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Michael Bourne has a sports science background, so it is no surprise that he places a premium on critical thinking.

“It is core to me,” the Performance Director at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA] tells the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

Critical thinking is a skill that also served him well in roles at UK Sport and the England & Wales Cricket Board amongst others before he took the reins at the LTA in October 2020 (with Covid restrictions still in place).

“But,” he cautions, “leadership for me is about change and progress, and you can have the greatest thinking and the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t drive and implement change, then it’s for naught.”

It starts with taking stock. “As a leader, make sure that you are ensuring everybody else is confronting those brutal facts and you’ve got to be ahead of that,” he says, adding that he too must be open to feedback.

“It should be unacceptable in a high-performance environment to know there is a challenge and to take no steps to do anything about it.”

In the first episode of this new series, Michael explains his mission-driven and people-centred approach to helping produce British tennis players with the means to compete with the world’s best [33:10].

During the conversation, we also touch upon the challenges the LTA faces and the benchmarks set [8:30]; his belief in the unique qualities of British tennis [14:30]; why the flow of information cannot be taken for granted at the LTA [38:30]; and the enduring power of the Lion King to move him [48:00].

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Main Image: the tests, which highlight the demands of being a professional tennis player, can be used to showcase the attributes of the ATP Tour’s next generation. (ATP Tour)

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By Joe Lemire

When the top eight under-21 men’s singles players convened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in late November for the Next Gen ATP Finals, they may have helped usher in a new age of tennis — not just their prodigious on-court potential but the increasingly tech- and data-infused competition in which they participated, a harbinger of what’s to come on the men’s tennis tour.

Before the tournament began, one of the courts at the King Abdullah Sports City was strewn with gadgetry: force plates, cameras, flashing lights. The ATP had organized the first athletic combine in Tour history, called Basecamp, putting the young men through a series of NFL Combine-style drills such as the 10m sprint, vertical jump and a pair of agility tests.

For the actual tennis matches, the players were offered tracking devices — GPS trackers with conjoined heart rate monitors — with two wearing them and five others indicating they were interested to do so in the future after having more time to acclimate. In combination with the existing player and ball tracking from Hawk-Eye, with Kinexon’s data analysis platform, the ATP Tour produced a Physicality Index to measure the athletes’ exertion and effort.

All of the data collected was shared with the players and some of it was published in web stories and social media to tout their athleticism. BreakAway Data’s app was used to grant the athletes easy access to their data from matches, practice and Basecamp while ai.io’s mobile tech unit, aiLabs, provided the testing equipment.

One of the motivations for the adoption of the new tech and data from Basecamp is to support athlete wellness guidelines, such as informing mandatory rest periods between matches. (ATP Tour)

“We really want you to understand yourself a little bit better off the court and tell that story to the fans as well because I think tennis players are great athletes, but we’ve never really had anything to measure that,” said James Marsalek, ATP Tour Senior Manager for Strategic Projects & Event Operations. “All these different metrics will then help us tell a slightly different narrative of, ‘Actually, you know what, they are [great athletes] because they compare X, Y and Z on the scales with basketball, football, whatever it might be.’”

The activations around the Next Gen Final were the most acute example of a broader strategy from the ATP Tour. In 2023, Tennis Data Innovations, which is the joint venture of the ATP and ATP Media, mandated that every tournament court have player and ball tracking. In March, Marsalek said the Tour started offering raw tracking data to all players for free. In September, the ATP and TDI created Tennis IQ, an analytics platform accessible to all ATP Tour players.

Marsalek said the goal is to have video embedded and synced to the data by 2025, with integration and visualization of wearable and other biometric data on the road map as well.

“It’s trying to tell this full story where players have got this one-stop shop that has access to everything,” he said, adding, “We tried to level the playing field and provide access to all our members.”

Though the ITF, the international governing body for the sport, began permitting wearable technology in matches back in 2019, the ATP didn’t sanction it until its most recent board meeting in November. It remains contingent on the Tour platform supporting it, which Marsalek estimated should happen in the first quarter of 2024.

