to just get exposure to understand how things work, to help me compete in those international events. A lot of those things — the training mindset, the training programs — are geared towards those bigger international events versus just winning at nationals. Four or five years prior to when I qualified for Athens, that’s when I really started thinking that the Olympics is something I could do.

On the training tools and tech available to her…

Very, very limited. And nothing compared to what we have today. So we would have some amount of video analysis, some amount of heart rate-related training that we would do. We would have these different threshold sets and whatnot for benchmarking, but nothing really beyond that. So it was a very, very different world training environment 15 years ago than it is today.

On her swimming career after Athens…

I trained to try and qualify for Beijing as well in 2008. I missed a qualifying time by .05 of a second. I actually swallowed water at 35 meters of the 50 meter raise, so that didn’t help. I swallowed water when I turned to take a breath — it’s something that I still think of. I moved to the US in 2009 and then swam a little bit more ’til 2010 and then decided that I wanted to switch focus to something outside the pool.

On her studies in science…

I was interested in biology, just because of being an athlete. I wanted to understand how the human body works, and just from a performance standpoint, we were reading up and talking with my coach. Everything just came together from an interest standpoint. And then also, as an athlete, I’d been drug tested so much. So I’d seen how that system works in India, and I saw I wanted to work in the anti-doping field after I graduated college. Some of the classes and courses that I took in college was geared towards getting to work at an anti-doping agency, post-graduation. So that was the motivation, really. And then after I graduated, I worked at USADA for about five years on the science team. And that was, at the time, my dream job.

On her belief in the anti-doping mission…

I definitely believe in clean sport. We put in so much effort as athletes, and you want to know that you’re standing at the start line with a level playing field. And I’ve also seen people around me in India not really — there was stuff going on, which didn’t get the appropriate, for lack of a better word, punishment. Part of that [interest] was because of that, and USADA is pretty much on top of things, as far as anti-doping goes in the world.

My role involved a bit of research and also understanding current trends and research. At a high level, it was translating that science into stuff that people could understand and that we could use that science to educate folks. While I was at USADA, towards the end, I actually helped build out one of the first online tutorials for anti-doping science, which was geared towards health and medical professionals and I think that’s still running even ’til today.

On her transition into the Silicon Valley tech industry…

I was immersed in the tech space, way more than I’d ever imagined. And so that’s what got me interested in tech, just by nature of being here. I worked at a few fitness wearable companies, and then I also worked at TechCrunch, which is a tech media platform. Working at TechCrunch allowed me to think about startups, understand a lot more about startups because that was the content we were covering.

I was drawn towards SVEXA for two reasons. One, I understood the space from an athlete perspective, but also from a tech standpoint, and I understood what they were trying to do. I really, really believe in their mission.

On her work at SVEXA…

From a SVEXA standpoint, we work with these different [stakeholders]. It could be tech companies, it could be sports teams, it could be junior athletes, it could be individual athletes, it could be even health and medical professionals who are reaching out to us. We help them essentially use all of this data, and then based on who their end customer is, help them with insights and recommendations that align with what their end customer is trying to achieve.

What we’re trying to do is a combination of AI and that human domain expertise, which is what a coach typically brings. And so for me thinking back, what we’re able to do here using all the data that we have is keep people in optimal zones in terms of performance, recovery, taking into account their goals, and when they want to peak and things like that. We’ve worked with a lot of elite athletes, and we’ve essentially helped them do that on a day-to day-basis — how do you structure and modify your training regimes to peak.

Having access to this, I think, would have helped me potentially elongate my career a little more because I did start getting injured quite a bit towards the end. So I think from an injury prevention or management standpoint, I think a lot of this could have also helped. And, again, from an overtraining perspective, keeping me in my optimal zones, I think, also could have helped in some situations.

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

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Rohan Taylor how he stays in touch with his instincts as a coach.

“I’m on that journey, to be honest,” says the Head Coach of Swimming Australia. “I’m very comfortable now, today, to say it’s my number one skillset that I think I have to keep front and centre. I see instinct and intuition as a collection of knowledge and experience that touches me on the head and says ‘have you seen this before?’ so I need to stop and listen and tap into it.”