“The ATP have got a hugely ambitious and fantastic opportunity to make data not just relevant but really progressive for the sport,” said BreakAway Data Head of International Business Ben Smith, who formerly led research and innovation at Chelsea FC. “Tennis, with the ATP leading it, have got an opportunity to help the sport progress over the next two, three years in a way that is, I think, hugely exciting and will advance both the physicality and the quality of the sport in a way that fans should be really excited about.”

In a video summary of Next Gen Basecamp produced by the ATP Tour, Arthur Fils — who ranked first in every category — could be seen celebrating his wins, a testament to the competitive spirit even with something brand news.

Just as often, the players asked, “Is that good?” Officials from the ATP Tour, ai.io and BreakAway Data were able to share some benchmarks, but more definitive norms will be established as this combine testing grows. Flavio Cobolli, who finished top-three in three of the four tests, called it a “good experience” and was quoted saying, “I want [Carlos] Alcaraz to do this for sure.”

Alcaraz is perhaps the premier athlete on the men’s Tour right now, whose 2022 US Open title run scored highly on the USTA’s Physicality Index, and would surely be a devastating combine competitor. But while the NFL Combine and team pro days are a rite of passage for all top prospects to improve their draft standing, that incentive doesn’t exist in tennis. To induce the elite players to participate, attaching prize money or other reward is likely necessary. But the accompanying videos and data may well be a new sponsorable asset.

“We ought to be a little bit creative,” Marsalek said. “We don’t have the same sense of jeopardy as the NFL does, where there’s a lot on the line, so we need to make sure that our athletes enjoy doing it. If they don’t, there’s no content.”

All of the data collected from Basecamp was shared with the players and some of it was published in web stories and social media to tout their athleticism. (ATP Tour)

The other motivation for the adoption of the new tech and data is to support athlete wellness guidelines, such as informing mandatory rest periods between matches. In the ATP’s 48-week season, most players average about 25 tournaments and, with Masters 1000 events all expanding to two weeks, that increases the amount of travel time.

Marsalek emphasized that data will not become the sole determining factor in decisions, but it is intended to provide a balance with an athlete’s feel in a skill-based sport. The goal is to encourage the use of data but have a centralized process to govern it — which should aid all stakeholders in tennis, just as was evident in Basecamp.

“It’s genuine high performance. Yes, it’s really enjoyable and competitive, and so the athletes have a good engaging experience. But there’s also valuable insight that those practitioner teams will take and move into the training environment,” Smith said, before adding about the development of data-driven narratives for fans. “That’s just really good, interesting engagement that, I think, opens up tennis to a slightly wider market.”

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.

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“The greatest gains in S&C can be made in how you make yourself an integral part of the team,” says Johnny Parkes.

“You have to be out there with the team on a daily basis, you have to have those soft skills – I actually call them essential skills – we have to recognise that we have to make ourselves completely valuable to the team.”

Johnny, who was recently appointed Associate Head Coach of the men’s tennis program at the University of South Carolina’s men’s tennis program, is the third and final guest on this Keiser miniseries, which seeks to understand the world of S&C through a leadership lens.

He is both an S&C and a tennis coach out on the court and, in his dual role, is in no doubt about what it takes to develop the essential skills of which he speaks.

He adds: “That might mean going out there for extended periods of time, watching practices, going above and beyond and staying later after an S&C session because a guy needs to work on their hip mobility a little bit more as opposed to just shutting the practice down.”

Also during this episode, we discuss:

• • The distinct challenges of coaching youth and adult tennis players [2:30];
  • The need to give the player a voice and shape your coaching cues to them as an individual [7:00];
  • Johnny’s comfort in discussing performance topics outside of his domain [14:00];
  • Why the gamification of elite athlete training resembles a PE class [23:00].

Previous episode:

Emily Hall – Queensland Rugby League

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Main Image: Volley

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Rob Schaeffer

Volley began as a tennis ball machine propped on painter sticks.

The racket sports training system that uses vision algorithms and machine learning to simulate practice programs was founded by CEO John Weinlader, who crafted the original contraption to refine his platform tennis game – but quickly grew frustrated with the device’s rigidity.

“It was good for certain things. But platform tennis, you’ve got to be able to throw a lob 50 degrees high up in the air,” Weinlader told SBJ. “No tennis machine does that.”

After three years of development and eight prototypes, Volley went to market with its high-tech Trainer in 2023 and now has machines at around 45 platform tennis courts – mostly country clubs in the northeast and Chicagoland area. Its latest expansion comes via a partnership with the American Platform Tennis Association (APTA), which boasts 32,000 members and hosts more than 250 annual tournaments. The partnership will make Volley the presenting sponsor for the APTA’s match livestreams. Volley will also demo its Trainer system at the association’s events circuit.

Image: Volley

The Trainer is more dynamic than your typical ball machine. Powered by a rechargeable battery with three-and-a-half hours of life, its height is adjustable up to 87 inches high, and its tilt between 56 degrees up, -38 degrees down and 34 degrees left/right, to simulate a wide array of shot angles for players to train against. It is equipped with multiple stereo cameras and an NVIDIA computer vision system to track player and ball movements, plus an LED screen and speaker to guide workouts. Through the company’s mobile app, players can program the Trainer to execute its desired practice program, watch film, or review play time statistics (i.e. balls hit, time on court).

“We have this model that we’ve built in the cloud of what the platform tennis court should be, where people are positioned, what all the shots might be. And we’ve analyzed through match play based on people at different levels a schema of what they would see at that level. You’re not going to go out there as a beginner and get a 120 mile per hour serve thrown at you,” Weinlader said. “You would go out there as a beginner, and we already have a profile built up, from watching match play, of what beginners typically would hit… That’s the first part of the AI side of this.”

The vision system can also track shots hit towards it, which, in a development coming “very, very shortly,” according to Weinlader, will allow users to play out entire points against the Trainer, with the machine’s return shots timed precisely to when a human on the other side of the net would strike the ball.

The company does not charge clubs anything upfront to carry its Trainer. Users instead can use the system once ($30) or purchase a monthly ($40 per month) or yearly subscription ($300), which is revenue-shared with client clubs.

“It’s all cell phone controlled,” Weinlader said. “The machine lends itself very well to an account-based model. This is a bit of a shift from typical ball machines.

“We give the machine away to the club and then members subscribe to it. In subscribing, they get their own account and that tracks their number of workouts that they did, it tracks their history, it tracks their video clips that they can then share with their pro for virtual coaching.”

As of now, Volley is available for platform tennis and padel, with pickleball coming soon. Weinlader hopes partnerships like the latest with the APTA will raise their profile even more.

“We’re looking to get some experience with customers, interfacing the machine that way, to help build our awareness,” Weinlader said.

Main Image: Chris Hyde/Getty Images

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.

* * * * *

Maria Sharapova is a former world No. 1 tennis player who is one of only 10 women to complete the career Grand Slam. She won her first professional tournament in 2003 at age 16 and claimed her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2004. Sharapova won the US Open in 2006, Australia Open in 2008 and the French Open in 2012 and 2014. She also won an Olympic silver medal at the 2012 London Games.

Sharapova, now 36, retired from tennis in February 2020 and became a mom in 2022. She also has been active in business, starting her own confectionary brand, Sugarpova, as well as reportedly investing in the UFC, Therabody, Tonal and more. Sharapova recently made an appearance at the US Open on behalf of IBM to discuss its latest innovations and held a small roundtable with a small group of reporters.

On evolution of technology and tactical analysis during her career…

Huge, and also for the teams that are surrounding the player. So imagine you have a coach that looks at the draw, he sees you’re playing against someone and maybe you’ve never faced them before, but he immediately knows how your opponent has performed on the surface against other players. So that analysis is done so much quicker than him having to go out and find videos. ‘What surface did that player play on? OK, well, maybe that doesn’t apply to my player’s match at the US Open.’

Providing tools for your team is also [important]. As a player, you go out there and you play on instinct, and you just become a competitor. When it’s 6-all in the third set, you’re most likely not thinking, ‘Unfortunately, looking back to the analytics, they said I was going to win. It was supposed to be in two sets, and now I’m deep in the third set and we’re in a tiebreaker. This isn’t how I planned my day.’

On key datapoints she sought out…

One stat that was quite good and I was actually very interested in and like to know about: When a player is down breakpoint and they’re serving, what’s their comfortable serve? Are they doing down the T or are they going out wide? And if, down break point, this player goes out wide 80% of the time, as a returner, you take a couple steps to that side to give yourself a chance to not be late to that first serve. So those types of stats really, really helped.