Taylor explains that he welcomes data but that he “won’t let it override what I feel”. “When I made the most successful moves or the most successful decisions or things that I’ve done really well, it’s been driven by my instincts with information informing me,” he continues.

It is not just decision-making around Swimming Australia’s programming either. “In a room when I’m talking to a group of people, I’m looking around to see is there a connection happening here and I rely on my instincts to tell me where to pivot if it’s not.

“My instincts tell me ‘you’re probably not hitting the mark’. I rely on them heavily and I’m very confident in them. And if I make a mistake, I make a mistake. It doesn’t faze me. I learn from that and it’s all about continual improvement for me.”

Taylor, who is currently with the Australian Dolphins at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, was a major contributor to our March Special Report Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions. Here, he reflects on his style as a leader and where he can continue to improve and develop.

Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

What is the key to getting the big decisions right and managing them effectively?

RT: I’m always a big believer that I’ve got to surround myself with people smarter than me and build that trust. Getting a big decision right is speaking to the right people to tell me what I need to hear and not what I want to hear; getting the right feedback. Because you can go to people and say ‘yeah, that’s the way to go’ but then they’ll ask questions and make me think a little bit more. So I’ve vetted my decision-making with trusted people around me. I think that’s a really important part. But for the piece I’m doing, is I’m trying to influence a greater number of people. Now I can’t go and have those conversations with everybody. So what I do is, those people around me are my influencers, they’re the ones that if they agree, the likelihood is that everybody else will follow along because they trust them even if they don’t trust me. So my decision making is making sure I spend the time informing and collaborating with the right people and then we’ll move forward together and be aligned; and if I don’t do that I usually find myself having to eventually do that anyway. So if I make a unilateral decision, I likely have to follow up by going back to those people to bring them onboard. So I spend the time talking to them before I go out and do that.

Is that when you feel at your most confident and in command?

RT: Absolutely, because you know you’ve got buy-in from the right people. Also, the thing is that I’m quite comfortable to make flexible moves on the go, but I’ll do it through the right people who will influence me, but it’s a two-way street. I’m very confident in saying ‘hey, here’s the direction’ but I’m also confident that if there’s a need to move one way or another that I’ve got people around me who will help me to make that adjustment if I need to. And they trust me.

How carefully do you choose your words? What can you say to an athlete? What do you prefer not to say?

RT: In this day and age you’ve got to be very careful. That’s the challenge and that’s the learning that all of us in leadership; and the coaches, who are leaders in their own right, are having to check their language, their feedback, because it’s a different world we live in now, from the point of view of sensitivity. For me, it’s the level of trust with the person you’re giving feedback to has a lot to do with it as well. Even then, I err on the side of caution more than anything. There’s times I’d like to say ‘pull your head in, you’re being a dickhead’ and although I want them to hear that, but I have to deliver it a different way. I think about what I feel like saying, and then I think ‘OK, I’m going to walk away and re-frame this and is there a message I need to try to deliver and then work it out?’ It takes a lot longer, to answer your question! You’ve got to take time to deliver things if you want to be impactful. At times it’s exhausting, to be honest.

How do you ensure you are protecting your own time and mental resources?

RT: Well, I moved where I’m living now. I moved 400m from the beach on the Sunshine Coast. I relocated for environmental reasons and that was absolutely a targeted move for my family. At some point today, I’ll be in the surf having a swim or go out on a jetski. I’ll go and play and that’s giving me to have that hour to myself or with my wife or walk or whatever. That’s simplistic me. I have targeted times where I just lock in on things and I’ve learned to disconnect now; I’m better at that. So I either physically remove myself or put myself in a different space or I go and read a book or something – usually I’m reading books about leadership so I’m not really getting out of that space! But I am actually refreshing my mind around re-engaging in that learning. I go and watch my girls do sport and that’s always a great little release. So I think I’ve got the balance right. The big thing for me is the balance is not about 50% this or 50% that, it’s 100% this and 100% that. So if I’m going out for an hour to spend on the jetski and go wave-jumping or surfing, I’m 100% into that. I’m not going out there thinking about something else. That’s to me is balance. That’s utopia to get to that point. Then I feel that I’ll be fine.

By John Portch

What makes for a great training facility? It is a question the Leaders Performance Institute posed to a series of athletes, coaches and practitioners, including Kate Warne-Holland, the Under-14s Girls Captain at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA].

“You have to bring the energy. Don’t come in if you’re not ready to come in,” she says.

“The players need to know exactly what the expectation level is of them and we have to challenge each other to bring the energy and the right attitude. When I ran my own environment as a coach, everybody in the team would have clear roles about where they would be that day; leading the session, assisting the session, hitting in the session. If, as a coach, you’re hitting in the session then you’re a player so you’d better behave like a player. You’re a real role model. Communication with the players in the session has to be pitched to what is in front of you that day.”

We spoke to individuals in American football, bobsleigh, rugby union, swimming, tennis, field hockey and athletics to glean their views on what makes a training or practice facility great. Here is what they told us.

Jack Easterby, NFL performance coach:

The flow is the number one thing. How does it flow and does that flow match the work flow of the operation? For example, I’ve had people walk into a locker room and it’s the first thing you see, which is great, but you’re spending more time in a meeting hall or in a study area than you are in the locker room. The second thing is unified technology. I think that technology creates behaviour. And so I think if you have a flow that’s really well done and you have unified technology around the building, it’s going to create the behaviours that are needed for the people inside.

Montell Douglas, British Olympic bobsledder and former Olympic sprinter:

The ideal is to have everything you need in one place. If you wanted to make the best athlete, you would give them everything you need in that realm to perform, but that’s rare. In transitioning into my newer sport, I realised that things aren’t always ideal and the best training facilities came from the times where I thought outside the box. A lot of times in my sport, I was training out of a garage with free weights. I would never imagine in sprinting that you could do that and still perform, but when you think about facilities, it’s not about the quality, although that’s hugely important. It’s always about: what is required and am I able to get the same desired outcome with what I have?

Ioan Cunningham, Head Coach, Wales senior women’s rugby union team:

The biggest thing for me is: how much does an environment help a player to learn? When you set up the environment, when they walk in, what triggers are there for them to learn? Is there signposting? And then out on the field it’s very similar. Is there an opportunity with us to get live feedback on a TV on the side of the field; ‘we’re just going to play this and then go and look at it’, ‘that was really good’ or ‘you didn’t run your line there properly’. We’re lucky we can do that at our level, but it’s also creating an environment where we will stop the session, give them 30 seconds to discuss it as a group, and then come back with two points. No more than two points. ‘How are you going to win the next minute?’ Those are the type of environments and learning environments – because learning leads to motivation, in my view. If you’re learning, you’re motivated. If you stop learning you become stale.

Rohan Taylor, Head Coach, Swimming Australia:

For me, there’s three really critical components that you look at across any high performance environment. These are almost non-negotiables. The facility needs to be accessible. Sometimes [swimmers] get kicked out of the pools or lane space, so we’ll secure access to facilities to be able to do the basics, the training. The second one is the coaching and the level of coaching expertise, not just elite coaches but the coaching group; I’m talking about the sports science. You need to have that and if it’s just one person they need to be really good, if it’s two people they need to work collaboratively together. And the third part is that you need that administrative support, that dry side support, to ensure those coaches are coaching, those athletes are training, and somebody’s supporting the structure around it. Whether it’s a large, professional football club or it’s a small swimming club, it needs those three components to be operating and working together. And if you take one away, it becomes a problem.