That’s part of the homework that you do with your coach in looking through those tools. But one in particular was second serve percentage. So if an opponent had a weaker serve, you most likely identified it in the stats, so what does that mean? As someone that was quite an aggressive and powerful player, I could maybe take two steps in front and attack that second serve. If a player has a really good second serve, maybe I don’t go for that first ball so much. So there’s absolutely technical aspects [of interest]. It’s one thing to have analytics, but it’s how do you apply to them and what you’re doing that’s most important.

On the timeliness of scouting data…

Recency is really important because the tour is basically cut into almost — I see it, as a former athlete — four parts. You start with the hardcourt season in Australia through Miami, and then you go onto the clay, then you go onto the grass, and then you go back onto the hardcourt. So within those periods, you have sections of success for different types of players based on their weaknesses, based on their preferences. Some players didn’t enjoy playing on clay. They’d skip those four or five weeks of competition and move on to the grass.

It’s a long season, so you have to pick and choose where you believe your game will most likely succeed. So recency, in terms of, what is the surface that this little chunk of time requires you to be on? Are you injured? Have you been competing for the last several weeks? So all that goes into play whereas [the global] ranking most of the time, because it goes back to points on how you performed a year ago, it’s not very relative to today.

On fitness monitoring devices…

I actually didn’t use many wearables. During practice, I would have a heart rate monitor, but [compared to] right now, that’s like nothing. I’d say I was fairly old school in my approach. My team relied on a lot of that — they wanted to know my HRV. But I was more focused on getting out on the court, and that’s why I was emphasizing the team if you can. If you as a player can gain confidence in all these tools for your team, the level of engagement that you will then indirectly have with those tools is significantly positive.

On the growth of fan interest and access…

I remember, the Tour was questioning whether you have fans in the stadium to watch you practice. Right now, as I came to the US Open and I was just flying over here, there was a live feed of the practices. Players are being mic’ed. The evolution of where the game is to where I started — I remember speaking to my manager on whether I needed a social media account.

But there is a part of sport — and then tennis in particular — where it’s down to heritage and tradition. And now I’m on the other side from being a player to being a fan and loving the game so much and wanting more access than just the players playing, the hour-and-a-half or two-hour match. I want more insights, I want to know about their matchups. I don’t see that on a day-to-day basis. So by having these tools in front of me, it’s such a quick way of accessing information and just makes it for a better experience.

On her pre-tournament pick at this year’s US Open…

I hope it’s Coco [Gauff]. If I’m predicting, I think she has an amazing head on her shoulders, I think she has a great vision of the game, and she also has this amazing voice as a young woman for change. She’s created a platform for herself. She’s way above her age in terms of her thoughts and how she speaks, and I find that professionalism so impressive. And that’s hard to find.

On her victory at the US Open in 2006…

The victory here was very special. Besides holding the trophy, in the final I beat Justine Henin, who, when I was growing up, was a huge idol but also the most challenging player that I played against because of her game, just talking about matchups. I think that was my first victory against her was at the finals in the US Open. If IBM was around [with predictions] then, it would have said, ‘Maria has no chance.’

I went into that match just so confident because I was having this great run but also knowing that this opponent in front of me just clearly knew my game so well. And looking across the net and seeing like someone so accomplished, I had only won one Grand Slam, prior to that year’s Open. So there’s a lot going on in your mind. I was only 19 years old. I was still kind of young on Tour, figuring things out. When you are that young — this young success, this fresh success — it is a fresh breath of air because you come from having no experience of these large victories.

[I loved] every little piece of it, I mean, being giddy in the press conference after and like when they offer you champagne, you’re like, ‘Do I drink it?’ When I started, New York was very intimidating. I think for many people, when they arrived in the city, it was overwhelming. And from an athlete’s perspective, when you’re not playing, you’re always recovering, and you’re in a city that never sleeps, so how do I recover? Your mind is always on. And then you just appreciate falling in love with what it brings you, from a fan perspective, from arriving at the US Open and feeling the energy and allowing that to lift you up, especially when you’re having a bad day. As an athlete, it is the best feeling in the world. And there’s no one that does it better than a New York fan.