Kate Warne-Holland, Under-14s Girls Captain, LTA:

Hard work also has to be fun. I work with under-14s and there has to be enjoyment throughout the session, with the amount of volume and intensity the kids are undertaking. I think there also needs to be respect for the effort the players are putting in, respect for the parents, and the coaching staff. And walking in each morning to a nice, clean space. No litter, no balls everywhere, everything is nicely tidy and the baskets of balls are ready to go. Often the session will start at 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the morning. You don’t want to be walking in to a messy chaotic environment. After every single session we would quickly reflect at the end; assistant into lead, player into assistant, and then lead into player. I might say: ‘I thought you were really good at bringing the energy, you behave like a player, you had high expectations of the other person’. Each person says a couple of things and it just keeps everyone on their toes around the idea that ‘this is important and we care about the quality of the sessions’.

Lisa Jacob, High Performance Director, Hockey Ireland:

It’s a feeling of ‘home’ and I think it’s somewhere you walk into and it makes you elevate your thinking. It’s very hard to describe what that looks like and, at the moment, we’re in conversations with Sport Ireland around what we want the hockey facility to look like going forward. I’m pretty sure if we started off with ‘it’s a feeling’ – Jesus, the architects can’t work with that! It has to have the basics [such as pitches and gym facilities onsite or nearby], but the one critical thing that would differentiate it for me is what the team room is like. In some places you won’t have couches and bean bags or graduated steps where you can watch videos or movies, but a place where a team can actually make it their own and create what empowers them most [is important]. There are a couple of facilities that have got it right.

Victoria Moore, Head of Performance Support and Solutions, Athletics Australia:

I see resources of people as far more beneficial than resources such as equipment and or a building. I’ve seen athletes absolutely flourish when they’ve got people to help them make informed decisions. I think you can make a lot with the right people. That’s why I’ve put resources and dollars into investing into building people’s capacity. A nice building might look great, but you should invest in people and make them feel valued and that they belong; and that’s when you’re going to get the better outcomes.

A session brought to you by our Partners

Speakers:

Joel Shinofield, Managing Director, Sport Development, USA Swimming

Jatin Patel, Head of Inclusion & Diversity, Rugby Football Union

Moderator:

Shona Crooks, Head of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Management Futures

We kicked off the second day of the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium with Joel Shinofield and Jatin Patel delving into how they are able to weave Inclusion & Diversity work into the fabric of their organisations.

Inclusion:

• Be inclusive first, and be really intentional with it. You want to foster an environment where people can be themselves and contribute.
• You need to ensure that when you bring in diverse talent, you have to provide them with the support to ensure they thrive.
• If you understand inclusion better, it will make engaging with diverse groups much easier.

What are you doing to make your organisations inclusive?

• Bystander training – how do we get teams to have more effective conversations and have the confidence to speak up? How do you ask better questions of each other?
• You have to invest in it. USA Swimming have a grant programme for clubs to move into new facilities. If you are able to access to the sport in your community, you are much more likely to be involved in the sport.
• Water has been an incredibly divisive tool in American history – pools were off limits to black families, so we have to acknowledge that first and intentionally increase greater access. We have to look at the ways in which we have excluded people to then help us find ways to include them.
• Rugby United – primarily aimed at black and Asian communities. England Rugby first looked at insights from these communities, their engagement, positive and negative experiences and tailor the approach to the specific communities. Ultimately it is about how we bring that cultural awareness into the broader game of rugby.
• Education is key, how to take responsibility of how to be more inclusive.
• On each of our teams there is someone who has DEI training. It is therefore woven into our coach development programmes. You have to make it part of your fabric.
• It is a strategic imperative as well as an outcome and output. ‘Drip drip’ it, don’t just have milestone big events, have it woven into every day and make sure it is pushed on the agenda constantly.
• Cognitive diversity starts with inclusion – how are you welcoming people in with new ways of thinking into your organisation?
  • Weekly department meetings, anyone can put something on the agenda, no matter your role.
  • How we approach specific groups where we know we haven’t done enough with in the past – there is a big gap in female coaching at the moment. Therefore we need a better pathway for young female coaches.
  • Data is crucial to understand how you haven’t served communities in the past so you can change it.
• Talk about it! Make it part of your everyday thoughts and conversations.

By Sarah Evans

After a brilliant first day of insights and learning at Twickenham Stadium, we were very excited to get Day 2 of our Sport Performance Summit underway. The agenda included sessions from Andrea Furst, Sport Psychologist at England Rugby, Rob Pountney, Chief Operating Officer at Breaking GB, and Kay Cossington, Head of Women’s Technical at the FA to name just a few.

Session 1: From Grassroots to Elite: Inclusion at Every Stage brought to you by Science in Sport  

Speakers:

Joel Shinofield, Managing Director, Sport Development, USA Swimming

Jatin Patel, Head of Inclusion & Diversity, Rugby Football Union

Moderator:

Shona Crooks, Head of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Management Futures

We kicked off Day 2 with an extremely insightful session where Joel Shinofield and Jatin Patel delved deeper into how they are able to weave Inclusion and Diversity work into the fabric of their organisations.

Inclusion:

• Be inclusive first, and be really intentional with it. You want to foster an environment where people can be themselves and contribute.
• You need to ensure that when you bring in diverse talent, you have to provide them with the support to ensure they thrive.
• If you understand inclusion better, it will make engaging with diverse groups much easier.

What are you doing to make your organisations inclusive?

• Bystander training – how do we get teams to have more effective conversations and have the confidence to speak up? How do you ask better questions of each other?
• You have to invest in it. USA Swimming have a grant programme for clubs to move into new facilities. If you are able to access to the sport in your community, you are much more likely to be involved in the sport.
• Water has been an incredibly divisive tool in American history – pools were off limits to black families, so we have to acknowledge that first and intentionally increase greater access. We have to look at the ways in which we have excluded people to then help us find ways to include them.
• Rugby United – primarily aimed at black and Asian communities. England Rugby first looked at insights from these communities, their engagement, positive and negative experiences and tailor the approach to the specific communities. Ultimately it is about how we bring that cultural awareness into the broader game of rugby.
• Education is key, how to take responsibility of how to be more inclusive.
• On each of our teams there is someone who has DEI training. It is therefore woven into our coach development programmes. You have to make it part of your fabric.
• It is a strategic imperative as well as an outcome and output. ‘Drip drip’ it, don’t just have milestone big events, have it woven into every day and make sure it is pushed on the agenda constantly.
• Cognitive diversity starts with inclusion – how are you welcoming people in with new ways of thinking into your organisation?
  • Weekly department meetings, anyone can put something on the agenda, no matter your role.
  • How we approach specific groups where we know we haven’t done enough with in the past – there is a big gap in female coaching at the moment. Therefore we need a better pathway for young female coaches.
  • Data is crucial to understand how you haven’t served communities in the past so you can change it.
• Talk about it! Make it part of your everyday thoughts and conversations.

Session 2: Psychology and Purpose: Creating a Thriving Team Environment

Speakers:

Andrea Furst, Sport Psychologist, England Rugby and Surrey County Cricket Club

Helen Richardson-Walsh, Performance & Culture Coach, Tottenham Hotspur FC

For session two, we had a peer to peer interview between Andrea Furst and Helen Richardson-Walsh, who worked together as psychologist and athlete to win Rio 2016 Olympic Hockey Gold for Great Britain. The pair talked us through how they were able to create a winning team environment and the importance of the role psychology can play in performance.

• Fostering trust between the psychologist and athlete is key. The athlete trusting that they are having a confidential conversation has such a positive impact.
• Allowing the players to sit down and set the culture helped to get player buy-in straight away, and it was credit to the head coach to allow that to be the starting point.
• When your vision is ‘winning’ it can leave you with a very empty feeling or feel very disappointed even if you’re on the podium. There is something more than just winning.
• The biggest thing a head coach can do with regards to culture work is give it time. To have the whole staff and players group involved and integrate it into every day behaviours.
• ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ It is about what can you do on the hockey pitch, but also who can you be off it. To be role models for women in sport, to stand up for what you believe and use your voice for good.