On the pickleball phenomenon…

I signed up for pickleball, and I’m playing you. You want something? I’m actually I’m playing with John McEnroe in February against Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. So I have no choice but to get my stuff together. It’s funny how, if you’re a tennis fan, when I mention pickleball, I’m seeing it from the outside because there’s so many racquet sports now. When you’re in Europe, everyone is talking padel. And then you’re in the States, and everyone’s talking pickleball.

So what I like about pickleball is the entry level element of it. Tennis is a very difficult entry level sport. That’s not a secret. For you to feel like you’re competitive, it’s going to take you a few months, so you can get discouraged. Pickleball, you can pick it up and you feel fairly natural soonish. So I love that about it because, thinking from a business perspective with partners and engagement, it’s just easier. It’s also very social.

If I ask my friends to play tennis with me, they’re like, ‘Forget it. Let’s go play pickleball.’ I’m like, ‘I really don’t care [about competition]. I just want to spend time with you.’ They’re like, ‘I’m not going to play tennis with you.’ ‘I’m really not that good anymore.’

Pickleball has become like my entry level with my friends. So yeah, I love the future. I love this future of racquet sports, and it’s another way to engage with the youth. Which when you think about getting children off their screens, and I’m a young mom, so I start thinking about that, how are all the screens impacting my engaging my child to be outdoors and adventurous and having fun and being playful? If that’s pickleball or something else, I’m all for that.

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.

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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 Rachel Woodland

In our second round of Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group calls, we discussed personal development both in terms of what this has looked like for members of the group and what it might look like in the future.  

Our US ‘call’ for this period was in fact a discussion that took place in person over breakfast at our Leaders Meet: People Development event in June at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.  

That morning we were joined by Shelby Baron, the Coordinator of Player & Coach Services at the United States Tennis Association and the Texas Rangers’ Senior Director of Baseball Operations, Michaelene Courtis, and Mental Performance Coordinator, Hannah Huesman. The trio explored the moments of progression in their careers; their experiences of what works as well as what else is needed.  

A month later, in July, the Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group came together to share their thoughts and experiences on the second call. 

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute picks out ten thinking points (networking and relationship building stand out for us) from across both conversations.  

1. Be sure to plan  

Several people mentioned planning their personal development better. This might be from a logistical point of view and when it makes sense to focus on development based on the seasonality of a role; at a time when full commitment can be given. Or planning what to spend time on in a more deliberate manner, be that based on current gaps or where someone would like to be in the future. We also discussed who might input into the planning aspect and the consensus was that seeking the input of others was key. It’s not all about what we need either: what do we want to learn? It is also important to have objectives and goals, which can be personal too.

2. Protect time for development…  

It sounds obvious, but the importance of protecting time for development, even when in amongst the weeds and firefighting, was a point clearly made. As leaders of others, how are we helping with this or role-modelling this? 

3. … and time and support for development in your role  

One way which helps ensure development happens is creating opportunities for development to take place organically through what’s needed from our roles. This might not always be people and leadership skills. At the breakfast in Texas, it was said that “in order to lead, you have to go and do it. Going out and doing the work is the best development you can have.” For this to be most successful and long-lasting we need to ensure that the right support is provided. For Hannah Huesman, one of the most valuable growth opportunities has been being the ‘middle person’. It challenges you to think about how to connect with people, collate information and deliver it to others.  

4. Put the person before the performer  

When planning our own development or supporting others, we have to be kind to ourselves, or to them, and put the person first; we can even demonstrate vulnerability. We should show genuine interest in them as a person. This will make sure the individual is at the centre. When supporting others, we shouldn’t take the responsibility of developing others lightly. We want to be there based on the experiences we have engaged in. That might be us being open with our own line managers, or as line managers encouraging those you line manage to discuss next moves, whether that’s inside or outside the current place of work.  

 5. Network and build relationships  

By far the most commonly mentioned successful – and desired – development tool has been networking and building relationships with others. This can be done in a deliberate manner. Whether that’s using networking for adding to our diversity of thought and understanding other people’s experiences by finding ways to connect with people who are not like ourselves. We tend to look for and find commonalities with people, but we should be aware that we can learn from anyone. It’s working for some to do this within their organisation as well as by speaking to those outside of our organisations by joining community groups, sharing current practices of your own. Some take consulting, or trustee, or non-executive roles, including those outside of sport.  