GB Women’s Hockey Vision:

• Be the Difference; Create History; Inspire the Future.
• The vision, values and behaviours make you accountable. The language was everything everyone had bought into and would use regularly. You knew what was expected of yourself and of one another.

Individual mindset: Knowing your ‘A Game’

• It is so important for every individual to understand their performance mindset before they go out to play and take responsibility for this.
• Knowing this allows you to understand how to be consistent.
• This is a skill and it can be learned.
• You then share your A game with the rest of the team, and the team understand you better plus they know how they can help you to stay on your A game. It is for a team work on; and it normalises it.
• If it matters to the head coach, it matters to the athletes. The head coach sets the tone, if they disregard psychology or integrate it, it filters through to the players and makes a huge difference.

Session 3: When Sport Meets Culture: Lessons from the New Sports

Speakers:

Lorraine Brown, Head of Performance, GB Climbing

Rob Pountney, Chief Operating Officer, Breaking GB

Moderator: 

Edd Vahid, Head of Academy Football Operations, The Premier League

The final session before the lunch break, we heard from Lorraine and Rob who have been at the forefront of two new sports, and how they preparing for Olympics whilst staying true to the culture of their sports.

• We have had a cultural shift in climbing from participation to performance.
• We have to make sure the pathway is really clear, and look at ways to identify how to add value on a daily basis.
• You have to stay true to your own sport, it is easy to think you have to be like the other sports who have been well established. Keep the roots and culture of the sport whilst making the transition to Olympic sport and the increasing demands it brings.
• What does talent look like? Once we have talent, how do we help them progress? How do we create the experiences to help them fulfil their potential?
• Lots of athletes coming from other sports, migrate to climbing for its culture. How can we still be an outlet for other athletes who want to try something different?
• Breaking is about pushing the individual boundaries of your own creation which makes the training environment very challenging.
• The idea of making sure it is fun has to be top of the pile. We don’t have the fear of change right now, we are trying to find the way the sport should look based on the culture of the sport. We have the freedom to make bold decisions.
• Every day we have to accept the different behaviours from our athletes, they are more independent and have more control over their schedules. Coaches and team managers have to work with the athletes whilst embracing the individuality and creativity of the athletes.
• How do we maintain that cultural element but also raise the standard and expectation and develop the right environments for athletes and coaches to thrive in.

Session 4: Culture and Collaboration: Learning Through an Interdisciplinary System

Speaker: Carl Gombrich, Academic Lead & Head of Teaching & Learning, London Interdisciplinary School

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

In this session we heard from Carl about why interdisciplinary education is so important, rethinking expertise, and finally Interactional expertise.

Interdisciplinarity:

• Combining knowledge in new and useful ways.
• An explosion in the combinatorial space of ideas.
• Yet we don’t have the educational processes to support this. We often are taught in a very rigid, traditional way.
• It is a battle against specialisation.

• UCL Founded the first BASc (Bachelor of Arts And Science). This equipped the students with a very wide skillset, prepared for innovation in the workplace and a burning curiosity to understand all processes and independent thinking. Have unique combinations of knowledge.

• You are an expert because of your interdisciplinarity, not in spite of it.
• Sport is highly specialised, but the environments do change. Unless you are constantly drawing on new knowledge you won’t be able to adapt and grow.
• The value in going broad when you’re young.

Interactional Expertise:

• The ability to :
  • Ask penetrating questions
  • Play devil’s advocate or just advocate
• Translate accurately from one expert to another
• Sell
• Negotiate in unfamiliar areas
• Make jokes

Relationship to Interdisciplinarity:

• Perspective taking
• Translating between sectors
• Brokering
• Empathy
• Team Leading
• Creative approaches

Session 5: Case Study: England Lionesses

Speaker: Kay Cossington, Head of Women’s Technical, The FA

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

The final session of the day was one not to miss. We heard from Kay Cossington who took us through what it took to win European Gold.

Where the journey began:

• Huge investment of finances and people into women’s football. However, they grew so big so soon with little direction on where to go and how to get there.
• To get people to understand that the women’s and men’s game are different was the first big step over a major hurdle.
• Created Women’s Technical Division of the FA.
• Implemented the first Women’s technical strategy and became a blueprint for success within the women’s development teams.

Building their own Identity:

• ‘Find A Way’
• Courage
• Grounded

• However, they found that they then began working in silos. Very quickly they recognised that they had to collaborate and used the phrase ‘football first’.
• Had a curiosity of what made the best in class, and how they were able to close the gap.
• Final piece of the puzzle was to appoint the right leadership.

New Women’s Strategy:

1. Identify the Purpose: Inspire positive change
2. Performance Requirements: Elements required for success
3. Identify the gaps: England in relation to other nations
4. Performance Plan: Football first initiative
5. Understand & Deliver: All staff are aligned

• Be Different
• Take Risks
• Be Brave

“Play for the little girl inside of you who dreamt of being here one day” – Sarina Wiegman’s team talk ahead of the European Final.

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Allison Schmitt is one of only seven American swimmers to compete in four Olympics, having competed in the Beijing, London, Rio and Tokyo Games. A freestyle specialist, she won 10 medals—four gold, three silver, three bronze—including five podium finishes in 2012. In London, she set Olympic and American records while winning gold in the 200 free and contributed to a world record in the 4×100-meter relay.

Born in Pittsburgh and raised outside Detroit, Schmitt later starred on the University of Georgia swimming team where she was a four-time individual champion and leader in helping the Bulldogs win the 2013 NCAA national title.

Schmitt initially retired after the Rio Olympics in 2016, at which point she began pursuing a master’s degree in social work at Arizona State. She reduced to a part-time load when she began swimming again in 2018 and now is on track to graduate in May. Schmitt recently joined the Female Athlete team at Orreco and is an ambassador for its FitrWoman campaign.

On her medical history . . .

I was diagnosed anemic in 2010, and the only really cure for that, I was told, was on an IUD so that I would bleed less. That’s all I knew, and I was on an IUD for eight years. I came off of that into the end of 2018. I just wanted to see how my body reacted. The myth is that the only thing we really know about female health is that our body changes every seven years. So I figured that maybe my hormones have changed, and I wouldn’t bleed as much.

That was my thought process. Coming off of birth control essentially was—I mean, I didn’t know what exactly an IUD was—my only question was, ‘I want kids some day. Is this going to stop me from having kids?’ They were like, ‘No, as soon as you stop, you can have kids.’ I didn’t really realize the severity of the synthetic hormones and what it does to your body. So when I came off it, my body was adjusting to it for quite a few months because of the synthetic progesterone was being produced for those eight years, and now all of a sudden, my body’s trying to produce it.

On using Orreco’s platform. . .

I didn’t really know what was going on with my body, which is when I got connected with the USA Swimming Director of Sports Medicine, Keenan Robinson. He connected me with Dr Georgie [Bruinvels], and I have been working with her ever since. I was very involved. I talked with Georgie almost daily. I would be on mostly weekly calls with the whole team. It was like a team. We would talk just to check in, make sure everything’s going right.

For what was needed, we would have blood work. So going towards Olympic trials, from probably October of 2020 through May of 2021, I was going through a lot of health things, and they helped me through that. And by the end, when I was actually into full training again, I was getting blood tests every Monday to check on my cortisol levels to see how it was in response to training.

On applying her Orreco results to training . . .

We had a plan of nutrition, recovery and training. But on Mondays if that number came back extremely low, I would have to adjust the training for that day or for that week. That was a different type of challenge, I guess for my coach, Bob Bowman, in just adjusting that based on what the scientific numbers are. I love that about Orreco: everything is proven and scientific-based, and it’s not just opinion.

We needed that change because of my performance at a time. I wasn’t able to finish practices. I wasn’t able to do practices at the level that I needed to do them at. The whole Orreco team helped us through that process. And, I mean, it was kind of like hands up in the air. Bob and I don’t know any information on the female health side, so teach us what we can [learn] and what’s going to be beneficial. It ended up working—all of us working together—and results started improving. From where I was in March and April to where I was in Tokyo was a drastic difference, and I don’t think that we could have got there without the help.