It’s common that people seek out differences, be that different sports, different levels within an organisation or different perspectives in terms of leadership execution and problem-solving; or in different areas of expertise within sport, new environments, and even in new tools emerging for communication. Others have sought out leadership positions that mean that they’ll be a leader of range of people.  

Whichever method people have chosen for networking and building relationships it’s in pursuit of the right spaces to connect, and to share stories and experiences. Sometimes it’s to deliberately seek differences and challenge thinking, other times it’s to normalise some of the challenges that are faced across sports, roles, and cultures; and it’s to also help us understand what is possible and know that others have done what we’re seeking to do. If you’re in a position that is less common, making yourself ‘available for networking’ could be powerful for others who aspire to follow in your footsteps.  

6. Consider relationship mapping  

To help make networking and relationship-building purposeful and focused, the act of relationship mapping can be a useful tool. In Texas, everyone in the discussion agreed on the importance of relationship mapping. Building these relationships creates an impact in the environment that makes a difference to performance.  

7. Try reciprocal mentorships or ‘reverse mentorships’  

Formalising this further, mentorships and reciprocal or reverse mentorships were discussed. They elevate collaboration between two people and provide more opportunity for quality learning. Some invest in personal coaches, be they specialists in leadership or from areas outside of sport. What people want from a mentorship will differ, but taking time to consider this for ourselves or those we support could prove fruitful. We spoke about the recent story of Debra Nelson, an educational assistant at sport and educational charity Football Beyond Borders, who recently reverse mentored Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at his request. 

8. Take risks  

A few community members said that being brave and taking risks was positively impacting their current development. Some of this meant putting themselves in new situations, reaching out to people they didn’t think would respond, or exploring new sports. Sometimes we might need it to be others that take risks on our behalf and support us as we find the confidence to shape a role that may have traditionally been a male-dominated space.   

9. Reflect  

Several members of the group mentioned being deliberate in reflection on their development, a good practice for ensuring learning. For example, 360-degree feedback might help with this, and kickstart the planning process again, ensuring some ‘bottom-up’ input to our journeys.

10. Look at the bigger picture  

And what can organisations be thinking about at a broader level? The following were suggested:  

• Sharing examples of women working in positions we might aspire to be in.  
• Providing spaces for women to engage with leaders and decision makers to support them in their understanding of the experiences women are facing, and then providing space for them to support changes.  
• Taking a step back, creating an environment where people feel safe enough to share their experiences.  
• Collecting data to support the experiences shared.  
• Taking ownership of developing those in positions of responsibility, so that part of their role becomes being great at developing people and planning for succession with diversity in mind.  
• Being willing to be challenged differently as and when there are more female leaders in your organisation.  
• As discussed in our last series of calls, evaluating current strategies to ensure an effective recruitment strategy that identifies and supports excellent people.  
• Considering that currently not many women athletes have vast levels of financial security when they retire from competing, so there’s a competitive advantage for organisations to develop and prepare players for that next phase in their careers.  

Ultimately, we were reminded to ask women first – don’t assume you know – and in general we should think about the individual needs of each person we’re working with and build a development plan from there.

By John Portch

The most influential disruptor of sport in recent times remains the pandemic, but Kate Warne-Holland reflects on that period with pride.

“I think we did even better during the pandemic because it was an opportunity,” says the Under-14s Girls’ Captain at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA].

“I think we all saw it as an opportunity to talk more because what happens in tennis is the day to day gets so unbelievably busy. I’m sure it’s the same in every sport. The coaches are coaching and we’re trying to organise and make things better but we can’t find the time to really reflect and do that together”.

One area of improvement was the online provision of coach education – a special project of Warne-Holland’s – and there was also the establishment of 15 regional player development centres (RPDCs). She estimates that 75% of all young British players are based at one of these centres. Each RPDC has an LTA-funded head coach that has been employed from tennis’ wider coaching pool.

“We have a very strong link to the head coaches and their development plans; where they want to go, what they want to enhance in their programmes,” she adds.

“Covid was a terrible thing in numerous ways, but here was an opportunity. Player development is much more connected and it also gave us a chance within the LTA for more fluid cross-department communication”.