On training men versus women . . .

I come from a mostly male training environment, and my mentality, which in that environment has gotten me a lot of success in sport, is, ‘Okay, put your head down, push through, you can get through it.’ But I think just now learning the difference between pushing through something, and getting the right help in this situation, is a big difference, but also the difference between men and women.

Why are we training females like males? And why is all the research on males when females and males are different people? How our bodies are made up is completely different. It’s critical to treat your body how it’s made up, understanding that [females] can use those hormones and the differences to their advantages, and they can be more powerful than what they already are.

On pairing training with monthly cycles . . .

We look at it as four phases in a female athlete, and yes, there’s different modalities that are ideal for them. But, at the end of the day, yes, we have our goals that we want to accomplish and adjusting to your needs and your period is not asking for less work. I’m still putting the same amount of work in, I just need to be more conscious and educated on ways that I can perform better. So whether that be nutrition, whether that be more recovery, whether that be more warm up—whatever that is for that day, I as an athlete have to be educated in that. But also, from a coach standpoint and pushing their athletes, I think there’s a lot of times where athletes are hard enough on their selves as it is. And they’re gonna want to do better week after week.

On other wellness monitoring . . .

I did use Sleeprate which [paired with] a disc under my bed. And when it first came out, I used Whoop. And then I started using it again at the end of my career. And still today I use those modalities just because it’s interesting to me to see how much our bodies can adjust, and even seeing between the different phases, the quality of sleep I have. It kind of affects my performance, not only in athletics, but in your everyday human interactions.

On now working for Orreco . . .

I’m very passionate about getting that education out just because I feel like I learned so much about it. And if I’m learning this—I’m a 30-year-old female and am just learning about my body—how many other females are going through the exact same thing? If we can get this information out to kids at a younger age, in high school and college, there’s a lot of obstacles that they will be able to avoid throughout their career and hopefully have a more successful career.

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.

As the sun sets on our return to in-person events after a two year hiatus, for all of us at the Leaders Performance Institute, it’s fair to say that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces, and meeting some new ones too. With the knowledge shared, the new connections made, the conversations witnessed and the fun and drinks along the way, we’re already looking forward to our first event of 2022. We hope you are too!

Day one set the bar high and we looked to carry that energy and momentum into day two. We began with a deep dive into the performing arts, looking at talent development at the Royal Ballet School and Royal College of Music before exploring the theme of diversity, equality and inclusion with Brentford FC and British department store Selfridges. We then checked in with performance coach Owen Eastwood before turning our attention to extreme adventurer Adrian Hayes in the afternoon. Aspetar then had the honour of bringing down the curtain with a fascinating look at rehabilitation and recovery.

A big thank you from the Leaders Performance Institute team and our main partners Keiser, Abu Dhabi Sports Council and Aspetar, for joining us for two days of total high performance.

For those of you who couldn’t make it – or those wishing you refresh your memories – here are the key takeaways from day two.

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Full Day 2 programme:

Talent Factories: How the Performing Arts Develops & Nurtures World Class Talent

• Christopher Powney, Artistic Director, The Royal Ballet School
• Dr Terry Clark, Research Fellow for Performance Science, The Royal College of Music

Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

• Owen Eastwood, Performance Coach and author of Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

Diverse & Inclusive Leadership: Exploring How Diverse Workplaces Positively Influence Organisational Performance

• Melisa Clottey, Chair of Diversity Board, Selfridges
• Shona Crooks, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Management Futures
• Kevin Yusuf, Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Brentford FC

Lessons from Extreme Adventuring: Adaptability & Resilience in Adversity

• Adrian Hayes, adventurer, polar explorer and author

Rehabilitation & Recovery: The Latest Thinking to Support your Performance Strategy

• Jamal Al-Khanji, Chief Patent Experience Officer, Aspetar
• Khalid Al-Khelaifi, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Aspetar

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