Warne-Holland, who has been in her current role for three years, was a contributor to our March Special Report Navigating your Way Through Major Competitions. The LTA will take young British players away from the natural habitats of their home programmes to tournaments across the globe. Youngsters can be away for up to 15 weeks per year, as she told the Leaders Performance Institute.

The LTA’s approach to youth development is continually tweaked and, as Warne-Holland explains, the travel and budget constraints enforced on the organisation during the height of the pandemic led her and her colleagues to adopt a “hybrid” approach between UK-based camp and both home and overseas competition programmes as lockdown restrictions eased.

“That meant we could get the kids together, sparring, peer group training, and get the competition box ticked by allowing them to compete more often, which they weren’t getting because they weren’t able to travel.

“We sought out cheaper court time, good venues in the middle of the country, outdoors as much as possible. We came up with what we called ‘NAGP [National Age Group Programmes] weekends’. They’re now called National Matchplay Weekends because they’re not solely for NAGP.

“It’s a fluid group of 16 players. For each weekend, eight automatically get their place based on success before but then another eight go into a selection process”.

As Covid restrictions eased in Britain, the LTA also devised a junior team competition between players from England and Scotland that helped to replace the summer and winter cups that were cancelled as the globe got to grips with the pandemic.

Crucially, as Covid policies receded, these competitions have remained. “They haven’t disappeared now we are back to ‘normality’,” says Warne-Holland. “They were so valuable and they were encouraging the private coaches to be there and coach on court. It provided an opportunity for the coaches to develop the players right in front of them. So they weren’t on a balcony, watching four matches, and then going home and working on it. We allowed and encouraged them to sit on court so they were able to impact on the player immediately.

“Ideas like that we’ve kept. It’s a very effective way of actually providing an environment that will help these kids when they travel, because it’s peer v peer, so it’s both pressured and very high support”.

Warne-Holland is not entirely fazed by the notion of future challenges, including budget cuts. “You’d find other ways to make things happen and find that high challenge,” she says. “Take them to the strongest tournaments, don’t take them to the easier, more expensive tournaments in places such as Scandinavia. Take them across the pond to France, get in the minibus, and off you go! I think it’s a more realistic journey for them. As I tell the girls, smooth seas don’t create great sailors. Make it choppy, make it high challenge, but if we’ve done the right things they’ll be able to go towards the challenge rather than running away”.

By John Portch

“I do feel a little bit sad for the players I had 20 years ago. They could have benefited from the experience I have now.”

The Leaders Performance Institute is on the phone to David Sammel, a tennis coach with more than 30 years of experience coaching men’s ATP Tour players.

This week, Sammel is at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in Wimbledon to coach Britain’s Liam Broady in both the gentlemen’s singles and doubles at The Championships.

We are speaking on Wednesday 5 July. It is the day after Broady’s first round defeat of Constant Lestienne and the day before he dispatched fourth seed and three-time grand slam finalist Casper Ruud. It was an ideal moment for Sammel to reflect on his development as a coach.

“I have different tools that I’ve developed over the years and I feel sad for those players in the past because there’s situations I look back on and I would have dealt with them differently now to how I did then,” he says. “But that’s part of the learning process as a coach and the other side of the coin is that I would hate to look back, even in five years’ time from now, and say I’m exactly the same as I was five years ago.”

Broady, the men’s world number 142, was due to play Ruud on the day of our conversation, but the rain put paid to that idea. Inclement weather is just one of a number of disruptions that players can routinely expect at a tournament.

“These days are tricky to manage because their stress and anxiety is there as the build-up to the match continues; and keeping someone in a holding pattern is not easy. The job almost shifts to keeping the player entertained in different ways and being light-hearted in practice,” adds Sammel.

“The work is really done beforehand and once you get into the tournament it’s just a bit of maintenance, a little bit of sharpening and keeping the player relaxed between matches. At majors it’s a little different because you always get a day off in between and, of course, like the rain at Wimbledon yesterday, we now get two days and, possibly, depending on how the weather is today, three days off.”

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute details five factors that underpin Sammel’s approach to coaching during a competition.

1. The fundamentals don’t change

During a tournament, Broady will aim to rise at his usual time, whether he is playing or not. Routine is important, although practice times will depend on the availability of practice courts.

Nevertheless, the fundamentals should not change because a player is competing at the All England Club. “What I’ll say to players is the court is the same size, you’re playing against people you can play anywhere in the world, and it’s just a label that this is the best tennis tournament in the world. You need to go out there and play tennis – not Wimbledon. It’s trying to keep the head in a place that, at the end of the day, it is your job to play tennis – it is not to play different tennis because it’s Wimbledon. It’s to play the best tennis that you can put on the court on the day.”

That said, “You’re not ignoring the fact that this is something a little bit different, but you’re saying ‘this is why you’ve done all the work. You dream about these things as a kid and now you’re living it and that’s amazing’.”

2. Help players to find their rhythm and confidence

Practice at a tournament is primarily to give players “a feel of the ball”, as Sammel explains. He speaks often about the need for players to find their “rhythm”. He says: “There’s nothing you really want to be working on unless there’s a couple of specifics because you’ve scouted the opponent and say something like ‘let me feed you a few balls, you’re going to get quite a few of these during the match’.

“The problems come if the player starts to miss a few balls and gets a little uptight – they feel the magic is disappearing.” The key in those moments is to talk the player “back down off the ledge”. “You’ve got to say ‘look, let’s have a drink. Relax. Let’s not think about this for a moment. Maybe let’s hit a few serves.’ And when you feel like they’re truly relaxed go back to it and hopefully they find some rhythm.

“On bad days, that’s when it’s important for the coach to be there and not show any stress and just be relaxed. That often calms a player. You also need to remind them that there’s nothing they’re going to face tomorrow that they haven’t faced before. They just need to go through your history and know that they’ve dealt with whatever adversity has been directed at them because that’s where real confidence comes from.” Confidence is key. “With great athletes, the difference is their belief and confidence to perform and bring a level no matter how they’re feeling.”

3. How is the athlete’s body language? How is your timing as a coach?

Sammel has learned to trust his instincts as a coach. “The one big thing that coaches are there for is feeling the moment and the timing of when you say things. Give very few messages, important key ones, and do not overload the player – when a player has too much to think about that really hurts their performance,” he says. It is also essential to read their body language. “When you’re talking to an athlete, you can tell in their eyes whether you are actually connecting and they’re hearing you or whether it’s just being blocked out. They’re nodding yes, they’re saying yes, but you know it’s not going in. That’s when you really need to change tack or understand that this is just not the right moment and then you’ve got to be looking out, pretty much all day, for the right moment when they’re open to having a different approach and you go again at trying to get your message across. That is one of the big things that comes from experience, that timing.”

He adds: “If you overload a player that’s going to kill them, but if you have an important message, you’ve got to find the right moment and know that it’s actually gone in. That can take two or three attempts but not in the same way; if you try to bulldoze a player with the same approach their resistance will grow stronger and then you’ve got no chance of getting the message in.”

4. No ‘victims’

Sammel stresses the need for “adult conversations”. He says: “When you’re in a good place, where you can go through a couple of things and you can see it’s going in and the player will ask a question like an adult, not like a victim.”

According to Sammel, a ‘victim’ would say thing such as: “‘I don’t know if I can do this’ or ‘what you’re asking is impossible right now’ or they’re dismissive. You know they have a worry, they have a stress and they’re trying to pretend that it’s not there. You have to try to have a conversation. ‘Look, let’s talk about whatever is bothering you, let’s get it out in the open, and that way we can deal with it before you go out there’. Because when a player has something bothering them, if they don’t take care of it before they go out there then you’re looking at disaster.”

5. Win or lose, generate optimism for the player

Defeats are inevitable but there is always something a player can take into their next tournament and upsets, such as Broady’s defeat of Ruud, can happen.

“After a disappointment, the coach’s job is to immediately shed light on what the next step is for the player to progress and go forward,” says Sammel. “You need to be going to the next tournament with optimism. ‘If we put a couple of things right, we practise a couple of things and get a bit better at those, that makes you even tougher. Let’s take that to the next tournament and see what happens then’.

“I have a saying that I’ve used for over 20 years, which is ‘do the work and good things will happen – you just don’t know when’. I’ll say: ‘This major is over and obviously we were hoping for more, it didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the next major. Let’s keep working and the good things will happen. It’s not our job really to know when because that’s the excitement of sport’.”